Not a great move when the narrative is almost entirely favorable to the mayors and the 50 odd days of street theater they have allowed

CNN, MSNBC, pretty much all the media are against him, giving Tammy Duckworth and others an open mike to attack the Duce.

He has some defenders in conservative media whose public reach is virtually negligible.

The Duce is apparently planning to send federales to a slew of major cities with Democratic mayors, still ongoing demonstrations breaking down apparently every day into rioting, and a marked uptick in violent crime.

Trump administration preparing to send federal agents to Chicago

The tenor of the reaction in Democratic media such as CNN and MSNBC is not far from that of Steve M's post on the deployments to Portland and Chicago.

Meanwhile, on Fox News cable, this is very nearly a non-story.

(It looks like Hannity - "Unrest in America Out of Control" - and a few others with talk shows are supporting him.)

Not much to be found at the Fox website, either.

But talking heads at Fox cable have talked some about this apparently unconstitutional and unprecedented absurdity.

Trump signs order to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted in redrawing of voting districts

A White House official said it clarifies that those in the country illegally would not be included for the redrawing process -- known as apportionment -- of congressional districts after the census. 

Census counts are used to determine the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, the number of electors in the Electoral College and hundreds of billion dollars of federal spending.

“Excluding illegal aliens for the purpose of apportionment reflects a better understanding of our Constitution and democratic principles,” the official said.

The order says that the Constitution "does not specifically define which persons must be included in the apportionment base."

"Although the Constitution requires the 'persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed,' to be enumerated in the census, that requirement has never been understood to include in the apportionment base every individual physically present within a State's boundaries at the time of the census," the order says.

"Instead, the term 'persons in each State' has been interpreted to mean that only the 'inhabitants' of each State should be included," it says. 

"Determining which persons should be considered 'inhabitants' for the purpose of apportionment requires the exercise of judgment."

It then says that that discretion "delegated to the executive branch to determine who qualifies as an 'inhabitant includes authority to exclude from the apportionment base aliens who are not in a lawful immigration status."

Mass politics

It could be said that an essential attribute of a successful regime in the age of mass politics is vulgarity.

But there is a considerable difference between the mere vulgarity of style and propaganda of the liberal regimes and the profound vulgarity of values of authoritarian and, even worse, fascist, racist, or Nazi regimes.

And right now many leading Western nations are sliding from the former toward the latter.

Are regimes, parties, or movements of the further left also committed to vulgar values?

Or is that another difference between them and regimes of the vicious right, from the merely authoritarian even to the totalitarian?

Questions that arise while watching on Amazon video Detective De Luca.

When the only defense of the constitutionality of X is that people have relied on it, well . . . .

Anyway, that was all one of the attorneys arguing Trump cannot kill the program had to say in response to Trump's reliance on the often expressed view not only of Republicans that the Obama era program is egregiously unconstitutional.

Daca case draws crowds to Supreme Court as justices consider program

Supreme court to rule on whether Trump can end Daca

Can't see the court buying that as a compelling argument.

It's full of conservative judges who are on record thinking Roe was wrong and should be overturned.

The poem presupposed racism, when written, says Cuccinelli

Probably true.

And now he's being fried for it as the Dems seeking nomination and desperate to win the hearts and minds of the party's primary voters and the entire left wing noise machine all blast him, Trump, the GOP, and the new policy for racism, racism, racism.

He also pointed out the poem was written one year after the first public charge rule was imposed.

Not going to matter.

Cuccinelli: Statue of Liberty poem was about 'people coming from Europe

I guess 2020 will tell us who was right about who wins when the Dems turn up the volume, yelling about racism.

They think it turns out their anti-racist voters and helps them win.

Steve Bannon thinks it fires up the GOP base in just the right swing states to give Trump another Electoral College victory.

Well, do you want that wretched refuse, or not?

How badly?

Should we not only open the door but by the tickets?

Cuccinelli torches famous Statue of Liberty immigrant quote

It's about revisions to the public charge rule.

In an effort to defend a new Trump administration rule aimed at making it harder for poorer legal immigrants to stay in the U.S., acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli offered a new take Tuesday on the poem attached to the Statue of Liberty.

"Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge," Cuccinelli said during in an interview with NPR's "Morning Edition."

The poem, titled "The New Colossus" and written by Emma Lazarus in 1883, reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, / Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

Any number of Trump's critics seem to think that poem has and must have the last word on US immigration policy.

It's true. The slightly further and even further left are making the argument.

The Case for Opening Our Borders

Google "open borders" and you'll get hits at leftier sites like this one and even The Nation, just for starters.

So far as I know, the Democrats have not adopted this even as a long-term aspiration, though they are flirting with moves in that direction with their talk of decriminalization of illegal immigration.

CATO and other libertarians support this position, too.

Forget the wall already, it's time for the U.S. to have open borders

The left regards any consequent decline in the standard of living of American workers or Americans relying on Social Security, etc., as a price those Americans are morally obliged to pay in order to be fair, equitable, just, etc. to the people seeking entry.

The argument that American policy ought to serve the interests of Americans strikes cosmopolitan policy wonks whose own positions are not at risk as ignominiously selfish and deeply immoral.

The standard issue right regards all that as a feature, anyway, and not a bug.

Both sides try to downplay those risks, but neither bunch of partisans can be trusted.

Just another case in which powerful forces on both ends of the spectrum are prepared to undermine the position of the American working class in order to better serve the interests of others.

The cosmopolitan left and the Wall Street right agree: American workers are way overpaid and have it way too good.

Including working class retirees.

Just doing their job

What kind of person volunteers for this job?

What kind of person rejoices in this news?

Mississippi Immigration Raids Lead To Arrests Of Hundreds Of Workers

Federal immigration officials raided several food-processing plants in Mississippi on Wednesday and arrested approximately 680 people believed to be working in the U.S. without authorization.

The coordinated raids were conducted by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Homeland Security Investigations "at seven agricultural processing plants across Mississippi," according to an ICE statement. 

In addition to the arrests, agents seized company business records.

More than 600 ICE agents were involved in the raids, surrounding the perimeters of the targeted plants to prevent workers, mainly Latino immigrants, from escaping. 

The actions were centered on plants near Jackson owned by five companies, according to The Associated Press.

TV news is saying many of those taken for deportation were parents whose kids, at school, were left behind.

Giving OITNB further relevance.

Is it worth the trouble mentioning that nothing Trump or the Republicans are doing will prevent or even delay the impending sorpasso, the demographic shift in which non-Hispanic whites stop being a majority of the US population.

[Yes, I am repurposing a word that had a very different meaning during the later days of the Cold War.]

Not that it's exactly imminent.

Guesses vary, but the earliest as to when this will happen is sometime after 2040.

And, anyway, when Hispanic whites are counted in (and why on earth not?), whites right now make up just under 80% of the US population, while when those folks are ignored whites comprise only just above 60% of the US population.

So when will whites, all whites, cease to be a majority in the US?

The Census Bureau says whites will still be 70% of the total US population in 2060, so not soon, and maybe not this century, if at all.

Mayor Pete joins the growing chorus

Buttigieg: 'There's no question white nationalism is condoned at the highest levels of our government'

Booker: Trump 'particularly responsible' for rising hate

Castro: Trump 'made a choice to divide people' for his 'political benefit'

More white racist, white nationalist, white Nativist violence in two cities in 24 hours

El Paso Shooting: Massacre at a Crowded Walmart in Texas Leaves 20 Dead

A 21-year-old gunman armed with a powerful rifle turned a crowded Walmart store in this majority-Hispanic border city into a scene of chaos and bloodshed on Saturday, stalking shoppers in the aisles in an attack that left at least 20 people dead and 26 others wounded, the authorities said.

. . . .

The authorities identified the gunman as Patrick Crusius, from a Dallas suburb. 

He was taken into custody after he surrendered to the police outside the Walmart. 

The authorities said they were investigating a manifesto Mr. Crusius, who is white, may have posted before the shooting, which described an attack in response to “the Hispanic invasion of Texas.”

Shooting in Dayton, Ohio, Kills at Least 9

MSNBC says 9 dead and 26 wounded.

Seems everyone else is saying 16 wounded.

At least nine people were killed and 16 were wounded in a shooting early Sunday in Dayton, Ohio, the second American mass shooting in less than 24 hours and the third in a week.

The shooting began at 1 a.m. on East Fifth Street in the city’s Oregon entertainment district, the Dayton Police Department said. 

It said on Twitter that officers were “in the immediate vicinity when this shooting began and were able to respond and put an end to it quickly.”

Officers shot and killed the gunman, who was using a long gun, the police said.

The mayor of Dayton was on saying police were there in less than a minute from when the shooting began, and still the shooter was able to kill 9 and wound 26.

He did that in less than a minute.

Police have not yet identified the killer or his motive.

My guess is he's another white racist.

To be clear, so far, most if not all of the killers motivated by race politics this year have been whites consumed with hatred of others.

Only a fool could deny that Trump's endless bellowing about an invasion of undesirables and criminals and druggies and terrorists from the shithole countries to our south has created the atmosphere of heightened racial hostility that has resulted in numerous such incidents since the advent of the Duce.

Of course, it might be said he is merely echoing now and then what Fox and Breitbart scream 24/7, so maybe most of the fault is actually theirs.

And that would rightly be said.

El Paso: Beto O'Rourke blames 'racist' Trump for inflaming hatred

Pete Buttigieg: America ‘Under Attack From Homegrown White Nationalist Terrorists’

The El Paso killer is said by one network to face hate crime charges, and by another to face charges of terrorism.

If that manifesto records a purpose of the killings was to discourage immigration from the south, that would do it.

Violence to incite terror to achieve a political goal by modifying behavior is pretty much the definition of terrorism.

And wouldn't that be a first?

Charging a white racist mass murderer with terrorism, I mean?

Resurgent nationalism

We are told it's about racist and ethno-nationalist reaction to mass immigration from outside Europe and the lesser migrations of Europeans among the nations of the EU.

The ethno-nationalist right believe they can do a better job maintaining national identity - and that's not just about keeping out the blacks - outside the EU than in.

That's a big part of it.

And they are probably right.

We are told that, in most European countries where nationalism is resurgent, it's about the right believing they can keep economies more business-friendly out of the EU than in it.

That's part of it.

But it's all a bit dicey, since some of the left notably think exactly the opposite, that they could take their societies further left outside the EU than in.

And anyway the whole trade picture makes it all a bit foggy; broadly speaking, free trade among the states of the EU is better for business than dealing with a lot of real borders and the various forms of trade restrictions that accompany them.

Last, a really big part of it that seems under-reported is resistance to the cultural revolution taking place in all Christian and post-Christian lands, perhaps only excepting Africa.

The soft spot in the heart of the American right for Putin is all about that.

So it's about abortion, yes, but also gay marriage and other offences against the traditional European morality, which is, of course, the traditional Christian morality.

It's about lots of people believing that they can keep their laws and their culture more in tune with traditional European morality out of the EU than in it.

And how far that is true may vary considerably by country.

PS. Didn't the left media used to rage it was all about Islamophobia?

There was truth to that, too, though it's not as though there wasn't plenty of reason to fear Islam.

Haven't heard much about that in a while, at least in the US.

We're supposed to shrug this off. Just part of the cost of keeping our country safe, right?

An American Citizen Is Released From Immigration Custody After Nearly a Month

Francisco Erwin Galicia, 18, was born in Dallas and, according to his birth certificate, is an American citizen. 

But he was held in federal immigration custody for nearly four weeks after he was detained at a Border Patrol traffic checkpoint in South Texas.

Mr. Galicia showed the agents the proof of his birth in the United States when he was stopped at the checkpoint one night in June, when he was on his way to a college soccer tryout. But the agents, his lawyer said, told him they believed it was fake.

They took him into custody, taking him first to a Border Patrol facility in the border city of McAllen and then to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Pearsall, Tex., southwest of San Antonio.

Late Tuesday afternoon, 26 days after he was first detained, Mr. Galicia was released after the news media, Democratic lawmakers and migrant advocacy groups put his case in the national spotlight.

And that's what it takes to make the Border Patrol honor the law?

No deal Brexit is coming

Or anyway so it appears.

Boris Johnson 'not bluffing' about quitting EU on 31 October with no deal

A position that absolutely terrifies most Britons will make him PM.

Representative government in the land of the Mother of Parliaments

The 0.3% of U.K. Voters Who Will Pick the Next Prime Minister

Some 160,000 members of the Conservative Party will make the choice.

This sliver of the population, just 0.3 percent of registered voters, is mostly white, aging and male. And it is poised to use its new clout — the party’s grass roots have never before picked a prime minister — to catapult Boris Johnson into Downing Street, potentially cleaving the world’s oldest and most successful political party as it sends Britain on the path to what could be a tumultuous Brexit.

As the Brexit mess has unfolded, Conservatives have grown ever more impatient, ever more fixated on leaving the European Union, come what may. 

Most members said in recent polling by YouGovthat leaving the bloc was worth enduring significant damage to the economy, secession by Scotland and Northern Ireland and even a shattering of the Conservative Party itself.

. . . .

Conservative membership has plunged since the 1950s, leaving behind a small core of politically active and increasingly right-wing supporters. 

Once effectively a social club where the upper classes mingled with their representatives and perhaps met a spouse, the party has remade itself as class-based politics fragmented and voters realigned themselves by education levels and age.

. . . .

One of the great concerns among Conservatives is the rise of the Brexit Party under Nigel Farage, the former leader of the anti-immigrant U.K. Independence Party. 

The Brexit Party crushed the Conservatives in the European elections last month with its message of Brexit at any cost. 

Mr. Johnson is seen as far and away the best equipped to blunt that charge.

. . . .

A no-deal Brexit, seen as the salvation of the party by some members, looks to others like its ruin. 

Economists warn it could drive up food prices, cost jobs, choke off the supply of medicines and badly disrupt British industry.

“It scares my mum, and I don’t want anything that scares my mum,” Jo Bartley, 49, a Conservative in Canterbury, said. 

“I think as a party, we should avoid things that scare people.”

Ms. Bartley is in the minority, with two-thirds of members preferring a no-deal Brexit.

Roughly 40 percent of the party’s members are older than 65, according to research led by Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, whose coming book on the members is called “Footsoldiers.” 

And they are disproportionately wealthy.

Not exactly an open door, eh?

It has been noted before that the Brexit movement is a development of specifically English nationalism.

Boris Johnson Says Immigrants to U.K. Should Be Forced to Learn English

Boris Johnson, the front-runner to succeed Theresa May as Britain’s prime minister, has said he would require immigrants to Britain to learn English, echoing remarks made by Nigel Farage, the former leader of the populist U.K. Independence Party.

“I want everybody who comes here and makes their lives here to be and to feel British, that is the most important thing. And to learn English,” Mr. Johnson said on Friday at a gathering of Conservative association members, who are voting in a contest between Mr. Johnson and Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary.

“Too often there are parts of our country, parts of London still and other cities as well, where English is not spoken by some people as their first language,” Mr. Johnson said. 

“And that needs to be changed.”

BJ is a Brexiteer who has openly favored a no-deal Brexit.

Mr. Johnson’s remarks were greeted with anger by lawmakers from Scotland and Wales, who represent areas where voters speak Gaelic and Welsh.

A legislator from the Scottish National Party, Angus MacNeil, derided Mr. Johnson as “moronic and clueless,” and compared his remarks to “arrogance of centuries past” that put down “native Celtic languages for the Germanic import.”

. . . .

Mr. Johnson, also a hard-liner on Brexit, seems poised for a landslide victory when roughly 160,000 Conservative Party members vote for a new party leader, and by default, the next prime minister. 

He has the support of 74 percent of party voters, compared to the more than 26 percent backing Mr. Hunt, according to a poll by YouGov for The Times of London. 

Ballots are being sent by mail to the members, who must return them in time for the end of voting on July 22.

The voting, already heavily criticized for being open only to 0.3 percent of British voters, faced fresh attacks on Saturday when it emerged that more than 1,000 Conservative Party members had received duplicate ballots. 

. . . .

Mr. Johnson has tacked to the right during the contest, reflecting the right-wing views of the Tory grass-roots members, who are — compared to the electorate as a whole — older, more likely to be white and male, and concentrated in the prosperous south of the country.

Populists, Nationalists, and terrorists in Germany, today

A Political Murder and Far-Right Terrorism: Germany’s New Hateful Reality

I tried snipping, but ended up pasting in about two thirds of the whole article.

Read it.

Gingrich the Fox-beloved projector

What could or should she say but "I know you are, but what am I?"

Newt Gingrich: Ocasio-Cortez is vicious, cruel and dishonest – And determined to destroy the America we know

The entire article is nothing but lies from beginning to end, most of them being projections as well of the facts about him and his party upon her and hers.

A shameless henchman of the Duce gets slapped

Federal Judge Blocks Barr’s Attempt to Deny Asylum Seekers Bail

A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked an order by Attorney General William P. Barr that would have kept thousands of migrants detained indefinitely while waiting for their asylum cases to be decided.

Judge Marsha J. Pechman of United States District Court for the Western District of Washington described the order, which would have denied some migrants a bail hearing, as unconstitutional. 

Under a preliminary injunction, Judge Pechman said migrants must be granted a bond hearing within seven days of a request or be released if they have not received a hearing in that time.

“The court finds that plaintiffs have established a constitutionally protected interest in their liberty, a right to due process, which includes a hearing before a neutral decision maker to assess the necessity of their detention and a likelihood of success on the merits of that issue,” Judge Pechman wrote.

This is how much Bozo and his Republican nazi emulators care about nonwhites or people not white enough

Ocasio-Cortez details 'horrifying' conditions at migrant detention facility

What Ocasio-Cortez saw inside the facility, which has been plagued by recent reports of abusive treatment of detained children, was “horrifying”, she tweeted.

She reported officers forcing women to drink out of toilets.

. . . .

With serial visits by Democratic presidential candidates and elected officials to migrant detention centers in recent days, the Trump administration has forcefully rejected claims of systemic abuse of detainees, calling them “unsubstantiated”.

. . . .

As Ocasio-Cortez visited the Texas facility, NBC News revealed an internal Department of Homeland Security report that said conditions inside an El Paso center were so dire that as early as May, border agents were arming themselves against possible riots.

Inspectors at the facility noted “only four showers were available for 756 immigrants, more than half of the immigrants were being held outside, and immigrants inside were being kept in cells maxed out at more than five times their capacity”, NBC reported.

“A cell meant for a maximum of 35 held 155 adult males with only one toilet and sink. The cell was so crowded the men could not lie down to sleep,” the report went on. “With limited access to showers and clean clothing, detainees were wearing soiled clothing for days or weeks.”

The Department of Homeland Security did not reply to a request for comment.

. . . .

However, the California congresswoman Judy Chu, also on the trip with Ocasio-Cortez, said she met a woman who had been told by a border agent: “If you want water, just drink from a toilet.”

“These are the same CBP personnel who threatened to throw burritos at members of Congress,” Chu tweeted. “Changes must be made.”

Ocasio-Cortez tweeted that migrants were being treated “like animals”.

She wrote: “This has been horrifying so far. It is hard to understate the enormity of the problem. We’re talking systemic cruelty [with] a dehumanizing culture that treats them like animals.”

Not justice, then. Vengeance.

4 people died in the Colorado pileup and a truck driver faces vehicular homicide charges

Countryman said the driver of the semi is Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 23. 

He has a commercial driver's license out of Texas, Countryman said. 

Aguilera-Mederos is cooperating with investigators, he added.

Aguilera-Mederos was behind the wheel of a flatbed truck loaded with lumber and was injured in the crash, but not seriously hurt, Countryman said.

According to the Jefferson County Sheriff's inmate roster, his next scheduled court appearance is listed as Saturday at 3 p.m. ET in Jefferson County court.

The suspect's brother, Daniel Aguilera, said Rogel is Cuban and is a permanent resident of the United States. 

Also a truck driver, Aguilera said he spoke to his brother after the crash and Rogel told him his brakes failed.

Countryman said there's no evidence of drugs or alcohol in the crash.

When asked whether there were any mechanical issues with the truck, Countryman said it is something his department is looking into, but he believes even if there were a mechanical issue, vehicular manslaughter charges would still stick.

Do you suppose Bozo will give him a pardon?

Just kidding.

Did reporting the news cause news to happen?

Not long ago, the Times reported on the activities of this rabble.

In a post at the time I questioned whether they could be legal.

F.B.I. Arrests Leader of Right-Wing Militia That Detained Migrants in New Mexico

Proving that though the Republican Party has been thoroughly Trumpified the federal government has not.

Not even the Justice Department just handed over by Trump to Trump-loyalist Barr.

And yet, it was not for those activities that the fellow was pinched.

And you have to wonder whether Trump will pardon him.

Or order the FBI to release him and drop their charges.

The F.B.I. on Saturday arrested the leader of a right-wing militia that was detaining migrant families at gunpoint near the border in southern New Mexico, as the group faced  a torrent of criticism for its tactics.

Hector Balderas, New Mexico’s attorney general, said federal agents had arrested the leader, Larry Mitchell Hopkins, who had been operating under the alias Johnny Horton Jr. Mr. Balderas said in a statement that Mr. Hopkins was arrested on charges of firearms possession by a felon.

“This is a dangerous felon who should not have weapons around children and families,” Mr. Balderas said. 

“Today’s arrest by the F.B.I. indicates clearly that the rule of law should be in the hands of trained law enforcement officials, not armed vigilantes.”

The firearms charge against Mr. Hopkins is relatively minor. 

But it is likely the start of a deeper investigation into his activities and those of the militia, and opens the way for the authorities to bring more serious charges like kidnapping and impersonating a police officer or an employee of the United States.

Mr. Hopkins’s arrest comes as tensions rise over ultraconservative paramilitary groups operating along the southwestern border. 

Professed militias have a long history of targeting immigrants from Latin America, tracing back to the Ku Klux Klan’s creation of its own border patrol in the 1970s.

. . . .

The organization led by Mr. Hopkins, the United Constitutional Patriots, recently uploaded videos of armed members detaining children and their parents in a stretch of the New Mexico desert near El Paso, before handing the migrants over to the Border Patrol.

Political leaders in New Mexico, a state largely controlled by Democrats, responded with fury. 

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said that any mistreatment of asylum seekers on the border was “unacceptable.” 

The state’s two Democratic senators, Tom Udall and Martin Heinrich, said in a statement that the actions of vigilante groups “cannot be tolerated.”

The American Civil Liberties Union denounced the militia’s actions in a letter on Thursday, saying the actions amounted to kidnapping by “racist and armed vigilantes.”

Still, such denunciations were far from unanimous in the state. 

A prominent New Mexico Republican, Gavin Clarkson, a former Trump administration official who is now running for United States Senate, met with masked members of the group in March and praised their efforts, according to a video of the encounter uploaded to Facebook.

That's a Trumpist.

But Mr. Clarkson said on Twitter on Saturday that he condemned militia activities. “Masked militiamen are the antithesis of what a free republic looks like,” he said.

. . . .

Mr. Hopkins, whose residence is in Flora Vista in northwest New Mexico, had already come under the scrutiny of groups tracking right-wing militias around the United States. 

He was convicted in 2006 for impersonating an officer and for felony firearm possession, according to The Daily Beast.