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Ruth King

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Trump’s Leaner White House Payroll Projected To Save Taxpayers $22 Million by Adam Andrzejewski ,

By on July 3rd, 2017

If the White House payroll is a leading indicator of the president’s commitment to shrink government then voters have a reason to cheer. Projected four-year savings on the White House payroll could top $22 million. Savings come from President Trump’s refusal to take a salary as well as big reductions in other areas including the absence of czars, expensive “fellowships,” and spending on FLOTUS staff.

On Friday, the Trump administration released their annual report to Congress on White House Office Personnel. It includes the name, status, salary and position title of all 377 White House employees. (Search the recent Trump administration payroll data – and last two-years of the Obama administration – posted at OpenTheBooks.com.)

Here are some key findings:

There are 110 fewer employees on White House staff under Trump thanunder Obama at this point in their respective presidencies.
$5.1 million in payroll savings vs. the Obama FY2015 payroll. In 2017, the Trump payroll amounts to $35.8 million for 377 employees, while the Obama payroll amounted to $40.9 million for 476 employees (FY2015).
Nineteen fewer staffers are dedicated to The First Lady of the United States (FLOTUS). Currently, there are five staffers dedicated to Melania Trump vs. 24 staffers who served Michelle Obama (FY2009).
Counts of the “Assistants to the President” – the most trusted advisors to the president – are the same (22) in both first-year Trump and Obama administrations. In the Trump White House, Steven Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Omarosa Manigault, Reince Priebus, Sean Spicer and 17 others make salaries of $179,700. In Obama’s first-year, David Axelrod, Rahm Emanuel and twenty others held the title with top pay of $172,000.
The highest compensated White House Trump staffer? Mark House, Senior Policy Advisor, has a salary of $187,500. Mr. House is “on detail” from a federal agency which allows him to exceed the top pay-grade of $179,700. In Obama’s Administration (2009), David Marcozzi earned $193,000 “on detail” from Health and Human Services.

Our review of the Trump White House payroll confirms five staffers dedicated to First Lady Melania Trump. Highly criticized for her twenty-four assistants, advisors, schedulers, directors, deputies, advance aides, associates, social and press secretaries and other helpers, former First Lady Michelle Obama’s staff was only slightly larger than Laura Bush’s staff of eighteen.

These five White House employees serving First Lady Melania Trump include:

Lindsay Reynolds, Chief of Staff to the First Lady ($179,700);
Stephanie Grisham, Director of Communications for the First Lady ($115,000);
Anna Niceta, Social Secretary ($115,000)
Timothy Tripepi, Deputy Chief of Staff of Operations for the First Lady ($115,000);
Mary-Kathryn Fisher, Deputy Director of Advance for the First Lady ($77,000).

Starting in 2009, President Obama came under fire for hiring special initiative czars. We found no evidence of “czars” on Trump’s payroll. Examples of these White House czars included Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change Carol Browner ($172,000), Director of the Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships Joshua DuBois ($98,000), White House Director of Urban Affairs Adolfo Carrion Jr ($158,500), and Director of the White House Office of Health Reform Nancy-Ann DeParle ($158,500).

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CNN’s Fake News Machine Daniel Greenfield

By on July 3rd, 2017

In April, media types were crowing that CNN had brought in Eric Lichtblau who had been, in the Washington Post’s words, at “the forefront of the New York Times’s reporting on the relationship between the Trump presidential campaign and Russia.” It was “an investment in investigative reporting and the sprawling Russia story”. It didn’t take long for the investigative investment to sprawl badly.

Lichtblau has resigned from CNN in a growing scandal over a Fake News story about a Trump associate.

“Eric will guide our coverage and thinking,” Lex Haris, executive editor of CNN Investigates, had boasted. “And when he’s onto a investigation, he’ll still be reporting and writing too.”

Not for long. And Haris has joined Lichtblau on the unemployment line after the Fake News scandal.

CNN Investigates had been announced after President Trump’s inauguration. Its hit pieces had followed the same pattern as the Scaramucci attack that would be its undoing. Go after a personality tipped for a job with the new administration. CNN Investigates had previously targeted Monica Crowley and Sheriff Clarke with plagiarism accusations. But this time around, CNN’s anti-Trump unit had made a big mistake.

Unlike K-File’s petty harassment of Trump associates, the Scaramucci hit piece came from the heavier hitters poached by CNN from mainstream media papers who were supposed to bring down Trump.

The men behind the disaster were no lightweights. Thomas Frank had been nominated for a Pulitzer. Eric Lichtblau had shared a Pulitzer for bashing the Bush administration over, of all things, surveillance. Their names were all over CNN hit pieces tying to tie Trump to an impeachable Russian scandal.

That was what they had been hired for.

CNN claimed that Lichtblau had been “reporting on Comey for more than a decade.” And Frank was busy rolling out fresh grist for the Trump-Russia mill. One Frank article on CNN breathlessly claimed, “One week, three more Trump-Russia connections.” CNN was riding the impeachment train to Moscow.

And yet Lichtblau’s tenure at CNN quickly became troubled. An early June piece denied that Comey had told President Trump that he was not under investigation.

“Comey expected to refute Trump,” was the headline. The headline didn’t hold up. An awkward correction was appended conceding that its premise had been discredited by Comey’s testimony.

The sources were, as usual, anonymous. The Fake News story was full of “a source tells CNN” and “another source said” attributions. Seventeen of them.

The hodgepodge of anonymous sources read like a bizarre fairy tale or mystery novel.

Was “the source said” the first anonymous source? Was “a source adds” the second anonymous source? Or a third anonymous source? Was “a source” the same as “one source” who claimed to be “familiar” with Comey’s thinking?

“This source” seemed to be different than “one source.” But what about “another source”? And the “sources”?

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Islamic Relief Fails a Whitewash by Samuel Westrop

By on July 3rd, 2017

Even if the Canadian branch of Islamic Relief claims not to have directly funded these Hamas groups, its own accounts reveal grants of millions of dollars to its parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, which oversees the movement of money to a number of Hamas fronts.

Islamic Relief branches also receive money from several terror-linked Middle Eastern charities, including those established by Sheikh al Zindani, whom the US government has designated a “Global Terrorist.”

Islamic Relief did not much care for the exposé. Reyhana Patel, a senior figure at its Canadian branch, first persuaded the Post to bowdlerize the article by removing some of the sourced material and adding sentences in defense of Islamic Relief.

On May 20, a Muslim cleric, Nouman Ali Khan spoke at a fundraising event in Toronto for Islamic Relief, one of the largest Muslim charities in the world.

Khan preaches that prostitutes and pornographic actors are “filth” and that “you have to punish them … They’re not killed; they’re whipped. And they’re whipped a hundred times.” Khan has also declared that God gives men “license” to beat unfaithful wives, and that Muslim women are committing a “crime” if they object to the religious text that he says permits this abuse.

Muslim cleric Nouman Ali Khan says that God gives men “license” to beat unfaithful wives, and that Muslim women are committing a “crime” if they object to the religious text that he says permits this abuse. (Image source: Rossi101/Wikimedia Commons)

Before the event took place, this author had written about Khan and Islamic Relief in the National Post, with the help of colleagues at the Middle East Forum.

Islamic Relief did not much care for the exposé. Reyhana Patel, a senior figure at its Canadian branch, first persuaded the Post to bowdlerize the article by removing some of the sourced material and adding sentences in defense of Islamic Relief.

Patel then published in the Post a response that denounced our research as “false… one-sided and unsubstantiated.”

Really? In a rather major failing, she failed even to address Nouman Ali Khan’s presence at the Islamic Relief event.

Instead, she boasted of her own humanitarian goodness and attacked the Middle East Forum (MEF) as an “anti-Muslim think tank” that “uses some of its resources to paint a negative picture of Islam and Muslims.” MEF has always, in fact, argued the very opposite. It believes that if radical Islam is the problem, then moderate Islam is the solution. This very maxim can be found in dozens of articles on its website. MEF supports a number of moderate Muslim groups working to challenge extremism, and encourages others to do the same.

It is old habit of Islamists to accuse anti-Islamist activists of being anti-Muslim, because it allows them misleadingly to conflate Islam and Islamism. That obfuscation severely inhibits the work of moderate Muslims trying to free their faith from the grip of these extremists.

Patel’s only reference to the charges of Middle East Forum, in fact, appears to be a deliberate misquote. She writes that MEF “labelled Islamic Relief Canada a ‘terrorist organization which regularly gives platforms to preachers who incite hatred against women, Jews, homosexuals and Muslim minorities.'” Islamic Relief does indeed regularly give platforms to such preachers — Nouman Ali Khan is just one example in the weekly pattern of this charity and its branches across the world.

But MEF did not claim that Islamic Relief was a “terrorist organization.” I wrote that it was “financially linked with a number of terrorist groups.” Islamic Relief branches have, for example, indeed given money to several groups in Gaza linked to the designated terrorist group Hamas. These include the Al Falah Benevolent Society, which the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Centre describes as one of “Hamas’s charitable societies.” And even if the Canadian branch of Islamic Relief claims not to have directly funded these Hamas groups, its own accounts reveal grants of millions of dollars to its parent organization, Islamic Relief Worldwide, which oversees the movement of money to a number of Hamas fronts.

Islamic Relief branches also receives money from several terror-linked Middle Eastern charities, including those established by Sheikh al Zindani, whom the US government has designated a “Global Terrorist.”

Although MEF believes that Islamic Relief is financially linked to terror, no one wrote that the charity itself is a terrorist organization. Others, however, are less circumspect. In 2014, the United Arab Emirates designated Islamic Relief as a terrorist organization. And in 2016, the banking giant HSBC shut down Islamic Relief’s bank accounts in the United Kingdom “amid concerns that cash for aid could end up with terrorist groups abroad.”

Perhaps Reyhana Patel hoped that by smearing the Middle East Forum, and telling her readers about her love of “diversity … tolerance and inclusion,” she could sell Islamic Relief as a force for good. The charity’s regular promotion of hate preachers and financial links to terrorist groups, however, says otherwise.

And is Patel herself really so dedicated to supporting peace and tolerance? Her social media posts and a short-lived career as a journalist suggest not. Patel has a history, it seems, of attacking organizations that oppose religious extremism. In 2014, Patel wrote an article condemning Student Rights, an British organization that works to expose homophobia, racism and other forms of extremism on campus. Without seriously addressing the group’s research, Patel described the organization as “sensationalist and misleading.” Sound familiar?

Patel has also defended gender-segregation imposed by Muslim student groups at Britain’s public universities, and then complained that Muslim women who oppose this misogynistic behavior “seem to want to discredit and deamonise [sic] me.”

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Palestinians: Mohammad Dahlan, the New Mayor of the Gaza Strip? by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on July 3rd, 2017

Dahlan will be functioning under the watchful eye of Hamas, which will remain the real de facto and unchallenged ruler of the Gaza Strip. Hamas is willing to allow Dahlan to return to the Palestinian political scene through the Gaza Strip window. But he will be on a very short leash.

Dahlan’s presence in the Gaza Strip will not deter Hamas from continuing with its preparations for another war with Israel.

Dahlan will find himself playing the role of fundraiser for the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip while Hamas hides behind his formidable political shoulders.

Mohammed Dahlan is an aspiring Palestinian with huge political ambitions. Specifically, he hopes to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA). Knowing this, Abbas expelled him from the ruling Fatah faction in 2011. Since then, Dahlan has been living in the United Arab Emirates.

Hamas, the Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip for the past decade, used to consider Dahlan one of its fiercest enemies.

As commander of the notorious Preventive Security Service (PSS) in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, Dahlan was personally responsible for the PA’s security crackdown on Hamas. On his instructions, hundreds of Hamas activists were routinely targeted and detained.

The enmity was mutual; Dahlan too considered Hamas a major threat to him and the PA regime in the Gaza Strip.

Dahlan’s contempt for Hamas knew no limits. On his orders, Hamas founder and spiritual leader Ahmed Yassin was placed under house arrest.

Two other senior Hamas officials, Mahmoud Zahar and Abdel Aziz Rantisi, were repeatedly detained and tortured by Dahlan’s agents. At one point, Dahlan ordered his interrogators to shave the two men’s beards as a way of humiliating them.

During and after its violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007, Hamas targeted Dahlan’s PSS and loyalists. Some were killed or incarcerated, while many others were forced to flee the Gaza Strip to Egypt and the West Bank. For many years, Dahlan was at the top of Hamas’s most wanted fugitives. No longer.

Erstwhile enemies, Dahlan and Hamas today have a common foe: Mahmoud Abbas. They seem about to join forces to repay him for the humiliation they have suffered at his hands.

Dahlan has long sought revenge for Abbas’s decision to expel him from Fatah and prosecute him on charges of murder and embezzlement. Dahlan will never forgive Abbas for dispatching security officers to raid his Ramallah residence and confiscate documents and other equipment. On that day, Dahlan slunk out of Ramallah.

Dahlan found refuge in the United Arab Emirates, a wealthy Gulf country whose rulers seem very fond of him. He receives millions of dollars from his Gulf hosts. Until today, Abbas regards Dahlan, who was once an intimate associate, as his main enemy.

Exile has been good for Dahlan. Thanks to the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, Dahlan has amassed enough power and money to become a major player in the Palestinian arena.

In the past few years, he has succeeded in building bases of power in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, largely with the cash that he has been providing to his loyalists and others.

More importantly, Dahlan has succeeded in building a personal relationship with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, who also seems rather partial to him. While this relationship has alienated Abbas, Hamas sees it as an opportunity to rid itself of its increased isolation in the Gaza Strip.

Hamas’s predicament has been exacerbated by the continued Egyptian blockade on the Gaza Strip, specifically the closure of the Rafah border crossing, and a series of punitive measures taken by Abbas in recent weeks.

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Fatwas and False Impressions The Islamic Fiqh Council’s Incitement to Violence by A. Z. Mohamed

By on July 3rd, 2017

The Islamic Fiqh Council (IFC) aims, in part, to: “Prov[e] the supremacy of Islamic Fiqh over man-made laws,” and “tak[e] measures to counter suspicions raised against Islam, as well as problems and observations designed to either spread skepticism about the rulings of Islamic Shari[a] or degrade their importance.”

The judge also seems not to be familiar with the Quran or Islamic history, such as its conquest of Persia, Turkey (the Christian Byzantine Empire), all of North Africa and the Middle East, Greece, Eastern Europe and southern Spain.

Judge Browning is not alone in his lack of familiarity with the background of Islam and this stunning “disconnect” in the West. It is high time for Americans to cease ignoring the words and deeds of Islamists — whether in the U.S., Canada, South America, Australia, North Africa or Europe.

A recent conference in Saudi Arabia served to underscore the misguided stance of many officials in the United States who deny the connection between Islam and violence, particularly when it comes to terrorist acts committed on American soil.

The conference, “Ideological Trends between Freedom of Expression and the Rulings of the Sharia,” was held in Mecca, March 19-21; organized by the Islamic Fiqh Council (an affiliate of the Muslim World League), and sponsored by Saudi King Salman ibn Abdul Aziz. The event illustrated the impossibility expecting Islamic governments to protect genuine human rights.

One of its participants, Dr. Yousef Al-Othaimeen, Secretary General of the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation, said that the gathering served as an important contribution to his group’s efforts “to promote the true image and lofty teachings of Islam, which call for affection, beneficence, tolerance, coexistence and harmony.” Both the content of the conference and the background of its initiators, however, indicate the opposite.

“Humans are free to have their blood, money and honor preserved and remain free except from worshipping God Almighty” said Prince Khalid Al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz, Mecca Region Governor and adviser to Saudi Arabia’s King Salman, referring to the Quran at the opening ceremony. The operative word is “except.” What that means is that all people must submit to the will of Allah and that Islam is the only true religion.

This assertion is mild in comparison to the workings of the Islamic Fiqh Council itself, however. It has not only been characterized since its inception by hatred, intolerance and extremism, but is behind the 1990 assassination of an imam in Tucson, Arizona, which Mideast expert Daniel Pipes called “One of the first killings on U.S. soil connected to the Islamic religion…”

Founded in 1978 and made up of a select group of Muslim jurists and scholars, the IFC aims, in part, to:

“Prov[e] the supremacy of Islamic Fiqh over man-made laws,” and “tak[e] measures to counter suspicions raised against Islam, as well as problems and observations designed to either spread skepticism about the rulings of Islamic Shari[a] or degrade their importance.”

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Europe’s Migrant Crisis: Views from Central Europe “We are not going to take part in the madness of the Brussels elite.” by Soeren Kern

By on July 3rd, 2017

Many so-called asylum seekers have refused to relocate to Central and Eastern Europe because the financial benefits there are not as generous as in France, Germany or Scandinavia. In addition, hundreds of migrants who have been relocated to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which rank among the poorest EU countries, have since fled to Germany and other wealthier countries in the bloc.

“It needs to be said clearly and directly: This is an attack on Europe, on our culture, on our traditions.” — Poland’s Prime Minister Beata Szydło.

“I think we have a right to decide that we do not want a large number of Muslim people in our country. That is a historical experience for us.” — Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister of Hungary, referring to Hungary’s occupation by the Ottoman Empire from 1541 to 1699.

The European Union has initiated legal action against the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland for failing to comply with a controversial order to take in thousands of migrants from Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

The so-called infringement procedure, which authorizes the European Commission, the powerful executive arm of the European Union, to sue member states that are considered to be in breach of their obligations under EU law, could lead to massive financial penalties.

The dispute dates back to September 2015, when, at the height of Europe’s migration crisis, EU member states narrowly voted to relocate 120,000 “refugees” from Italy and Greece to other parts of the bloc. This number was in addition to a July 2015 plan to redistribute 40,000migrants from Italy and Greece.

Of the 160,000 migrants to be “shared,” nine countries in Central and Eastern Europe were ordered to take in around 15,000 migrants. Although the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania and Slovakia voted against the agreement, they were still required to comply.

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The Republican Health Plan: Good, Bad, and Ugly The Senate’s latest effort to repeal and replace Obamacare is a mixed bag, but it’s not as bad as you’ve heard.Joel Zinberg

By on June 30th, 2017

Joel Zinberg, M.D., J.D., F.A.C.S., a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, is a practicing surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital and an associate clinical professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine.

In the near term, the health-care plan that the Senate released this week—officially, the Better Care Reconciliation Act (BCRA)—will provide stability to individual health-care markets and state governments. It commits to funding the cost-sharing reductions that insurers are required to provide, but which Congress had not funded adequately through 2019. This should calm insurers uncertain about staying in the individual-insurance markets. Anthem, a major insurance player in both the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplaces and Medicaid, has announced that the Senate bill “will markedly improve the stability of the individual market and moderate premium increases.” The Congressional Budget Office predicts that premiums will be 30 percent lower than under current law by 2020. The BCRA will also allow insurers to charge older enrollees up to five times what they charge 20-year-olds—the standard before the ACA—rather than the 3-to-1 limit that Obamacare imposes. This should make the market more attractive to insurers and insurance more affordable for young people, who have resisted signing up under the ACA.

The BCRA also delays the end of enhanced federal funding for Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion and begins phasing it out with a gradual reduction in the enhanced federal payment share between 2021 and 2024. States would be free after 2024 to continue coverage for the expanded population covered under the ACA, but at regular federal matching rates. This should give governors ample time to plan if and how they want to continue expanded Medicaid eligibility. It will also give them time to expand private insurance markets to those at or below the poverty line, since the BCRA removes the lower income limit on premium tax credits to purchase insurance. Adults displaced by the phase-out of the Medicaid expansion and residents of states that did not expand Medicaid could use these credits to purchase private insurance.

In the longer term, the BCRA makes it far more likely that Obamacare’s section 1332 “innovation waivers” can become effective tools for state-based experimentation and reforms to improve insurance coverage. These waivers let states modify or eliminate many central ACA provisions, including the rules regarding the premium tax credits and cost-sharing subsidies and which plans and essential health benefits (EHB) must be offered on the insurance exchanges. The BCRA ends ACA restrictions that have inhibited waiver applications. It also streamlines the application process and creates a $2 billion fund to motivate states to apply for waivers.

But the Congressional Budget Office’s prediction that the BCRA will lead to 22 million more uninsured by 2026 has dampened enthusiasm for the Republican proposal—even among Republicans. The problem is that the CBO’s estimates of coverage under current law are based on its March 2016 baseline, which is known to be inaccurate. The CBO predicts that the BCRA will decrease coverage in the non-group market, including marketplaces, by 7 million, yet concedes that “enrollment in the marketplaces under current law will probably be lower than was projected under March 2016 baseline used in this analysis.”

The CBO’s estimate that 15 million fewer people will be covered by Medicaid in 2026 as compared with current law is also suspect. About a third of this loss derives from people whom “CBO projects would, under current law, become eligible in the future as additional states adopted the ACA’s option to expand eligibility.” It’s unlikely that the 19 states that have thus far not expanded eligibility under the ACA would expand if the law remains unchanged, especially since, under Obamacare, states now have to start sharing some of the financial burden for these newly eligible enrollees with the federal government.

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Swedish “No-Go” Zones On The Rise, Police Chief Crying for Help By Andrew West

By on June 30th, 2017

As the European Union continues its absurd push for the hasty relocation of Syrian migrants, one member nation is facing unprecedented perils.http://constitution.com/swedish-no-go-zones-rise-police-chief-crying-help/

In Sweden, the Syrian refugee crisis has been an absolute nightmare. Lawlessness and violence are the new norms in areas that are heavily populated with these middle eastern migrants, and the Swedish police are having difficulties maintaining law and order in the otherwise tranquil nation. These areas, colloquially known as “no-go” zones have turned increasingly chaotic in recent weeks, and now even the police assigned to these areas are asking for assistance.

“Swedish National Police Commissioner Dan Eliasson has begged the government for help as the number of no-go zones has risen from 55 to 61 in only one year.

“’Help us, help us,’ Eliasson said at a press conference on the subject of the rising levels of crime and criminal networks in Sweden. Eliasson said there were at least 5,000 criminals divided into around 200 networks in Sweden operating in the now 61 no-go zones, many of which are heavily migrant-populated, Göteborgs-Posten reports.

“Police have said that they are monitoring 61 ‘no-go zones’ but say that 23 of them are particularly vulnerable. Tynnered, a suburb in Gothenburg, is a new addition to the list after cases of car burnings and shootings, the most recent of which occurred earlier this month.

“Eliasson warned if the trend persists and crime continues to increase then the social contract could break down in Sweden – though he does not believe Sweden was beyond repair. ‘Should we want the social contract to hold, people will have to want to pay taxes and participate in society. It must not go any further, we must reverse the trend.’

“Though the Swedish interior ministry has promised to hire more police officers, many Swedish police departments are facing an exodus of officers, especially in no-go areas.”

As though these 61 areas of complete anarchy and lawlessness weren’t enough, a staggering 80% of Swedish police tasked with patrolling these areas have threatened to quit due to the endemic chaos.

These areas have sprung up as a direct result of the EU’s ridiculous and dangerous migrant quotas, in which the globalist-style organization has mandated that member nations receive these potentially dangerous refugees despite the continued admission of terror groups such as ISIS that they are indeed exploiting the programs to move their jihadists around the globe. In Europe, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have all refused the EU’s demands, citing a concern for national security.

The United States has finally enacted their own anti-refugee actions with a partial and temporary ban on travel into the U.S. from countries with high rates of terror. This necessary security measure had been previously held up by meddling leftist judges who were opposing President Donald Trump on purely partisan reasoning.

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House Republicans Step Up Pressure on Sanctuary Cities Legislation would turn up heat on communities to cooperate with immigration-enforcement policies By Laura Meckler and Natalie Andrews

By on June 30th, 2017

WASHINGTON—Cities and counties that don’t help federal immigration authorities could lose millions of dollars in federal grants under legislation that passed the House on Thursday, as Republicans ramp up their battle against so-called sanctuary cities.

The legislation represents the Republicans’ most aggressive effort yet to force local communities to cooperate with President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration-enforcement policies.

Mr. Trump and his administration regularly spotlight undocumented immigrants who commit crimes, and on Wednesday he met with their victims. After the bills passed Thursday, Mr. Trump said the “implementation of these policies will make our communities safer.”

The bill, along with a companion enforcement measure, represents a contrast with the comprehensive immigration legislation long pushed by Democrats and some Republicans. Those proposals typically combine enforcement measures with pro-immigrant provisions such as the legalization of people living in the U.S. illegally. But Mr. Trump and his allies in Congress have showed little interest in a bipartisan approach.

Both bills passed largely on party lines, and both are expected to face strong opposition in the Senate, where they would need Democratic support to pass.

The first bill, called the “No Sanctuary for Criminals Act,” primarily aims to persuade local jurisdictions to hold people in jail when asked to do so by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Proponents in the Trump administration and elsewhere say releasing criminals who should be deported makes communities less safe, They add that asking a jail to hold someone for up to 48 hours is a reasonable request.

“By flagrantly disregarding the rule of law, sanctuary cities are putting lives at risk and we cannot tolerate that,” said House Speaker Paul Ryan (R., Wis.).

Many local communities don’t honor these ICE “detainer” requests today for a range of reasons. Some say cooperation would undermine trust in law enforcement in immigrant communities, making legal and illegal immigrants less likely to report crimes. Some cite court rulings that found local communities are liable if someone such as a U.S. citizen is wrongly held based on inaccurate information.

Under the legislation, jurisdictions would lose federal grants from the Justice and Homeland Security departments if they enact policies restricting assistance with the enforcement of federal immigration law. CONTINUE AT SITE

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The End of Embracing America? By Eileen F. Toplansky

By on June 30th, 2017

No immigrant who has come to America has had an easy beginning. The difficulties are reflected in learning a different language with its mind-boggling idioms, understanding a new culture, and ultimately needing to be self-sufficient. Often education in the immigrant’s country is insufficient or completely lacking. Even those who are well educated in their birth country need to return to school to become properly licensed according to American standards.

Yet “[b]etween 1850 and 1930, about one million Asians from China, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, and India came to the United States. But by the second half of the 19th century a backlash had developed [.]” The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act created increasingly restrictive laws against Asians. At one point, a law passed by the California State Legislature and signed by the governor created a $50 tax per head for Chinese entering Californian ports that was to be paid within three days. The California Supreme Court later ruled the law unconstitutional.

This discrimination was not limited to the Chinese. In the early 20th century, “[h]otels and clubs refused Jews admittance, and universities established Jewish enrollment quotas. Industrialist Henry Ford, a popular public figure, openly expressed anti-Semitic sentiments.” A notorious incident of anti-Semitism took place in Georgia in 1913, when Leo Frank, a Jewish factory superintendent, was convicted, on circumstantial evidence, of murdering a young girl and was lynched.

Then there was the “[d]iscrimination against Roman Catholics in the U.S. [which] began in the Colonial era, when Catholics were few in number. However, in the 1840s, the Catholic population expanded significantly when thousands of Irish Catholics immigrated to the U.S. following Ireland’s potato famine. In the late 1800s, a second flood of Catholic immigrants came from Eastern Europe and Italy. Protestants feared Catholics, coming from customs which included communal religious hierarchies, would not adapt to the individualism promoted by democracy.”

Furthermore, “[a]mong the Italian immigrants arriving in the late 1900s were large numbers of young men from southern Italy who hoped to earn money for the impoverished families they left behind. Discrimination against southern Italians was rampant. Newspapers fostered theories that Sicilians and other southern Italians were intellectually inferior to northern Europeans.”

So, sadly, discrimination has existed against many groups who eventually became Americans and shared in the American dream.

There are never excuses for the irrationality of prejudice. The latest shift in this country is where whites are now demonized in subtle and blatant ways just for being white. It is an idea being fostered in the halls of higher learning.

In the Pacific Standard Magazine of March/April 2017, an essay titled “The Mexican American Dream” begins with the following: “Despite the rhetoric and hate crimes, Mexican immigrants are poised to reframe American culture, if white people would only let them.” Clearly a provocative opener, it sets the stage for the “us against them” mentality that seems to be propelling all conversations these days. The narrative has become a brown-black vs. white storyline and has taken on a decidedly nasty racist overtone.

With this backdrop, the reader is supposed to feel an emotional angst for the protagonist of the article, named Vianney, who was born to “undocumented” parents. Her father had a drinking problem, and there was domestic violence. Despite drinking, taking drugs, and almost “flunking out of school,” Vianney was propelled into the Music Academy at the Colburn School in L.A., where she excelled. Noting the differences between the “world she had grown up and the [white] world of privilege, wealth, and status,” at one point, she “really wanted to be white.” Eventually, she “stopped trying to make herself seem white and started to embrace her Latina heritage.”

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