Last Call For Deportation Nation, Con't

The mass deportation era that I've been predicting since Trump's election is almost upon us, and Trump is shifting preparations into high gear with plans to appoint a White House "immigration czar"...our old friend, Kris Kobach.

President Donald Trump is reportedly considering adding a “border czar” to his administration, and the individual said to be at the top of the list of potential candidates is Kris Kobach—a Republican who helped author one of the harshest anti-immigration laws in recent history.

“In this administration, it does not surprise me at all. He exemplifies the view of this administration, which is contrary to American history because immigration is very much the story of success in this country,” Joyce White Vance, a former federal prosecutor, told Newsweek on Tuesday.

“Kobach is anti-immigration in the most mean-spirited way possible. And that’s clearly the policy that this administration has chosen to adopt towards immigrants,” Vance added.

According to an Associated Press report on April 1, the White House is looking for someone to spearhead the president’s immigration initiatives amid a surge in migrants crossing the southern border. On the shortlist of possible appointees is Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, and Ken Cuccinelli, the former attorney general of Virginia.

While both men are immigration hardliners, Kobach once lent a hand in the creation of Alabama HB 56. The 2011 law is seen as one of the strictest anti-immigration policies in the nation and was once heralded by state lawmakers as an initiative for people to “deport themselves.”

Remember Alabama's "Papers, Please" law?  Kobach helped write it.

The law, officially titled the Alabama Taxpayer and Citizen Protection Act, was aimed at curbing illegal immigration. Its net effect was to make the state inhospitable to undocumented immigrants by essentially creating new immigration-related crimes.

Under HB 56, renting a house or giving a job to an “illegal” became a crime. It required state police officers to investigate or detain people based on a “suspicion” that they may be undocumented. Educators were also told to collect information regarding the immigration status of the students and their parents.

“That, of course, tamped down on school participation and school attendance,” Vance said. “If you’re a 7- or 8-year-old kid missing a year of school while that litigation went on, that’s a huge game-changer for the rest of your life. But that was what it was intended to do.”

Vance was serving as a U.S. attorney during HB 56’s passage and successfully challenged key provisions of the law in court in United States v. Alabama. The Obama administration essentially argued that the state could not create its own immigration law that is contrary to federal policy as it would be a violation of the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution.

The law has continued to unravel as many of its most substantial provisions have been blocked in court.

Kobach would be a disaster.  So would Cuccinelli.  Kobach in fact really, really wants to round up the undocumented (and their families) and put them in deportation camps.  Sorry, "asylum seeker processing areas".

But the guy you really have to watch out for is Stephen Miller.

The White House is exploring all executive authorities in existing law that will allow an aggressive crackdown on illegal immigration and legal immigration fraud, senior adviser to the president Stephen Miller told The Daily Caller in an exclusive telephone interview.

“There’s going to be an aggressive effort to utilize every existing authority in statute,” Miller announced, explaining that several authorities exist in immigration laws passed by Congress throughout history, including the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act.

Miller noted that the White House is “systematically reviewing all authorities that are already on the books, both in terms of cracking down on illegal immigration and […] the abuse of our legal immigration system.” The targeted abuse actions include illegal immigrants who overstay temporary visas, “combatting or addressing legal benefit seeking in the legal immigration system.”

Noting that there are approximately 1 million illegal aliens in the United States with final removal orders that still remain at large — in some cases for several years — Miller gave one example of the type of executive action the administration can take. The presidential adviser noted that existing law has a statute that allows for a “significant financial penalty” for every single day that an alien resides in the country after being ordered removed.
“This law has been on the books for a very long time and has not been utilized. That’s the example of the kind of legal authority that already exists that is the kind of thing we can deploy to restore integrity to the immigration system.”

If you thought concentration camps for undocumented was fun, wait until we have beggar's prison camps for the families who are US citizens who can't afford to pay Miller's fines for their undocumented fathers, mothers, sons and daughters.

I'm telling you guys that this is coming.  Trump's big re-election campaign is going to be "Deport them all" and should America grant him a second term, the round-ups are going to come.  Hell, they'll start before that.

The End Of The Never Trumpers

The NY Times has finally realized that the "principled conservative opposition" that materialized to scold Trump was always a ruse, and there's no better example of that then the doomed "Never Trump" movement inside the GOP that disintegrated as soon as he got his Supreme Court picks.  They were always Trump, just not as willing to take to his extreme measures in order to win.  Nowadays there is only Trump.

As Mr. Trump has prepared to embark on a difficult fight for re-election, a small but ferocious operation within his campaign has helped install loyal allies atop the most significant state parties and urged them to speak up loudly to discourage conservative criticism of Mr. Trump. The campaign has dispatched aides to state party conclaves, Republican executive committee meetings and fund-raising dinners, all with the aim of ensuring the delegates at next year’s convention in Charlotte, N.C., are utterly committed to Mr. Trump.

To Joe Gruters, who was co-chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign in Florida and now leads the state party, the local G.O.P. is effectively a regional arm of the president’s re-election effort.

“I’ve had probably 10 conversations with the Trump team about the delegate selection process in Florida,” Mr. Gruters said, adding of a potential Republican primary battle, “The base of the party loves our president, and if anybody runs against him, they are going to get absolutely smashed.”

State and local Republican organizations typically operate below the radar of national politics, but they can be vital to the success of a presidential candidate. Party chairmen and their deputies are tasked with everything from raising money to deploying volunteers to knock on doors, and in many states they help choose delegates for the nominating convention.

For Mr. Trump, who prevailed in 2016 as an outsider with little connection to his party’s electoral apparatus, the ability to control the levers of Republican politics at the state level could make the difference in a close election or a contested primary. It also leaves other Republicans with precious little room to oppose Mr. Trump on his policy preferences or administrative whims — on matters from health care to the Mexican border — for fear of retribution from within the party.

Mr. Trump’s aides have focused most intently on heading off any dissent at the Charlotte convention: To that end, two of Mr. Trump’s top campaign aides, Bill Stepien and Justin Clark, have worked quietly but methodically in a series of states where control of the local party was up for grabs. They have boosted Mr. Trump’s allies even in deep-blue states like Massachusetts, and worked to make peace between competing pro-Trump factions in more competitive states such as Colorado.

The devotion to Mr. Trump was on clear display Saturday outside Denver, where the state party gathered to elect a new chairman. Though Mr. Trump’s unpopularity helped drive Colorado Republicans to deep losses last fall, there was no sign of unrest: Mr. Trump’s name was emblazoned on lapel pins and a flag toted by one candidate for the chairmanship, and his slogan — “Make America Great Again” — was printed on the red hat from which the candidates drew lots to determine their speaking order.

Mr. Trump himself stayed out of the race, and campaign aides sent the White House a short memo last month urging the president not to pick sides between allies after Representative Ken Buck, a deeply conservative candidate, lobbied administration officials for support.

But when Mr. Buck claimed victory in the race for chairman, he described his mission in terms of unflinching loyalty to the president.

“The key is that we make sure that the voters of Colorado understand the great job the president has done,” Mr. Buck said. “That is what my job is.”

You're either with Trump, or you're an "enemy of the people".  And folks are lining up to be on the side with the orange fascist at the helm.  If somebody's actually expecting John Kasich or Jeb Bush or Mitt Romney to show up and "save" the GOP from Trump, it'll never happen.

The Republican Party is the Trump Party and it always has been.

We have to save ourselves.

Clearance Sale At The White House

Bothe the NY Times and Washington Post are reporting that a White House whistleblower came  forth to House Democrats last month in order to report that more than two dozen denials of security clearances were overturned by top Trump regime officials and that the two of the people initially denied security clearances for national security reasons are Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump.  The NY Times story:

A whistle-blower working inside the White House has told a House committee that senior Trump administration officials granted security clearances to at least 25 individuals whose applications had been denied by career employees for “disqualifying issues” that could put national security at risk, the committee’s Democratic staff said Monday. 

The whistle-blower, Tricia Newbold, a manager in the White House’s Personnel Security Office, told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform in a private interview last month that the 25 applicants included two current senior White House officials, in addition to contractors and other employees working for the office of the president, the staff said in a memo it released publicly. 

The memo does not identify any of the 25 people. But one of the senior White House officials appears to be Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser. 

NBC News reported in January that Carl Kline, who until recently served as the head of the personnel security division and was Ms. Newbold’s boss, had overruled a decision by career security officials concerned about granting Mr. Kushner a clearance.

The New York Times reported in February that President Trump had ordered his chief of staff, John F. Kelly, to grant a clearance last year to Mr. Kushner. The president had earlier said he had no role in the clearance. 

Democrats on the oversight panel are also demanding information from the White House about the process of granting a clearance to Ivanka Trump, among others. Ms. Trump’s final clearance was granted shortly after Mr. Kushner’s. In an interview in February with ABC News, Ms. Trump insisted her father had no hand in either her clearance or her husband’s.

Ms. Newbold told the committee’s staff members that she and other career officials had denied the 25 applications for a variety of reasons, including “foreign influence, conflicts of interest, concerning personal conduct, financial problems, drug use and criminal conduct,” the memo said. 

The denials by the career employees were overturned, she said, by officials with more seniority who, by her account, did not follow the normal procedures meant to mitigate security risks and generally adhered to by other administrations.

The Washington Post story focuses more on Newbold, and gives us a major clue as to a third current WH official.

A White House whistleblower told lawmakers that more than two dozen denials for security clearances have been overturned during the Trump administration, calling Congress her “last hope” for addressing what she considers improper conduct that has left the nation’s secrets exposed. 

Tricia Newbold, a longtime White House security adviser, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that she and her colleagues issued “dozens” of denials for security clearance applications that were later approved despite their concerns about blackmail, foreign influence or other red flags, according to panel documents released Monday. 

Newbold, an 18-year veteran of the security clearance process who has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, said she warned her superiors that clearances “were not always adjudicated in the best interest of national security” — and was retaliated against for doing so. 

Newbold’s allegations intensify pressure on the White House over its handling of security clearances, a controversy that burst into public view last year with the revelation that dozens of staffers had temporary approvals to access sensitive government information while they awaited clearance approval. 

Among them was presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, who President Trump ultimately demanded be granted a permanent top-secret clearance, despite the concerns of intelligence officials. 

Newbold alleged that 25 individuals were given clearances or access to national security information since 2018 despite concerns about ties to foreign influence, conflicts of interests, questionable or criminal conduct, financial problems, or drug abuse.

That group includes “two current senior White House officials,” according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee. 

The panel did not identify the senior White House officials but asked the White House to immediately provide documents related to the security clearances of nine officials, including Kushner, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and national security adviser John Bolton. 

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the committee chairman, said in a letter to the White House Counsel’s Office that his panel would vote on Tuesday to subpoena Carl Kline, who served as personnel security director at the White House during the first two years of the administration — the committee’s first compulsory move aimed at the White House. 

Newbold alleged that Kline, then her direct manager, overruled her clearance denials and then retaliated against her when she objected.

Yep, our third contestant appears to be John Bolton's Mustache.

And the Clearance Sale continues.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump now says that Democrats must "fix" immigration issues with the southern border using legislation or he will close the border as soon as this weekend.
• Two black Baptist churches have been torched in the last few days in St. Landry's Parish, Louisiana, police are telling black churches to be cautious as they are still looking for suspects.
• Meeting a promise of an April 2 deadline, Democrats have issued subpoenas for the unredacted version of the full Mueller report from the Department of Justice.
• Former federal prosecutor Lori Lightfoot has won Chicago's mayoral runoff election, she will be the Second City's first openly gay black woman Mayor.
• Google is teaming up with Walmart so Google Assistant can order groceries using your voice.