Time for Action: #EndFamilySeparation

Recently, we've discussed the Trump administration's new policy of separating families entering the U.S., either illegally or in search of asylum, and given a brief explanation of the rank barbarism of the policy for the ethically challenged.

Here, we make an effort to present solutions.

One obvious solution is to pledge to campaign and vote for Democrats in November. And while that is a necessary course of action, it is hardly sufficient. For one thing, the Democrats' record on immigration issues isn't all that great, so simply marking the line marked 'D' won't guarantee results. We need to push Democrats, both incumbents and challengers, to adopt pro-immigrant policies. For another, the election is still more than 5 months away, which means that a Democratic Congress is at least 7 months away, and even then they'll only be able to check Trump's abuses (hopefully) rather than enacting their own legislation.

Families are being torn apart NOW. We can't wait that long to act.

I'm certainly not the best resource for this kind of information, but here's my best shot:

1. Contact your legislators, whether they are Republicans, Democrats, or Zoroastrians. As noted above, not all Democrats are good on immigration policy; they need to be pushed. As for Republicans, their death-grip embrace of Trump is all poll-driven. If they receive enough constituent calls (especially from Republican constituents), they'll turn around. Plus given the current push to force a DACA vote in the House, we shouldn't assume that all Republicans are as bad on immigration as Trump.
2. Donate time, money, or both to groups fighting the administration's policy, or fighting for immigrants' rights. There are many such organizations, so choosing just one can be a bit overwhelming. The ACLU has a long and distinguished history of winning victories for civil rights of all kinds, and they're on the case here. The same is true of the Southern Poverty Law Center. For organizations specifically focused on immigration, I believe that the Informed Immigrant is a solid site, which hosts a search engine you can use to find local organizations where you can donate. (UPDATE: The following organizations have been recommended since this post originally went up: Innovation Law Lab, the CARA Pro Bono Project, the Florence Immigration and Refugee Rights Project, and the Texas Civil Rights Project.  My donation went to this last organization, because it is highly rated by Charity Navigator, and because a wonderful woman named Kendyl Hanks (@HanksKendyl) has promised to match donations made to TCRP if you DM her your confirmation.  Her offer may have expired by the time you read this).
3. Two other organizations which seem good --- but caveat emptor, I've spent literally minutes researching them --- are The Young Center for Immigrant Children's Rights and The National Immigrant Justice Center.
4. Democrats in my local congressional district have some other suggestions, as does politicalcharge.org.
5. MoveOn is organizing a national day of action on June 30.  Check for an event in your area.  If there isn't one, come back later to see if someone organized one --- or organize one yourself!

Finally --- this is a horrific situation, and there's no question Trump, Sessions, ICE and CBP all bear responsibility for it. But this isn't and shouldn't become a political cudgel. For one thing, Obama's hands are far from clean when it comes to immoral immigration policy. For another, this is a national disgrace which requires a unified, national response. And we can't work together to end the injustices of the immigration system --- all of them, whether it's Obama or Trump who's responsible --- if we insist on pointing fingers at each other.

This atrocity is the defining issue of our time. The way we respond as a nation will define America for the next generation.

Things Everyone Knows: Ripping Families Apart is Wrong

Earlier today, I wrote about the Trump administration's latest policy shift that attempts to limit illegal immigration; namely, taking children away from parents who come to America illegally, or even those who (legally) come to America seeking asylum.

Naturally, I thought it goes without saying that such a policy is morally bankrupt in all circumstances, but reality soon asserted itself.  Of course there is a small but determined group of dead-enders who steadfastly support the policy, on the grounds that anyone who comes to America illegally must suffer the consequences, even if that means the loss of their children.  So for the benefit of those who need the clarification, I'll explain why this policy is deeply immoral.

The most obvious reason is that even if the parents may have broken the law, the child has not. So separating a child from her parent not only punishes the child for a crime she didn't commit, her punishment may be much harsher than the one the parent suffers, given that as of this writing, roughly 20% of all children in the hands of federal sponsors simply vanish, many of them likely into the hands of human traffickers.

So yes, destroying the life of an innocent child is immoral. Do I really need to continue?

The next most obvious problem with the idea that 'criminals deserve what they get' is that quite often, the parent giving up her child is also innocent. As Chris Hayes reported, this policy targets asylum-seekers as well as illegal immigrants, even though it is not illegal to come the U.S. seeking asylum.

So yes, destroying the lives of an innocent child AND his mother is immoral. Shall I go on?

Fine. Now I've never met you, so I don't know what religious beliefs you might have, if any. So I'll simply point out that most (if not all) of the world's religions teach kindness and generosity toward immigrants, not authoritarian horror. For example:

• If you're Christian: "When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. (Leviticus 19:33-34)"
• If you're Jewish, then the above Leviticus quote applies equally to you, but there's also this: "whether we decide as Americans through the political process to open our arms or arm the gates, as Jews the message is clear: those struggling to leave the place of their birth and find freedom and security and opportunity in a new land are human beings. There is no 'us' and 'them.' They are God’s children. They are our brothers and sisters."
• If you're Muslim: The people of Madinah would later be given the title of “The Helpers” because, ultimately as the verse from the Holy Quran states, they welcomed the men and women of Mecca into their city and their homes. They shared their food and sustenance. They gave and gave, even from what they themselves wanted to partake from. They sacrificed, and as a community they prospered.
• And if you're none of these things, or simply believe the U.S. Constitution should settle the matter, there's the 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment, in which category the destruction of families clearly applies. Sara Ramey, Executive Director of the Migrant Center for Human Rights, gives a more detailed constitutional argument against the policy.

So --- hang on to your Hammurabi-like desire to punish immigrants, asylum-seekers and their children if you must. But please don't pretend that fairness, justice or the Constitution have anything to do with your deeply immoral belief.

First They Came for the Immigrants . . .

The Trump administration is a very effective scandal-generator. Ironically, because there is at least one new scandal each day, no single scandal has really taken root. The media and the public have shifted their attention from one scandal to the next to the next, and in so doing, the Trump administration has kept its head above water, like a rock skipping across a pond.

That really needs to stop now.

A "zero-tolerance" policy toward people who enter the United States illegally may cause families to be separated while parents are prosecuted, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said Monday.

. . .

"We don't want to separate families, but we don't want families to come to the border illegally and attempt to enter into this country improperly," Sessions said. "The parents are subject to prosecution while children may not be. So, if we do our duty and prosecute those cases, then children inevitably for a period of time might be in different conditions."

This new policy has had predictably disastrous results. Take the time to watch the whole clip:

A brief flavor of what's going on:

Children as young as 18 months are being “ripped out of the arms of their mother,” Hayes reported, adding it was for a very specific reason: “to punish the immigrants,” many of whom he said were “often seeking asylum”.

It's worth noting here that when someone comes to America from another country seeking asylum, they are not breaking the law. This distinction appears to be lost on ICE, a rogue agency with a lot of other issues, which separate the children from their parents anyway.

The good news here is that a lot of people were rightly outraged by the new policy, which seems like something only an authoritarian dictator would implement. For his part, Trump responded to the outrage by --- blaming the Democrats:

Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 26, 2018

But of course, this is typical Trump misdirection and lying. As Chris Hayes noted in the film clip above, this policy is new with the Trump administration, and unprecedented. In particular, Trump himself pushed for the policy, raising speculation that Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen might resign over it:

One persistent issue has been Mr. Trump’s belief that Ms. Nielsen and other officials in the department were resisting his direction that parents be separated from their children when families cross illegally into the United States, several officials said. The president and his aides in the White House had been pushing a family separation policy for weeks as a way of deterring families from trying to cross the border illegally.

This policy isn't a Democratic policy, and it's no accident. This policy is consistent with Trump's anti-immigrant views, and also with his pattern of nominating outright racists for government posts, including most recently, Ronald Mortensen, who among other things believes that all immigrants commit multiple crimes after arriving in the U.S., and that all DACA participants are criminals.

Mr. Mortensen has been nominated as the assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. It would be funny if it weren't destroying families. Meanwhile, the Trump administration doesn't seem to care:

John Kelly acknowledged in a recent interview with NPR that family separation “could be a tough deterrent” to illegal immigration. In that same interview, the White House chief of staff argued that it wasn’t cruel and heartless to take children like Jose away from their parents because, “The children will be taken care of – put into foster care or whatever.”

"Whatever". No big deal. Just a child, perhaps an infant, in a strange country, taken from the only parent they've ever known, to be separated from them indefinitely.

Whatever.

I make no secret that I believe Donald Trump is a horrible president and a horrible human, and that impeachment is the nicest thing that he deserves. This isn't about politics, and it shouldn't be. It's about those families.

You can hate illegal immigrants. You can even hate asylum seekers. But America should never, EVER be a country that tears families apart. That's not making America great. That's making America fascist --- U.S. Customs and Border Protection even makes the parents wear yellow wristbands in custody.

This isn't America.

So I hope everyone reading this --- no matter whether they're Republican, Democrat, independent or Zoroastrian --- will speak out against this immoral policy, and urge others to do the same. Here are some ways to do that:

1. Always, always, always let your elected representatives know your thoughts and feelings.
2. There are organizations out there fighting this policy in the courts. The ACLU and the Southern Poverty Law Center are two of my favorites. You can give them money, or contact them about other ways to help.
3. Informed Immigrant keeps a list of organizations which might be in need of volunteers. You search to see whether there are any in your area (I have not done this yet myself, but I plan to).
4. Look for the #WhereAreTheChildren hashtag on Twitter.

This is it, folks. When the history of the Trump administration is written 20 years from now, THIS will be at the center of it, and our response as a nation will define how history views us as a nation.

Choose wisely.

UPDATE: This shouldn't surprise me, but it did. Some folks on social media --- hardcore supporters of Emporer Biggott P. McTreason, no doubt, argue that if people come to the U.S. illegally, they deserve whatever happens to them. Even if that means never seeing their children again. In case it's not obvious why this view is horribly, horribly wrong (or if you just want to see the reasons summarized nicely all in one place), look here.

Meanwhile, in an Alternate Universe . . .

Outgoing House Speaker Paul Ryan makes the following announcement:

Over the past 15 months, our nation has become more divided than at any time in memory.  Entitlement and grievance have become the chief motivators of public policy, while rage and invective have replaced respectful and reasoned discussion of our differences.  As the leader of the Republican caucus in the House of Representatives, I must accept a significant portion of responsibility for that.  However, such transgressions are not solely the fault of Republicans.

There is plenty of blame to go around.

However, it has become obvious to me and to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle, as well as in the Senate, that the path America is on currently is tearing it apart.  The time has come for our leaders to lead our country to a place where our policies are the product of established facts, honest expression of opinion, and good-faith compromise.

The first step in this new direction has to be the removal from office of President Donald Trump, who, in addition to personifying everything that is currently wrong with our public discourse, is clearly guilty of a staggering number of high crimes and misdemeanors.  He needs to be removed from office immediately, but Congress will not initiate impeachment proceedings at this time, for the following two reasons:

1. The Trump administration, including Vice President Pence, is corrupt all the way to the ground.  Simply impeaching Donald Trump isn't enough to put America back on course.
2. When President Trump is replaced, his successor should be selected by the American people, and not by anyone in the current administration or Congress.

For these reasons, and after much deliberation, both the Democratic and Republican members of Congress make the following promises to the American people:

1. On January 3, 2019, immediately upon their swearing-in, the House of Representatives of the 116th Congress will initiate impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence.
2. Within 2 weeks, the U.S. Senate will initiate the trials of Donald Trump and Mike Pence.  Given their records, removal from office is assured.
3. With both the offices of President and Vice President vacant, the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives will assume the office of President, and select a nominee for the office of Vice President for the consideration of the U.S. Congress.

The practical consequence of these promises is that, by February 3, 2019, the Speaker of the House at that time will become our next president.  What this means for the American voter is that they will effectively be selecting this president when they vote for a member of Congress in November.

Obviously, these promises are not binding on future members of Congress.  But all members of the 115th Congress strongly encourage those running for House and Senate seats this fall to publicly make this promise, and we urge voters not to vote for any candidate who refuses to make it.

Because in the end, the future of America depends on you, the voters.

We urge you to educate yourselves, and others, about the issues.  We urge you to refrain from personal attacks and empty rhetoric, and to reject any candidate who offers these.  And even though it is more challenging than ever to separate fact from spin from outright lies and distortion, we urge you to take the time to find the truth.  Because America has no more time for hate and divisiveness.  The problems we face are too important to waste any more time with lies.

As a Congress, we realize that we have shirked our duty to America for too long.  That ends today.  And every American, whether Republican or Democrat; whether black, white, Asian or Hispanic; whether Muslim, Christian, Jew or atheist; from ages 18 to 118, needs to do their duty in November and make an informed vote for America's future.

Sinclair

I'm late to the party on this (what else is new), but in case you haven't seen it in the past week:

Earlier this month, CNN’s Brian Stelter broke the news that Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner or operator of nearly 200 television stations in the U.S., would be forcing its news anchors to record a promo about “the troubling trend of irresponsible, one sided news stories plaguing our country.” The script, which parrots Donald Trump’s oft-declarations of developments negative to his presidency as “fake news,” brought upheaval to newsrooms already dismayed with Sinclair’s consistent interference to bring right-wing propaganda to local television broadcasts.

It's worth clicking through to see the video Deadspin put together, showing news team after news team parroting the same Trumpian script.

This is a problem for two reasons.  First, the Sinclair-owned stations reach 39% of U.S. viewers.  Second, Sinclair is on the verge of merging with Tribune Media, and if the merger goes through, it will extend Sinclair's reach to 72% of viewers.

There is an expectation, or at least the desire, that news outlets in America are reliable, fact-based, and unbiased (to the extent that is possible).  But Sinclair affiliates have a long history of right-wing partisan tilt, and for many Sinclair employees, this latest stunt is the final straw.

Of course, it's easy to say that reporters with integrity should refuse to participate in reporting new they know to be false, but it's clear not only that refusal to participate might cost them their jobs, but that quitting a job at Sinclair carries a larger penalty than a simple loss of your paycheck.  Not only is Sinclair horrible in an Orwellian sort of way, but also in an employer-who-exerts-undue-control-over-your-life sort of way.

And, oh yeah, even as they force their anchors to regurgitate Trump's 'fake news' mantra, they produce generous amounts of dishonest right-wing propaganda themselves.  John Oliver detailed the atrocities in his own inimitable way last summer:

So if you're now frothing mad at Sinclair (and if you're not, what's wrong with you?), here are some things you (yes, you!) can do to help fight back.

First, you can speak up to oppose the merge of Sinclair and Tribune Media.  Probably the most effective way to do this is to contact your representatives in Congress directly, but you can also contact them via Free Press or Common Cause.

Second, you can boycott Sinclair stations and their advertisers.

Let Mueller Do His Job

It has been obvious for some time that Trump deserves to be removed from office, either via impeachment or the 25th amendment.  I laid out the case as succinctly as I could back in January, to no fanfare.  The #DoYourJob tag I hoped would go viral disappeared without a trace.

Since then, Trump has continued to find new and interesting forms of malfeasance, including (but not limited to):

• Waiting more than six weeks to finally impose sanctions on Russia for attacking our elections, even after his CIA Director warned him that he has 'every expectation' they will attack again in 2018.
• Firing Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, obviously because he made perfectly fair criticisms of Russia which Trump couldn't stand for.
• The discovery that he has made hush money payments to one or more women with whom he had extramarital affairs before becoming president.  The sex isn't the big problem; it's the fact that Trump is likely horribly, horribly compromised.
• Required White House staff to sign unconstitutional non-disclosure agreements, stifling both free speech and transparency.
• Firing Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, in a clear abuse of power and attempt to undermine Robert Mueller's investigation into Trump.
• Discussing the possibility of prosecuting Robert Mueller --- not because he's suspected of any crime, but simply to hobble his investigation.  Even discussing such a thing is a clear abuse of power.

All this is, obviously, an order of magnitude worse than anything Nixon or Clinton did.  And yet the Republicans in Congress --- the ones who spent months investigating the non-scandal of Benghazi --- actually CLOSED their investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, concluding (are you sitting down?) that Trump did nothing wrong.

Nope! No scandals to investigate here!  But House Republicans aren't sitting around wasting taxpayer money, no sir.  In fact, they're investigating Hillary's emails so furiously, the FBI has had to staff up to handle all of the requests for information.  I wish I were joking.

I have learned my lesson, however.  It's absurd to ask congressional Republicans to do their jobs; they're to far into their Fox fantasyworld where Donald Trump is the saintly, unfairly maligned, humble servant who selflessly gave up the life of a billionaire to serve his country.

Apparently, it's too much even to ask a Congress still obsessed with a non-scandal from 2 years ago to look into any of the scandals Trump seems to generate daily.  So I'm going to make a more modest request.

If you're not going to #DoYourJob, could you at least make sure Mueller can do his?  Let's game this out.

If you're a House Republican, your time is running short.  There's a very good chance you'll only be in Congress for another 9 months (23 of you have already given up), and if you DO win re-election, the Democrats will be impeaching Trump in a little over a year, a fate he clearly deserves.

If you're a Senate Republican, your seat is safer, but you too will face a difficult choice in just over a year.  When Trump is impeached, you'll need to decide whether you can do the right thing and vote to remove him, or stand out as a politician who famously put party ahead of country in exonerating the most corrupt president in history.

Wouldn't it be nice to be on the RIGHT side of history?  And to do it now, when it actually means something?

You can.  Publicly support Mueller, and legislation to protect his investigation.  It's the absolute minimum you can do to uphold your oath to the Constitution.  I understand it's unreasonable to ask you to do more.

Emma Jane Gonzalez

So . . . this is a thing that's happening in the land of Trump-worshippers and gun-worshippers: some are saying some survivors of the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland Florida aren't really students at all, but are paid 'crisis actors':

The previous pics of Gonzalez from the “Eat Our Feelings” video were in 2014, some four years ago. The Emma Jane Gonzalez of 2014 had a weak chin (aka “chinless wonder”), whereas the Emma Jane Gonzalez on Now Casting has a pointy chin like Parkland Emma Gonzalez. My guess is that sometime in the past 4 years, Emma Jane Gonzalez had a cosmetic surgery on her chin.

I'm not providing a link, because this site doesn't deserve even the pitiful amount of traffic they might get from this blog.

The main argument appears to be that there IS a young actress named Emma Jane Gonzalez --- and one of the MSD survivors is also named Emma Gonzalez.  And the way we know there is an actress by this name is by searching IMDB, the internet movie database.

Of course, Emma Gonzalez is a common name.  There are a lot of Emma Gonzalez's listed:

This by itself doesn't prove anything.  There are also IMDB pages for Vice President Mike Pence, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, EPA Chief Scott Pruitt, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats, Secretary of Energy Rick Perry, and former president George Bush --- both of them, I guess.

So obviously, the mere existence of an actor with a given name doesn't mean that John Kelly, George Bush, or Parkland shooting survivor Emma Gonzalez are actors.  If you're going to allege that someone is profiting from such a tragedy, you better damn well have some airtight proof.

Do I need to bother mentioning, that the 'proof' provided by these truthers is hardly airtight?

Probably not, but since I've come this far.

First, let's call out the obvious problems with the idea that the student Emma Gonzalez is the same young woman as the actress Emma Jane Gonzalez.  Just for starters, actors rarely act using their real name.  I mean sure, there was Jerry Seinfeld, but that's about it.  It makes no sense for the actress Emma Jane Gonzalez to pretend to be a shooting survivor named Emma Gonzalez, if for no other reason than, you know, whoever is paying her would want to make it at least a tiny bit difficult for other people to figure it out.

Next, consider the other Parkland students who have been outspoken in the media.  If you believe that Emma Gonzalez isn't really a Parkland student, then you must believe that NONE of the people posing as Parkland students really are --- otherwise, it's unlikely that they would happily go on TV with a paid actress, like we recently saw on the Ellen DeGeneres show (Emma Gonzalez is the one with the shaved head):

So if you believe the Emma Gonzalez in the clip above is Emma Jane Gonzalez the actress, that means either that ALL of the supposed Parkland survivors are paid actors, or at least that ALL of the real survivors of the shooting --- and their parents and teachers --- are willing to go along with the deceit.

At which point, we're really in tinfoil hat territory.

But of course the final straw is that we actually have video of the actress Emma Jane Gonzalez, which we can compare to the student Emma Gonzalez.  And while it's possible that if the actress were to shave her head, and wear brown contact lenses, and --- in the words of our friend above, get 'cosmetic surgery on her chin' --- there is some resemblance between them, this is hardly definitive proof.

Unless, of course, you're a right-wing conspiracy theorist, in which case the name similarity alone was probably enough.

Emma Jane Gonzalez is the dark-haired actress here.

Because this is obviously a sensitive matter, it's important that the Parkland survivors be accorded all possible respect, even if you disagree with their goals.  So I would ask that if you see someone slandering Emma Gonzalez as a 'crisis actor', you point them here.  And then ask them to correct themselves on any media platforms where they may have spread lies about her.

It's a shame that I just had to spend an hour debunking this right-wing nonsense, when there's an important discussion to be had about gun control (and many, many, many other problems facing the country right now).  Unfortunately, it seems that when it comes to this topic (and many, many, many others), fear, lies and slander are all the right has to contribute.

Update: If you haven't seen Emma Gonzalez's speech at March for Our Lives on March 24, you really should.  Watch all the way to the end; it's powerful.