Contrary to the impression left by last week’s missive, I have not, in fact, fully combusted into “a fiery ball of rage,” as one friend put it. I’m still here, in human form! Everything is terrible but this week it’s more wearying rather than rage-inducing. Progress?
TRUMP IS A LOSER: In a unanimous opinion tonight, the 9th Circuit refused the DOJ’s request to reinstate Trump’s immigration and refugee ban, meaning that the lower court’s stay of the order remains in effect. You can read the opinion here, but here’s a rundown of the most important aspects. First, it rejects the DOJ’s argument that presidential “determinations” in the area of immigration are, in effect, unreviewable by courts. Such an assertion, the court declared, “runs contrary to the fundamental structure of our constitutional democracy.” Next, it found that Washington and Hawaii had standing to challenge the order on behalf of their universities, which are now deprived of hosting scholars and visitors from around the world. Third, declared that the DOJ had not shown that it was likely to succeed in its opposition to the States’ due process challenge to the EO (ie, that it was more likely that the States would prevail). The court emphatically reaffirmed that citizens, all people in the U.S., and some aliens trying to re-enter the U.S. have due process rights -- rights that the EO likely impairs. Notably, the court held that even if we assume that lawful permanent residents are not subject to the ban and thus not part of the lawsuit, the EO may violate the due process rights of “other persons in the United States, even if unlawfully,” aliens who temporarily left the country and wish to re-enter, and even visa applicants who have never been here but who have ties to those in America already who have rights of their own. The court declined to attempt to rewrite the EO to make it acceptable, stating that the political branches of government were responsible for doing that. Fourth, the court held the government had also not shown that the States’ religious discrimination challenge was likely to fail. The court held it could consider Trump’s repeated statements calling for a “Muslim ban”, but ultimately “reserve[d] judgment” on this issue given their ruling on the due process claim and the fast pace of briefing. Finally, the court held that the government had not shown that it would be irreparably harmed by the denial of a stay. “Despite the district court’s and our own repeated invitations to explain the urgent need for the Executive Order to be placed immediately into effect, the Government presented no evidence to rebut the States’ argument that the district court’s order merely returned the nation temporarily to the position it has occupied for many previous years.” Trump is, of course, taking this very well and behaving in a completely normal, appropriate, and presidential manner. HA yeah right: He’s tweeting in all caps.
THE BAN IS STILL EXACTING A TOLL: Even though the order is now stayed, it has exacted a real toll on real people. I highly recommend last week’s “This American Life,” which is entirely devoted to Trump’s senseless, dangerous, incompetent, rage-inducing, disgusting executive order barring all refugees and banning all travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries. Go listen to it! Slate highlights the heartbreaking stories of multiple people who, in the hours and days after the order was signed, were forcibly deported even after court orders forbidding deportations came down; denied food and water in airport detention; and prevented from speaking to their families or attorneys. The order is also ripping apart couples, who had previously taken free travel to and from the United States as a given. Read these stories; digest them; carry them with you. Let them add to the weight of shame that we will have to spend all of our efforts scrubbing over the ensuing years.
“NEVER BELIEVE THE REPUBLICANS’ B.S. EVER AGAIN”: Let’s go back a few weeks to examine Trump’s first military operation, a special forces raid in Yemen he authorized just days after taking office, in a dinner meeting with foreign policy experts Jared Kushner and Steve Bannon. The raid was a failure; “almost everything that could go wrong did.” By the end, Chief Petty Officer William Owens was dead, three other Americans were wounded, a $70 million Navy helicopter was destroyed, and dozens of civilians (including nine children) were killed. Trying to justify the hastily-planned raid, the Pentagon released video clips that it said were recovered in the raid and were evidence of its success. It turns out those videos had been on the internet for over a decade. The debacle has led Yemen to reassess its relationship with the U.S. and whether it will grant permission for further counter-terrorism operations. No wonder it was such a disaster: Reports are that it was conceived as little more than a show of “strength” by the thin-skinned embodiment of toxic masculinity. “President Trump was convinced to launch a “botched” counterterrorism raid in Yemen after being told that the Obama administration would have never attempted one, according to a report.” That the raid was a debacle should be beyond dispute; after all, a Navy seal was killed. Yet surprise, surprise, the White House insists that it was a resounding success -- and that to suggest anything else is traitorous. After John McCain had the temerity to suggest the raid was less than successful, the White House went into full attack mode. Sean Spicer declared from the podium on Wednesday: “It was absolutely a success. Anyone who suggests it was not a success does a disservice to the life of Chief Ryan Owens. . . . I think anybody who undermines the success of that raid owes an apology and disservice [sic] to the life of Chief Owens. . . . The action that was taken in Yemen was a huge success.” Thursday morning, Trump lent his own totally sane and completely appropriate voice to the discussion (via, of course, Twitter): “Sen McCain should not be talking about the success or failure of a mission to the media. Only emboldens the enemy! He’s been losing so long he doesn’t know how to win anymore, just look at the mess our country is in - bogged down in conflict all over the place. Our hero Ryan died on a winning mission (according to General Mattis), not a “failure.” Time for the U.S. to get smart and start winning again!” Not only are we seeing shockingly fast reversion to Bush-era “with us or with them” line-drawing, the episode has starkly revealed the utter bullshit hollowness of the GOP’s years-long substance-free Benghazi freak-out. Brian Beutler lays out precisely why “we never have to take Republican sanctimony at face value again.” (Also, as for Trump, recall that he has spent the last eight years doing nothing but taking ridiculous and ill-informed public potshots against every one of Obama’s foreign policy decisions -- just three weeks before the election he declared that the Iraqi/coalition effort to retake Mosul “is turning out to be a total disaster. . . . U.S. is looking so dumb.”) P.S. When talking about Yemen, it’s important to remember that Obama’s decisions to support the Saudi-led intervention in Yemen’s civil war was and remains morally fraught and troubling.
NEVERTHELESS SHE PERSISTED: On Wednesday evening, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III -- the intellectual godfather to the white nationalist cabal scuttling around the White House -- was confirmed to be the next Attorney General of the United States, immediately superseding (in a cruel bit of irony) the first two African Americans to hold that position. This man will be a disaster for our country, foremost for the enforcement of our civil rights laws, especially voting laws. (A group of high-profile democrats have created a new voting rights group, Let America Vote, that you should check out.) The Democrats held the Senate floor all night Tuesday night to speak out against Sessions and his long history of conscious-shocking, bigoted, mean-spirited, narrow-minded, revanchist views. Elizabeth Warren, speaking around 8pm, started to read a letter that Coretta Scott King had submitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee when it was considering Jeff Sessions for a judgeship in 1986 (one he was ultimately rejected for, on account of his racism). In the letter, King wrote: “Mr. Sessions has used the awesome powers of his office in a shabby attempt to intimidate and frighten elderly black voters. For this reprehensible conduct, he should not be rewarded with a federal judgeship.” Warren was cut-off mid-sentence by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who objected that Warren had impugned the character of a sitting senator (Sessions) in violation of senate rules. Watch the clip here. Warren was forced to sit down, barred from speaking on the floor about Sessions in any way, for the rest of the debate. As Jamelle Bouie put it, “For McConnell and his Republican colleagues, King’s critique of Sessions’ work was a personal attack. He saw this well-grounded accusation of racism as worse than the actions it described. And so he called for silence.” The outrageous application of this selective enforced gag rule (one that makes no sense in the context of debating a senator’s nomination to a cabinet position) was made all the more arbitrary when McConnell permitted multiple other male senators to read the exact same letter, without objection. In the end, Warren comes out ahead. Not only were millions more eyeballs directed to King’s letter than would have been otherwise, but she got the best campaign/t-shirt/tombstone slogan anyone could possibly hope for, in McConnell’s words: “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.” Pretty good rallying cry for the current feminist movement, I’d say! (Insult on top of injury came late Wednesday, when Sean Spicer declared from the podium: “I can only hope that if Coretta Scott King was still with us, that she would support Senator Sessions' nomination.”
Must Read of the Week: Jamelle Bouie on how we are now being governed by straight-up white nationalists (and this was even before Sessions was confirmed). It’s an important and powerful read.
Truly Awful Story of the Week: A woman who came to the U.S. from Mexico at age 14, has worked here ever since, and has two American children has been deported under Trump’s new regime, which gives far more discretion to border officials to deport essentially anyone, even if they have not committed any serious crimes.
Good Video of the Week: Seth Meyers looks at another Trump EO that has been basically ignored: the federal hiring freeze.
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