Breaking from The Post:
Attorney General Jeff Sessions ruled that victims of domestic abuse and gang violence generally will not qualify for asylum under federal law, a decision that advocates say could endanger tens of thousands of foreign nationals seeking refuge in the United States.
Sessions told immigration judges that his decision “restores sound principles of asylum and long-standing principles of immigration law” and will help a growing backlog of cases in immigration court.
Shorter Trump administration: MS-13 gangs are “animals” who are 10 times worse than Nazis, but people fleeing these “animals” need not apply for asylum in the United States of America. And if they do, we’ll put their children in cages.
(((CassandraLeo)))
I utterly loathe these people, and I’m so tired of living in the Darkest Timeline.
mattH
It’s insane how much I feel like I’m back in the 80’s.
Corner Stone
Any immigration judges resign as yet?
Platonailedit
Making amurkkka go apartheid.
Corner Stone
“Fellow Republicans, this can not be our party our party our party our party our party our party our party”
Oh, sorry about that Flakester. Looks like you hit a skip in your broken record.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
The Great Wall
Dead Kennedys
Great Wall of China
It’s so big it’s seen from outer space
Put there to keep starving neighbors
Locked outside the gates
What’s changed today?
Empires hoard more than they need
And peasants threaten our comfort
We’ll build a Great Wall around our power
Build a Great Wall around our power
Bankrupt L.A.’s streetcar line
So people pay more to drive
Plant strategic freeways
To divide neighborhoods by color lines
We’d rather pay for riot squads
Than pump your ghetto back to life
We let your schools decay on purpose
To build a Great Wall around our power
Another Great Wall around our power
Warlords in grey suits
Take a different route to work each day
Second-hand green berets
Form the companies’ private armies.
We’ll take all your gold
But won’t teach reading or feed your poor
The League of Gentlemen
Would rather feed guns to puppet dictators
There’s too many people in your world
And refugees are expensive
When they trickled down onto our soil
We hunt them and arrest them
Classify them insane
And put them back on the next plane
To the waiting arms
Of the same death squads they fled
We’ve built a Great Wall around our power
Economic Great Wall around our power
Worldwide Great Wall around our power
Give us your poor,
Your tired and your weak
We’ll send ’em right back
To their certain death
Jay
“US District Judge Amy Berman Jackson has scheduled Paul Manafort’s arraignment on the latest superseding indictment for Friday morning (she’d already set a hearing for arguments at that time on the pretrial release issue). ”
mobile.twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1006216976149172225?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2…
Booger
@Corner Stone: Explain that reference for the young ‘uns, please.
Greg
So much for the concept of “Pro-Life”.
Teddys Person
Fuck these motherfuckers. I know, I know, I’m being uncivil.
Jack the Second
Seriously, what is wrong with Sessions?
I can, like, understand Mitt Romney’s greed, and I can understand why slavery was really awesome for the slave owners.
What does Sessions get out of this? Why does he have such a desperate need to make people’s lives worse, even when there is no benefit to him?
gkoutnik
Reminds me of the transatlantic liner “St. Louis,” filled with Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in 1939, sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights, but not granted refugee status here. They had to return to Europe, and found refuge in England, Belgium and France. Most, but not all, survived WWII. We condemn the horror but do not shelter the victims.
Teddys Person
@Jack the Second: The benefit to the KKKebler Elf is asserting natvism and white supremacy.
Mnemosyne
@mattH:
No shit. I never thought we’d return to the days where we would decide who did and didn’t get asylum based on the political leanings of the death squad that was trying to kill them.
And assholes like Jeane Kirkpatrick carefully explaining that authoritarianism was peachy-keen and only totalitarianism was bad. Each defined solely by conservatives, of course.
Corner Stone
@Booger: Oh, sure. Be happy to. You see, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona is a disgusting cowardly piece of shit who runs his mouth a bunch saying all the same things. But never, ever takes action that is contra to what he whines so stringently about. Hope that helps.
Timurid
@Jack the Second:
What does some random dickhead get out of shooting up a school? The motivation is pretty much the same…
Mnemosyne
@Jack the Second:
He gets the thrill of having the power of life and death over helpless people. He enjoys knowing that he can murder people by proxy.
It’s as simple and as sick as that. He’s the kind of guy who bullies his waitress when he goes to a restaurant because he knows she has to suck it up and smile if she wants to keep her job.
Calouste
@Jack the Second: It’s the “there is no win-win or lose-lose, there is only win-lose” mentality. Someone other than Jeff Sessions is losing, so he must be winning. And of course plain old white supremacy. Never forget that Sessions was too racist to be confirmed as a federal judge even under Reagan.
kindness
They are Nazis. While that doesn’t embarrass Trump it should embarrass the rest of the Republican world. If their WWII veteran parents were still around they would get a whoopin when they saw them next.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Mnemosyne:
Looked her up. This is what she had to say on authoritarianism vs totalitarianism:
I wonder if anyone ever challenged Kirkpatrick to live in one of these authoritarian regimes and see how she liked it.
schrodingers_cat
This is an easy issue to demagogue about because native born citizens do not know the ins and outs of our complex immigration system. Even the well meaning ones like people on this site and others like it. Administration appears tough to their base and most people caught up in the tentacles of the system are not citizens and hence can’t vote.
There are about 14 million plus permanent residents who are eligible apply for naturalization. So if you know someone like that , urge them to consider applying for citizenship. I have so far convinced to three people to do the same.
The Dangerman
Hmmm, news that will probably be under the fold (I assume summit is above said fold).
All sorts of crazy shit might get announced today.
AliceBlue
God I’m so tired today.
ruemara
This was a knife into the soul. Monstrous people.
@Jack the Second: Racism isn’t clear enough for you?
jacy
@Jack the Second:
He’s a petty racist motherfucker to his core. That’s all you need to know about Jeff Sessions. If you’re not white, you’re either livestock or a varmint that needs to be exterminated.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: How is your N-400 application coming along?
Booger
@Corner Stone: Actually I meant the reference to a skipping record.
Corner Stone
I wish MSNBC would stop putting Gordon Chang on their air. He’s a hawk that does not seem to have a great record on Asia. He’s the China/Asia type counterpart to Peter Beinart.
eric
So, for those playing at home, here is how I read the change: if you are beaten because you are a wife or girlfriend who pissed of a psychotic man, you are not protected; if you are persecuted more broadly because you are a woman (genital mutilation, perhaps), then you may seek protection. The fact that the governments in question are “unable or unwilling” to protect the wife/girlfriend is no longer enough. (The unable/unwilling is the test for government action when there is no actual government action.) Here is the relevant statute for who is protected: “A ‘refugee’ is any person unable or unwilling to return to her country because of persecution or a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” 8 U.S.C. § 1101(a)(42)(A). Sessions has unilaterally defined “social group” to exclude abused women. I need to research why an executive can interpret the statute conclusively. I did not think that was the law.
Immanentize
@eric: The domestic violence exclusion is particularly weird ( legally, not psychologically) because there is a special visa status for immigrants in abusive relationships (a U-visa). It is intended to help address human trafficking. What Sessions has done is to encourage female abuse, slavery and trafficking. I have no more evens to can’t.
ruemara
@schrodingers_cat: I’ve finished most of it. I have some questions about whether I should include my parents’ information, as I’m over 40. It seems I’d need their citizenship dates and former A #s. Plus there’s the tax thing.
schrodingers_cat
Is it any surprise that pu$$y grabber’ s AG is anti-women in addition to being anti-immigrant?
D58826
@Jack the Second:
Well walking around with a hood and sheets is out of favor so he has to improvise and outsource the violence to others.
Immanentize
@ruemara:
My friend. This is not a moment to take a principled stand about your parents and your age. Include every scrap of bullshit they ask for unless it would endanger someone.
My advice is only worth what you paid for it. But I do care about you.
Immanentize
Sessions is pro-human trafficking.
rikyrah
He is a demon.
A muthaphucking DEMON ??
eric
@Immanentize: so, then it is not “asylum” per se?
rikyrah
@jacy:
That sums him up.
schrodingers_cat
@ruemara: I included all the information about my parents in my N-400.
eric
@Immanentize: “Whoever welcomes this little child in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest.”
Gelfling 545
Sessions might pause in his racist agenda to comtemplate what countries might offer HIM asylum if a sufficient quantity of voters regain (or newly acquire) sanity.
Balconesfault
@Corner Stone: just watched that segment and observed the same thing. Didn’t know him so had to look him up… His Wikipedia page amusingly notes all of the times over the last decade that he’s predicted China’s imminent economic collapse.
Omnes Omnibus
@eric: @Immanentize: It sounds like he is trying to eliminate the right to self-petition under VAWA.
ruemara
@Immanentize: Oh, there’s no principle except reluctance on dealing with my parents. But this weekend should be a light one, so I can get that hurdle over with. I just genuinely don’t know if it’s necessary or unnecessary & if the fact that they are citizens is of benefit to my application. If it was a positive, I’d slap “Still not a serial killer” gold star right on top of my app.
@schrodingers_cat: Ah. Ok, that’s an answer to the question.
rikyrah
@Jack the Second:
He has waited his entire adult life to live out his White Supremacist fantasies. This is why he will NEVER quit. He can only be fired.
WereBear
It’s like they see it as a competition about who can be the most callous and cruel.
Ruckus
@Jack the Second:
He is a tiny little racist shit of a man who has arrived at a position of power over someone. He will use that power to show how strong he is and how right his racism is. He is obviously a corrupt human being who thinks that hurting others is his calling in life. There is no punishment that will convince him otherwise, he has the righteousness of his hate on his side. He thinks this will change history and his side of the racist war will be won by the side that lost over 150 yrs ago. Lincoln wasn’t wrong to not destroy the south, that was the humanistic thing to do. But these are not humanistic people, the far right, religious racists and they have taken it as a weakness that they can exploit. And he is going to do a lot of harm for a couple of reasons. The republican party has spent the last 50+ yrs conditioning their followers that retribution for the loss of the civil war is theirs to claim. They don’t state it that way but look at what this tiny little man is doing. He is trying to make up for 150 yrs of loss of power of racism. And he is, I’m sure making money off this somehow. Vlad is stirring up a lot of shit by empowering drumpf to be himself and bring along all of his shitty friends. Vlad has nothing else to being a world power. Not prestige, not a powerful economy, not a military, not respect from most of the world, his fame will be knocking down the US a few notches. We are third most populous, we have I believe the largest GDP, and he’s trying to take us down with a moron and all the moron’s buddies. It might just work, unless we stop it.
Chyron HR
Take THAT, neoliberal status quo!
rikyrah
For those who put us in this position..
They will NEVER BE FORGIVEN ?? ?
Balconesfault
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??: you think that Kirkatrick wouldn’t be more comfortable living in an authoritarian regime presuming she was part of the power structure?
Immanentize
@Omnes Omnibus: That is a different process. It is really friggin hard to get a U Visa as it is. The assylum stuff is new and distinct.
Tokyokie
@ruemara: Sorry to say, but the fees for processing citizenship applications (plus fingerprinting, etc., etc., and so forth) rose dramatically during the Shrub presidency. His administration was in favor of a path to citizenship, but only for those of sufficient means (i.e., likely Republican voters). We got through the process for the spousal unit before the increases went into effect, but just barely.
Also, my experience is that if you answer every question and bury the inspectors in mountains of documentation whenever there’s a possibility to do so, things will go smoother, as La Migra workers figure that anybody running a con wouldn’t go to so much trouble. (Which is probably true.)
In other words, what Immanentize said in #34.
Immanentize
@eric: send that to the Monster, Kirtjen Nielsen.
schrodingers_cat
@rikyrah: Yes I am with you. What irritates me the most about these T enablers is their whining about lack of respect they get from the rest of us. You want to be an arsonist, don’t expect to get my praise for it.
Jack the Second
@ruemara: I mean, I guess I know the answer to my question is racism, but it’s just…
Sessions is arguably one of the ten most powerful men in the US government, if not the country. And he is literally going out of his way to find the least powerful, most vulnerable people to put his foot on their neck and grind them deeper into the dirt.
It’s like, in another thread elsewhere people were talking about the Civil Rights strategy of putting the youngest protestors at the thick of things, because even most racists know (knew?) beating children is wrong.
But the part I don’t want to acknowledge is that the reason that strategy was possible is because there were other racists willing, eager, gleeful to beat those children to death, despite or because they were children.
Sessions’ actions are like stumbling on someone torturing small animals for sexual pleasure. It’s sick in a way that makes it difficult to even know about, think about, acknowledge.
If this were a just world, a good world, there would be years of counseling and therapy in his future. But the best I can hope for is for him to live long enough to see his actions repudiated and undone.
Baud
@WereBear: And they all win.
eric
@Immanentize: she would just call it socialism and elite liberal idealism ;)
schrodingers_cat
@Tokyokie: There was a distinct change post 9-11. I went to Canada several times before that, and everyone was so chill on both sides of the border, not so post that date.
ruemara
@Jack the Second: Oh, that’s the “Adults Don’t See The Monster” trope. it’s so horrible, you don’t want to see it. I get it, I’m sorry. But seeing it is necessary.
@Tokyokie: Yeah, that’s when I about to do it, but the costs were out of my reach then too. Even better to know. Ok, I’ll baffle ’em with bullshit.
Omnes Omnibus
@Immanentize: I know it is different. I’ve done some training with our local legal aid people to be put on their list to related pro bono work. I am on my phone so I wasn’t able to open up the linked article to which process Sessions is fucking with.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jack the Second:
It’s really about domestic violence – it’s these women and children’s fault they don’t obey their husbands and father’s better in Sessions twisted world. He chooses immigrants because they are at the edge of society.
??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??
@Balconesfault:
I’m saying if she weren’t
Ruckus
@Jack the Second:
Not to be too VDE here but Italians had it right at the end of WWII.
They hung Mussolini in a public square for a while so people could come and spit on him. It isn’t humanistic, or even right, but sometimes something is so wrong that cathartic actions are what we do. But also notice that ICE is doing what they are told. They may be making up some of this shit as they go along but they have permission to do this, and from this little shit of a man.
Jack the Second
@ruemara: :-(
Yeah, there’s another layer of the horror. “You mean un-privileged people always see the monsters, and can never forget they exist?”
Brendan in NC
@Tokyokie: Yup. Found that out with my ex. If they asked for 2 from column A, and 3 from column B; and each column had 5 choices, we brought them 10 things to look at. We never got questioned about much. ;-)
Ladyraxterinok
@gkoutnik: Yrs ago I heard an NPR report on this event. IIRC people working on this at the Holocaust Museum had interviewed a man in Israel who had been on the ship. He said he hated the US. and wanted nothing to do with it. He said many he had met on the ship were returned to Germany where they died in the death camps.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@Jack the Second:
You’re answering your own question – the Civil Rights activists put children in the front because they knew sadistic bullies can’t resist targets that can’t fight back and it will make the awfulness of the Civil Rights opponents clear for all to see. The question is why is Sessions not trying to hide this? The same hubris that drove the Charlottevile racists; everyone Sessions is in contact with is a racists shit so Sessions thinks that is the majority opinion in America.
ruemara
@Ruckus: And a lot of them wanted to do this. The rest will use some cognitive dissonance to make sure they still feel like heroes.
Trust me, I am very interested in the brochures of the Italians who decided a clear reject of Il Douche was required. However, it’s funny to note that even there, a nationalist party is gaining in power. Plus ça change.
Mnemosyne
Alright, I’m going to put on my cockeyed optimist hat because otherwise I’m going to lose my motherfucking mind today ?
The election numbers must look even worse for Republicans than we realized if they’re rushing to dump all of this shit into our government before the Democrats take the House back and can start investigating them.
Citizen Alan
@??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??:
As a wealthy white woman, I’m sure she’d have enjoyed it. She’d have been one of those rich assholes in multi-million dollar homes with walls high enough to where she couldn’t see the favelas.
Citizen Alan
@Ruckus:
Let’s agree to disagree. I live in Mississippi, and frankly, I think America would be better off today if Sherman had become President. If nothing else, I bet he’d have ordered the KKK to be hunted to extinction.
Tokyokie
@schrodingers_cat: We had reservations for a cruise to Cozumel for our wedding anniversary, and it was touch-and-go whether she’d have her U.S. passport by then. We got it about a week before our departure date, but pre-911, neither of us would have needed one.
Mnemosyne
@Citizen Alan:
I’ll also kind of disagree with you: what was really needed was someone to keep Reconstruction on track, but racist Northern whites were complicit in allowing the Southern states to reverse those gains.
There’s a reason Ulysses S. Grant’s presidency and reputation was destroyed, and it ain’t because he was unusually corrupt for his time. It was done to stop Reconstruction in its tracks.
Duane
After today’s SC and AG rulings, DeNiro was getting ahead of the crowd when he said fuck Trump. This is only Monday and there’s nothing else to say.
Tenar Arha
@gkoutnik:
Davebo
I know, heck I was engaged to the immigration judge that got the spousal abuse class incorporated. Matter of RA.
sgrAstar
@ruemara: Rue! I think you should consult an immigration lawyer, to be on the safe side. I know you’re experiencing a financial pinch…we can help. :)