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You are here: Home / Politics / America / What Has Been Will Be Again 2: The US Does Not and Has Never Really Lifted a Lamp Beside the Golden Door

What Has Been Will Be Again 2: The US Does Not and Has Never Really Lifted a Lamp Beside the Golden Door

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While I covered some of this last September, in light of AL’s earlier post* I thought it was important to highlight some of this again. Specifically that the US has never cared about refugees it didn’t consider white and Christian.

When Allan Tarlish of the Jewish War Veterans of America wrote to Senator Robert Taft in 1939 asking for his assistance in getting European refugees fleeing the rise of NAZIism, including/specifically Jewish ones, into the US, he was politely and longwindedly told no.

Senator Taft’s attitudes and position mirrored that of US public opinion**:

And some things seem to never change…

It was during this same time period as these polls were conducted, that the St. Louis sailed for Havana. The St. Louis carried almost a thousand Jewish refugees. The plan had been to make initial landfall in Cuba and then travel on to the US from there. The refugees had been issued Cuban entry documents that were invalidated a week before their arrival. When all but 29 were refused entry into Cuba, they turned North and headed up the coast of the US as some of the refugees had relatives living in and/or citizens of the United States and almost all had applied for US entry prior to sailing from Hamburg. Here too the St. Louis was turned away and with no port to make call turned east back across the Atlantic to Europe. The official problem was the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1924, which Senator Sessions has stated he’d like to see reinstated.

Quotas established in the US Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 strictly limited the number of immigrants who could be admitted to the United States each year. In 1939, the annual combined German-Austrian immigration quota was 27,370 and was quickly filled. In fact, there was a waiting list of at least several years. US officials could only have granted visas to the St. Louis passengers by denying them to the thousands of German Jews placed further up on the waiting list. Public opinion in the United States, although ostensibly sympathetic to the plight of refugees and critical of Hitler’s policies, continued to favor immigration restrictions.

But there was another reason these refugees were turned away, US popular opinion and leadership, including FDR, were afraid these refugees might be NAZI spies or a fifth column. And this belief persisted well into WW II.

World War II prompted the largest displacement of human beings the world has ever seen—although today’s refugee crisis is starting to approach its unprecedented scale. But even with millions of European Jews displaced from their homes, the United States had a poor track record offering asylum. Most notoriously, in June 1939, the German ocean liner St. Louis and its 937 passengers, almost all Jewish, were turned away from the port of Miami, forcing the ship to return to Europe; more than a quarter died in the Holocaust.

Government officials from the State Department to the FBI to President Franklin Roosevelt himself argued that refugees posed a serious threat to national security. Yet today, historians believe that Bahr’s case was practically unique—and the concern about refugee spies was blown far out of proportion.

The US’s immigration policy for receiving the stateless, displaced victims of WW II and the Holocaust was much better. A lot of this seems to be a combination of Soldiers who had seen the camps and suffering in the European Theater combined with the impact that visiting the displaced persons camps had on congressional delegations. Unfortunately, the lessons regarding resisting and fighting authoritarianism and providing compassion and aid to its victims that the WW II generation learned in blood have less and less impact 72 years later. And, as is always the case in the US, hard learned and hard earned progress is immediately followed be a concerted attempt to return to the regressive attitudes, beliefs, and policies that existed before the progress occurred.

 ETA: I just want to add that given the history of how the US failed to act in regard to Jewish and other refugees fleeing the NAZIs, any Jewish American organization that does not go to the mattresses in opposition over the attempt to close off access to the US for anyone fleeing ISIL should be shunned and should close up shop. Those Jewish Americans who fail to stand up for Syrians and Iraqis and others fleeing the horrors of ISIL, regardless of their religion, should be ashamed of themselves and are a shonda for the goyim.

* I don’t have much to say about the International Holocaust Day Proclamation as I have no idea who actually wrote it. I’m not even sure the first sentence is even a sentence. I have no idea, and unless there is a leak I doubt we’ll ever know, if any of the three prominent Jewish Americans that the President has surrounded himself with – his daughter and son in law and his chief policy advisor (Stephen Miller) – saw this or had input into its drafting.

**Hat tip to David Matthews at Fusion for collecting all of these in one place so I didn’t have to go tracking them all down again.

 

Reader Interactions

304Comments

  2. 2.

    nelle

    My white, Christian father was denied entry in 1923. He was 11. Obviously, a communist spy from Russia, right? Thankfully, Canada opened its doors. By the way, this was after the Reds had taken his brother, put the whole family under house arrest. As a 10 year old, he had to have a guard for the trip to the outhouse.

  3. 3.

    debbie

    The US’s immigration policy for receiving the stateless, displaced victims of WW II and the Holocaust was much better. A lot of this seems to be…

    …guilty consciences. Because somewhere deep down inside, they knew that back when they said no, they were wrong.

    That letter from Taft is something else. Amazing the pretzels people will turn themselves into in order to rationalize their bigotry. Just like today’s proclamation.

  5. 5.

    japa21

    For too many people, the last line of our National Anthem is a joke. This is hardly the “home of the brave”.

    And again, this shows how much some people lie when they call themselves Christian.

  6. 6.

    oklahomo

    Every time I read of this shameful period all I can do is go all Reverend Wright, “God damn America .”

  8. 8.

    cosima

    My former mother in law was an Eastern European WWII refugee. She was approximately 10 when she arrived in the US, and I have no idea how she made it in, as she would never ever discuss it with anyone in the family.

  10. 10.

    debbie

    @cosima:

    A schoolmate’s mother survived Dachau. Her husband was one of the soldiers who liberated the camp. She was one of the kindest mothers I knew. She never talked about her experiences, but she gave testimony as part of Spielberg’s Shoah Project.

  11. 11.

    Comrade Scrutinizer

    Nazi Germany’s initial plan for ridding the Reich of the Jews was forced emigration. Ironically, the refusal of other countries to accept huge numbers of emigres led to the Nazi government considering a more permanent solution to their problem. Martin Gilbert writes:

    In the eyes of the German government, the ‘solution’ to the increased number of Jews within the Reich remained emigration. More than 100,000 of Austria’s 160,000 Jews now emigrated; most of them to the UK, the USA, and Palestine, to which they took their talent in many professions, including scientists, doctors, writers, and musicians.

    Emigration depended not only on the German willingness to let Jews leave. but also on the willingness of other states to take them in. Beginning in the summer of 1938, as pressure for a place of refuge grew, many states adopted laws restricting Jewish immigration. Another problem for the Jews who left Germany was that they could not know which countries would remain safe; the tens of thousands of Jews who found refuge in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, for example (as did the German-Jewish girl Anne Frank and her family), could not know that the countries which took their in would, in due course, be overrun by Germany.

    With the German invasion of Poland in September 1939 (see POLISH CAMPAIGN), a further million and a half Jews came under German rule. During the murder in the streets of more than 10,000 Polish civilians in September and October 1939, an orgy of slaughter unprecedented in Europe in the 20th century, 3,000 Polish Jews were among those killed; some of them were forced into synagogues and then burnt alive. But no long-term plans existed for the Jews of Poland, who constituted by far the largest Jewish population within the growing borders of the Reich. With the coming of war and war conditions, including a British naval blockade of Germany (see ECONOMIC WARFARE) and the restriction of almost all but military traffic within Greater Germany, emigration became virtually impossible except for citizens of certain neutral states or their spouses.

    Gradually, during the winter of 1939 and the early months of 1940, a third ‘solution’ emerged, to be applied to the Jews of Poland. They would be expelled from several thousand localities in which they had lived hitherto, and made to live in restricted areas. A medieval concept, that of the ghetto, was revived. But whereas in medieval times the ghetto, such as the one in Venice, was a centre of Jewish creativity, under the Nazi scheme it was a place of confinement and poverty.

    From the spring of 1940 Jews throughout German-occupied and annexed Poland were driven out of the towns and villages in which they had lived for centuries, and sent to specially-designated areas in certain towns. They were also driven out of many parts of the principal cities, such as Warsaw and Lódz, in which they had lived hitherto, and were forced into an area which was too small for their numbers, often lacking adequate sanitary facilities, and deliberately so. The food ration imposed upon them was even smaller than that imposed upon the non-Jewish inhabitants of Poland. Anyone trying to leave the ghetto, or trying to smuggle food into the ghetto, faced execution.

    By April 1941 ghettos had been enforced throughout German-occupied Poland. By June the death toll from starvation had reached 2,000 a month in the Warsaw Ghetto (where half a million Jews were confined), and 800 a month in the Lódz Ghetto (where a quarter of a million were confined). This was in itself a horrifying ‘solution’, the murder of whole communities of people by slow starvation, though at the rate of death in the ghettos, the total destruction of Polish Jewry would take 20 years or more. No other solution was then in prospect. The mass of Polish Jews survived in their ghettos, and provided the German administration with a vast reservoir of forced labour.

    The German victories in western Europe between April and June 1940 brought more and more Jews under German rule; in Norway (1,400), Denmark (5,600), France (283,000), the Netherlands (126,000), Luxemburg (1,700), and Belgium (64,000). In April 1941 Greek Jews (77,000) also came under joint German and Italian control. These western European and Balkan Jews were subjected to civic disabilities, and obliged to a yellow badge on their clothing to identify them (another medieval practice revived). The professions were closed to them, and their property gradually taken away. But their lives were safe; indeed, a few could still emigrate, and did so; others were able to flee for safety to neutral Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, and Turkey.

    In June 1941 the German Army invaded the Soviet Union (see BARBAROSSA). Immediately following the troops were special killing squads or Einsatzgruppen, whose orders were to murder Jews in every locality. This was the fourth ‘solution’ after expulsion, emigration, and ghettoization. It led, within six months, to the murder of as many as a million Jews. The aim of the killing squads was to eliminate Jewish life altogether. In hundreds of small villages in what, up to 1939, had been eastern Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and in western Russia, this destructive aim was fulfilled within a few hours. The killing was made easier by the active participation of local police and paramilitary groups, especially in Lithuania and the Ukraine. In Bessarabia, Moldavia, and parts of southern Russia, the killing was carried out by Romanians.

    In cities with large Jewish populations, thousands were murdered within a few days; at Kiev, a total of 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children were killed in three days, having been taken to Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of the city, and machine-gunned. Tens of thousands of Jews were shot down in ditches, gravel pits, and fields near every town and village in the vast area through which the Germans advanced in the summer and autumn of 1941.

    These killing places, some of them pre-war beauty spots, quickly became synonymous with mass murder: Ponar near Wilno, Kaiserwald near Riga, the Ninth Fort at Kovno, the Ratomskaya ravine at Minsk, and the Drobitsky ravine at Kharkov were five of the most terrible. Other cities with large Jewish populations, such as Kishinev and Odessa, were likewise the scene of massive slaughter.

    By October 1941 each of the four ‘solutions’ so far put into practice was still in effect. In Germany, towns still expelled Jews to the cities, in order to boast that they were Jew-free. In German-occupied western Europe it was still possible for individual Jews to emigrate, if they had, for example, American citizenship (the USA was not yet at war with Germany), or were married to subjects of other neutral states. In German-occupied Poland, more than two million Jews were still confined to ghettos, many of them forced to work in factories manufacturing clothing for the German Army. In former Czechoslovakia, a so-called ‘model’ ghetto was established, on 10 October 1941, in the l8th-century fortress at Theresienstadt. Jews were deported there from Prague, Brno, and several hundred other towns and villages in Bohemia and Moravia.

  13. 13.

    Ohio Mom

    I get very tired of my co-religionists harping on the six million and overlooking the five million (gentile) others. It’s a peculiar and ironic sort of Holocaust denialism.

    That said, Holocaust Remembrance Day is a *Jewish* holiday, so leaving out any mention of the Jewish people’s experience is strange to say the least.

    But why expect anything better from the Trump administration?

  15. 15.

    Feebog

    We seem to have learned nothing as a nation. Not compassion, not humanity, not decency or morality. And a couple of years later, after Pearl Harbor we were imprisoning our own citizens because of their ancestry. I truly wonder if that is next.

  17. 17.

    cosima

    @debbie: It is interesting the legacy that springs from those experiences. My mother in law was very kind, but also very broken in many ways. My daughter’s partner (soon to be husband, maybe) is Jewish, but very removed from religion, community, history. My friend here in Scotland is quite active in the (very small, now) Jewish community, and has been speaking in secondary schools this week about these issues. She was brought up in a very religious household, and attended a Jewish school in Glasgow until going to uni. However, it’s not been until now, when she sees so many parallels, that she’s become passionate about politics and human rights — for everyone.

  18. 18.

    Mike in NC

    I’m reading “Heydrich: The Face of Evil” by Mario Dederichs. Similar future title I imagine of a biography of Trump.

  19. 19.

    Adam L Silverman

    @oklahomo: Unfortunately Sundays, and specifically Sunday mornings, are still some of the most segregated hours in the US. Amazing to see a bunch of white people, with no understanding of African American Protestantism, freak out about an edited out of context two sentences from a sermon and yet yawn, if that, when Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell blamed 9-11 on what they believe are the sexual and lifestyle sins of Americans. Reverend Wright was condemning the US for failing to live up to its stated ideals, Reverends Robertson and Falwell were telling Americans they deserved to be attacked because of buttsex.

  23. 23.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Chet Murthy: No worries. I took last night off to take my Mom to see Hidden Figures, which I highly recommend. I already knew the history, but excellently written and acted. Though I do want to see an outtake to see if Jim Parsons cracked everyone up by walking up to the door of Kevin Costner’s office and doing “knock, knock, knock – Kevin Costner, knock, knock, knock – Kevin Costner, knock, knock, knock – Kevin Costner.

    I saw the Maddow reporting last night and a large amount of the reporting it was based on yesterday. This includes stuff in Russian translated with the help of Chrome’s translate program. Here’s my take:
    There are only four ways he could have been burned:
    1) The Russians themselves tumbled to having a mole in an internal CI sweep.
    2) The Obama Administration, which had access to the sources and methods in regards to Russian interference in the US election, burned him.
    3) The US IC burned him.
    4) The Trump Administration, which had access to the sources and methods in regards to Russian interference in the US election, burned him.

    I think we can eliminate 2 and 3. I do not know how good Russian CI is, especially as one of the other people rolled up and charged with treason was the FSB officer in charge of Russian CI.

  24. 24.

    oklahomo

    @Adam L Silverman: Look how long it took the Baptists to admit that their justifications for slavery were wrong. And most of the religious nuts I know around me have only one use for Jews: they need enough to serve as bait to start the End of Days. Just horrifying.

  25. 25.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Feebog: We have broad, sweeping, grand ideals as an inheritance. And too often they have been wasted on small minded, cruel, petty inheritors.

  26. 26.

    debbie

    @Adam L Silverman:

    For sure. “Trials of the Diaspora” is a history of anti-Semitism in England and reading it confirmed that benign anti-Semitism is far worse than the rabid variety.

  27. 27.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BillinGlendaleCA: He was Senator McConnell before Senator McConnell was Senator McConnell. Don’t think too hard about that sentence or you’ll get a nosebleed and a migraine…

  28. 28.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mike in NC: I think the subtitle will be “: The Spray Tan of Evil”, but same basic idea.

    More seriously, I think evil gives him too much credit. What he appears to be is all appetite/Id with no self control, no socialization/acculturation to social norms, rules, and laws (social bonding), and never having to actually pay a real price for failure. And I have my suspicions that he was, at least, emotionally abused growing up.

  30. 30.

    Calming Influence

    I’m feeling like the myth of america, the “your tired, your poor” that we grew up with, needs shoring up right now. And much of it isn’t really myth, just gloss. Ignoring cherry trees, Washington ordered prisoners of war to be treated with care and kindness. The (forgive me) “Japs” and the “Jerries” were the torturers in WW2, never the “Yanks”.

    I’m not ignoring history, or forgiving it. But the myth of America I grew up with makes me abhor the things that Trump and the Republicans are apparently comfortable with doing. So I would prefer that the same sort of generalized myth that I grew up with continue to be be the starting point for learning the whole history of America. We’re always the good guys, because we always stand up for the little guys. Instill that, and we’re halfway there.

  33. 33.

    NotMax

    Sort of topically related – Monday at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, TCM is airing Hotel Berlin.

    Made (and released) while the end of WW2 in Europe was determinable but not quite in sight, it is an unusual, even gutsy move from Hollywood as it concerns only Germans who also are well aware that the end is nigh and does not present them all as the usual total embodiment of evil of films from that era. Indeed, reference is made to the atrocities of the concentration camps, and this was before those were liberated and their horrors documented.

    Peter Lorre as an alcoholic doctor is particularly noteworthy among many well known acting names in the film.

  34. 34.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ohio Mom: Actually its 12 million non-Jews. Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally, developmentally, and physically disabled, Eastern Europeans, and a variety of resistors from within Germany and the states and societies they dominated. This does not count battlefield deaths and deaths as a result of combat at sea or in the air.

  37. 37.

    Ohio Mom

    Somewhat off-topic but essayist Calvin Trillin likes to point out that the changes to US immigration law in 1965, which opened up our borders considerably, is what led to the explosion in ethnic restaurants.

    Going into business cooking the food your mom cooked for you was a way of earning a living newcomers could get started in fairly easily. We owe a lot of good eating to that law.

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: By the late 19th and early 20th Centuries the British stuff was often the bizarre flip side: philo-Semitism. Where stereotypical Jewish traits were lauded rather than condemned. I’ve seen speculation that this may actually be where the President is at. He’s not an anti-Semite, rather he’s a traditional philo-Semite – he see’s Jewish Americans and Jews in general in regard to their stereotypes of financial and legal and scholarly and medical acumen and seeks to leverage it for his own benefit. When he gives it any thought at all.

  42. 42.

    Spanky

    @PhoenixRising:

    I have rarely been so ashamed of my country.

    Don’t be. The Americans came, after everything that went before that Adam documents above.

    When the chips are down, we’ve always done the right thing. True, sometimes almost by accident.

    WASF. We Always Shall Fight.

    (Edited for lysdexia)

  43. 43.

    Adam L Silverman

    @PhoenixRising: That hope, going forward, is more than likely going to be a false one. More’s the pity.

    When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, the 33rd Battalion of the Georgian army was in deployed in Iraq. Specifically it was assigned to my brigade combat team as part of the Multi-National Coalition. Because the Bush 43 Administration had winked winked, nudge nudged the Georgians into the coalition by providing resources (including funding) and intimated the US would support Georgia’s entry into NATO and the EU, the Georgians reckoned that since they’d come to help us, we would now come to help them. My BCT Commander’s job was to facilitate moving them out of his Area of Responsibility and back to Georgia. On their way out I remember some of them asking if we were coming to help them. That they’d come to help us, so we were coming to help them fight the Russians, right? The Russians didn’t stand a chance, because the Georgians new ally, the US, would come and help them.

    I get ashamed every time I think about this, let alone recount it.

  44. 44.

    PhoenixRising

    @Adam L Silverman: you got his number.

    he’s a traditional philo-Semite – he see’s Jewish Americans and Jews in general in regard to their stereotypes of financial and legal and scholarly and medical acumen and seeks to leverage it for his own benefit.

    He referred to ‘the guys in the little caps’ that are ‘who you want counting your money’ in an interview in the 1980s.

    Stupidly, I assumed that the Israel-At-AnyPrice AIPAC American Jews who have started to skew GOP would find that as repugnant as I did. Wrong.

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @oklahomo: Yep. Though the stupidity of what seems to be the objectives just boggles the mind. If you collapse the post WW II and Cold War orders. Destroy every trade agreement the US is involved with and completely trash what little safety net we have, there will be no economy to gorge on. If the dollar is worth nothing, then their wealth will not exist. If they think they are going to survive the collapse they’re trying to bring about, they are beyond delusional.

  47. 47.

    Iowa Old Lady

    From The Nation magazine:

    My own belief is that calling it a women’s march attracted far more people than it repelled, because it appealed to a deep sense of outrage and injury felt by women that went deeper than Trump’s policy positions. That the least qualified man, a self-confessed harasser and molester to boot, beat the most qualified woman, despite getting fewer votes, told women that no matter how hard they tried and how excellent they were, they were always going to be second-class citizens, always going to be passed over in favor of men, and that disrespecting, insulting, and even assaulting them was perfectly okay in 21st-century America. The shock of that recognition awakened something profound in women, including many who had not been active in politics before.

  49. 49.

    Timurid

    My paternal grandparents came to this country as refugees from the Mexican Revolution, when they were still teenagers. The experience scarred them for life. They were ‘preppers’ before anyone had heard of the term. They built a bunker in their house and filled it with canned goods, guns, and gold. They had bugout bags and escape plans and money in offshore accounts. I can only imagine how they would be handling current events if they were still alive…

    I’m not sure what legal obstacles they faced while immigrating. Having family in Texas probably helped… and they made it here before 1924. The family was originally from Texas. They were some of the first settlers of San Antonio back in the early 1700’s. One of my ancestors fought at the Alamo… for the rebels. They were expelled from Texas during the Civil War for being Unionists and had to go back to Mexico. The more things change…

  50. 50.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I still have not gotten a taco truck on my corner. Given that they are leaking the President may unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia, I’d be willing to settle for a blintz truck on the corner.

  51. 51.

    PhoenixRising

    @Adam L Silverman: Jesus hopscotching Christ. That is awful.

    I’ve had a longtime not-quite-grandparents-to-my-child connection to a Cambodian-American couple. They met at a US naval hospital. He was an officer in the Cambodian Navy who was in training at Annapolis in April 1975. She was a nurse who had been fast-tracked to work in the hospital by the Red Cross’s limited daily visa powers.

    They chose her after she rolled into a refugee camp in Thailand in March ’75 with a truck full of injured Cambodian Republic soldiers and the weapons she had liberated from the military base when her father the general was summoned to the front to face the Khmer Rouge revolutionaries.

    When my kid turns 19, I plan to tell her that ‘ya’ey’ [Khmer word for grandma] was robbing the only guy in the village with any gas left–at gunpoint–and packing her wounded to let the border guards steal the top layer of weapons, at her age. It’s a legacy.

    They are deeply patriotic Americans who were refugees from a war-torn region where our soldiers were still under fire. Their presence makes our country more worthy of our reputation.

  52. 52.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Spanky: And often after running through every wrong thing several times in the perverse belief that it just might work if I try really hard at being stupid one more time!

  55. 55.

    Chet Murthy

    @Adam L Silverman: Adam, thank you for this. I had no idea. I’d heard about the Baltic States and their contribution in Iraq (h/t Dr. Maddow) but had not learned of the Georgian contribution.

    It seems important to cultivate a sense of shame for when we as a nation did not live up to our ideals. Because it can remind us to try harder next time.

    [Of course, for some, it’s a reason to never reach that high again, but still ….]

  56. 56.

    Mary G

    I think Trump probably thinks rich “white” Jews, like Jared Kushner, are good, but he doesn’t worry too much about what Bannon, for example, or his legion of deplorables thinks.

  57. 57.

    Adam L Silverman

    Just added the following to the post up top:

    I just want to add that given the history of how the US failed to act in regard to Jewish and other refugees fleeing the NAZIs, any Jewish American organization that does not go to the mattresses in opposition over the attempt to close off access to the US for anyone fleeing ISIL should be shunned and should close up shop. Jewish-Americans who fail to stand up for Syrians and Iraqis and others fleeing the horrors of ISIL, regardless of their religion, should be ashamed of themselves and are a shonda for the goyim.

  60. 60.

    japa21

    @Adam L Silverman: They are delusional, but they have history on their side. I think they believe that, after they have done most of their looting, the Dems will win, straighten things out to prevent a complete disaster, and they will get off free and clear. One of these times it isn’t going to happen.

  61. 61.

    Adam L Silverman

    @BruceJ: I would not be surprised to find that Smithsonian Magazine quickly becomes unreadable, as it did under the Bush 43 Administration, in short order.

  64. 64.

    geg6

    @Iowa Old Lady:

    This is true. I know it’s how I felt and feel. And my feeling is further buoyed by seeing some of my friends, most of whom were not very politically engaged, are now marching and calling and organizing and telling me they are sorry for lecturing me for being so shrill all these years. It’s pretty amazing to see.

  66. 66.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: That was my understanding. The difference, of course, was I wasn’t in a war zone with a Ukrainian battalion and didn’t have to try to maintain eye contact with them as they were expressing the false hope that the cavalry was coming.

  68. 68.

    Ohio Mom

    @Adam L Silverman: You’re saying six million Jews and twelve million others, for a total of 18 million? I have never heard that number but no reason to disbelieve you. Wow. And I thought I was beyond astonishment on this subject.

    I grew up in the Bronx, among many survivors, in the days when you weren’t supposed to talk about the concentration camps out loud. If anyone remembers the Neil Simon movie where the narrator demonstrates how people used to whisper “cancer” because it was too much of a horror to say aloud, that is how “he/she was in the camps” was whispered.

    Along the way, I also internalized a lot of what is described in the post: a cold-eyed assessment of how big a gap there is between the US’s stated values and it’s actual behaviors when it came to Jews. i remember meeting cousins who ended up in Cuba for years because they couldn’t get into the US; my husband’s family had Mexican cousins for the same reason. And those were the lucky ones.

    Still, all the men in my father’s generation willingly went off to fight for the US in World War II. The draft-dodging generations were those who emigrated earlier to get out of serving in the czar’s army, and those who went to college to avoid Vietnam.

  69. 69.

    Adam L Silverman

    @PhoenixRising: Without a doubt. It is also the difference between patriots with a small “p” and the professional, and largely bogus, large “P” ones that have to shout it to the sky at all times.

  75. 75.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Origuy:

    Oh, that news makes me very sad. He was the most amazing Caligula in I, Claudius back in time. Great actor. May he R.I.P.

  77. 77.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: Speaking of this, in my household we’re having discussions about what to do from an economic point of view. Is it smart to have all the money in dollars? Is there a safer place?

    I’m pretty sure my household isn’t the only one having this conversation. And it’s probably being done on a more global level too. The US has long been the world’s reserve currency. But with Trump talking about defaulting on US bonds “to get a good deal” then the economic powers in the world have to be sitting up and paying attention. How long before some other economy, some other currency is deemed safer? And which one will it be?

  79. 79.

    rikyrah

    Abed A. Ayoub ‏@aayoub

    Visas being denied immediately. Chaos at airports and in the air. #MuslimBan will apply to green card holders attempting to return tonight.

  80. 80.

    geg6

    Trump’s Willing Executioners. I read the first volume, Hitler’s Wiiling Executioners many years ago and found it so disturbing I couldn’t finish it. I really don’t want that volume 2 to ever have to be published.

  81. 81.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Ohio Mom: Yes. Its usually 6 million Jews, 6 million Eastern Europeans, 3 million Gypsies, and 3 million homosexuals. The disabled – mentally, developmentally, and/or physically -intellectuals, dissenters/resistors get rolled into the 12 million non-Jewish victims.

  85. 85.

    Michael Bersin

    Sidi Mohammed ben Yusef – Mohammed V, Sultan of Morocco, a Muslim, saved the life of my mother and 250,000 other Jews during WWII.

    Donald Trump and his supporters, as well as his enablers in Congress can go fuck themselves, their bigotry, and their cowardice.

  88. 88.

    rikyrah

    Trump Executive Order Could Block 500,000 Legal U.S. Residents From Returning to America From Trips

    In banning newcomers from seven countries from entering the United States for the next 30 days, the president has used language that could affect those who are in the U.S. already on visas and green cards.
    ProPublica, Jan. 27, 2017, 8:07 p.m.

    Muslims and immigration activists at a prayer and rally against President Donald Trump’s immigration policies on Jan. 27, 2017, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
    When details leaked earlier this week about a spate of immigration-related executive orders from President Donald Trump, much public discussion focused on a 30-day ban on new visas for citizens from seven “terror-prone” countries.

    But the order signed this afternoon by Trump is actually more severe, increasing the ban to 90 days. And its effects could extend well beyond preventing newcomers from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, from entering the U.S., lawyers consulted by ProPublica said.

    It’s also expected to have substantial effects on hundreds of thousands of people from these countries who already live in the U.S. under green cards or on temporary student or employee visas.

    Since the order’s travel ban applies to all “aliens” — a term that encompasses anyone who isn’t an American citizen — it could bar those with current visas or even green cards from returning to the U.S. from trips abroad, said Stephen Legomsky, a former chief counsel to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services under President Obama.

    “It’s extraordinarily cruel,” he said.

  91. 91.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @BillinGlendaleCA: and @Adam: Y’all do know that the Mr. Milquetoast Taft debbie referred to is the son of Senator Taft, right? Young Robert was indeed of the pale toast, never mind his conviction for undisclosed bribes while OH governor. Crooked as they come but easily overlooked in any crowd.

  92. 92.

    Woodrowfan

    @Ohio Mom: no, it’s 6 million Jews, 5-6 million others, for 11-12 million total.

    that does not include such victims are partisans killed by the Germans and their Allies.

    (NOTE, I see the Holocaust Museum says estimates may be much high than the traditional 11-12 million, so I have to go back and look at their numbers)

  93. 93.

    rikyrah

    Dept of State (Alt) @AltStateDpt

    State Dept. site had Myths & Facts on Refugees, Migration & Humanitarian Assistance. Page is now gone. Will new admin re-post facts? #Resist
    2:00 PM – 27 Jan 2017

  95. 95.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: On this I have no good advice. I’m not a financial analyst/specialist. I know the basics of macro and micro economics, fiscal and monetary policy, and have a decent understanding of econometrics, but what you’re asking is not in my area of expertise.

  96. 96.

    Lizzy L

    I just want to add that given the history of how the US failed to act in regard to Jewish and other refugees fleeing the NAZIs, any Jewish American organization that does not go to the mattresses in opposition over the attempt to close off access to the US for anyone fleeing ISIL should be shunned and should close up shop. Those Jewish Americans who fail to stand up for Syrians and Iraqis and others fleeing the horrors of ISIL, regardless of their religion, should be ashamed of themselves and are a shonda for the goyim.

    This is eloquent. @Adam L Silverman: May it be shared with others?

  97. 97.

    rikyrah

    “I think the media is the opposition party in many ways. I’m not talking about everybody, but a big portion of the media, the dishonesty, total deceit and deception. It makes them certainly partially the opposition party, absolutely. I think they’re much more capable than the opposition party. The opposition party is losing badly.”
    — President Trump, in an interview with CBN.

  100. 100.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @rikyrah:

    No words. I am scared to death (and, no, I am not Muslim, nor any minority except female. But I am truly terrified of this lot).

  101. 101.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah: There will be lawsuits brought by the families of green card holders by Monday to get their relatives back into the country and home.

  102. 102.

    rikyrah

    Joshua Silver‏@eyejosh

    @ericgarland There is an urgent call now in the UK for a cross-party MI5 full Investigation of Russian subversion of the “brexit” Referendum

  105. 105.

    Adam L Silverman

    @geg6: The Goldhagen thesis. I find it compelling and well reasoned, even if it is not a perfect explanation.

  108. 108.

    Timurid

    They’ve already started the religious purges and the son of a bitch has only been President a week.

    I have no words.

  109. 109.

    rikyrah

    Jamil Smith Verified account
    ‏@JamilSmith

    Alabama engaged in unconstitutional racial gerrymandering in at least 12 districts to preserve a GOP supermajority.

  112. 112.

    Woodrowfan

    State Department, full of old money, old family north-eastern WASPS, was notoriously anti-Semitic back before WWII and earlier. See ‘FDR and the Jews,’ by Richard Breitman and Allan J. Lichtman

  114. 114.

    rikyrah

    John Nichols ‏@NicholsUprising

    Democracy wins one!
    Federal court orders new legislative maps for #WI by November 2017 — a bold rejection of Republican gerrymandering!

  115. 115.

    Adam L Silverman

    @rikyrah: Again, lawsuits will be filed all over the country first thing Monday morning to get these green card holders, H1B visa holders, student visa holders back into the US and back with their families here. It is going to be a complete and utter mess.

  116. 116.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah:

    @ericgarland There is an urgent call now in the UK for a cross-party MI5 full Investigation of Russian subversion of the “brexit” Referendum

    God, I hope they do this.

  121. 121.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    I’ve said this in many contexts, especially the Shitgibbon’s saying how rich he is, that if you have to talk about it, you aren’t.

    SG: I have the biggest hands.
    Reality: You have small hands.

    SG: I got the most votes.
    Reality: Hillary got the most votes.

    SG: I had the biggest crowds.
    Reality: Obama ’09, Obama ’12, and Women’s March ’17 all had much bigger crowds than your inauguration.

  125. 125.

    Adam L Silverman

    @oklahomo: Yes, we encouraged the Shi’a to rise up and did little to back them when they actually did it. We’ve also left a lot of the Iraqis and Afghans who worked for us as translators and interpreters in the lurch. A lot of them, and their families, need to be brought here to the US for protective reasons as the work/service they’ve provided us over the past 14-16 years has placed them and their families in grave danger.

  127. 127.

    Peale

    @rikyrah: the green card ban makes no sense. The EO was for future nonimmigrant visas. If they are cancelling immigrant visas already granted, that goes way outside the scope.

  129. 129.

    Yarrow

    @Adam L Silverman: I’ve been joking about it (mostly gallows humor, I guess) and I’ve seen others mention it as well. I’m sure it’s not just on liberal blogs that people recognize this is a real issue. I don’t think the Republicans and Trump do, or maybe they don’t think it would really happen, but I can’t see why it wouldn’t.

  132. 132.

    Chet Murthy

    @Yarrow: M^4 strikes me as being quite technically savvy. I cannot believe that s/he meant that “bitcoin obviously” in any way other than “chock full of sarcasm”.

  134. 134.

    rikyrah

    Russian Charged With Treason Worked in Office Linked to Election Hacking
    JAN. 27, 2017

    MOSCOW — The authorities in Moscow are prosecuting at least one cybersecurity expert for treason, a prominent Russian criminal defense lawyer confirmed on Friday, while a Russian newspaper reported that the case is linked to hacking during the United States presidential election.

    While surely touching a nerve in American politics, the developments in Moscow left a still muddled picture of what, exactly, a series of arrests by the security services here signifies.

    But the virtually simultaneous appearance of at least four prominent news reports on the hacking and several related arrests, citing numerous anonymous sources, suggests that the normally opaque Russian government intends to reveal more information about the matter, though it is unclear why.

    In the waning weeks of the Obama administration, American federal intelligence agencies released a report asserting the Russian government had hacked into the computers of the Democratic National Committee and the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, John D. Podesta, stealing and releasing to WikiLeaks emails intended to damage Mrs. Clinton and help President Trump win the election.

  135. 135.

    Gator90

    @Ohio Mom: Of course non-Jewish victims of Nazism should not be excluded from consideration or remembrance. On the other hand, the notion of Jews as just one of many victimized groups does not sit well either. One hopes there would be an appropriate middle ground.

  137. 137.

    rikyrah

    ,Nearly 5 million U.S. jobs depend on Mexico

    Well before the relationship seems to have reached a crisis point, Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute, boiled down some fairly substantial numbers in his study. He noted that the two countries trade over a half-trillion dollars in goods and services each year — “more than a million dollars in bilateral commerce every minute.”

    Breaking that down further, some 4.9 million jobs are at risk from frozen trade, which means one out of every 29 U.S. workers has a job supported by trade between the countries, he said. When looking state by state, the data referred to 2014 numbers that showed California most vulnerable with 556,000 jobs dependent on trade, while Texas was equally at risk with 382,000 jobs relying on that relationship.

  138. 138.

    Yarrow

    @Chet Murthy: Hence my LOL. I was laughing along at it. While pointing out an obvious limitation with it. And some gallows humor of everything stopping functioning.

  140. 140.

    Gin & Tonic

    @BillinGlendaleCA: Funny story. My father was self-employed, and died relatively young, while he was still somewhat in business, but gradually enough that he had time to “settle his affairs” and liquidate his business before the end. I recall him talking with his friend, who was his broker/adviser, about the importance of having the weeks that he had to do this. Since he and his broker had lived in Europe before the war and left afterward, there was some agreement on portfolio strategy and the importance of physical assets. This was at a time when Americans could buy gold only in the form of Krugerrands. My father had some, which we sold after his death.

    Some years later we came to learn that the broker died suddenly and unexpectedly. We learned this because his wife was spending her time calling everyone she thought he’d known to inquire about the location of the safety deposit box containing his Krugerrands. I don’t know if she ever found it.

  142. 142.

    rikyrah

    File this under:

    TRUTH WILL ALWAYS BE STRANGER THAN FICTION:

    GA GOP lawmaker recovering after being shot at adult cinema parking lot carrying thousands in cash
    27 JAN 2017 AT 15:02 ET

    A Georgia Republican lawmaker is in recovery after he was robbed and shot at an adult cinema parking lot while he was carrying thousands of dollars in cash.

    The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports that State Rep. Gerald Greene (R – Cuthbert) is now recuperating in his own home after being treated at a local hospital for a gunshot wound to the leg that he incurred during an armed robbery.

    Greene claims that he had parked outside of the Foxes Cinema, an adult book and video store in Columbus, GA because he wanted to go into an adjacent liquor store.

    Greene also claims that the thief — whom he described to police as “a male about 5 feet 5 inches tall who was wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt and black pants” — only took his iPhone and was apparently unaware he was carrying a sackful of cash.

    As for the money itself, Greene says that it was collected donations to help victims of storms that had ravaged Southern Georgia over the past weekend.

    No arrests in the shooting have been made, and police are still searching for the alleged perpetrator.

  144. 144.

    chris

    @Yarrow: If we get to that point money won’t do you any good, it’ll be worthless too. The other night somebody recommended trade goods like cigarettes and ammunition. If we get to that point YMMV.

  146. 146.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @Adam L Silverman: It was a commenter here – I can’t recall who now – who told a story about seeing her therapist. The topic came up and the therapist said “They rounded up your people too, you know. We were the yellow star people and you were the pink triangle people.” The commenter said she replied “I know; it’s the world’s saddest bowl of lucky charms.” An eloquently clever comment about a horror.

  149. 149.

    CaseyL

    @Origuy: I just heard. He was an amazing actor – the kind that disappear into a part without altering his face or voice. I, Claudius was the first thing I saw him in, as Caligula; and Dr. Who the last. I think he’s best known for his scifi roles, particularly the jaw-dropping chest-bursting scene in the first Alien movie.

    A good life, one of solid accomplishments.

  153. 153.

    Lizzy L

    @Adam L Silverman: TY.

    OT but good to know, evidently lots of people, some of them actual US senators, are saying that ALL the Democratic Senators will vote NO on DeVos’s nomination.

  154. 154.

    Adam L Silverman

    @oklahomo: Yes. I don’t think Israel actually has a lot of pull with the new Administration. Jared Kushner and Stephen Miller notwithstanding.

  157. 157.

    MomSense

    Today of all days Dolt 45 decided to sign the refugee ban. I’m beyond furious. This is abhorrent.

  159. 159.

    Timurid

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Yeah, it’s like a tin lining inside an EF-5, but Netanyahu is going to be crying tears of blood when he finally figures out how he didn’t think his clever plan all the way through.

  161. 161.

    Lizzy L

    @Adam L Silverman: Terrific book. I also loved The Man Who Kept The Secrets, by Thomas Power, about Richard Helms. Oddly, I haven’t read Helms’s autobiography, though I know he wrote one. Maybe it’s time…

  162. 162.

    Villago Delenda Est

    Unfortunately, the lessons regarding resisting and fighting authoritarianism and providing compassion and aid to its victims that the WW II generation learned in blood have less and less impact 72 years later.

    Their grandchildren betrayed them on 9 November. These vile wretches are utterly unworthy of the freedoms, the government, that these brave men and women fought, bled, and died for. Anyone who voted for Donald betrayed them. This betrayal is a criminal act.

    Every last one of them needs to be held accountable for the crime they committed.

  163. 163.

    weaselone

    @Adam L Silverman:

    There will be lawsuits brought by the families of green card holders by Monday to get their relatives back into the country and home.

    There shouldn’t fucking have to be.

  164. 164.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Peale: The EO wasn’t worded well. It simply stated aliens. From the reporting I’ve seen, they’ve not been running any of these things through the DOJ office that is supposed to review them, let alone past Congress, to prevent doing stupid things, unconstitutional things, illegal things. The two people writing them, based on reporting, Bannon and Miller, are not legal specialists and despite Miller working for Senator Sessions, don’t seem to really understand how anything works that isn’t ideologically driven.

  165. 165.

    chris

    @Adam L Silverman: I can’t really imagine it happening but I couldn’t imagine this outcome of the election either. Given everything that’s happened in just the last week anything, however repugnant, now seems possible.

  166. 166.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @BillinGlendaleCA:

    Oh yes, IIRC it was in one of the GOP debates with L’il Marco. I suspect he’s been obsessed with the size of his … hands … since he was a young man. Probably about the time he went into business on his own, essentially competing with his father. Of all the people who have written biographies of Dolt 45 (h/t NotMax), I wish one of them could be a trained psychologist/psychiatrist/psychotherapist.

    Ethics, schmethics.

  167. 167.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Yarrow: For the people around the President who are pushing this, as well as the group of folks in Congress, this is all about belief, specifically their ideology and political doctrine. It isn’t about reality or real world ramifications or good policy.

  168. 168.

    Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho

    @Adam L Silverman: Yup. President the bigot, his son “Mr. Republican” Senator Taft, the President’s grandson and “Mr. Republican’s” son convicted former OH governor. Quite the line, local to me. Taft trivia: when I was quite young, a cousin to Senator Taft died in an explosion in his bomb shelter. It occurred a mile or two from my father’s house, and was kind of a local event of some notoriety.

  171. 171.

    oklahomo

    @Adam L Silverman: It blows my mind, that with Bannon and the Pepe-pukes and the alt-right behind Trump, that any Israeli party/person/organization would endorse Trump over Hillary.

  172. 172.

    Lizzy L

    With regard to Muslims with green cards not being allowed to return home: a friend of mine just wrote in a comment on FB:

    People with green cards are already tweeting from Europe that they’re being turned back tonight.

    Shit. Shitshitshitshitshitshitshit.

  173. 173.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Gin & Tonic: One day someone is going to dig up part of that woman’s backyard to put in a pool or a flower bed and find a strong box full of krugerrands.

  175. 175.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Major Major Major Major: 22 LR and other ammo, booze, food, medical supplies, women. Pretty much standard post apocalyptic currency. You may have to fight with the mutant twinkies and cockroaches for the women though…

  178. 178.

    Timurid

    @Lizzy L:

    That might get reversed (for the moment), but some of those people are going to decide ‘to hell with this, I’m getting out while the getting’s good.’

    Totally unintentional, I’m sure. Totally.

  179. 179.

    amygdala

    Thanks for this, Adam.

    Right after 9/11, Nisei (second-generation Japanese-Americans) who had been in the camps spoke out in support of Muslims in the US who were being persecuted. The Nisei, like Holocaust survivors, are fewer in number now, but George Takei, at least, is still speaking out.

    I’m depressed and outraged by today’s executive order. Extreme vetting, my ass. This is bigotry and xenophobia, plain and simple. Horrible day for America.

  181. 181.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Lizzy L: Is that any people, or people from the affected countries? My son (a native-born USian) and his GF (not) are currently out of the country, slated to fly back on Sunday.

  184. 184.

    Seanly

    RE: the Allies and Jews (as well as other concentration camp victims), the Allies KNEW EXACTLY WHAT THE NAZIS WERE DOING AS EARLY AS 1942. They didn’t care. Blah blah blah, bombing the camps would show Nazis we had intel or kill the victims. But I think they just weren’t so different from the Nazis in attitudes towards Jews, gays, Roma, etc.

  186. 186.

    Mike in NC

    US Government has a long history of betraying foreign allies: South Vietnamese, Cambodians (Hmong), Lebanese, Iraqis, Afghans, Kurds, etc.

  187. 187.

    Ohio Mom

    @Alternative Fax, a hip hop artist from Idaho: I remember Bob and his awfully skinny wife Hope. You have to wonder if he would have gotten anywhere in life if he’d had a different last name.

    To all of those who mixed up various Tafts: I don’t think you should bad, there were a lot of them. I’ve lived in Phio for forty years and I still don’t have all of them straight.

  189. 189.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @NotMax:

    Bannon, et al. probably super pissed that today isn’t also March 1 so Dolt 45 could work that in to his comments..

    I am probably missing an important cultural reference, but the only thing March 1 means to me is Saint David’s Day (patron saint of Wales). What are you referencing?

  190. 190.

    Mike J

    “They totally had a private chartered train waiting for them at the station that pulled away empty because none of the GOP were willing to walk into the station,” one protestor on the scene told us. “The Amtrak agent had called for the boarding of the charter train number, over and over announcing its departure,” she said, “and then conferred with the protest organizers, who then announced it to the crowd.” Whereupon the crowd cheered. It was a fitting and triumphant end to a week that saw so many in Philadelphia responding to the absurd madness and craven greed of the Trump presidency in a way that the city’s founders would have been both proud of, and there for.

    http://www.philebrity.com/blog/2017/1/27/in-the-grandest-metaphor-of-the-week-an-actual-gop-ghost-train-left-30th-street-station-this-morning

  191. 191.

    Baud

    MoJo

    Within hours of President Donald Trump signing his “Muslim ban” executive order Friday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations announced that it is about to file a lawsuit challenging the ban.

    The order, called “Protection of the Nation From Foreign Terrorist Entry Into the United States,” denies entry to the US to anyone from Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, according to CNN. The order also freezes refugee admissions for 120 days.

    “There is no evidence that refugees—the most thoroughly vetted of all people entering our nation—are a threat to national security,” CAIR national litigation director Lena Masri said in a release. The group says it will announce details of the lawsuit Monday.

  192. 192.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: Yep. Lots of people of all ethnicities, religions, and nationality stepped up and did the right thing. Often at great risk to themselves.

  193. 193.

    debbie

    @Seanly:

    They knew in the 1930s but chose to defer to the banks who didn’t want to endanger losing any of the money they’d loaned Germany.

  195. 195.

    Lizzy L

    @Gin & Tonic: I believe it is people with green cards who are from countries on the list. Details unclear. Your son is native born so not in jeopardy. Depending on her country of origin, his GF might be stopped. I don’t know more than that.

  198. 198.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @Mary G:

    Now we will have to have a pink hijab march.

    I would definitely participate.

    This is appalling.

    Appalling and sickening. I’m not only embarrassed to be an American right now, I’m embarrassed to claim membership in the human race.

    I’ll get over it, though, and march proudly in all the pink I can lay hands on.

  200. 200.

    Adam L Silverman

    @chris: This is where my statement about holding the line will have to be put into play. If they start a registry for Muslims, it is a requirement for all Americans of good conscience who are not Muslim to sign up. If they come and try to take people, it is a requirement of all Americans of good conscience who are not part of the group they are trying to round up to physically put themselves in the way to prevent it. They may accomplish these things, but they should be made to pay a great price to do so.

  202. 202.

    HRA

    @Lizzy L:

    I am really amazed at not allowing people with green cards to come home. I had a green card when my parents and I came to the US from Canada. I thought it said permanent resident status.

    There has to be a way to get around it by maybe flying to Canada or Mexico, have a friend or relative pick them up and come home.

  206. 206.

    Baud

    @HRA: Right. The EO should be unlawful with respect to green card holders. I don’t think the president has the authority to rescind that status en masse.

  207. 207.

    Lizzy L

    @HRA: You think they haven’t thought of that? I don’t know about Mexico, but you need a passport now to travel to or from Canada, and you still have to go through Customs. They’d stop you.

  208. 208.

    Bupalos

    So I’m not sure I get it. You’re arguing that trumps eo and the frog people’s xenophobia is as american as apple pie because…

  212. 212.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Lizzy L: The demarches will being immediately from these governments to the US Embassies in all of these countries. It is not the responsibility of the states that these people were visiting or transiting through to now have to deal with this given that their US credentials – green cards, visas – are still good and active. By tomorrow the cables back to the State Department will be numerous. If the Administration doesn’t adjust this by Monday, the Courts will deal with it starting on Monday.

  213. 213.

    MomSense

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m thinking it would be a good idea to go say hello to the Imam at the nearest mosque, sign up to receive their newsletter and establish connections now.

  215. 215.

    Major Major Major Major

    @Lizzy L: You need a passport for all border crossings now, IIRC.

    @Baud: I actually looked it up yesterday, and from my read, the feds can deport somebody/strip green card status from somebody who’s been convicted of a crime of moral… turpitude or something.

  216. 216.

    Mary G

    @HRA: The border patrol fingerprinted, cracked smartphones, photographed and then denied entry to Canadians attempting to attend the Womens’ March on 1.21.2017. If they are denying entry at airports, they will be doing it at the border as well.

    Motherfuckers.

    Chris Murphy of CT just tweeted this with a picture of the dead three-year-old refugee on the beach:

    To my colleagues: don't ever again lecture me on American moral leadership if you chose to be silent today. pic.twitter.com/XW7sjmCcXh— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) January 28, 2017

  217. 217.

    Peale

    @Lizzy L: on the plus side, I think those with visas will have better luck than refugees who applications were summarily dismissed from actually winning in court. And no, I don’t see even a trump dominated Supreme Court going for summary cancelling permanent residence of immigrants. Kennedy has at least some class.

  219. 219.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Adam L Silverman: Courts, huh? “John Marshall has made his decision; now let him enforce it!”

    How many infantry battalions can your federal district court deploy?

  220. 220.

    Baud

    @Major Major Major Major: Right. There is due process built into the law. I don’t believe the president can issue a blanket rescission of permanent residence status. If the EO is doing that, I believe it’s invalid.

  222. 222.

    Chet Murthy

    @Timurid: I’m sure it was on purpose. Trump learned quite a while ago, that it wasn’t necessary to dog-whistle. In fact, that a klaxon was a much, much better way to reach his base. This is precisely that, it seems to me: a klaxon to his base that he’ll keep those dusky-hued masses out, even if it means bigfooting Holocaust Remembrance Day. B/c they know what it is, they know -precisely- what happened, and for him to, on such a day, slam the door on refugees, well, it just doubles the deliciousness.

  230. 230.

    Timurid

    @Peale:

    He’ll need more than one new Justice for that. One bit of good news is that compromising the Federal courts will be a slow process and one that can’t be easily sped up short of Pinochet-style tanks in the streets shenanigans… That being said, we might be one big terrorist attack away from that kind of bullshit.

  232. 232.

    Baud

    @Davis X. Machina: They can hold the relevant agency official in charge in contempt. But it won’t come to that. The bigger problem with the court system is the potential for delay if Trump orders the lawyers to string it out.

  242. 242.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Baud: It’s not Trump — it’s Bannon. I’m pretty sure litigating things is going to slow him down much.

  243. 243.

    Chet Murthy

    @HRA: I’m sure they’d be stopped at the border crossing. And if any sizable number got across the border surreptitiously, I’m sure they’d be rounded up, charged with a crime, and expelled permanently.

    Remember the Women’s March protestors who were refused entry.

  246. 246.

    Peale

    So rereading the order, yeah it looks like if you are an non citizen immigrant and we’re out of the country, you may have to sue your way in, or hope that in 90 days the entry suspension is lifted.

  249. 249.

    Mary G

    I know there are a couple other people here who live in CA 49. Darrell Issa is having a telephone town hall meeting Monday. Sign up on his FB page. He’s too big of a chicken to show up in person.

  253. 253.

    Gin & Tonic

    So,

    “I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean, religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from,”

    Dick Fucking Cheney gets it.

  254. 254.

    BillinGlendaleCA

    @efgoldman:

    Does Shitweasel’s maladministration have any lawyers at all that might read this shit before he signs it? Any proofreaders?

    No. They’ve already put out a statement that spelled the PM of the UK’s name wrong.

  258. 258.

    Adam L Silverman

    @MomSense: I recommended to a synagogue I was doing a security consult for that they needed to get all the synagogues, churches, mosques, Hindu, Buddhist, and Sikh temples and other religious congregations together and set up a security consortium to share information and look out for each other. There is safety in numbers and the time to establish those numbers is now.

  260. 260.

    MomSense

    @efgoldman:

    I did happen to notice and I think one of the lawyers involved in the Emoluments suit noticed, too. I’m not sure I have the energy to look it up right now but he ended his tweet with “see you in court”

  262. 262.

    Davis X. Machina

    @Baud: The president — or more accurately Bannon — is on board — or wil be when they explain what contumacy is to Trump….

    Bannon’s the problem — the guy’s a Leninist, and is on record as wanting to burn it all down.

  267. 267.

    Adam L Silverman

    @efgoldman: The reporting is that they are not running this stuff past the DOJ office that reviews these to make sure there aren’t any issues – either contradicting statutory law or creating other problems unforeseen by the drafters.

  272. 272.

    J R in WV

    @japa21:

    Matthew 6:5-6

    And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by men. Truly I tell you, they already have their reward.

    6But when you pray, go into your inner room, shut your door, and pray to your Father, who is unseen. And your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

    7And when you pray, do not babble on like pagans, for they think that by their many words they will be heard.

    So these Megachurches, and Prosperity Gospel Preachers, and TV ministries, are all breaking a commandment of Jesus, whom they claim to worship.

    I was raised up first in Prebyterian Sunday School, but then in a Unitarian Fellowship, and so I have different perspectives on religion than lots of more traditional christians do.

    Nothing makes me more angry and sad than hypocrites! And the Bible Belt is so chock full of them. As is the Republican party. Look at Mike Dence! Calling himself a christian, when he’s one of the biggest hypocrites there is wherever he is.\

    Thanks Adam for writing this, I know it was hard. It is hard just to read, let alone ponder the wording for each sentence.

  274. 274.

    chris

    @Adam L Silverman: That’s what the Conservatives did here in Canada. They’d make a new rule and get shot down by the courts again and again. At one point the prime minister got into a public spat with the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. It did not end well for him, she doesn’t take shit from anyone.
    It’s part of the playbook, just look at the voter ID and gerrymandering cases that are losing or have lost in the courts.

  275. 275.

    Bupalos

    I think the moralnof the story today is that if trump’s not on the front page, watch out…. Because trump IS GOING TO BE ON THE FRONT PAGE.

    He’s not going to be IGNORED here. And yes, he will be throwing your rabbit into a stew-pot*

    *I’m drunk, but I think I remember Daryl Hannah putting a rabbit in a stew pot in that movie.

  277. 277.

    Peale

    I know that the tendency will be to shout about the religious discrimination aspect of it, and discuss the uncharitable way we treat refugees, but if it’s true that people with valid visas are having them denied now, I think we really do need to focus in on the fact that these were people who followed the rules. And basically the administration has deported them without due process when they followed the rules.

  281. 281.

    Chris

    @Seanly:

    Yes. A lot of the World War Two mythology was constructed post 1945 and tends to whitewash a lot about the Greatest Generation. As pointed out above, plenty of WW2 vets went for Drumpf.

  282. 282.

    Chris

    @Calming Influence:

    The myth is important, indeed. What’s important is to remember that it IS a myth, and that living up to it takes constant effort and improvement. Conservatives do the opposite. Instead of treating the ideals as something to strive for, they treat it as a reality we achieved the moment the founding fathers signed the constitution. All the crap about American exceptionalism, about how this is the greatest country on Earth, about how anyone who says otherwise is a traitor trying to undermine us from the inside, it’s all about enshrining the myth at the expense of the reality.

    That’s the danger of the myth.

  283. 283.

    HRA

    I belong to a local Muslim site from the neighborhood where I finished growing up in the US. The news about the green card holders not being allowed back to the US has just come up there.
    Although I am not a Muslim, I grew up knowing my Dad’s boyhood Muslim friends. I have to calm down and my medications do not allow me to have any alcohol. I really need it now.

  284. 284.

    Lizzy L

    https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/27/us/politics/trump-syrian-refugees.html?emc=edit_na_20170127&nl=breaking-news&nlid=20900995&ref=cta

    Breaking news from the NYT.

    President Trump on Friday closed the nation’s borders to refugees from around the world, ordering that families fleeing the slaughter in Syria be indefinitely blocked from entering the United States, and temporarily suspending immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries.

    Declaring the measure part of an extreme vetting plan to keep out “radical Islamic terrorists,” Mr. Trump also established a religious test for refugees from Muslim nations: He ordered that Christians and others from minority religions be granted priority over Muslims.

    Announcing his “extreme vetting” plan, the president invoked the specter of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Most of the 19 hijackers on the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Shanksville, Pa., were from Saudi Arabia. The rest were from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Lebanon. None of those countries are on Mr. Trump’s visa ban list.

  286. 286.

    Villago Delenda Est

    @Seanly: The Vernichtungslagern were out of US/British bomber range (the only two powers who could actually help) until nearly the end of the war. There was little the Allies could to but prosecute the war to the best of their ability to end it as early as possible.

  292. 292.

    Peale

    @Lizzy L: yeah. Honestly, I don’t give a fuck about ISIL. Discussing ISIL is the wrong approach. It makes it seem that Muslims are all potential radical zealots. We don’t care about ISIL. And our immigration policy isn’t set for their pleasure.

  293. 293.

    Peale

    Seriously, running out the ISIL argument is almost as islamophobic as what Trump is doing. It kind of implies that Muslims are such that a few bad encounters with westerners not being nice or fair just throws them into off the deep end and the next thing you know…beheadings and hijackings. Don’t go that route. All it does is promote the idea that these particular immigrants are of special concern. They aren’t. Really. The people with work permits and student visas are following the rules and people who follow rules need our protection, not more fear raised about them.

  294. 294.

    PJ

    @efgoldman: Someone who was 18 in 1945 would be 90 this year, so, yeah, I think the number of WWII veterans voting for Trump would be in the wee numbers.

  295. 295.

    Vhh

    @Adam L Silverman: I am a scientist not a spook, and have no inside info, but I speak Russian, I have happily worked on [unclassifed] research with Russians in Russia and elsewhere, I know a fair bit of Russian history, and I am not a conspiracy theorist. I’ve read the “independent” Russian press account of the dramatically public Mikhailov arrest in Novaya Gazeta. My spidey sense suddenly told me that this is a Trump-sized diversion. The FSB has attacked prominent people with polonium and dioxin, has committed any number of murders with fake suicides or killers who then disappeared. All without really geting caught. They took Mikhailov [who may or may not be a double] in broad daylight to confuse, derail, or devalue potential US investigations. One scenario is that they now say “well, we hacked a few states, we just couldn’t resist, but the CIA turned our guy. So no harm done, Donnie boy,let’s lift the sanctions and get rich on oil. Those Dems are just sore losers.” There are other possibilities, but I bet they all aim at changing the subject away from serious effects on the election and [esp.] possible collusion. I would like to think that our IC beagles are able to sniff this out. What worries me is that the Trump crew, Ryan, and the Turtle might try to use this to emasculate the IC or cut the US inquiry short.

  296. 296.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Vhh: Our CI guys know their business. As do Britain’s. Putin can pull whatever maskirovka he wants on this. It may work with the President and his immediate circle. It will not work with the professionals.

  301. 301.

    Raven Onthill

    Dear @POTUS: on Holocaust Remembrance Day my synagogue told me the Syrian refugee family we’re sponsoring is not coming. Go fuck yourself. – Daniel Drezner

  302. 302.

    Vhh

    @Adam L Silverman: That is what I think, too, in which case it is a sign of desperation on the Russian side. But how does the IC engage with politicians when the executive is the target, and Congress is controlled by the same party? I guess only via leaks to the media. I hope the WaPo and CNN have the guts for this, I would not count on the NYT.

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