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Dems demand Trump advisers testify before Congress, but excused Obama advisers
July 17th, 2019 | 
Author: Jason Chaffetz: Dems demand Trump advisers testify before Congress, but excused Obama advisers
House Judiciary Committee authorizes subpoenas for Jared Kushner, Jeff Sessions and 10 others
Democrats say the subpoenas of high-profile individuals associated with President Trump go to the heart of obstruction of justice allegations; chief intelligence correspondent Catherine Herridge reports from Washington.
Feigning shock at what he called “part of a pattern” of “unprecedented cover-ups,” House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings, D-Md., this week bemoaned the failure of White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway to show up for a congressional hearing.
This is part of a pattern all right, but perhaps not the one Cummings is hoping voters will see. The Trump administration is exercising a privilege routinely enjoyed by previous administrations – and exercised with impunity by President Obama.
Why?
“The appearance of a senior presidential adviser before Congress threatens the independence and autonomy of the president,” according to the White House counsel. Not President Trump’s counsel. President Obama’s. Neil Eggleston made that comment in May 2016 after I invited Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes to come testify. He had been out talking to the media about the Iran nuclear deal.
Before Trump, I’d never seen a president give so much access to people when he didn’t have to. In the report on Benghazi, Hillary Clinton didn’t provide that much access even when we had four Americans dead.
The New York Times Magazine, in a profile of Rhodes, had portrayed the aspiring novelist bragging about having misled reporters on the Iran deal. He claimed to have promoted a narrative he knew to be untrue and relied on inexperienced reporters in the “echo chamber” to report it as fact. I wanted him to come before Congress and explain himself.
We invited Rhodes, but he refused. When we threatened him with a subpoena, Eggleston said there was a separation of powers issue. He was right. We dropped it. The president does have executive privilege. The exercise of that privilege does not equate to a cover up. Yet this week, we have Cummings threatening to hold Conway in contempt of Congress for exercising a right routinely invoked by the Obama administration without a peep of dissent from Cummings.
Forcing presidential advisers to testify about their work in the White House would have chilling effect moving forward. That’s why, until now, both sides have refused to do this. You want the president’s senior advisers to advise him with candor. It is different for a Cabinet secretary or someone actually confirmed by the Senate. But the president’s personal advisers are not obligated to disclose internal deliberations. Democrats know this. They even agree with it.
Yet they continue this charade of calling up witnesses they know cannot testify in an effort to create a false narrative of obstruction and cover-up. There is no precedent for holding people like Conway in contempt for failing to testify before Congress.
Voters should be skeptical when they see Democrats take to the fainting couch over Conway’s absence at a hearing she was not required to attend. Don’t be fooled by the fact that they have a willing media to go along with the charade. Salon Magazine referred to Conway’s absence at the hearing as “a pattern of defiance” – as if there was something unprecedented about White House advisers refusing to testify.
Complicit media have shown a willingness to perpetuate this false narrative. Given any amount of research, the narrative would prove false. When Democrats and their media allies feign exasperation, it misinforms the public and reinforces the notion of fake news.
The media never wrote these kinds of stories during the Obama administration. Yet now, under this administration, invoking executive privilege is suddenly a constitutional crisis. House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., Cummings and others know exactly what they’re doing. They’re just manipulating the daily news cycle to create this drumbeat that is unfair, unprecedented, and unrealistic.
In reality, the Trump administration has been the very model of transparency compared to what I dealt with during eight years of the Obama administration. President Trump’s cooperation with the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller stands in stark contrast to the botched Accountability Review Board investigation of Benghazi.
Before Trump, I’d never seen a president give so much access to people when he didn’t have to. In the report on Benghazi, Hillary Clinton didn’t provide that much access even when we had four Americans dead.
Perhaps Democrats should take the advice of former Obama White House spokesman Eric Schultz, who told reporters during the dust-up with Ben Rhodes that “with all the serious issues stuck in Congress right now – like preparing for Zika’s arrival, helping Puerto Rico through their financial crisis, providing assistance to the people of Flint, or combating the opioid epidemic – it is a shame that Chairman Chaffetz is choosing to … distract from all the work they should be doing.”
Touchè.
Posted in 
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A Different Take on Trump’s Tweet Storm About ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen
July 17, 2019
A Different Take on Trump’s Tweet Storm About ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen
President Trump was raked over the coals by both the left and right for his tweet storm on Sunday, suggesting:
“Progressive” Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they have a functioning government at all), now loudly and viciously telling the people of the United States, the greatest and most powerful nation on earth, how our government is to be run. Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. Then come back and show us how it is done. These places need your help badly, you can’t leave fast enough. I’m sure that Nancy Pelosi would be very happy to work out free travel arrangements!
I’ve wracked my brain trying to find the racism that many are arguing is so obviously inherent in that series of tweets. But it’s simply not there. He never once mentions race or ethnicity. And more to the point, it seems only too obvious that he is referring to ideas about governance.
But here’s something you may not have considered, given that everyone (and I mean everyone, as I’ve yet to see a pundit suggest anything to the contrary) seems to be assuming that the tweets are meant to call out Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Ayanna Pressley – or “the Squad,” as this quartet of freshman Congresswomen has been so stupidly dubbed by Maureen Dowd.
But why? If you still doubt me, try reading that sequence of tweets, above, again.
Now, it couldn’t be clearer that Trump is referring to Ilhan Omar and her native country of Somalia, which is a nation exactly as he describes. But he doesn’t say “four Congresswomen” or invoke among them at all. In fact, the only reason one might think it’s specifically referencing those four women at all is Trump’s use of plural words — “Congresswomen,” “countries,” “governments,” or the pronoun “they.”
But there is evidence that this series of tweets was specifically about Ilhan Omar, and not meant to specifically invoke the others it’s assumed to reference.
First of all, let’s presume, as the media has, that Trump meant to include Ocasio-Cortez in his blanket statement about “Congresswomen who originally came from other countries.” Trump is well-known to voraciously imbibe cable news, and few who know anything about Ocasio-Cortez don’t know that she’s of Puerto Rican descent. Did Trump just miss that in the copious hours of watching news reports about the most prominent upstart in the Democrat Party and the leftist media’s new favorite darling?
President Trump in the Rose Garden Monday, defending his tweet storm
Even in the unlikely event that he believed she was born in Puerto Rico, do you think he would be claiming that she “originally came from” another country when Puerto Rico is a United States commonwealth, which Trump would clearly know, given that he’s conducted business there?
So, at this point, to think what he said was racist, or that he was talking about Ocasio-Cortez, you are already making an improbable argument, because, again, he never mentions race or ethnicity in the tweets, and it seems unlikely that he’s talking about Ocasio-Cortez.
But it would make more sense that he’s talking explicitly about Ilhan Omar, and was just using plurals to a) avoid singling out Omar for criticism, thereby avoiding charges of a singular attack against a young, female, black Congresswoman, and b) to suggest that the problem he describes is broader than she, as a single example, represents.
After all, the rest should all make sense in every way. Pelosi would certainly “arrange free travel arrangements” to get rid of her, as she’s been a thorn in her side all year. Omar has been an open critic of Pelosi in 2019. The House Speaker had appointed Omar to the Foreign Affairs Committee in January, only to have her openly make anti-Semitic statements in February that required much spin and deflection. Pelosi still protected her, passing a resolution in response to her anti-Semitic statements which condemned hatred, but not her specific brand of it, and not condemning her by name.
What was Pelosi’s reward for that protection? Omar condemned her for opposing the anti-Israel movement of “boycott, divest, sanctions” (BDS) back in March. Then, when Ocasio-Cortez accused Pelosi of racism just last week, Omar doubled-down on the accusation, tweeting: “Patetico! You know they’re just salty about WHO is wielding the power to shift “public sentiment” these days, sis. Sorry not sorry.”
But the evidence that Trump was specifically referencing Omar doesn’t end there. Just a day before Trump’s tweet storm, Omar began a foreign policy panel at the liberal Netroots Nations conference in Philadelphia by “making light of her anti-Semitic comments” earlier in the year, following up by saying, “I believe, as an immigrant, I probably love this country more than anyone who is naturally born and because I’m ashamed to continue living in its hypocrisy.”
She likely made these statements in response to Tucker Carlson’s comments in the preceding days (Omar had called Carlson “racist fool” before the Philadelphia event), with the Fox News pundit saying: [T]here are signs that some people who move here from abroad don’t like this country at all. As we told you last night, one of those people now serves in our Congress.
Think about that for a minute. Our country rescued Ilhan Omar from the single poorest place on Earth. We didn’t do it for the money, we did it because we are kind people. How did she respond to the remarkable gift we gave her? She scolded us, called us names, showered us with contempt. It’s infuriating. More than that, it is also ominous. The United States admits more immigrants than any other country on Earth, more than a million every year… Americans like immigrants. But immigrants have to like us back.
When Carlson says “us,” he is talking about Americans, and our inherent national devotion to free markets, individual liberty, and limited government — the very principles which have made us great. Trump’s tirade could very well have been an addendum to Carlson’s tirade against Ilhan Omar, and specifically in response to her comments from the day before.
Yes, Trump used the opportunity to troll Pelosi, and forced her to rush to the defense of the same the group of people that had, just days before, denounced her as a racist, and who have been (and will continue to be) campaigning for her ouster. That’s all hilarious, sure. But the question is, will Americans miss the larger point Trump made in the noise created about the tirade being about “the Squad,” or being racist somehow?
I don’t think so, because such expressions as Trump’s aren’t uncommon in discussions among Americans today, as anyone outside of a leftist media bubble or a college outrage mob would know. What is being discussed among Americans are ideas, and we Americans still like the American ideas of free markets, individual liberty, and limited government.
As a good friend of mine from Texas wrote to me on Monday:
As far as Omar goes, Trump is 100% right. You had to flee point A to go to point B because obviously B is better. Then you complain about B and actively work to make B different from what made it better than A in the first place. If you want to change something so bad, then change A. Race doesn’t have anything to do with that.
This is the crux of Trump’s tweets. Race, in an objective view of this discussion, is nothing more than a red herring, and any suggestion that those tweets are racist is just smoke to hide the underlying truth — the Left wants to destroy and fundamentally transform America, and is working to normalize the notion that it’s somehow noble of us to import enough people who can allow them to do so.
But the Left must be relying upon that smoke for 2020. Consider that, in swing states, Ilhan Omar boasts a 9% approval rating, according to a recent poll. A national platform of a prominent Democrat being “ashamed” of living in our national “hypocrisy” may not play as well in those states as Trump’s believing that America is “the greatest nation” on the planet, or that the principles which have long guided our country should be preserved.
William Sullivan blogs at Political Palaver and can be followed on Twitter.
Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/07/a_different_take_on_trumps_tweet_storm_about_progressive_democrat_congresswomen.html#ixzz5tx0snGen
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Population shifts set up huge House battleground
Population shifts set up huge House battleground |
As many as 1 in 5 seats in the House of Representatives may be competitive next year as population shifts and partisan realignment conspire to create one of the most widespread battlefields in generations. |
Read the full story here |
White House and Congress inch toward Debt Budget Deal
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Democrat civil war widens
Over the weekend, a cataclysmic storm continued to build, threatening massive destruction. I don’t mean the hurricane in the Gulf, but the escalating battle in Congress between the old line House Democrats (the “hide what we really believe until after the election” faction) and the regressive “progressive” Democrats who’ll come right out and tell you they want open borders, sky-high taxes, no prosecution of criminals, no deportations of illegal aliens, and socialism replacing capitalism. They think that’s a winning platform, while the old line Democrats think it’s the kind of platform that drops out from under you when you get hanged.
https://www.westernjournal.com/ct/full-blown-civil-war-brewing-democratic-party/
That link recaps some of what led up to this, plus the latest development in which Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Chief of Staff, Saikat Chakrabarti, suddenly catapulted from the shadows to center stage by accusing other Democrats – including black and Native-American Democrats – of being racists and white supremacist sympathizers. This is what happens when you develop a bad habit: you just can’t stop doing it even when it makes no sense whatsoever.
(To refresh your memory, Chakrabarti is the guy who’s usually photographed wearing a T-shirt with the face of a radical, Nazi-sympathizing Indian leader on it. He’s a ringleader of the Justice Democrats, the far-left group that got AOC elected and hopes to repeat that nationwide using the same strategy: target low-turnout Democratic primaries in one-party districts and run stealth campaigns for radical leftists who defeat incumbents whose supporters assumed they’d win so they don’t bother to show up at the polls. This is how America got AOC in Congress, thanks to just 16,898 primary voters in a Bronx district with nearly 700,000 residents. I plan to keep warning people about that until the word gets out, so we can stop the rising tide of America-hating Congress members and D.A.’s who refuse to prosecute 90% of crimes.)
This is great spectator sport for Republicans, but it’s not healthy for one of the parties in a two-party system to be tearing itself apart, particularly when its young up-and-comers are ignorant of history and want to impose policies that have been proven tragic failures everywhere they’ve been tried.
And while Speaker Pelosi and her supporters try to tamp them down and point out that they are only four votes in the House, this news must send chills down her spine:
A poll taken in May (even before all the publicity over the Dems’ civil war ramped up) of swing voters that the Dems will need to win back from Trump found that the Democrat whose name they most recognized was AOC. Among swing voters, 74% knew AOC, and 22% approved of her. Likewise, 53% knew Ilhan Omar, and 9% approved of her. Also, 18% viewed socialism favorably, and 69% disapproved of it.
Remember how I told you that the far-left platform was like the platform you get hanged from? Well, if the Dems who mount that platform do swing for it, then it may be swing voters dropping the trap.
https://www.axios.com/alexandria-ocasio-cortez-poll-democrats-2020-aeaa3771-f142-4059-b79e-1fed569dfdf9.html
Politics Trump vs “The Gang of Four”
There’s been a lot of commentary on the whole Trump/Gang of Four blow-up. Frankly, a lot of the big name pontificators are too full of themselves to see what’s really going on, so here a couple that are both entertaining and worth reading.
Nina Bookout at the Victory Girls blog examines that Trump-bashing press conference that she says “backfired spectacularly.” It gave the Republicans scads of video clips for the 2020 election, like Rep. Omar dodging and saying, “I will not dignify that with an answer” when asked about accusations that she’s a communist and supports al-Qaeda. Not to mention the profanity, the false accusations and wild misstatements of fact, the victimhood mongering, and the demands for impeachment for the “most corrupt Administration” in history without naming any actual crimes that have been committed other than the discredited “Russian collusion” fable.
And let’s not forget the bogus claim that migrants in federal border facilities have to “drink out of toilets!” It’s an institutional plumbing fixture with a sink on the top and a toilet on the bottom. Sorry if it doesn’t come up to HGTV aesthetic standards, but if they don’t like it, they can always (wait for it!) go back where they came from. No, literally: the so-called “detainees” are not being detained; they can go home to their native counties anytime they want. Which, incidentally, is yet another way in which these facilities are nothing like Nazi concentration camps.
In fact, that presser was so bad, it made Ms Bookout reconsider about whether Trump’s original tweets were really a blunder or a risky political calculation. The left keeps telling us Trump is the bull in the china shop, but when every time he waves a red flag, they charge headfirst into the nearest wall, you have to wonder who’s really the bull here.
And here’s an interesting take on Monday’s political melodrama. This blogger’s parents and their friends were all immigrants (the old fashioned kind who actually came here legally and loved their adopted country). This piece makes the argument that what Trump is doing is pushing back against the leftist takeover of the language and reclaiming the right to voice obvious truths publicly and say what you honestly think instead of just what’s politically correct (a right I have always refused to give up, no matter what kind of trash gets posted on my Twitter feed.) If so, let’s hope it’s only step one.
http://www.bookwormroom.com/2019/07/14/trump-is-not-a-racist-hes-pushing-the-overton-window-to-normal/
The REAL story about “The Squad”
MIKE HUCKABEE
Back in mid-March, I featured a commentary about a video presentation called “The Brains Behind AOC,” about the sudden rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez thanks to a radical leftist group called Justice Democrats. It showed that she had been recruited by that organization through an “audition” of sorts to track down –- from a field of about 10,000 –- the most engaging face of radical leftism they could find. JD had other candidates in its stable as well, some of whom had already won primaries in their heavily-Democrat districts and, of course, had gone on to be elected (as Nancy Pelosi has said, there are districts in which a glass of water with a “D” next to its name could get elected), and others who were being groomed to mount primary challenges in 2020 against relatively moderate Democrats.
When “The Squad” of four far-left congresswomen went before cameras on Monday, spouting vague pronouncements of racism and xenophobia and outright lies about border facilities, ICE and President Trump, it occurred to me: these four individuals have something huge in common: they were all backed by the same socialist organization, Justice Democrats. Just to double-check, I went to their website and, sure enough, at the very top of their home page is a graphic featuring images of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of the 14th District of New York, Ayanna Pressley of the 7th District of Massachusetts, Rashida Tlaid of the 13th District of Michigan, and (last but not least) Ilhan Omar of the 5th District of Minnesota. “The Squad.”
TO READ MORE AND COMMENT GO HERE>>>
With gratitude,
Mike Huckabee
House expected to vote Wednesday on Democrat’s impeachment effort
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s policies are “toxic” to the Democrat Party.
New Poll Showing AOC’s Damage to Dems Proves Trump’s Tweets Are Genius
Published 11 hours ago on ByTom Pappert
A new poll reveals freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is destroying the image of the Democrat Party, proving President Donald Trump’s tweets calling out Ocasio-Cortez and her cohorts were brilliant.
President Trump was roundly derided by globalists and media figures from both sides of the aisle for calling out Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) via Twitter, though his genius is proven by a poll released by Axios revealing Ocasio-Cortez’s divisive rhetoric and brainless commentary is destroying the Democrats’ image.
Axios reported that “Democrats are sounding the alarm that swing voters know and dislike socialism, warning it could cost them the House and the presidency,” and that “The poll is making the rounds of some of the most influential Democrats in America.”
Axios revealed that the May poll focused on group of freshman congresswomen referred to by President Trump as “The Squad”, and “included 1,003 likely general-election voters who are white and have two years or less of college education.”
According to Axios, the poll is potentially devastating to Democrats.
From Axios:
The findings:
Ocasio-Cortez was recognized by 74% of voters in the poll; 22% had a favorable view.
Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota — another member of The Squad — was recognized by 53% of the voters; 9% (not a typo) had a favorable view.
Socialism was viewed favorably by 18% of the voters and unfavorably by 69%.
Capitalism was 56% favorable; 32% unfavorable.
“Socialism is toxic to these voters,” said the top Democrat.Today, President Trump tripled down on his remarks, saying that Democrats would rather “run for the hills” than tackle the anti-America, anti-Israel, pro-socialism “Squad” of Democrats who are derailing their party.
Big League Politics reported:
President Donald Trump observed Tuesday that the Democrat party is completely afraid to confront the radical bigoted statements of the left-wing congresswomen who have seized media attention worldwide.
Trump made a concerted play to confront the congresswomen directly on Twitter, proving that the media and the Democrat party is terrified of criticizing that extremist group.
Louisiana congressman Ralph Abraham offered to purchase plane tickets for Ilhan Omar and her compatriots so they can leave the country. President Trump suggested that the junior Democrats perform humanitarian or political work in other countries in the Third World. Trump refused to back down from his comments, pointing out that the crew of Democrats have said anti-American and anti-Semitic things. Trump gained strong support in the Senate from Steve Daines and Lindsey Graham.
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HANNITY
HERE WE GO AGAIN: Rep. Omar Says US Must Support Those Who ‘Fight for Liberation of Palestine’
posted by Hannity Staff – 3 hours ago
Controversial Congresswoman Ilhan Omar continued to focus on the “liberation of Palestine” over the weekend; telling a group of supporters in Philadelphia that the US needs to celebrate “non-violent” resistance against Israel.
Ryan Saavedra ✔@RealSaavedra
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) says that the Palestinian movement against Israel is non-violent: “In the situation of Palestine, what we are doing right now is having hypocrisy in not celebrating non-violent movements there and condemning it.”
“In the situation of Palestine, what we are doing right now is having hypocrisy in not celebrating non-violent movements there and condemning it,” said Rep. Omar.
“That’s what we’re dealing with in the Halls of Congress. That is in the media, in regards to people who are not-violently wanting to resist and fight for the liberation of the Palestinian people. That hypocrisy needs to end,” she added.
Ilhan Omar made national headlines earlier this year for a series of anti-Israeli controversies; accusing American politicians of holding a secret allegiance to the world’s only Jewish State.
Omar also defended Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’ recent controversial Holocaust remarks last Friday; saying people are “in camps” and being “concentrated,” therefore they are “Concentration Camps.”
“When you look at what is taking place, people are being put in camps. And when you think about the definition, if we separate it from death camps, I would say these are camps and people are being concentrated in them. And so that’s the general definition,” Omar said during a recent interview.
“I think a lot of people are conflating what a death camp looks like or a specific removal of people. These people are coming to the border. We are removing them from the border. We are placing them in camps. Some of them are being removed from communities and being put in what we’re calling detention centers — but are essentially camps,” she added.
Ocasio-Cortez flat-out refused to apologize for her recent remarks regarding the President’s immigration policy Friday; doubling-down on her stunning comparison between detention centers and ‘Concentration Camps.’
“As long as the @GOPLeader supports jailing children and families on the border, I will continue to hold him to account for it. That’s why I’m calling on Rep. McCarthy to apologize for aiding and supporting the separation of children from their parents,” posted Ocasio-Cortez on social media.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez ✔@AOC
As long as the @GOPLeader supports jailing children and families on the border, I will continue to hold him to account for it. That’s why I’m calling on Rep. McCarthy to apologize for aiding and supporting the separation of children from their parents.
Yad Vashem, the official Israel Holocaust Center in Jerusalem responded this week to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’ recent comments; urging the far-left lawmaker to “learn” about concentration camps.
“@AOC Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of ‘extermination through labor.’ Learn about concentration camps,” posted Yad Vashem.
There is absolutely no difference between most Democrat members and the four radical so-called freshmen
Trump Proves that Pelosi & Four Progressive Radicals Aren’t Fighting Each Other, But Fighting FOR Each Other
By Judi McLeod —— Bio and Archives—July 15, 2019
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It was never supposed to happen this way. The Fox Hunt is supposed to unmercifully run the poor, tired outnumbered-by-hounds fox, to ground. But on Sunday, forced into the role of the fox, President Donald Trump turned things around and ran an avaricious huntress to ground.
Showing no signs of battle fatigue from continuing worldwide smears and heaped on hatred, the president left Nancy Pelosi behind flailing uselessly in the dust, winning the fox hunt hands down before it could even get underway.
It’s now Monday and most of the media are yip-yipping away, harping on about how the president told four of House Speaker Pelosi’s “progressive” freshman members to go back to their countries of origin to fix the corruption plaguing those nations before they lecture the United States.
Other than flagrantly showing themselves disloyal to the Republic, it makes puny difference that three of the four radical progressives were born in the U.S.—because as anti-American radical activists they put their mother countries first even after being sworn in to defend America and even though the pay checks they cash are 100% American.
But the chased down fox was never supposed to leave the huntress back in the dust, yipping and yapping in shock and surprise.
Most mainstream and social media missed the main point of the president’s Sunday tweet about the four radicals.
“In the tweet, Trump referred to them as “progressive Democratic Congresswomen” whose home countries are collapsing from corruption and said they should return home to aid those who are suffering. (Fox News, July 14, 2019)
“He also said their departure would please Nancy Pelosi and suggested she would even cover the cost of their travel.”
Pelosi would never cover the cost of their return because they are critical to the fate of the Democrat Party.
“Trump’s tweets prompted a backlash from several members of Congress, including Pelosi and Michigan’s Rep. Rashida Tlaib. (Fox News)
“The Speaker of the House responded to Trump’s tweet shortly thereafter and said the issue was not about policy but about race, claiming the president wants to “make America white again.”
“She also called Trump’s comments xenophobic and asked for an end to all ICE raids, in favor of bipartisan immigration reform.
“New York congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez flipped the script on Trump in her Twitter reply and blamed him for the corruption and lawlessness at the southern border and accused him of purposely instilling fear while being driven by anger.
“Meanwhile, Tlaib tweeted out a call for impeachment in response to Trump’s comments and said he represents the real crisis, not the immigration issues on the southern border.”
Fox made a point of identifying the radicals as American-born:
“Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican, was born in the Bronx, New York, and raised in suburban Westchester County. Pressley, the first African-American woman elected to represent Massachusetts, was born in Cincinnati. Tlaib, who along with Omar became one of the first two Muslim women ever elected to Congress, was born in Detroit.
“Omar is the first Somali native elected to the House and despite being born in Somalia, she spent much of her childhood in a Kenyan refugee camp as a civil war tore her country apart. She is the only one of the four not to be born on U.S. soil.
“The Washington-based Council on American-Islamist Relations (CAIR) condemned Trump’s comments and issued a statement through their National Executive Director Nihad Awad:
“Trump’s latest racist tweets echo the bigoted shouts of ‘go back where you came from’ heard daily by American Muslim women and children, immigrants and members of other minority communities across our nation. It is sad to see the occupant of the Oval Office transition from empowering and encouraging racist taunts to actually using them himself,” Awad said. “If Trump shouted the same thing at a Muslim woman wearing hijab in a Walmart, he might be arrested.”
“Omar has fundraised for CAIR, the influential civil rights group for Muslims. CAIR has been condemned by conservatives, who say the group unfairly labels its critics Islamophobic.”
“So interesting to see ‘Progressive’ Democrat Congresswomen, who originally came from countries whose governments are a complete and total catastrophe, the worst, most corrupt and inept anywhere in the world (if they even have a functioning government at all), now loudly……” Trump said in the first of three tweets on the topic. (Washington Examiner,July 14, 2019)
“Matt Wolking the deputy director of communications for Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, got in on the action as well and said the media was already mischaracterizing the president’s comments. (Fox News)
“Anyone who says the president told members of Congress to go back to where they came from is lying,” he wrote on Twitter. “He told them to “Then come back and show us how it is done.”
“Last week Pelosi was caught in a public feud with her four progressive freshman members: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib, Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn. Ocasio Cortez had been publicly acrimonious in her responses to Pelosi and accused the speaker of giving her busy work to keep her quiet and out of the way.
The truth is that not only did foxy President Donald Trump leave vociferous Pelosi flailing uselessly in the dust on Sunday, he shed illuminating light on the truth: The truth that Omar, Talib, Pressley and their leader Ocasio Cortez are in fact ”progressive Democratic Congresswomen”.
Fox Trump proved that the Gig is Up, Madam Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi and the four are not fighting each other—they are fighting for each other. The four progressive Democratic Congresswomen’s act ever since being elected has been to make it appear that Pelosi and fellow Democrats are moderate compared to them. There is absolutely no difference between most Democrat members and the four radical so-called freshmen. They are one and the same.
Fox Trump proved that the Gig is Up, Madam Pelosi.
Meanwhile, President Donald Trump will keep outrunning you right up to Election 2020. And for over half the country—and still counting—that’s something worth celebrating
Related: Trump doubles down on ‘go back’ tweets amid outrage, calls on ‘Radical’ reps to apologize
President Trump doubled down Monday after taking heavy fire for inflammatory tweets calling on Democratic congresswomen to “go back” to where they came from—even though most of his intended targets were born in America—as he called on those same lawmakers to “apologize” and chastised the party for defending them.
“When will the Radical Left Congresswomen apologize to our Country, the people of Israel and even to the Office of the President, for the foul language they have used, and the terrible things they have said,” Trump tweeted Monday. “So many people are angry at them & their horrible and disgusting actions.”
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NO “RED FLAG” GUN GRAB! SIGN Petition to my Congressman and Senators
From National Association for Gun Rights
Dear Fellow Patriot,
With growing high-profile GOP support, the threat of a “deal” over so-called “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation Order legislation is growing by the day. If passed, government goons could burst into your home and seize your guns with ZERO due process.
You don’t get to defend yourself in court or even see what you’re accused of. All that has to happen is someone complains about you! It is already happening in California, Maryland (where a terrified gun owner was shot dead at home just after 5 am) and a few other extreme anti-gun states. But the politicians in Washington are in a rush to make it a NATIONAL law.* *Including Senator Marco Rubio
That’s why I’m counting on you to please sign your NO “RED FLAG” GUN GRAB petition right away!
https://nagr.org/2019/973_Red_
We will deliver your petition to your lawmakers at our expense before any “Red Flag” bills are voted on in Congress.
For Freedom,
Dudley Brown
President
National Association for Gun Rights
Dudley Brown
President
National Association for Gun Rights
NO “RED FLAG” GUN GRAB!
Petition to my Congressman and Senators
WHEREAS: So-called “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation laws violate the Second amendment and Fourth amendment to the United States Constitution by confiscating legal firearms from law-abiding citizens without due process; and
WHEREAS: Already we’re seeing the dangerous repercussions of this policy. Last October, one Maryland father was shot dead on his doorstep when law enforcement pounded on his door at five in the morning demanding he surrender his legally possessed firearms; and
WHEREAS: By relying solely on baseless accusations and anonymous complaints as “evidence” this law can be easily abused by violent ex-spouses, stalkers, or criminals who seek to disarm their potential victims leaving women defenseless to protect themselves and their children; and
WHEREAS: A national “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation law would be a grave mistake, one which will put the lives and safety of law-abiding gun owners and law enforcement needlessly at risk to serve a rabid anti-gun political agenda.
THEREFORE: On behalf of Second Amendment supporters, I urge you to vote “NO!” on any gun control scheme that reaches the floor of the Senate, including so-called “Red Flag” Gun Confiscation Legislation.
Trump threatens the world elites, and that’s why they hate him.
RUSH: Now, I mentioned earlier in the program that a British diplomat, the ambassador to the United States, had written some scathing memos for British diplomats to read sharing his observations of Trump and the Trump administration. Somebody leaked them to the U.K. Daily Mail. The U.K. Daily Mail ran a gigantic story on this, and the Brits have since apologized for this.
But I want to break down some of the things the guy wrote, because it is a teachable moment. But the U.K. today said that it will formally apologize to the White House after leaked confidential memos revealed its ambassador to the U.S. described the Trump administration as inept and dysfunctional.
A spokesman for the Prime Minister Theresa May told reporters: “Contact has been made with the Trump administration, setting out our view that we believe the leak is unacceptable. It is, of course, a matter of regret that this has happened.”
The trade minister, Liam Fox, said he’s gonna apologize directly to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, whom he is expected to meet while he is in Washington. He told the BBC radio, “I will be apologizing for the fact that either our civil service or elements of our political class have not lived up to the expectations that either we have or the United States has about their behavior, which in this particular case has lapsed in a most extraordinary and unacceptable way.”
We’re talking about Sir Kim Darroch. And Britain has launched an investigation into who leaked the emails from this guy that he had sent to others. Liam Fox said, “I hope if we can identify the individual, either the full force of internal discipline — or if necessary the law — will be brought to bear because this sort of behavior has no place in public life.”
Now, what’s fascinating about this is that they reacted so quickly to this and that nobody in the U.K. wants to back it up publicly. They want to apologize for it and get rid of it. Here’s the upshot of this. Sir Darroch, who is, again, U.K.’s ambassador to the United States, said that Trump is inept, uniquely dysfunctional, his career could end in disgrace — this is a series of memos that he sent to the prime minister and others at Number 10 Downing Street.
And this is a key quote from one of the leaked emails. “This ‘America First’ administration could do some profoundly damaging things to the world trade system: such as denounce the W.T.O., tear up existing trade details –” By the way, these memos are two years old up to the present. I mean, it’s a lot of leaked data. Could “denounce the W.T.O., could tear up existing trade details, launch protectionist action, even against allies. It could further undermine international action on climate change, or further cut U.N. funding.
“He said that Trump’s ‘spontaneous’ missile strike on a Syrian airbase in April 2017 had won him ‘the best headlines of his brief time in the Oval Office,’” that’s how old some of these leaks are, “but warned that ‘a less well judged military intervention is not inconceivable.’”
So what this is rooted in — and again these leaked memos go all the way back to the early days of the Trump administration. And it’s rooted in a bunch of European elites, just like their American counterparts, having a cow over the concept of make America great, Make America Great Again, keep America great. This somehow poses a gigantic threat to them. It poses a gigantic threat to the world order that they have all set up and think that they administer for themselves.
And, of course, this world order requires that the super power United States subordinate itself to lesser nations, that the United States be willing to act as a piggy bank, that the United States, because of it’s wealth and power and size assume the responsibility of defending Europe. This is only fair. It is only just while the nations of Europe allocate their resources to other more pressing needs. And this is a world order that everybody’s accepted, that the United States takes it on the financial chin and that this concept of Make America Great Again threatens everything.
And these guys are paranoid about it, they literally get paranoid over the whole concept of making America great again, because it totally upsets their established order. They do not understand it. To be afraid of that, just like their U.S. counterparts are, the American left, the Washington establishment, they likewise are also threatened by this concept and haven’t the slightest idea how it resonates with the American people.
There’s nothing wrong with America being great. America being great does not threaten anybody, except America’s enemies. And the U.K. is not one. Europe is not an enemy. Europe is an ally. Making America great does not diminish Europe. But these people don’t see this this way.
They look at Trump as somebody who wants to take the United States out of the world order, out of all preexisting agreements and do nothing but make the United States a lone island in the world doing everything possible and everything necessary to make it great at and to the expense of others. That’s not what it means.
As Trump has said, he thinks every leader of every country ought to have that attitude about his or her own country. That Angela Merkel ought to be trying to make Germany great again, that Theresa May and the Brits should be trying to make the U.K. great again. What in the world be wrong with it? When everybody is working toward that goal, it’s best for every citizen in these the countries.
These guys don’t see it this way. They are threatened by the concept of America being great because to them it means nationalism. It means white supremacy, which is a big crock and hoax. And it means America as all alone and in it for itself and nobody else.
So you boil it all down, what it really means, when they hear Trump talk about Make America Great Again, it’s like their bank is shutting down. It’s always all about money. And these people are afraid the great American federal reserving is shutting down, the bank is shutting down, Trump’s gonna choke off payments, Trump is gonna start making ’em pay their dues to NATO and this kind of thing. It’s gonna cost them money.
The idea of an American which is the solution to the world’s problems, getting better, getting stronger, the idea that that threatens supposed small D democrats, how in the world can that possibly be? We do not conquer. We do not take. We do not steal. We do not move in on other countries and conquer them. We liberate people. It’s the exact opposite of this paranoia.
So this guy starts writing his memos on the basis that Trump poses a threat to this established order, this America first administration could damage world trade. No. It’s gonna fix it. The World Trade Organization deserves to be denounced. The World Trade Organization is the organization set up that was to decide against the United States in trade disputes as an element of fairness. The big guy needs to lose some. America needs to lose now and then. We can’t win everything. It’s not fair. We’re too big.
So the WTO comes along and sides in trade disputes with smaller nations. And this is the way the world order was set up. And this is what we’re supposed to accept. And every previous president to Trump did. It’s how we kept the peace supposedly. Kept the peace, we’re talking about our allies here. And they worry about upsetting trade deals. Trump is doing that, but he’s improving them. There isn’t any protectionism going on here. The tariffs raise is about leveling and taking care of preexisting problems.
But then this guy later on in his memos tells people, “Don’t write Trump off.” In one of the most sensitive areas of the leaked documents, Sir Kim writes, “We don’t really believe this Administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept.”
In other words, we don’t think this can ever get better, not with this guy Trump there. This is gonna remain inept, abnormal, dysfunctional, unpredictable, and driven by factions. All of this means nothing more than these people are threatened by an ally. Normal to them is the United States not acting like and not really being the world’s superpower. It’s a little bit more complicated than that, but for the purposes of making my point I’m putting it that way.
“One account of a Trump rally says that there is a ‘credible path’ for Trump to win a second term in the White House – but describes the crowd as ‘almost exclusively white.’” So a white ambassador to the United States from the U.K. looks at a Trump rally and sees what he doesn’t see. He says it’s all white.
They’re not all white at Trump rallies by any stretch of the imagination. So he’s no different than a Washington establishmentarian. And this just illustrates what Trump has been up against since day one, not just here but throughout the great halls of the European Union.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: There’s a lot more in these leaked emails from Sir Kim Darroch, the U.K. ambassador to the United States, but this is the remaining big finale. “But while warning Whitehall that Trump’s White House could collapse under the weight of scandal, he also urged the British Government not to write Trump off. The president, he noted, has been mired in scandal most of his life but has always survived.” He seems unperturbed by scandal.
Let me tell you something. You do not know what this guy is saying. This guy is voicing a shocked disbelief of every Trump opponent. They can’t believe that he survived all this. They can’t believe he hasn’t gone crazy. They can’t believe he’s survived the Access Hollywood video. They can’t believe that he survived the allegations of colluding with Russia.
And by survive, I mean they can’t believe he hasn’t lost his mind. And I’m not exaggerating. They’ve been trying to drive him crazy. They’ve been trying to drive him crazy psychologically, self-esteem, beat that down. They can’t believe the guy’s still looking younger, still out there on message, on point, still with as much energy as ever. They are in shocked disarray.
And this guy is letting us know that the same type of elites, pointy-headed academics in the U.K. feel the same way. “The president, he noted, has been mired in scandal most of his life, but has always survived. Sir Kim Darroch,” the leaker — well, he’s not the leaker. He’s the author of all these analyses. “drew a parallel with The Terminator, a 1984 science fiction film featuring Arnold Schwarzenegger as a cyborg that is almost impossible to destroy.”
Wait a minute. We’ve just come from inept, embarrassing, clumsy, incompetent to now being somebody they can’t destroy? “Trump may,” it says here, “emerge from the flames, battered but intact, like Schwarzenegger in the final scenes of The Terminator.”
It shocks me this guy would deign to admit he watched such a thing. I’ve never known an establishment type to admit they watched Terminator movies. When do they have time to leave the club and their port and cigars to go watch Terminator movies? It’s so beneath them. But yet that’s the analogy.
“Looking to the future, Sir Kim warned ‘there are real risks on the horizon’ and that Trump ‘will do or say things we oppose.’”
(gasping) The shock of it all. The arrogance of it all. The disrespect of it all. That Trump is going to say things and do things that we oppose. And we cannot tolerate this.
They’re scared to death, folks. They’re scared to death because Trump literally poses a threat to their way of life, the threat to their cushy, establishment existence which does not require performance to survive, does not require being good at what they do to survive, does not require accomplishment to survive. It maintains a pecking order based on membership. And Trump is threatening every one of them throughout the entire western alliance. Gotta love it.
The Democratic Socialists of America Helped Elect Them. Now What? BETTER WAKE UP AMERICA SOCIALISM IS ON THE MARCH!
DSA chapters across the country are navigating relationships with politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
On April 9, soon after five members of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) had secured seats on Chicago’s City Council, the Chicago DSA electoral working group gathered in a concrete office building on South Ashland Avenue to talk about what comes next. The chapter’s priorities for the new aldermen include addressing lead in drinking water and eliminating the Chicago Police Department’s gang database.
“We’re the first chapter in the country to have the lucky problem of having five aldermen who we are trying to keep accountable,” says Sarah Hurd, 24. Hurd, whose blond hair is streaked pink and purple, joined DSA in the summer of 2017 and now co-chairs the branch’s electoral working group. (A week later, the lucky problem would grow, when DSA member Rossana Rodríguez-Sánchez won a council seat by 13 votes after a mail-in and provisional ballot count.) Hurd hopes to “work out the kinks of making sure membership has a say in legislation without unwieldy processes.” That night’s discussion was brief, the prelude to a longer conversation about the branch’s strategy to campaign for Bernie Sanders, but member Steve Weishampel, 33, proposed a committee to “coordinate our communications with elected officials.”
DSA’s nationwide membership has grown nearly tenfold since the 2016 presidential election, but another measure of its traction is the number of new DSA-endorsed elected officials: at least 60, the organization estimates, from county school boards to Congress. Across the country, DSA chapters are learning in real time how a fast-growing, multi-tendency organization can work with the politicians it helps elect, balancing an uncompromising vision of a socialist future with the mundane challenges of everyday organizing.
They have been largely independent in this work. In 2018, DSA’s National Political Committee (NPC) adopted an electoral strategy that member Allie Cohn, 48, of Knoxville DSA, describes as decentralized, “as opposed to the NPC saying, ‘This is what you’re going to do electorally.’ ”
With guidelines in place, Hurd has a vision of collaboration—between DSA, the politicians it endorsed and other groups on the Left. “I think it’s kind of like just viewing ourselves on the same team,” she says.
For Kara Gloe, a 38-year-old-mother of four in Moorhead, Minn., involvement in DSA preceded electoral politics. In early 2017, she helped write the bylaws for Red River Valley DSA—which also encompasses Fargo, N.D. When Gloe decided to run for school board that summer, her fellow chapter members knocked on doors and helped her trounce her 12 opponents. “I don’t know if I would have run without the help I was counting on from DSA,” says Gloe.
Gloe’s victory is significant in a region where the term “socialism” is often met with confusion or antagonism. “There is definitely an effort to villainize the word,” says member Courtney Schaff, 28, who lives in Fargo. “And we are doing our best to reclaim it, before it gets too scary.” It helps to have Gloe in office, who answers “Why would you call yourself that?” with “You know Bernie Sanders?”
Gloe is frank about the fact that her hectic schedule—raising four kids between the ages of 6 and 14 and attending half-a-dozen monthly school board meetings—makes attendance at DSA meetings difficult. “I had some guilt after the first election about dropping off the face of the earth with DSA after these people rallied around me,” she says.
But DSA was forgiving, and Gloe still keeps up with the chapter’s socialist feminist working group over a group text and strives to put socialism into practice in office. Since her election, she has organized two annual peanut butter and jelly sandwich fundraisers to cover the debts of families that are past due on their school lunch payments.
“We’re family,” says Schaff. “Kara is part of the genetic makeup of our chapter. She’s in the marrow of our chapter. And that lends to a very organic line of communication back and forth.”
Another one of Red River Valley DSA’s endorsed candidates, the Native American activist Ruth Buffalo, was elected to the North Dakota State House in November 2018. This April, the chapter set a new endorsement threshold—67% of the vote from a quorum of meeting attendees—and created its first endorsement committees, which will be tasked with writing candidate questionnaires, and assessing any candidate’s viability, volunteer needs and alignment with chapter priorities.
“I think we were lucky that our first endorsement was with someone that we have such great care and trust for,” says Schaff. “Now we are starting to think more intentionally about accountability.”
*****
Pittsburgh DSA garnered national attention in May 2018 when two of its endorsed candidates, Summer Lee and Sara Innamorato, decisively beat incumbent state Reps. Dom and Paul Costa, members of a prominent Democratic family, in the primary. The In These Times headline read, “Socialists and Progressives Just Trounced the Democratic Establishment.”
But Pittsburgh DSA and the new state representatives have since drifted apart. Lee did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Innamorato confirmed that while she still pays DSA dues, she does not attend meetings. “There are amazing advocates, policy experts and labor organizers who happen to also be DSA members and are interested in electoral politics and legislative strategy,” she says. “Those are the people I keep in contact with as a legislator.”
The disconnect goes back to last spring. Following Lee and Innamorato’s victories, tensions brewing within the chapter over the primacy of electoral politics boiled up. Instead of turning, as Chicago has, to discussions of how to work with the candidates they had just elected, Pittsburgh DSA focused its attention inward. In June 2018, the chapter hosted a bylaws convention and voted to change its leadership structure. Members of a less electorally focused group took over and some who prized electoral work decamped. Daniel Moraff, 27, who both managed Lee’s campaign and was active in DSA, has let his membership lapse, saying that the chapter has become “internally focused.” (Full disclosure: Moraff has written for In These Times.)
Carl Redwood, 66, a Pittsburgh DSA member, longtime socialist and veteran of the anti-Vietnam War movement and African Liberation Support Committee, says disagreements are to be expected. “We had meetings where people brought pistols back in the day,” he says. “The key thing around DSA, is there’s a lot of different tendencies. This whole big tent idea is a good thing.”
But the chapter has struggled with cliquishness and a lack of internal communication, several current and former members told In These Times. An email from DSA’s national grievance officer to Pittsburgh DSA member Arielle Teer, 31, in late 2018 describes “what many feel is a toxic environment.” Some current and former members contacted for this story would not speak on the record, concerned about reprisal.
Asked about the impression that the chapter has moved away from electoral work and become fractious and siloed, Becca Tasker, Pittsburgh DSA’s communications coordinator, says, “Not everyone is going to agree about the best ways to build a mass movement for socialism, and Pittsburgh DSA believes that we should utilize all the tools we have to build this movement. This means focusing on a large variety of tactics and focuses, including electoral work.”
The chapter’s other projects include an abortion access fund that has raised $20,000 for the Western Pennsylvania Fund for Choice, and solidarity work with the University of Pittsburgh graduate student union and with striking United Electrical locals in Erie and Wilmerding. On April 27, DSA participated in a Potluck for Palestine.
David Greve, 31, is a strong believer in electoral work and still active in the chapter. He says he recently spoke to Innamorato about the chapter’s affordable housing organizing. Greve believes “there still is an opportunity to build a very strong relationship with [our office holders], one that matches with our other goals.”
In November 2018, Pittsburgh DSA adopted new, stricter endorsement guidelines that require endorsed candidates, if elected, to attend one chapter meeting a year, speak with the electoral committee every two months, and work with the branch to draft legislation.
Meanwhile, participation in the chapter is down. While Tasker says paper membership is close to 1,000, meeting attendance dropped to roughly 80 people over the winter from a spring 2018 peak of 120.
In April, 109 people attended a meeting to consider the chapter’s first endorsement of the year, for 2019 District Attorney primary candidate Turahn Jenkins. Unable to endorse because of a lack of quorum, the chapter issued a recommendation encouraging members to vote for Jenkins. However, Pittsburgh DSA will not be able to campaign for him.
Chapter member Candice, 31, draws a direct line from the Pittsburgh DSA’s internal dysfunction to what she sees as an unfortunate retreat from electoral work and other critical community work. (She asked that her last name be withheld for personal reasons unrelated to DSA.) Simply put, she says, “You can’t be a socialist if you are not willing to socialize.”
Rep. Lee has taken her grassroots work elsewhere. In January, she launched a progressive political action committee, UNITE PAC, that’s attracted electoral-minded DSA members. Pittsburgh City Paper reported this winter that Lee, the first black woman from southwestern Pennsylvania ever to serve in the state legislature, hopes UNITE will inspire more candidates to follow in her footsteps.
“The actual story is that this coalition is rising,” says Moraff. He and other former and current Pittsburgh DSA members believe that DSA got too much credit for its electoral work last year. In reality the chapter estimates it was responsible for only 15%–30% of doors knocked for Lee and Innamorato. The Sierra Club, local progressive Democratic clubs and other grassroots groups pulled lots of weight.
Teer, no longer active in Pittsburgh DSA, is now managing the Allegheny County Council primary campaign of Olivia “Liv” Bennett. Bennett has been endorsed by UNITE and did not seek DSA’s endorsement ahead of the May election. As a black woman, Bennett says she was inspired by Lee, who is “unapologetically black.” If elected, she hopes to expand police oversight boards across the county, hold polluting corporations to account, and improve conditions for transgender people incarcerated in county jails.
“I don’t know how much weight the DSA is carrying right now because they have a split within their ranks,” says Bennett. “I would love to see that rectified, because I felt like they were a very strong body.”
*****
In New York City last summer, DSA members watched their underdog candidate—freshman Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who joined DSA midway through her campaign—catapult to overnight fame. It caused a stir when she showed up unexpectedly at a Queens branch meeting after her primary victory. “We all tried to play it cool to an extent,” member Aaron Taube, 29, recalls. “People came up afterward and talked to her and took photos with her.”
Then, in October 2018, Ocasio-Cortez attended a meeting just for DSA members in Queens. Attendees didn’t hold back. Ocasio-Cortez had recently tweeted that the late Sen. John McCain “represents an unparalleled example of human decency.” One attendee asked, “Did you agree that John McCain is a war criminal?”
Says Taube, “It’s rare that a [soon-to-be] sitting member of Congress would come before a socialist organization and take questions for two hours.”
From October through January, Ocasio-Cortez’s senior legislative advisor Randy Abreu hosted calls with housing and labor organizers in chapters, as well as DSA National Director Maria Svart and leaders from several other grassroots groups in Ocasio-Cortez’s district, such as Make the Road NY, Bronx Progressives and the Southeast Asian Organizing Center (DRUM).
The regular calls stopped when Abreu moved to Washington, D.C., as schedules got increasingly hectic. Still, Abreu says he emails policy questions directly to trusted DSA members for feedback, on issues like labor policy and expanding rent control. “It stems from the relationship from the primary, and that helps maintain the informality of it all,” he says. “It seems to be a very free-flowing and smooth relationship.”
Taube, however, notes the limitations of this informal relationship, saying, “I think we need to figure out a firmer procedure for when a member wants to propose that DSA ask Alexandria to do something.”
*****
Thus far, accountability between DSA chapters and the politicians they endorse and campaign for has been based on goodwill and the glue of personal relationships. Now that chapters are beginning to explore more formalized structures, it’s clear that both electoral work and accountability will need to be, in some ways, coalitional. “Yes, DSA is a 55,000 member organization and that’s fucking phenomenal,” says DSA NPC member Allie Cohn. “But that’s still pretty small, relatively speaking.”
Detroit DSA electoral co-chair Jessica Newman says she has seen how powerful it can be when grassroots groups and the officials they elect work together.
In mid-January, Detroit DSA and other members of the Detroit Coalition for a Green New Deal, including Good Jobs Now, Sunrise Lansing, the Autoworkers Caravan and Breathe Free Detroit, staged a protest at a Detroit auto show gala against General Motors’ planned plant closures. Detroit DSA member and U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib, who had just taken office, joined in. “She shows up early to this demonstration and pulls out the bullhorn and just takes charge,” says Newman. “It was incredible to watch.”
Tlaib’s presence helped drive turnout, and hundreds of people came. “It’s not just getting people elected,” Newman says. “It’s building the movement.”
Update: On May 21, after this story went to press, all three of UNITE’s endorsed candidates won their primary elections: Olivia Bennett and Bethany Hallam for Allegheny County Council, and Pam Harbin for Pittsburgh’s school board. Turahn Jenkins lost his district attorney bid with 40.67 percent of the vote.
Hannah Steinkopf-Frank contributed reporting to this story.
WHERE IS AMERICA HEADED IF DEMOCRATS WIN IN 2020?
Democrat Game Plan for USA
Chronology of Venezuela’s Transition from Prosperity to Socialism – Socialists have same plan for USA.
1992: Venezuela became 3rd richest country in Western Hemisphere
1997: Venezuelans became 2nd largest purchaser of F-150
2001: Venezuela voted for a Socialist President to address “income inequality”
2004: Private Healthcare is completely socialized.
2007: All higher education becomes “free”
2009: Socialist banned private ownership of guns
2012: Bernie Sanders said “Venezuelans are living the American Dream better than Americans”
2014: Opposition leaders are imprisoned
2016: Food shortages become widespread
2017: Constitution and elections suspended
2019: Venezuelans massacred by their own government; Civil War begins…
It took them all of 27 years to totally bankrupt and destroy of the richest economies in the world,
how long do you thing it would take the likes of Bernie sanders and elizabeth Warren to do the same to America?
how long do you thing it would take the likes of Bernie sanders and elizabeth Warren to do the same to America?
Trump Campaign to receive 90% of $5.9 Billion Dollar Fortune.
Home Depot Co-Founder To Anti-Trump Snowflakes: Uh, You Think Threatening Me Is Going To Stop My Support Of The President
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus isn’t having any of the anti-Trump Left’s nonsense. The billionaire recently declared that he’s devoting some of his wealth to getting Donald Trump re-elected president of the United States. Of course, the Left went ballistic, calling for boycotts over these remarks and sending threats to a man who has given billions to philanthropic causes. That’s liberalism in 2020, folks. Marcus is undeterred, though angered by the recent insanity that’s been hurled at him over his support of the president. In a Facebook post, he noted such reactions are what you would see in Russia, China, or Argentina, not in the U.S. concerning the support of a political candidate. Second, he noted that he’s been retired from Home Depot since 2002 and that all this boycott would do is hurt the 500,000 workers employed by the home improvement chain.
Marcus is already rich, you progressive morons. He’s a billionaire. You’ll never win in trying to torch his wallet. Marcus also laid down the gauntlet, saying that with all their hollering and rage, he’s not backing down from his support of Trump. He’s a proud deplorable and makes a bet that he will do more to better people’s lives than these losers could in “40 lifetimes.”
Donald J. Trump✔ @realDonaldTrump ·
A truly great, patriotic & charitable man, Bernie Marcus, the co-founder of Home Depot who, at the age of 90, is coming under attack by the Radical Left Democrats with one of their often used weapons. They don’t want people to shop at those GREAT stores because he contributed….
….to your favorite President, me! These people are vicious and totally crazed, but remember, there are far more great people (“Deplorables”) in this country, than bad. Do to them what they do to you. Fight for Bernie Marcus and Home Depot!
I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be another great day. I’ve been celebrating with friends, family and the community since I turned 90. I’ve told you about the gracious gift of $117 million that was collected and given in my honor to four charities that mean a lot to me. All that happiness blew up because I said in a newspaper interview that I have supported and will continue to support Donald Trump.
Boom!
Negative stories… vicious threats, without cause, to boycott the company that has enabled my foundation to give billions to support autism, medical research, education, heart and neurological issues like stroke, and to help our veterans. The company that I retired from in 2002 and have not had a business relationship with in almost 20 years. A company that has employed more than a half-million people. The people who work there are affiliated with both political parties or no party at all. They are of all religions and all colors and backgrounds. Why would people want to hurt them?
All because I give my voice and some of my money to our President. Am I in China? Argentina? Russia? That’s what it feels like to me.
It saddens me that our country has come to this, where I, as a private citizen, cannot express my feelings. It angers me and it saddens me, but it sure as hell is not going to stop me. If you thought it would, you’ve got the wrong guy.
In the next ten years, God willing, I will accomplish more to save this world than my critics will do even if they had forty lifetimes.
We cannot retreat, folks. The economy is booming. Every sector of the economy added jobs last month. The stock market has reached all-time highs under this administration. The small business and investment community’s confidence has reached their highest levels in years. Why should we trash that? We should we downplay that? Well, because the liberal media and their minions got their marching orders: ‘orange man…bad.’ The Left has become increasingly unhinged after 2016. You can’t have a reasonable conversation with them. So, screw them.
ICE Raids have started
ICE deportation raids underway in New York City, ‘number of jurisdictions,’ official say
A nationwide crackdown to apprehend thousands of illegal immigrants across the country began late Saturday in the nation’s largest city and several other places, according to an official.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) resumed its previously announced plan to apprehend thousands of illegal immigrants who’ve been given orders to leave the country, targeting people in at least 10 cities. The ICE raids began late Saturday and into the early morning hours on Sunday in “a number of jurisdictions,” not just New York City, a senior administration official confirmed to Fox News
In an exclusive interview on “FOX & friends,” Acting ICE Director Matt Albence said while he couldn’t speak to anything specifically from an operational perspective, the overarching concern when the agency conducts any sort of enforcement operation is “the safety and security of both our officers that are conducting the operation as well as the public.”
“We are doing targeted enforcement actions against specific individuals who have had their day in immigration court and have been ordered to be removed by an immigration judge,” Albence told Fox News’ Griff Jenkins. “We are merely executing those lawfully issued judge’s orders.”
Nationwide ICE deportation crackdown underway
Mike Tobin brings you the latest updates on ICE raids across the country from Chicago, Illinois.
Albence, who said using the term raid does everyone “a disservice,” added the agency is focusing on people who had had the opportunity to make an asylum claim in front of an immigration judge and chose not to do so or didn’t appear for their first hearing. The acting director added that ICE gave those individuals the opportunity back in February to arrange for an orderly process to be removed from the country, but only 3 percent of people responded to letters that were sent out. “At this point, we have no choice but to go out and execute those lawfully-issued removal orders from an immigration judge,” he told “FOX & friends.”
In addition to the enforcement operation, ICE also released a report on Sunday meant to illustrate the necessity for removing those who have committed crimes.
A senior administration official told Fox News that ICE raid began late Saturday and into the early morning hours on Sunday in “a number of jurisdictions” across the country. (File/Charles Reed/U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement via AP)
The first of what will be quarterly “Declined Detainer Reports” details incidents from the second quarter of fiscal year 2018, where law enforcement agencies arrested undocumented immigrants, ignored ICE requests to hold them until federal authorities could pick them up, and then those individuals were arrested on new charges. The report features highlighted cases, including ones where the arrests were for rape, murder, assault, burglary, car theft, drug possession, and DUI.
ICE RELEASES REPORT OF ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO ALLEGEDLY COMMITTED CRIMES AFTER COPS IGNORED DETENTION REQUESTS
In the cases described in the report, three of the individuals were eventually caught by ICE and removed from the U.S., one is believed to again be in law enforcement custody while ICE awaits action on a new detainer, and 12 are believed to still be at large.
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In one such case, ICE said an illegal immigrant had been arrested and released 10 times by San Francisco police between February 2018 and January 2019, despite ICE issuing detainers. Each of those arrests included charges related to either burglary or a stolen vehicle.
“That individual is a one-man crime spree,” Albence said on “FOX & friends.”
The immigration sweeps were expected to start Sunday, but New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Saturday on Twitter that ICE agents had already taken action in New York. De Blasio said the raids in New York City took place in parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan.
WHY THOSE ICE RAIDS ARE BEING ANNOUNCED IN ADVANCE
“Receiving reports of attempted but reportedly unsuccessful ICE enforcement actions in Sunset Park and Harlem,” the mayor said. “@NYCImmigrants and advocates are connecting with residents and distributing resources door to door.”
Mark Morgan, acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, told “FOX & friends” on Sunday that the raids were about “enforcing and maintaining the integrity of the system.”
“This is about the rule of law,” Morgan said. “Those individuals who remain here illegally, especially those who’ve received due process more than any other nation in the world would provide someone that came here illegally, to including those with final orders, that there are consequences to those that remain here illegally. That’s what today is about. “
ICE raids expected in at least 10 major cities Sunday
Insight from former acting ICE Director Ron Vitiello.
Morgan, the former head of ICE, differed to disclose details about the raids. But he blasted mayors of cities who pushed back against the crackdown, calling their actions “unconscionable.” “This is about going after individuals here illegally,” he said. “Any city, any law enforcement agency that resists, does not cooperate, they’re actually putting those cities in higher danger.”
On Friday, Albence said targets were on an “accelerated docket” of immigration court cases for predominantly Central Americans who recently arrived at the U.S. border in unprecedented numbers. Similar operations occurred in 2016 under President Obama and in 2017 under President Trump.
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The operation will target people with final deportation orders on 10 major court dockets, including Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, and Miami. Albence said that doesn’t mean arrests will be limited to certain areas. Authorities will go where their investigations lead, even if it’s five states away from where the case is filed.
Trump said authorities were “focused on criminals as much as we can before we do anything else.” “It starts on Sunday and they’re going to take people out and they’re going to bring them back to their countries or they’re going to take criminals out, put them in prison, or put them in prison in the countries they came from,” the president said. The Obama-era family operation in 2016 resulted in about 10 percent of those targeted being arrested, and the 2017 effort had a lower arrest rate, according to Albence.
Flyers in English and Spanish are shown stacked at a nearby restaurant before immigration advocates gather them and hand them out, Thursday, July 11, 2019, in the Little Havana neighborhood in Miami. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee)
Other operations that have targeted people with criminal arrest records have yielded arrests rates of about 30%, aided by access to law enforcement databases.
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Administration officials have said they are targeting about 2,000 people, which would yield about 200 arrests based on previous crackdowns.
Trump has said on Twitter that his agents plan to arrest millions of immigrants in the country illegally.
Fox News’ Kevin Corke, Ronn Blitzer, Hollie McKay, Sam Dorman, and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
CANADA FREE PRESS SATIRE – FUNNY
Money does not grow on trees: “Sure it does,” replied AOC confidently, “we have hundreds of trillions of trees. We simply cut them down, make wood pulp, print paper money, Government can afford anything. You just do not understand economics
ALEXANDRIA OCCASIONALLY-COHERENT (AOC) ANNOUNCES REPARATIONS PLAN
By William Kevin Stoos —— Bio and Archives—July 13, 2019Cover Story | Comments | Print Friendly | Subscribe | Email Us
Satire (An Exclusive Interview with Hugh Betcha)
When Alexandria Occasionally-Coherent wants to create news, she calls for a press conference. But when she wants to grab a headline she does what every smart politician does—she calls ace reporter Hugh Betcha of the mighty Canada Free Press. Hugh, who walks with kings and princes, is widely respected on both sides of the aisle in Washington, and recently won the coveted MSNBC “Conservative Reporter We Most Admire 2019” award was happy to oblige. Occasionally-Coherent, author of Move Over Grandma—The Socialist Case Against Speaker Pelosi (Marxist Press, 2019), and We Can Just Walk—The Case Against Gasoline, (Little Golden Books, 2019), was anxious to announce her reparations plan for the country.
“So you want to pay blacks whose forebears were slaves—is that right?” asked the reporter “isn’t that discriminatory? How about other groups who have been oppressed in the past?”
“Well that is exactly right,” Occasionally-Coherent replied, “this country has oppressed so many groups that it would be unfair to pay only blacks who descended from slaves; so I am expanding eligible groups in order to be all inclusive.”
“So how much are you going to pay and to whom?”
“Well, I think $5,000 in oppression payments sounds about right—for each person who has descended from someone who has been oppressed in the past,” Occasionally-Coherent replied.
“You mean even relatives of Japanese Americans who were interned during World War 2?”
“Well yes, I hadn’t thought of that, but they should receive an oppression payment as well.”
“Native Americans such as Elizabeth Warren,” Hugh inquired, “certainly the United States oppressed them too. Should they not receive oppression payments as well?”
“Yes of course—them too.”
“And Hispanics?”
“Yes if they have any relatives who were oppressed in the past, say when our country stole Texas from Mexico, they would be entitled to oppression payments.”
“How about LGBT persons whose forebears were oppressed in the past—pay them too? Certainly you do not want to forget them.”
“Of course, “replied Occasionally-Coherent, “they should receive an oppression payment as well.”
“Okay,” pressed Hugh, “how about Americans who are descendants of persons oppressed at several levels?”
“What do you mean?” asked Occasionally-Coherent.
“Well, for example a gay black person whose great grandmother was Native American—what then?”
“I had not thought of that,” Occasionally-Coherent conceded, “to be consistent and fair,
he or she should receive three units of oppression payments or $15,000—one for descending
from a slave, one for descending from a gay person who was discriminated against and one for his/her Native American blood.”
“But,” said Hugh, “isn’t this going to cost billions of dollars—assuming that you get past all the logistical problems with identifying these folks, documenting their heritage and determining all the possible permutations as in the case of multiple oppression levels? Money does not grow on trees you know.”
“Sure it does,” replied AOC confidently, “we have hundreds of trillions of trees. We simply cut them down, make wood pulp, print paper money, and Government can afford anything. You just do not understand economics.”
