The first official shot in what could be a massive legal war over President Trump’s new anti-immigrant census policy was fired on Wednesday, in an existing case that immigrant rights groups had previously brought against the administration.
Continue reading “The New Legal War Over Trump’s Anti-Immigrant Census Policy Kicks Off”
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a tweet Tuesday night that she would not allow President Donald Trump to deploy troops in Chicago to “terrorize our residents.”
Under no circumstances will I allow Donald Trump’s troops to come to Chicago and terrorize our residents.
— Mayor Lori Lightfoot (@chicagosmayor) July 21, 2020
Hours later, the mayor said that perpetrators of crime in the city would be “held accountable.”
“Too many guns are on our streets in the hands of people who should never possess them,” Lightfoot wrote. Later adding, “We cannot give shelter to killers.”
The flurry of tweets comes as the Chicago mayor has wrestled with the Trump administration’s potential deployment of federal agents in Chicago.
On Monday, the Chicago Tribune reported that the Department of Homeland Security, was “crafting plans” to deploy about 150 federal agents to the city this week.
The Department of Homeland Security, in recent weeks, already deployed federal officers to quell protestors using aggressive tactics in Portland. Agents descended on the Oregon city, and ensuing images of tear-gas canisters and protesters fleeing smoke and impact munitions have surfaced online. Reports also emerged last week that unidentified agents in masks and camouflage fatigues without identifying insignia were pulling people off Portland streets and detaining them in unmarked vans.
In May, Lightfoot weighed the sincerity of Trump’s offer to help Chicago and criticized his response to the protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
“What I really want to say to Donald Trump … begins with F and it ends with U,” the Chicao Tribune reported that she said at a news conference in May.
In a four-page letter addressed to President Trump on Monday that was obtained by The New York Times, Lightfoot said if the president really wanted to help Chicago, rather than “mocking the level of violence that challenges Chicagoans” he should enact gun control legislation, do more to curb the coronavirus, partner with local law enforcement and help to bolster community programs.
In the letter, Lightfoot said that addressing crime in Chicago “requires genuine efforts to unite us and collaborate, not more conflict and division.” She added that “focus and resources” were sorely needed to tackle guns and COVID-19 — two major areas of “public health” that she says the federal government has “the unique ability to step up.”
“What we do not need, and what will certainly make our community less safe is secret, federal agents deployed to Chicago,” Lightfoot wrote. “Any other form of militarized assistance within our borders that would not be within our control or within the direct command of the Chicago Police Department would spell disaster,” she added.
Although Lightfoot, a former assistant U.S. attorney, had threatened to sue Trump over calls to send troops into Chicago, she said later on Tuesday that the city, which has a long history of gun violence, would be working with federal agents to fight crime not protesters. However, Lightfoot was clear that her administration would be on watch against abuses of power.
“Unlike what happened in Portland, what we will receive is resources that are going to plug in to the existing federal agencies that we work with on a regular basis to help manage and suppress violent crime in our city,” Lightfoot said, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Last month, Trump launched an attack on Lightfoot and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker over Chicago’s gun violence, accusing them of putting their “own political interests” ahead of the lives of residents and insisting that “law and order” was needed.
Lightfoot responded in a statement she didn’t “need leadership lessons” from Trump, accusing the President of using victims of gun violence to try to score “cheap political points.”
BEIJING (AP) — The United States said Wednesday that it has ordered China to close its consulate in Houston “to protect American intellectual property” and the private information of Americans.
China strongly condemned the move, the latest in a series of steps by the Trump administration as it ratchets up pressure on the world’s second-largest economy over trade, technology, human rights and security.
Continue reading “US Escalates Tensions With China As It Orders Consulate In Houston Closed”
On the same day he patted himself on the back for finally wearing a mask on Monday, President Donald Trump held a campaign fundraiser at his hotel in Washington, D.C. without a facial covering.
Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) held back on supporting a shelter-at-home order for a Texas county that has been dealt a staggering blow by the coronavirus and that’s scheduled to begin Wednesday.
While Abbott acknowledged in an interview with CNN affiliate KRGV Tuesday night that some counties continue to experience “record breaking” numbers of positive tests and hospitalizations as well as “far too many deaths” — he said a mandated stay-at-home order was not enforceable.
The new emergency order, issued earlier this week by Hidalgo County Judge Richard Cortez, includes a curfew, travel limitations and a requirement for facial coverings for Hidalgo residents.
It states that it is “highly encouraged and recommended” that all commercial businesses discontinue their activities, unless they are essential, providing necessary supplies or services related to health and safety. The order excludes curbside, drive-thru and takeout services from its recommendation for closure.
The situation has grown so dire that Hidalgo County officials threatened Tuesday to criminally prosecute people who refuse to quarantine after testing positive for the coronavirus.
“There are parts of the orders which I have the complete latitude to enforce, such as the curfew,” Abbott told KRGV. “That is the authority that the local County judges always have been including right now, and it’s my understanding that in Cameron and Hidalgo County they intend to be enforcing curfews. That is one of the strategies to make sure they reduce the number of people out and about.”
But the governor’s response stopped short of agreeing that a stay-at-home requirement was the best answer to the panic at hospitals as beds fill up. According to CNN, Abbott’s office had also said earlier Tuesday the mandate lacked the legal authority and was more of a recommendation.
Earlier this week, a spokesman from Abbott’s office, John Wittman told the Texas Tribune in a statement late Monday that the order “has no enforcement mechanism,” which made it “simply a recommendation for those to stay home if they can, which Governor Abbott supports.”
Under Abbott’s current statewide orders, local governments cannot enforce their own stay-at-home orders. Wittman also clarified that “this order does not force businesses to shut down in the Rio Grande Valley.”
Cortez said the mandate was a response to a frightening reality that hospitals are quickly hitting capacity.
“Unfortunately, our hospital rooms look like war zones because there are just so many from so many sick people there,” Cortez told CBS News.
Acting Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Chad Wolf spun his unidentified federal agents’ random detainment of nonviolent anti-police brutality protesters in Portland, Oregon as some kind of pre-crime measure on Tuesday night.
Continue reading “DHS Chief Says His Federal Agents Are ‘Proactively’ Arresting People In Portland”
Several Ohio politicos — including the state’s House Speaker Larry Householder (R) — were arrested and slammed with federal charges Tuesday over a massive alleged bribery scheme.
Continue reading “‘F*ck Them Over Later’: Inside The Massive Alleged Bribery Scheme Rocking Ohio”
We can’t make this up.
The return of President Trump’ reality TV-style press conferences included offering well wishes to Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of being an accomplice to the late sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls.
“I just wish her well, frankly,” Trump during his first press conference since April that was billed as an update from the administration on the coronavirus pandemic.
The President added that he met Maxwell “numerous times over the years” especially when they both lived in Palm Beach.
Last week, a federal judge denied bail to Maxwell after she pleaded not guilty to sex crime and perjury charges. Prosecutors allege Maxwell helped Epstein in the mid-1990s recruit young girls in an operation that forced them into engaging in sexual acts. Maxwell’s trial is scheduled to begin in July 2021.
Trump’s kind words for Maxwell came amid a press conference where he once again insisted that the coronavirus will “disappear” someday and expressed his newfound advocacy for mask-wearing after months of shunning the simple but effective face coverings.
Here’s how Trump’s first press conference since April played out:
Trump on accused Epstein enabler Ghislane Maxwell: "I wish her well" pic.twitter.com/YbE30X8RmE
— TPM Livewire (@TPMLiveWire) July 21, 2020
“I call it a black box.”
President Trump’s new census memo is both a shameless power grab and an almost unbelievable Hail Mary.
Continue reading “Trump Goes All In On Rigging The System To Advance White Rural Political Power”
