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Trump Immigration Tag

An Al Sharpton guest has the early lead for today's most simultaneously inflammatory and nonsensical statement. Ras Baraka, mayor of Newark, NJ, said that in clamping down on sanctuary cities such as his, the Trump administration is "trying to intimidate us into being what I've called fugitive slave catchers." Not only is the image abhorrent, it is utterly illogical. By enforcing the immigration laws, the Trump admin is not seeking to force illegal immigrants into uncompensated labor. To the contrary, the goal is to deport them.

In the wake of a Massachusetts state representative tipping off illegal aliens about pending ICE raids, Tucker Carlson interviewed MA state senator Jamie Elderidge to discuss this plus pending legislation to make Massachusetts a "sanctuary state." Fox News reported on state rep Michelle DuBois's Facebook posting warning illegals in Brockton to "stay off the streets."

It probably comes as no surprise that California's politicians are doubling down against President Trump's immigration law enforcement policies.
State and local leaders in California struck a defiant tone Monday, saying they would continue to protect people in the country illegally despite an announcement by U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions that the U.S. Department of Justice would soon cut federal grants from so-called sanctuary cities. ...[I]n Sacramento the swiftest reaction came from state Senate President Pro Tem Kevin de León (D-Los Angeles), who is championing legislation that would effectively make California a sanctuary state by prohibiting state and local police from enforcing federal immigration laws. He called Sessions’ statements “nothing short of blackmail.”

On the heels of the failed GOP health care bill, Republicans on the Hill have two new battles: tax reform and avoiding a government shutdown. I detailed the tax reform fight Sunday. Funding for Trump's border wall could complicate the looming budget showdown. Among the options for avoiding yet another government shutdown are reeling in Democrat support to stop a filibuster in the Senate and possibly excluding border wall funding in the spending bill. Typically, the federally government is funded on a yearly basis. Current federal funding ends at the end of April and if nothing happens, a partial shutdown may occur. If a shutdown occurs, GOP lawmakers fear they'll be blamed like they were in 2013. Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK) has encouraged his colleagues to stay focused:
“The government can’t shut down,’’ he said. “If you have a Republican Congress shutting down a Republican government, that’s just about as politically stupid as it gets.”

While California's Governor Jerry Brown is in Washington, D.C., asking for the Trump administration for funding to help pay for storm damage repair and train construction, the state's legislators have been busy working against the American President. The border wall is the cornerstone of President Trump's campaign platform. This week, Sacramento politicians proposed a bill that that would divest its pension funds from companies engaged in the building of that wall.

After the 9th Circuit refused to vacate a TRO issued by a federal judge in Washington State as to Donald Trump's first executive order, I suggested that those judicial decisions not only were legally unjustified, they presented a threat to Trump's lawful executive powers and that dropping and reworking the executive order would be a mistake:
To accept the 9th Circuit ruling is to accept that the President does not have the powers vested in him by the Constitution and Congress.
And so it came to pass, with a narrowed and reworked second executive order being enjoined by district court judges in Hawaii and Maryland. There's an interesting article at the LawFare blog, written by Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic, The Revolt of the Judges: What Happens When the Judiciary Doesn’t Trust the President’s Oath. The central thesis of the post is that judicial aggressiveness towards the executive orders may reflect distrust of Trump by many in the federal judiciary. That distrust, in turn, may be leading judges to cast aside the legally required deference to the political branches that the Constitution, legislation, and Supreme Court precedent require.

Two big developments on judicial usurpation of presidential immigration and national security powers. The federal district court in Hawaii issued a TRO and the 9th Circuit denied en banc hearing of the first appeal. Both Orders are embedded in full at the bottom of this post. The net result is that Trump has been stripped of his constitutional and statutory powers to protect the nation through control of who is permitted to enter the country. I warned about this, and the danger of Trump not seeking Supreme Court review in the first case, President Trump must not back down on immigration Executive Order:

And there it is! Hawaii has become the first to file a lawsuit against President Donald Trump's revised executive order on six nations. From The Hill:
“The Executive Order means that thousands of individuals across the United States and in Hawai‘i who have immediate family members living in the affected countries will now be unable to receive visits from those persons or to be reunited with them in the United States,” attorneys said in court filings.

President Donald Trump has signed a new immigration order, exempting Iraq and those who already hold visas. It still prohibits people from six nations "from entering the U.S. for 90 days." From The Wall Street Journal:
The new order doesn’t ban citizens of Iraq, one of many changes made to an original order in hopes of putting the measures on stronger legal and political footing. The White House says the ban is intended to stop potential national-security threats.

CNN is upset Trump misled them about his plans to support a pathway to legalisation for DREAMers. Before his Joint Address Tuesday night, Trump met with reporters and talked about the need for "compromise" in the coming immigration legislation. CNN reported Tuesday:
President Donald Trump wants to pass an immigration reform bill that could grant legal status to millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US.

Donald Trump's offhanded comment about immigration problems in Sweden was met with two reactions. First, deception. Much of the media and many political opponents invented the fake claim that Trump referred to a terror incident that happened the night before. It was a lie, as the transcript showed, NBC Falsely Suggests Trump Talked of ‘Terror Incident’ in Sweden. While Trump may not have used the most clear language, he clearly didn't mention either specifically or in general a terror incident happening the night before. I understood what he was referring to when he mentioned something last night -- it was a Fox News report on a video about immigration problems in Sweden. Second, Trump was attacked, including by the Swedish government, for relying on a video report that allegedly exaggerated the problems. As we reported, the filmmaker stood by his video, Filmmaker Confirms Numbers on Refugees And Crime in Sweden. Here is the original video, which featured Swedish Jewish reporter Annika Hernroth-Rothstein:

Huffington Post hates Donald Trump. Af first, it refused to cover his primary campaign in the Politics section, putting coverage instead in the Entertainment section. Of course, the joke was on HuffPo, since that move proved it wasn't a serious news organization. Then, HuffPo added a "disclaimer" to the end of each column about Trump: "Note to our readers: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.” That didn't stop Trump from winning the presidency. How far will HuffPo go to hurt Trump? Far enough to delete a post that credited Trump with being right in his comments about Sweden having problems due to mass immigration and migration.

Former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, fired for insubordination after she told DOJ not to defend Trump's immigration Executive Order, is being held up as a new hero by the left for doing so. She attended an event on race in Atlanta this week and got a standing ovation. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported:
Sally Yates gets hero’s welcome at Atlanta race panel discussion:

It seems like a million years ago give the fast flow of news cycles, but you may recall that a lone unidentified Judge on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals called for a vote by the full court as to whether to hear en banc the government's emergency motion for a stay pending appeal. That motion had been denied by a three-judge panel, which refused even to narrow the sweeping District Court injunction against the immigration Executive Order. Since then, Trump has made clear that there will be a new Executive Order issued next week meant to address judicial rulings against the prior Executive Order. Apparently there also were similar representations to the Court in a supplemental brief: