Category: Republican Reality

Stephen Miller’s attack on Biden’s immigration policy

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“Under normal administrations, whether it was the Obama administration, the Trump administration, the Bush administration, the Clinton administration, if a criminal alien was arrested by a local sheriff’s department, a police department, state troopers, state police, highway patrol, they were then flagged by ICE. Something called a detainer was issued. And when that person was released, whether they were bonded out by a judge, whether they were put on their own recognizance pending trial, or whether they completed the prison sentence, they were placed into ICE custody. … The Biden administration has stopped doing that in the vast majority of cases. So, all of those criminal offenders are now being released back into the U.S. population, back into your communities, back into your schools, back near the places where you live. The result of that is going to be massive amounts of recidivism. Innocent people are going to get hurt. Innocent people are going to get killed. Innocent people are going to suffer irreparable damage as a result of that decision.”

— Stephen Miller, adviser to former president Donald Trump, in an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News, April 18, 2021

After four years in the White House as Trump’s immigration adviser, Miller is now on the outside looking in as President Biden winds down many of his policies.

Continue reading “Stephen Miller’s attack on Biden’s immigration policy”

GOP sees immigration as path to regain power

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Republicans are building their case for taking back control of Congress around immigration, which they see as their top issue heading into the midterms.

Polls show President Biden with a high approval rating, bolstered by the pace of vaccinations and optimism about the economy. Yet they also indicate Biden’s handling of the border is a weakness, creating an opportunity in the eyes of the GOP.

Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) on Wednesday predicted that immigration will be a “potent weapon” for Republicans. Continue reading.

As the voting-rights fight moves to Texas, defiant Republicans test the resolve of corporations that oppose restrictions

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As the battle over a new Georgia law imposing identification requirements for mail ballots and other voting limits raged this month, Republicans in Texas knew they would be next — and acted quickly to try to head off the swelling number of corporations that had begun to scrutinize even more restrictive proposals being considered there and around the country.

Gov. Greg Abbott angrily declined to throw the first pitch at the Texas Rangers’ home opener, accusing Major League Baseball, which had announced plans to pull its All-Star Game from Atlanta, of buying into a “false narrative” about Georgia’s new law. The next day, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick responded to an early trickle of corporate statements denouncing the proposals under consideration in Austin, calling the critics, including Texas-based American Airlines and Dell Technologies, “a nest of liars.”

“Texans are fed up with corporations that don’t share our values trying to dictate public policy,” Patrick said in a separate statement. Continue reading.

Trump’s old ‘half-wit’ intelligence director ridiculed for not knowing where federal jobs are located

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If there’s one thing that former Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell has done since leaving office, it has called into question the “intelligence” portion of his previous job title.

Such was the case Wednesday when the long-time federal employee proclaimed that no state should have most of the federal jobs in it. He was talking about his reasons for opposing statehood for Washington, D.C., which comes up for a vote in the U.S. House Thursday.

DC statehood has always been a problem for those nearly 700,000 residents who live in its borders and pay taxes but aren’t given representation in Congress. It became an even greater point of contention during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Mayor Murial Bowser requested help from the National Guard ahead of the rally, but when the violence began, it took several hours for the guard to be deployed to the Capitol. Bowser had to call Virginia and Maryland and beg for help from their governors because the federal government is in charge of the D.C. guard because D.C. isn’t a state.  Continue reading.

Senate Republicans take step to revive debt ceiling brawls with White House

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The non-binding vote is a sharp pivot from their hands-off approach during the Trump administration

Senate Republicans on Wednesday signaled they might oppose any future increase to the debt ceiling unless Congress also couples it with comparable federal spending cuts, raising the specter of a political showdown between GOP leaders and the White House this summer.

Republican lawmakers staked their position after a private gathering to consider the conference’s operating rules this session, issuing what GOP leaders described later as an important yet symbolic statement in response to the large-scale spending increases proposed by President Biden in recent months.

“I think that is a step in the right direction in terms of reining in out-of-control spending,” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told reporters after the meeting. Continue reading.

Maddow: Al Qaeda used to instruct terrorists to ram their cars into crowds — just like GOP bills now legalize

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Oklahoma and Florida legislatures have legalized running a car into a crowd of people if one feels “threatened.” It’s being called a get-out-of-jail-free card for white supremacists and terrorists who want to commit murder during a Black Lives Matter rally.

Ironically, Oklahoma experienced an incident in which a disgruntled student plowed into a crowd of people at the homecoming parade in 2015, killing two people. Oklahoma was also home to large, armed tea party rallies that could now be targeted thanks to the law. There are generally much larger and louder protests from the right-wing in Oklahoma than from Black Lives Matter protests. 

In Florida, they’ve essentially nullified the right to assemble when it comes to confederate statues, which will likely get the law thrown off the books. Still, an all-white Republican group of lawmakers cheered on the freedom they now have to kill Black Lives Matter activists. Continue reading.

Investigation suppressed by Trump administration reveals obstacles to hurricane aid for Puerto Rico

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A watchdog report uncovers bureaucratic hurdles the administration erected for the island to receive aid after Hurricanes Irma and Maria

The Trump administration put up bureaucratic obstacles that stalled approximately $20 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico and then obstructed an investigation into the holdup, according to an inspector general reportobtained by The Washington Post.

Congress requested the investigation into the delays to recovery aid for Puerto Rico after Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017 left residents of the U.S. territory without power and clean water for months. But, the report said, former Housing and Urban Development secretary Ben Carson and another former HUD official declined to be interviewed by investigators during the course of the examination that began in 2019.

Access to HUD information was delayed or denied on several occasions. Several former senior administration officials in the Office of Management and Budget refused to provide requested information about decision-making related to the Puerto Rico relief funds. Continue reading.

G.O.P. Bills Target Protesters (and Absolve Motorists Who Hit Them)

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As the nation reacts to the guilty verdict a jury handed to Derek Chauvin in the killing of George Floyd, Republican-led states are introducing punitive new measures governing protests.

Republican legislators in Oklahoma and Iowa have passed bills granting immunity to drivers whose vehicles strike and injure protesters in public streets.

A Republican proposal in Indiana would bar anyone convicted of unlawful assembly from holding state employment, including elected office. A Minnesota bill would prohibit those convicted of unlawful protesting from receiving student loans, unemployment benefits or housing assistance.

And in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed sweeping legislation this week that toughened existing laws governing public disorder and created a harsh new level of infractions — a bill he’s called “the strongest anti-looting, anti-rioting, pro-law-enforcement piece of legislation in the country.” Continue reading.

‘Nope, done’: Tucker Carlson abruptly ends interview after former NYPD officer schools him on Derek Chauvin’s culpability

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On Tuesday, April 20, a jury found former Minneapolis police officer guilty of three charges in connection with the May 25, 2020 killing of Georgia Floyd: second-degree murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter. Far-right Fox News pundit Tucker Carlson, the night of April 20, discussed the verdict with Ed Gavin — a former deputy sheriff with the New York City Sheriff’s Department — and Carlson brought the interview to an abrupt end when he didn’t like Gavin’s analysis.

Carlson asked Gavin to weigh in on “what this means for law enforcement,” posing the question, “Who’s going to become a cop going forward, do you think?” Gavin responded, “I think people will still become police officers. This really is a learning experience for everyone. Let’s face it: what we say in that video was pure savagery. I mean, the documentary evidence showed the police officer putting his knee on the perpetrator’s neck while he was rear-cuffed and his stomach was on the ground, causing positional asphyxia.”

Gavin continued, “What I’d like to see is more training for police. I’d like to see the police trained as EMTs, like in the fire department.” Continue reading.

Republican ‘base is vanishing’: These figures show why the GOP is hell-bent on voter suppression

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With Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp having recently signed into law a voter suppression bill that civil rights activists are vehemently protesting against, Republicans in state legislatures all over the country are pushing equally repressive bills. Conservative Washington Post opinion writer Jennifer Rubin, this week in her column, emphasizes that Republicans are deathly afraid of evolving demographics. And she points to recent data from the Democratic firm TargetSmart and Gallup as evidence of why the GOP is so worried and is resorting to blatant voter suppression.

TargetSmart, Rubin notes, has “compiled information on more than 98% of those who cast ballots last year.” The firm reports that “non-college educated Whites dropped from 53.8% of the electorate in 2016 to 49.2% in 2020” and that “nationally, total turnout increased by 12% relative to 2016, turnout among (Asian-American and Pacific Islander) voters surged by 43%, and Latino turnout increased by almost a third of all votes cast.”

Rubin notes that although former President Donald Trump performed better among Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016, he “still lost 65% of these voters.” Continue reading.