Dan Coats is stepping down as Director of National Intelligence.
On Monday Trump announced his DNI replacement, a partisan GOP congressman who has among other things attacked the Mueller investigation. By Friday, Trump withdrew the nomination.
The GOPs only black member of Congress, who is also from Texas, announced he would not run again in his competitive district.
A Jake Tapper source: “The senior national security official on those comments: ‘Everyone at this point ignores what the president says and just does their job. The American people should take some measure of confidence in that.’”
The Democrats had their second round of debates, this time in Detroit.
Immigration News
The New York Time reports: More than 900 children have been removed from an adult — usually a parent — with whom they arrived at the southern border since June of 2018.
Saturday morning a gunman shot and killed 20 people in an El Paso shopping mall.
He wrote and published a white nationalist manifesto minutes before the shooting began.
With Mueller set to testify on Wednesday, veteran Mueller watchers are publishing their advice on what questions Congress should ask him. First up is Wittes, who would get him to admit that he intended Congress to make a judgement on impeachable offenses; that there is the possibility for criminal liability after Trump leave office: “So, to summarize, I take your report to state that you found substantial evidence of presidential obstruction of justice, which you chose not to analyze, because you were deferring to Congress on questions of impeachment and to federal prosecutors after President Trump leaves office on questions of criminality. Is that a fair reading?”
Quinta Jurecic: Congress will be performing a valuable service if it can simply highlight the report’s findings to a public that has not had the opportunity to fully grapple with the contents of a 448-page document—whether by walking Mueller through a careful line of questioning, or by simply asking him to read through sections of the report out loud…. use the hearings to begin the process of forming opinions and judgments about what to do with the material Mueller has provided.
Mueller testified on Wednesday for five hours before the House Judiciary and Intelligence Committees. “Here is a pretty comprehensive summary from Lawfare. Which ends with this: Schiff’s remarks were a kind of mustering call for the House, an acknowledgement to Mueller that the former special counsel’s role was over and that he had successfully passed the baton to the legislative branch…. Schiff did not stake out specific next steps, but there is an obvious follow-up move for Congress in the wake of the Mueller hearings: calling fact witnesses and hearing from them directly.”
Pelosi is still against impeachment: “My position has always been whatever decision we make in that regard would have to be done with our strongest possible hand, and we still have some outstanding matters in the courts,” Ms. Pelosi said after the back-to-back hearings. “It’s about the Congress, the Constitution and the courts. And we are fighting the president in the courts.”
The Senate released its first volume on Russian election interference, showing that all 50 states’ election systems were hacked.
Immigration News
The recent immigration raid targeted 2000 people but only 35 were arrested.
Also: “on Monday the Trump administration said that it would accelerate the deportation of undocumented immigrants who cannot prove they have been in the United States for more than two years, enabling federal agents to arrest and deport people without a hearing before a judge.”
News reports of an autopsy done on a boy who died in a border patrol facility in May show that he died of the flu alone in a toilet stall.
Border Patrol detained an 18 year old American citizen for over a month because they believed he was an undocumented immigrant, despite the fact that he had “a wallet-sized Texas birth certificate, a Texas ID card and Social Security card.”
Here is a report about terrible conditions in a facility for children. A boy described his stay: “He describes them as filled with hunger and thirst, extreme temperatures and fear of the guards manning the facility. They refused to give him food when he asked, mocked him if he asked what time it was, and, on one occasion, punched another boy in the stomach, Abner said.”
Trump administration and Pelosi agreed to a budget deal to avoid hitting the debt limit.
On Saturday Trump advanced his racial political appeal by tweeting about Elijah Cummings: Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous. His district is considered the Worst in the USA…… ….As proven last week during a Congressional tour, the Border is clean, efficient & well run, just very crowded. Cumming District is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess. If he spent more time in Baltimore, maybe he could help clean up this very dangerous & filthy place. Why is so much money sent to the Elijah Cummings district when it is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there. Where is all this money going? How much is stolen? Investigate this corrupt mess immediately!
According to the Washington Post: Trump’s advisers had concluded after the previous tweets that the overall message sent by such attacks is good for the president among his political base — resonating strongly with the white working-class voters he needs to win reelection in 2020. This has prompted them to find ways to fuse Trump’s nativist rhetoric with a love-it-or-leave-it appeal to patriotism ahead of the 2020 election, while seeking to avoid the overtly racist language the president used in his tweets about the four congresswomen…. The attack on Cummings underscores Trump’s penchant for undermining any attempts by other Republicans to steer clear of overtly racial attacks
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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.5%
NOTE: Trump’s job approval reached 43% for one day on July 22, the highest since October 2018.
On Sunday Trump tweeted criticism of four members of Congress who are women of color: “So interesting to see “Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful Nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to quickly work out free travel arrangements!”
David French: “The near-total silence (at least so far) from GOP leaders is deeply dispiriting. Do they not understand the message the leader of their party is sending — especially to America’s nonwhite citizens? Do they not understand that racial malice as a political strategy isn’t just an ultimately losing proposition but also deeply divisive, picking at the scabs of America’s deepest political, cultural, and spiritual wounds?”
Adam Serwer: “When Trump told these women to “go back,” he was not making a factual claim about where they were born. He was stating his ideological belief that American citizenship is fundamentally racial, that only white people can truly be citizens, and that people of color, immigrants in particular, are only conditionally American. This is a cornerstone of white nationalism, and one of the president’s few closely held ideological beliefs.” On the way supporters are defending the tweet: “self-deceit is, in a sense, necessary for the president’s advocates: To reconcile the America they say they believe in with the one they actually do believe in, they cannot be honest with themselves about what the president actually said.”
The House voted to on a resolution condemning Trump’s racist comments. Here is the text: “strongly condemns President Donald Trump’s racist comments that have legitimized and increased fear and hatred of new Americans and people of color by saying that our fellow Americans who are immigrants, and those who may look to the President like immigrants, should “go back” to other countries, by referring to immigrants and asylum seekers as “invaders,” and by saying that Members of Congress who are immigrants (or those of our colleagues who are wrongly assumed to be immigrants) do not belong in Congress or in the United States of America.” Only four Republicans voted in favor.
At a rally in North Carolina, Trump inspired his crowd to chant “Send her home”: “His voters and supporters were having fun. The “Send her back” chant directed at Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota was hateful but also exuberant, an expression of racist contempt and a celebration of shared values.”
Adam Serwer argues “we have never seen an American president make a U.S. representative, a refugee, an American citizen, a woman of color, and a religious minority an object of hate for the political masses, in a deliberate attempt to turn the country against his fellow Americans who share any of those traits. Trump is assailing the moral foundations of the multiracial democracy Americans have struggled to bring into existence since 1965, and unless Trumpism is defeated, that fragile project will fail.”… “To attack Omar is to attack a symbol of the demographic change that is eroding white cultural and political hegemony, the defense of which is Trumpism’s only sincere political purpose.”
Ronald Brownsteain suggests Trump’s strategy: “He has to double down on stirring turnout from his base through racial and cultural strife to offset his underperformance with swing voters alienated by exactly that behavior. It is as if Trump is on two diverging roads: He has already moved so far down the path of centering 2020 on American identity that he can no longer realistically cross back to focusing it primarily on the economy. He fights over American identity not only because he likes to, but also because, by this point, he must.”
On Thursday Trump said he was not happy with the chant and he falsely suggested that he tried to interrupt it. Thins comes after some Republicans were trying keep the chant from catching on. By Friday he walked this back, telling reporters: “No, you know what I’m unhappy with — the fact that a congresswoman can hate our country…. You know what’s racist to me, when someone goes out and says the horrible things about our country.”
By Saturday, Trump was praising the chanters: “As you can see, I did nothing to lead people on, nor was I particularly happy with their chant. Just a very big and patriotic crowd. They love the USA!” He retweeted far right anti-immigrant propagandist who wrote “New Campaign slogan for #2020? Don’t love it? Leave it. Send her back is the new lock her up. Well done to #Team Trump.”
The House voted to hold Barr and Ross in contempt over their handling of the Census case.
SDNY is not going to charge anyone else in the Trump campaign hush money payment scheme: “With Mr. Trump, the prosecutors were limited by more than just a Justice Department policy that bars charging a sitting president with a federal crime, one of the people said. Prosecutors also grappled with whether they had enough evidence to show that Mr. Trump had understood campaign finance laws and had intentionally violated them.”
Immigration News
Large-scale ICE raids failed to materialize over the weekend.
According to Washington Post: “there were few signs that ICE was out in force, with a smattering of reports of ICE activity…. New York City officials said Saturday night that ICE agents were spotted conducting “enforcement operations” in two neighborhoods but that no arrests were made after residents declined to answer their doors.”
NPR reports that border agents directed a 3 year old asylum seeker with a heart condition to chose which one of her parents she would be aloud to take with her into America. They dragged her father away. After legal intervention, the family was reunited and allowed to go to relatives in the US.
Personal Log: after reading that last news story I involuntarily bowed my head and prayed for God to give these people strength as they are forced to cope with these immigration challenges.
Iran says it has breeched the 2015 nuclear agreement: “the country had surpassed a limit of 3.67 percent uranium enrichment, and was prepared to go further.”
An appeals court struck down the emoluments case against Trump saying Maryland and DC has no standing.
The British ambassador to the US resigned after his assessments of Trump were leaked.
On the census case, DOJ lawyers quit the case and asked to be replaced but the judge denied their request. At a rose garden press conference with Ross and Barr, Trump said he would no longer push for a citizenship question on the Census and that they would get the data by other means.
Immigration News
ICE is preparing to begin arresting immigrant families who are scheduled for deportation. The first wave or arrests are scheduled for Sunday. The DHS chief has opposed the plan on logistical ground, but the head of CBP Mark Morgan as pushed for the raids. One logistical problem: “If undocumented parents are found to have children who are United States citizens, for example, ICE agents will need to wait with the children in a hotel room until a relative in the United States can claim them.”
Pence visited two border detention centers this week, one which had the overcrowded conditions that has been reported on in recent weeks: “he instead described the conditions as the result of the migrant border crisis the administration has been warning about for months but demurred twice when asked if he was okay with the facility’s conditions.”
NBC News reports that numerous immigrant detention centers are forcing kids to sleep on concrete, using abusing language, and even sexually assaulting them.
Iran breached uranium enrichment levels mandated by the 2015 nuclear deal for the first time since Trump withdrew from the agreement.
The House has finally sued to get Trump’s tax returns.
Trump gave a speech about the military at the Lincoln Memorial on the 4th of July. Here is Frum’s analysis: Trump’s speech was written by people who did not know what they wanted to say. It was a litany of old glories, a shout-out to heroes carefully balanced by race and sex, but with no conscious theme or message.
Washington Post reports on the secret leaked total of taxpayer money that the Trump Administration is diverting from the Parks Department to pay for his July 4th rally on the Mall–$2.5 million: “The diverted park fees represent just a fraction of the extra costs the government faces as a result of the event, which will include displays of military hardware, flyovers by an array of jets including Air Force One, the deployment of tanks on the Mall and an extended pyrotechnics show.”
Immigration News
ProPublica reported on a batch of sexist and racist Facebook messages by current Border Patrol Agents. The private group has 9,500 members: “Group members posted offensive graphics, including a photo illustration of Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez being sexually assaulted by President Donald Trump; discussed plans to disrupt a congressional visit to a Border Patrol facility; and joked about the deaths of migrants.”
Homeland Security released an inspector general report about conditions at several Border Patrol facilities, with graphic pictures of overcrowding: “Its report describes standing-room-only cells, children without showers and hot meals, and detainees clamoring desperately for release.”
After losing in the Supreme Court, the Trump administration announced that they will print the 2020 Census without the citizenship question.
Trump pulled an about face when he heard that his DOJ was not pursuing the Census question, and said on Twitter that he was. He may use an executive order in an attempt to include the question.
More details are included in this NBC report: a border station in the El Paso sector that only four showers were available for 756 immigrants, over half of the immigrants were being held outside, and immigrants inside were being kept in cells maxed at over five times their capacity.
The report explains why this is happening. Border Patrol is supposed to transfer immigrants to ICE custody quickly since ICE is equiped for long-term detention: “In our discussions with ICE field management about this situation, they explained that their capacity to find additional bed space is strained. As a result, Border Patrol continues to hold detainees for more than 72 hours in overcrowded conditions while they await transfer.”
Here is a New York Times investigative report about the Clint, Texas facility.
