It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018
Not immigrants
Nov 1st, 2018 5:35 pm | By Ophelia BensonOur people
Nov 1st, 2018 5:24 pm | By Ophelia BensonIt is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018
The risk of disenfranchisement is large
Nov 1st, 2018 2:05 pm | By Ophelia BensonThat lawsuit against North Dakota’s voter identification law? The judge ruled against a stay.
A federal judge in North Dakota on Wednesday declined to grant emergency relief to a Native American tribe and voters who said they are being disenfranchised by North Dakota’s voter identification law.
U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ruled that granting an injunction days before the election “will create as much confusion as it will alleviate.”
But Hovland said the allegations contained in the lawsuit, filed Tuesday, “give this Court great cause for concern. The allegations will require a detailed response from the Secretary of State as this case proceeds.”
…
Versions of North Dakota’s voter identification law have been the subject of litigation for the past few years. Earlier this year, Hovland found the requirements, including identification carrying a residential street address, disproportionately burdened Native American voters.
He also found that thousands of Native Americans were less likely to possess identification that met the requirements or the documentation required to obtain identification.
A federal appeals court in September lifted the stay that prevented the residential street address requirement from being enforced. The majority opinion noted that “if any resident of North Dakota lacks a current residential street address and is denied an opportunity to vote on that basis, the courthouse doors remain open” — a line the plaintiff cited in the opening of a filing in the lawsuit filed this week.
In October, the Supreme Court declined to stay the appeals court ruling, allowing the street address requirement to go into effect for the November election. In a dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the “risk of disenfranchisement is large.”
It’s as if we’ve been returned to 1950, without even an overnight bag.
Guest post: Except the feeling of panic doesn’t go away
Nov 1st, 2018 1:31 pm | By Ophelia BensonOriginally a comment by latsot on Great respect.
You know when you’re trying to fix something and you strip a screw or something? There’s this momentary panic. You think “fuck, how am I going to fix this now?” Then you remember that even if you don’t know how to deal with the stripped screw or whatever, you know how to find out how.
That fleeting feeling of panic, that “holy fuck, this is my fault, what do I do now?” is really similar to the feeling I get every time Trump tweets or speaks and every time it becomes even more obvious that Trump’s awfulness has infected horribleness in pretty much every other nation leader. Some of them seem to have been waiting for an excuse to act in an abysmal way and feel that the existence of Trump is that. Some of them seem to recognise a formula we seem to be helpless to protect ourselves against (just lie about everything in the most brazen way possible without caring how it sounds or – especially – how it is).
Except the feeling of panic doesn’t go away. I know I can find out how to deal with a stripped screw or a software roll-out I monumentally fucked up. I know how I can try to deal with broken laws and proposals for new broken laws. All the tools are available and if I don’t know about them, they’re a duckduckgo search away.
But not this. Not a president who – as a fundamental – doesn’t care about anyone or anything but himself and every other politician in the world waking up to the fact that you can actually pull that shit and get away with it.
There just isn’t a way to fix it or a way to find out how to fix it. Trump will be gone sooner or later but his tactics of brazenly lying are quite visible in the words of politicians here in the UK, for instance. They’re not as horrible as Trump, of course, not even such awful people as Johnson, Rees-Mogg and Rudd, but they are quite clearly adopting the same tactics.
Next time you promise to fix something precious to a loved one and break it instead; next time you plug something into the mains that you made yourself and the lights in the whole street go out; next time you unwittingly reveal something that was supposed to be a secret… well, you’ll rationalise it one way or another and you’ll know the sort of thing you need to do to fix it. You don’t and won’t know what to do about this increasing shitstorm and the feeling of ohshitohshitohshitohshit will not go away.
Needless to say, these examples were plucked entirely out of the air and don’t relate in any way to anything I might have done. And I’ll orchestrate an amateurish smear campaign against anyone who says otherwise. Unless they buy me a drink, in which case I will definitely spill the beans.
The frightening message that casting a ballot is risky
Nov 1st, 2018 1:16 pm | By Ophelia BensonVoter suppression in Georgia, chapter 47.
[Brian] Kemp’s attempts to prevent people from voting exemplify the familiar ways in which access to the ballot has been restricted for people of color across the United States. But voter suppression also happens in ways that aren’t as well-known, and are even more insidious. In particular, local prosecutors have increasingly brought criminal charges against black voters and community activists for small technical infractions. They’re sending the frightening message that casting a ballot is risky — a message that resonates even when the charges turn out to be baseless and the people charged are acquitted.
In a particularly disturbing case, Olivia Pearson, a grandmother and lifelong resident of Coffee County, Ga., found herself on trial this year on charges of felony voter fraud. It began six years ago, on the first day of early voting in Georgia, when a black woman named Diewanna Robinson went to cast her ballot. Ms. Robinson, then 21, had never voted before and didn’t know how to operate the electronic voting machine, reported Buzzfeed. She asked Ms. Pearson, more than 30 years her senior, for help. Ms. Robinson would later testify that Ms. Pearson informed her where the card went in the machine and told her to “just go through and make my own selections on who I wanted to vote for.” Ms. Pearson walked away before Ms. Robinson started voting.
Almost four years later, Ms. Pearson received a letter from District Attorney George Barnhill’s office, informing her that she was facing felony charges for improperly assisting Ms. Robinson. The city councilwoman and community leader was arrested and booked. She had never been in trouble with the law, but now she found herself facing up to 15 years in prison.
Ms. Pearson was not accused of telling Ms. Robinson whom to vote for. She didn’t help her cast her ballot or even touch her machine. Prosecutors did not allege that the brief interaction between the two women impacted Robinson’s decisions in the voter booth. Rather, they insisted that because Ms. Robinson was not illiterate or disabled, she had not been entitled to even minimal verbal assistance.
One stares at the screen in horror and disbelief.
Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said prosecutors are increasingly preying on “respected community leaders” in rural areas where they “anticipate people will not be able to shine a bright spotlight on what’s happened.”
When residents in Quitman County, Ga., elected a majority-black school board for the first time in 2010, Mr. Kemp’s office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation sent armed investigators to interrogate residents about voter fraud and ultimately charged 12 organizers. One Quitman resident, Debra Dennard, was charged with two felonies for helping her partly blind father fill out his absentee ballot. Lula Smart was accused of assisting voters by carrying their sealed absentee ballots to the mailbox. She was charged with 32 felony counts. If convicted, she faced over 100 years in prison.
Georgia.
It’s not hard to conclude that what Mr. Trump, Mr. Kemp and their ilk are worried about is not voter fraud but access to the ballot for minorities and Democrats. This attitude helps explain why Ms. Pearson was apparently the first person ever tried for “improper assistance in casting a ballot,” phrasing that does not even appear in Georgia’s criminal statutes. (Prosecutors eventually dropped that charge, after the defense said that the state had “attempted to fashion a criminal offense by cobbling together parts of four statutes.”) Over the next two years, Ms. Pearson navigated two trials, two defense counsels, three dropped charges and one hung jury. Finally, in late February, after a 20-minute jury deliberation, she was acquitted of all charges. Six years after her brief interaction with Ms. Robinson, she was finally free.
“This was without a doubt a racially motivated targeted prosecution of a woman who was exercising her right to get out the vote in her community,” said Sarah Geraghty, managing attorney at the Southern Center for Human Rights and one of Ms. Pearson’s lawyers.
“I was tried because I’m black and outspoken,” Ms. Pearson told me.
The acquittal was a victory for Ms. Pearson. But it was also a victory for voter suppression. As Election Day approaches, it’s essential to remember that consequences of prosecutions like hers radiate far beyond the defendant, making entire communities question whether it’s worth the risk to engage in one of the most sacred rights in a democratic society.
Keep your eyes on the prize.
Trump tells us to hate all the brown people
Nov 1st, 2018 11:20 am | By Ophelia BensonIt’s Thursday. Trump has four more days to go Even More Racist, but he’s set himself a high bar today.
It is outrageous what the Democrats are doing to our Country. Vote Republican now! https://t.co/0pWiwCHGbh pic.twitter.com/2crea9HF7G
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018
Pinned at the top of President Trump’s Twitter feed Wednesday was a video. The man on the screen has a shaved head and a mustache and long chin hair. Smiling, he announces, “I killed f‐‐‐— cops.”
The man is Luis Bracamontes, a twice-deported Mexican immigrant who was given the death penalty in April for killing two California law enforcement officers in 2014. At the time of the shootings, Bracamontes was in the United States illegally — and now, with the midterm election approaching, he’s the star of the GOP’s latest campaign ad.
“Illegal immigrant, Luis Bracamontes, killed our people!” reads text on the 53-second video, which is filled with audible expletives. “Democrats let him into our country. . . . Democrats let him stay.”
The text is superimposed over videos of Bracamontes appearing to show no remorse for his crimes, and even declaring, “I’m going to kill more cops soon.”
More footage follows: Throngs of unidentified people rioting in unidentified streets and pushing down fences in undisclosed locations. A Fox News Channel correspondent interviewing a man identified only as “deported immigrant in caravan,” who asks to be pardoned for attempted murder.
“Who else would Democrats let in?” the video asks. An image of Bracamontes smiling reappears before being replaced by text, “President Donald Trump and Republicans are making America safe again.”
I watched it. It’s Nazi-level. It’s terrifyingly racist. It’s a national emergency.
This may be the most desperate and vile ad since Willie Horton. Trump and Republicans don't want to talk about the fact that they plan to repeal the ACA, gut Social Security, Medicare, & Medicaid, and cut taxes even further for their donors, so they've resorted to fearmongering. https://t.co/xaXNThEOfb
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) October 31, 2018
To all the Republicans who think that words don’t matter, who rationalize support for the president because of judges or tax cuts, who insist that domestic terrorism is unrelated to normalization of virulent racist rhetoric and who remain silent believing they have no moral responsibility for this brand of politics, I would say this is reason enough to vote, as my colleague Max Boot has suggested, against each and every Republican on the ballot. We have not seen individual Republican candidates, let alone House and Senate leaders, denounce the ad or insist that Trump take it down. Silence is assent. And therefore each one deserves the ire of decent voters.
…
To Rupert Murdoch, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Lou Dobbs, Fox shareholders, Fox producers and Fox executives and other on-air Fox personalities, I would say that this is in large part your doing. You’ve spent years drumming up fear of immigrants, misrepresenting the danger they pose, blurring the line between criminals and noncriminals (including “dreamers”) and sending dog whistles — no, make that trumpet blasts — to the white nationalists. I would say to you that Fox is not a news organization but a source of material and affirmation for the worst elements in our society, a small sliver of whom become violent. It’s not a place where reputable news people should want to work, nor a network that advertisers should support or viewers should indulge.
This country is falling off a cliff.
Great respect
Oct 31st, 2018 5:49 pm | By Ophelia BensonWhat else is Trump up to today?
Melania and I were treated very nicely yesterday in Pittsburgh. The Office of the President was shown great respect on a very sad & solemn day. We were treated so warmly. Small protest was not seen by us, staged far away. The Fake News stories were just the opposite-Disgraceful! pic.twitter.com/9B9HgCF1G9
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018
Making his visit to Pittsburgh yesterday all about him and not at all about the reason he was there: the eleven people murdered and four people injured in a mass shooting by a racist on Saturday. The closest he got to mentioning the actual occasion is “a very sad & solemn day.” (“Solemn” is kind of telling – as if he’s reminding himself to behave.) The rest is all about him and how nicely he was treated and how much respect he got and how far away and tiny the protest was and how much he hates journalists. “Look at me being all solemn and important at this sad occasion look how everyone loved me look how much respect they gave me look at me look at me look at me.”
Also threatening to send 15 thousand troops to the border.
A week after a bomb was sent to CNN’s offices. https://t.co/i7zkOUZ1e1
— Robert Reich (@RBReich) November 1, 2018
Also continuing to attack the Fourteenth Amendment.
Trump: “Birthright citizenship, you know all about it, we will keep the criminals, the drug dealers, we will keep them all out of our country. We will get rid of all of this. We will end, finally, birthright citizenship.”
— Philip Rucker (@PhilipRucker) November 1, 2018
Trump criticizes "chain migration" and the visa lottery, then says: "Birthright citizenship, you know all about it, we will keep the criminals, the drug dealers, we will keep 'em all out of our country. We will get rid of all of this."
— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) November 1, 2018
Just another day.
The events that took place
Oct 31st, 2018 5:14 pm | By Ophelia BensonI feel sick.
Yesterday in Pittsburgh I was really impressed with Congressman Keith Rothfus (far more so than any other local political figure). His sincere level of compassion, grief and sorrow for the events that took place was, in its own way, very inspiring. Vote for Keith!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 31, 2018
That hamfisted attempt to sound somber, followed by the exclamatory Party Political Broadcast – dear god. But also “for the events that took place” – the squeamish little toad can’t even bring himself to name what happened, I suppose lest anyone be reminded that he inspires violent hatred.
Nice exploitation of mass murder to hustle votes. Very presidential. https://t.co/sxtid2lr0z
— Norm Eisen (@NormEisen) October 31, 2018
The equal protection of the laws
Oct 31st, 2018 11:37 am | By Ophelia BensonAs soon as I read about Trump’s attack on the Fourteenth Amendment, I wanted Eric Foner’s take. Now we have it.
(Why Eric Foner? Because he literally wrote The Book on Reconstruction, and because he’s a quality thinker and writer.)
He starts with saying Trump’s cunning plan would undoubtedly be unconstitutional.
It would also violate a deeply rooted American idea — that anybody, regardless of race, religion, national origin, or the legal status of one’s parents, can be a loyal citizen of this country.
(Or sex.)
Birthright citizenship is established by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, still on the books today, and by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified two years later. The only exceptions, in the words of the amendment, are persons not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Members of Congress at the time made clear that this wording applied only to Native Americans living on reservations — then considered members of their own tribal sovereignties, not the nation — and American-born children of foreign diplomats. (Congress made all Native Americans citizens in 1924.)
The Civil War changed things when it came to citizenship.
The first Naturalization Act, in 1790, limited the process of naturalization to “white persons.” In 1857, on the eve of the Civil War, the Supreme Court, in the Dred Scott decision, declared that no black person, slave or free, could be a citizen of the United States or part of the national “political community.” Echoes of this outlook persist to this day, including in Mr. Trump’s long campaign to deny the birthright citizenship status of President Barack Obama.
It’s interesting trying to parse this kind of thinking. The “white persons” dragged black persons here to extract their labor by force, and therefore decided none of them – even escapees – could be part of the political community. The violent thieves are the political community, and their victims aren’t good enough. It’s strange.
The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to provide, for the first time, a uniform national definition of citizenship, so that states would no longer be able to deny that status to blacks. It went on to require the states to accord all “persons,” including aliens, the equal protection of the laws, as part of an effort to create a new egalitarian republic on the ashes of slavery.
The birthright citizenship provision, explained Senator Jacob Howard of Michigan, one of the founders of the Republican Party and the floor manager of the amendment’s passage in the Senate, was intended to “settle the great question of citizenship once and for all.” The amendment formed part of a constitutional revolution that, in the words of George William Curtis, the editor of the Republican magazine Harper’s Weekly, transformed a document “for white men” into one “for mankind.” In 1870, Congress amended the naturalization laws to allow black immigrants to become citizens. The bar to Asians, however, persisted; they could not be naturalized until well into the 20th century.
It’s not heartwarming to see the brute Donald Trump trying to vandalize the effort to create a new egalitarian republic on the ashes of slavery. (Egalitarian except for Asians, and women when it came to voting. These things seem to take awhile.)
In the interview in which he discussed his plan to issue the executive order, Mr. Trump claimed that the United States is “the only country in the world where a person comes in and has a baby, and the baby is essentially a citizen of the United States.” This, too, is an exaggeration, as many in the Western Hemisphere do recognize birthright citizenship. But it is true that in the past decade or two the nations of Europe have retreated from this principle. All limit automatic access to citizenship in some way, making it depend not simply on place of birth but also on ethnicity, culture, religion or extra requirements for the children of parents who are not citizens.
That has not been our way. Adopted as part of the effort to purge the United States of the legacy of slavery, the principle of birthright citizenship remains an eloquent statement about the nature of American society, a powerful force for assimilation of the children of immigrants and a repudiation of our long history of racism.
Mr. Trump’s order, if issued, will not only violate both the Constitution and deeply rooted American ideals, but also set a dangerous precedent. If the president can unilaterally abrogate a provision of the Constitution by executive order, which one will be next?
Only the Second would be safe.
Overturned
Oct 31st, 2018 10:17 am | By Ophelia BensonA Pakistani court has overturned the death sentence of a Christian woman convicted of blasphemy, a case that has polarised the nation.
Asia Bibi was convicted in 2010 after being accused of insulting the Prophet Muhammad in a row with her neighbours.
She always maintained her innocence, but has spent most of the past eight years in solitary confinement.
The landmark ruling has already set off violent protests by hardliners who support strong blasphemy laws.
Demonstrations against the verdict are being held in Karachi, Lahore, Peshawar and Multan. Clashes with police have been reported.
“Hardliners” is a good deal too euphemistic. They want a woman killed for supposedly saying something they don’t like about a self-declared prophet who’s been dead for 14 centuries. She says she didn’t say the Naughty Things, but if she had, so what? At most it might be a reason to find a neighbor unpleasant and hostile; we don’t get to kill neighbors we find unpleasant and hostile. These “hardliners” who “support strong blasphemy laws” are rioting because they want to see a woman killed for trivial words. If a religion doesn’t inspire you to be more loving toward other humans, what the hell is the point of it? Never wiping your bum with your right hand? Not good enough.
Even after she is freed, the legacy of her case will continue. Shortly after her conviction a prominent politician, Punjab Governor Salman Taseer, was murdered for speaking out in her support and calling for the blasphemy laws to be reformed.
The killer – Mumtaz Qadri – was executed, but has become a cult hero with a large shrine dedicated to him on the outskirts of Islamabad.
His supporters also created a political party – campaigning to preserve the blasphemy laws – which gathered around two million votes in this year’s general election.
Two million votes for the party of murderous fanaticism – it’s tragic.
So the question is, will she be able to get out of Pakistan?
She has been offered asylum by several countries and is expected to leave the country.
Her daughter, Eisham Ashiq, had previously told the AFP news agency that if she were released: “I will hug her and will cry meeting her and will thank God that he has got her released.”
But the family said they feared for their safety and would likely have to leave Pakistan.
They will, of course. I just hope she and they can leave immediately, and will have support when they arrive. They’re not multi-lingual intellectuals, they’re farmers; moving to a foreign country is not going to be easy.
He’s just shy
Oct 30th, 2018 4:45 pm | By Ophelia BensonTrump went to Pittsburgh even though many people there wanted him to stay away. That seems pretty typical of his callous narcissism. Yes, it seems to be part of a president’s job to assist with public mourning, but that gets complicated when the president spends a lot of time publicly inciting hatred against individuals and groups. He becomes a person you don’t want hanging around a funeral, especially a funeral for people murdered by someone shouting ethnic or religious hatred.
Trump is not a kind or generous or caring man. He’s the opposite. He’s angry, and greedy, and self-centered, and filled with hostility and aggression. He’s terrible in disasters, and it’s hard to imagine he’s any better at funerals of the type taking place in Pittsburgh. (When it’s his own relatives or friends maybe it’s a different story, maybe he can be more human then, but this isn’t that.) He shouldn’t go. He should have stayed away.
The White House gave no immediate explanation for why the president was determined to rush to the horror-stricken community over the objections of local leaders. But Mr. Trump has a heavy travel schedule filled with campaign rallies beginning on Wednesday, with at least one political appearance planned each day until Monday, the eve of the midterm congressional elections.
There again: that’s about him, not about them.
The stop is an opportunity for him to play the traditional role of consoler in chief that presidents often step into after a national tragedy. But in the wake of the shooting and a recent spate of mailed explosive devices, Mr. Trump has been reluctant to blunt his bitter political attacks, arguing that his supporters crave his incendiary rhetoric.
Reluctant to blunt his bitter political attacks? You might as well say the shooter was reluctant to aim his bullets at the ceiling. Trump isn’t reluctant to blunt, he’s determined to intensify. Trump isn’t just saying “Noooooo I don’t want to,” he’s screaming his hatred and contempt every few hours.
Back? BACK??
Oct 30th, 2018 4:25 pm | By Ophelia BensonWill they never learn?
President Trump punches back even as synagogue mourns https://t.co/CUElM5QCCn
— TIME (@TIME) October 29, 2018
“Trump punches back” for godsake – nobody punched Trump.
What is wrong with you? This headline is so irresponsible.
Eleven elderly Jews were murdered in a synagogue at prayer on Shabbat, gunned down with automatic weapons by a man fueled by Trump's rhetoric.No one "punched" Trump.
— Victoria Brownworth (@VABVOX) October 30, 2018
There’s a lot more where that came from.
The gradual growth of our own wickedness
Oct 30th, 2018 12:23 pm | By Ophelia BensonGarrett Epps in the Atlantic in July:
I have been writing about the citizenship clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and its meaning for the children of the undocumented, for more than a decade. In a 2006 book, Democracy Reborn: The Fourteenth Amendment and the Fight for Equal Rights in Post-Civil War America, I traced the drafting of the Amendment and the process by which the Senate added citizenship language in May 1866. In a subsequent scholarly article, “The Citizenship Clause: A ‘Legislative History,’” I reviewed in exhaustive (you’ve been warned) detail the debates over this precise clause. I have written about the birthright citizenship issue for The Atlantichere, here, and here.
…
Tyrants and would-be autocrats throughout history have itched to get their hands on the law of citizenship. When Hitler took power in Germany, he engineered the passage of the Nuremberg Laws, which stripped citizenship from Germans not of “German blood.” Jews and others were subsequently “state subjects,” without the rights of “real” Germans. That inequality by law was a key part of the chain of events leading to the Holocaust. The Soviet Union, in a law promulgated in 1931, gave the power to annul the citizenship of any citizen to the Presidium of the Soviet Central Committee. Over the years, thousands of dissidents—including Stalin’s political rival Leon Trotsky, the poet Joseph Brodsky, the Jewish activists Avital and Natan Sharansky, and the Nobel Prize–winning author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn—were stripped of citizenship, driven into exile, and (in Trotsky’s case) murdered.
Nice company Trump keeps.
A democratic country belongs to its people, not the other way around. The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment knew this well. They’d had decades of experience with racist state laws denying citizenship to slaves, free black Americans, and immigrants. The citizenship clause placed American citizenship—national, equal, unitary, irrevocable—at the center of the democratic polity that they hoped to build from the ashes of the house divided. No one has offered convincing evidence that they secretly intended citizenship to be a gift of the state; no one but Anton has dared to suggest that a president could void the citizenship clause by executive order.
The idea, in fact, seems outlandish today; but until recently, so too did the idea of an overnight Muslim ban, or of forcibly seizing, caging, and drugging innocent children. “We are easily shocked by crimes which appear at once in their full magnitude,” Samuel Johnson once wrote, “but the gradual growth of our own wickedness, endeared by interest, and palliated by all the artifices of self-deceit, gives us time to form distinctions in our own favor, and reason by degrees submits to absurdity, as the eye is in time accommodated to darkness.”
The administration is accustoming the public to crimes of great magnitude. What was unimaginable in November 2016 is already happening in 2018, and it will keep happening until Americans stop it.
They do know how to ratchet.
Fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hatred
Oct 30th, 2018 11:40 am | By Ophelia BensonCan't wait for The Federalist to publish a hot take on why Democrats lack "direct and immediate allegiance to the US" and therefore their kids are not entitled to 14th amendment protection. IT'S AN OPEN CONSTITUTIONAL QUESTION GUYS. https://t.co/Bl5GdIvRWk
— Susan Hennessey (@Susan_Hennessey) October 30, 2018
Pence is willing to flout the Constitution to drive this ridiculous idea into the midterms. Whatever happened to the strict constructionists in the GOP, who found Constitutional certainty in language far less clear that the citizenship provision of the 14th Amendment? https://t.co/ezWNbvmiho
— Joyce Alene (@JoyceWhiteVance) October 30, 2018
Know anyone else who needs to brush up on the 14th Amendment? https://t.co/Inlxc6kD2v
— ACLU (@ACLU) October 30, 2018
This is a blatantly unconstitutional attempt to fan the flames of anti-immigrant hatred in the days ahead of the midterms.
The 14th Amendment’s citizenship guarantee is clear. You can’t erase the Constitution with an executive order, @realDonaldTrump. https://t.co/8vGkjOlPsE
— ACLU (@ACLU) October 30, 2018
The 14th Amendment overturned a Supreme Court ruling that black people could not claim rights as citizens because past leaders had denied them rights. The amendment took away power to define people out of citizenship, which Trump now says he’d like to do.
https://t.co/PYVxpclTGl— Steve Inskeep (@NPRinskeep) October 30, 2018
Eager to test it
Oct 30th, 2018 11:32 am | By Ophelia BensonThe Times on Trump’s attack on the 14th Amendment:
Doing away with birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants was an idea Mr. Trump pitched as a presidential candidate, but there is no clear indication that he would be able to do so unilaterally, and attempting to would be certain to prompt legal challenges. The consensus among legal scholars is that he cannot, but Mr. Trump and his allies are eager to test it in the Supreme Court.
Naturally. They lost the popular vote by over 3 million in a heavily gerrymandered election, so why wouldn’t they be eager to destroy the amendment that covers equal rights for all citizens?
“We all cherish the language of the 14th Amendment, but the Supreme Court of the United States has never ruled on whether the language of the 14th Amendment — ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ — applies specifically to people who are in the country illegally,” Vice President Mike Pence told Politico in an interview on Tuesday, several hours after Mr. Trump’s comments were reported.
Well now there’s a big fat lie. Pence doesn’t “cherish the language of the 14th Amendment” – if he did he never would have gone near Trump and his administration.
Mr. Trump told Axios that while he initially believed he needed a constitutional amendment or action by Congress to make the change, the White House Counsel’s Office has advised him otherwise.
“Now they’re saying I can do it just with an executive order,” Mr. Trump said. The White House did not immediately respond to requests for clarification of the legal grounds the president’s lawyers have given him for validating such a move.
His discussion of the idea comes after the administration announced it was streaming more than 5,000 active-duty troops to the southern border, part of an election-season rash of executive action Mr. Trump has undertaken as he works to energize his anti-immigrant base.
That is, as he works to inflame his rabidly racist “base.” That’s all this is: naked shameless racism.
Big plans
Oct 30th, 2018 5:09 am | By Ophelia BensonTrump adds another item on the white supremacist agenda: getting rid of citizenship by birth aka the Fourteenth Amendment.
President Trump is planning to sign an executive order that would seek to end the right to U.S. citizenship for children of noncitizens born on U.S. soil, he said in a television interview taped on Monday.
A president can’t ditch a constitutional amendment just by signing an order.
The move would be certain to spark a constitutional debate about the meaning of the 14th Amendment. It reads: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
In other words, the people formerly known as slaves and non-citizens are citizens and have the rights of citizens. John Wagner at the The Atlantic gives some background:
To the members of the 39th Congress who framed the Fourteenth Amendment, the cause of the Civil War was clear. It was something called “the Slave Power”—a term which referred to the concessions made by the Philadelphia Framers to the slave states in 1787. Those were (1) the “three-fifths” clause, allowing extra seats in Congress to states with large slave populations; (2) the “electoral college,” which gave slave states undeserved power over the selection of the president; and (3) the principle of equal representation in the Senate, which had come over time to allow the South a veto over the more populous and dynamic North. As a result of this rigged system, the South had since 1790 dominated the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. And in the years after the 1857 Dred Scott decision, “the slavocracy” had begun making a legal argument that even “free states” must now be required to permit and protect slavery within their borders. The pro-Southern Supreme Court seemed quite likely to back such a radical new rule. “We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their state free,” Abraham Lincoln warned in 1858, “and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave state.”
We have a history. The Fourteenth Amendment is a corrective to some of that history (far from all of it).
It has come to their attention
Oct 29th, 2018 5:15 pm | By Ophelia Benson
AART – Artists Against Rampant Transphobia
It has come to our attention that Liverpool based artist Nina Edge is transphobic and has been spreading her vile bigotry on twitter via the Welsh Streets twitter account. We ask that anyone in the Liverpool art scene takes a stand against this by limiting her involvement in your projects and spreading awareness. Thank you once again for the incredible amount of public support and solidarity we have witnessed since this was discovered. Protect trans women and include them in feminist spaces!
Of course, she hasn’t been doing any such thing. But hey, let’s organize to destroy her anyway!
These 11 wonderful people
Oct 29th, 2018 4:54 pm | By Ophelia BensonThese 11 wonderful people were at Tree of Life Synagogue. I imagine they were holding prayer books singing Hebrew prayers Jews have loved for thousands of years. I’m sure many were wearing a Tallit, the Jewish Prayer Shawl. May They Rest In Peace. May Their Memory be a Bleasing. pic.twitter.com/wK0uxOwSSS
— Wolf Blitzer (@wolfblitzer) October 29, 2018
She thinks it’s outrageous
Oct 29th, 2018 4:02 pm | By Ophelia BensonNo @PressSec, CNN did not say @realDonaldTrump was directly responsible for the bomb sent to our office by his ardent and emboldened supporter. We did say that he, and you, should understand your words matter. Every single one of them. But so far, you don’t seem to get that. pic.twitter.com/ZbH5DQggWq
— CNN Communications (@CNNPR) October 29, 2018
Look. If you incite hatred, then hatred has been incited. If you have a huge public megaphone – such as for instance the personal Twitter account of a president or prime minister – and you use it to call Xs “Enemy of the People” then you are doing just that. If you rant and rave over and over and OVER again that particular journalists represent “Fake News” then that is what you are doing. Trump may think he does it only to inspire his fans, or get it off his chest, or motivate CNN to do better, or set the record straight…but he can’t know that that’s how all of his audience will receive it.
Sarah Sanders probably knows that. But: deny deny deny.
Please stay away
Oct 29th, 2018 2:39 pm | By Ophelia BensonA number of people in Pittsburgh have asked Trump to stay away. Of course he is going there anyway.
Nevertheless, the White House announced Trump would travel to Pittsburgh on Tuesday, ignoring the letter as well as a plea from Pittsburgh’s mayor that the president at least refrain from visiting “while we are burying the dead.” The first of the funerals for the 11 shooting victims is expected to take place Tuesday.
This will go well. He’ll shout about the caravan, he’ll tell them to vote Republican, he’ll flap his hands stiffly in and out, he’ll make jokes about his hair, he’ll rant about Fake News.
The open letter, which was published and shared on Sunday, was written by 11 members of the Pittsburgh affiliate of Bend the Arc, a national organization for progressive Jews focused on social justice…
Ah well no wonder he’s ignoring it. Social justice is THE ENEMY.
“For the past three years your words and your policies have emboldened a growing white nationalist movement,” the Jewish leaders wrote. “You yourself called the murderer evil, but yesterday’s violence is the direct culmination of your influence.”
The letter continued: “Our Jewish community is not the only group you have targeted. You have also deliberately undermined the safety of people of color, Muslims, LGBTQ people, and people with disabilities. Yesterday’s massacre is not the first act of terror you incited against a minority group in our country.”
Women. Also women. He has also deliberately undermined the safety of women. Remember women? Half of humanity?
Bend the Arc was founded in 2012 as an advocacy organization. Three years later, with the help of Alexander Soros, son of liberal philanthropist George Soros, the group launched the first Jewish political action committee focused on dealing solely with domestic issues, the Forward reported. According to its website, the group supports “everyone threatened by the Trump agenda,” and Alexander Soros is the chair of its board of directors. The Pittsburgh chapter was created shortly after the 2016 election, Friedman said.
Trump will talk about the Soros-occupied State Department. Count on it.
