Going (Pay)Back To Alaska

If Donald Trump is anything, he's an inveterate liar.  If he's two things, he's an inveterate liar with a massive vindictive streak who likes to bully those he thinks have slighted him in any way, real or perceived. Alaska GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski is finding out that second fact today as the Trump regime is now considering The Last Frontier as The Enemy of Trump for her refusal to throw her own constituents off Medicaid.

President Donald Trump isn't going to just let Sen. Lisa Murkowski's no vote on Tuesday's health care motion go.

Early Wednesday, Trump took to Twitter to express displeasure with Murkowski's vote. By that afternoon, each of Alaska's two Republican senators had received a phone call from Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke letting them know the vote had put Alaska's future with the administration in jeopardy.

The response follows Trump's no-holds-barred style of governing, even when it comes to his own party. It is his first strike of retaliation against Murkowski, however, despite her tendency to stray from the party line and the president's priorities.

Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan said the call from Zinke heralded a "troubling message."

"I'm not going to go into the details, but I fear that the strong economic growth, pro-energy, pro-mining, pro-jobs and personnel from Alaska who are part of those policies are going to stop," Sullivan said.

"I tried to push back on behalf of all Alaskans. … We're facing some difficult times and there's a lot of enthusiasm for the policies that Secretary Zinke and the president have been talking about with regard to our economy. But the message was pretty clear," Sullivan said. The Interior secretary also contacted Murkowski, he said.

First of all, this is Alaska's other senator, Dan Sullivan (who *did* vote for throwing his own constituents off Medicaid like Trump wanted) that is the source of this story. Sullivan confirmed that Zinke's threat was definitely based on Murkowski's no vote to proceed on Trumpcare on Tuesday.  There are several federal projects on the line here, most notably expanded oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, that are now in jeopardy.  Alaska overall relies on a lot of federal dollars for infrastructure and economic assistance.

Those dollars now have to be considered in real trouble.

The second thing is that Trump is more than happen to screw over the entire state to punish Murkowski.  He doesn't exactly care about Alaska's citizens, because he figures most of them will vote for him again in 2020 anyway, and he's probably right.  Trump clearly figures that Alaskans will side with him over Murkowski.

What happens now is anybody's guess, but if I were Ryan Zinke, I might want to keep in mind that the Chair of the Senate Committee on Energy and Resources, which controls both the budget and oversight for the Interior Department happens to be...Lisa Murkowski.

This could get interesting.

No Sanctuary For Cities, Con't

The Trump regime has been broadly hinting at retaliation against sanctuary cities across America, but so far nothing's happened other than vague threats and trial balloons involving federal law enforcement grants.  That's still billions of federal dollars at stake, but as of yet, it's nothing more than posturing.

That situation appears to be about to change from posturing to action, rapidly.

On Tuesday night, the Department of Justice announced its first real attempt to prohibit “sanctuary cities” — cities that, in the federal government’s view, don’t do enough to help federal agents enforce immigration law — from getting federal funds. 

Under the DOJ’s new criteria for the Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program, the biggest federal grant for local law enforcement, states and cities will only be able to apply if they agree to allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers into local jails — and if they notify ICE agents at least 48 hours before anyone ICE has expressed interest in gets released. 

The Trump administration’s been saber-rattling against “sanctuary cities” during its whole six months in office (not to mention on the campaign trail). But until now, the actual steps it’s taken to change federal policy to crack down on “sanctuaries” have been relatively toothless. Tuesday’s announcement puts an end to all that. It signals that the fight to defund sanctuary cities has begun in earnest.

In other words, this just got deadly serious, and the Trump DoJ is now actively moving to cut off a quarter of a billion from police departments across the country in places like New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco and more.

The Byrne Justice Assistance Grant program hands out funds to states and cities that get used for everything from training to military-style equipment. It’s the biggest grant the Department of Justice administers to local law enforcement; in fiscal year 2016, it handed out more than $263 million in funds. 

The Trump administration isn’t trying to strip funding that’s already been promised. But starting in the fall, according to the DOJ’s Tuesday announcement, applicants for new Byrne grants are going to have to certify three things: 

• that they comply with a federal law banning any state or local policy that prohibits municipal employees from sharing information with the feds about someone’s immigration status;
• that they allow ICE agents into local jails; and
• that, whenever ICE sends local jail officials a “detainer request” — a request to hold someone after they’d otherwise be released so ICE can pick them up (sent when ICE agents have reason to believe someone in a local jail is deportable) — jail officials give ICE at least 48 hours’ advance notice before letting that person go.

The first criterion is in line with the steps the Trump administration has already taken against “sanctuary cities,” which have focused on the idea that cities are violating the federal law against local bans on information-sharing. 

But it’s a pretty toothless critique. Even the most outspoken sanctuary cities in America claim that they don’t prohibit anyone from sharing immigration information with the federal government.

But the second two criteria added to the Byrne JAG program, though, take turn the rhetoric against sanctuary cities into actual policy.
Many cities and states limit the circumstances under which jails can hold people just because ICE asks them to. And while the DOJ isn’t officially requiring grantees to agree to all ICE requests, it’s requiring them to do things that would lead to pretty much the same outcome.

The bottom line is that current local laws make those last two items impossible to meet in several cities right now, or that the 48-hour notice is impossible to meet in such a large city like Los Angeles when there's potentially thousands of prisoners at any given time.

What ICE wants to do is turn city and county jails into de facto deportation pipelines. Local governments would have to hold anyone suspected of being an undocumented immigrant for at least 48 hours, informing ICE beforehand and they must be able to hold and produce anyone ICE tells local law enforcement that they suspect of being deportable.

In other words, county and city jails would become deportation holding facilities, and local cops and county sheriff's deputies would become de facto immigration agents.

And they'll do it, or lose millions in federal grants.

This is now stated DoJ policy.

Will cities comply?

StupidiNews!

• Conservative GOP lawmakers say they did not ask for the total ban on transgender service members in the US military that Donald Trump announced on Twitter Wednesday morning.
• An 18-year-old man was killed and five otheres injured when a ride malfunctioned at the Ohio State Fair in Columbus, GOP Gov. John Kasich has ordered all rides closed for inspection.
• Japanese Defense Minister Tomomi Inada will reportedly resign over a suspected coverup of troop involvement in possible criminal acts by UN peacekeeper forces in South Sudan.
• As both the Senate GOP Trumpcare replacement plan and full repeal plan votes have failed, the Senate will take up dozens of Obamacare fix amendments offered by Democrats today. 
• Apple has been ordered to fork over more than a half-billion dollars in a patent violation case to the University of Wisconsin's research arm.