Sartorial Selection

Immigration Mess:  While the Trump administration is no longer separating children from their parents, the news on the immigration front still isn’t all that good, in fact it’s depressing and confusing.  Immigration officials are now bumping families with children to the front of the processing line but despite a few early reports that they were otherwise granting some leniency, they aren’t.  The families are still being detained and placed in confinement, but now they are being left intact. Running out of room and anticipating the need for more space the administration plans to build tent cities capable of housing 20,000 more unaccompanied minors on military bases in Texas and Arkansas.  It’s not clear if the bases will also house families with minors since the original plans were made when families were still being broken up but the way things are going it’s  likely that some families will end up in those sweltering tent cities.  Defense Secretary Mattis has also agreed to temporarily detail 21 military attorneys (JAGs) to the Justice Department to help in prosecuting border immigration cases, “with a focus on misdemeanor improper entry and felony illegal reentry cases.”  That decision isn’t going down well with a number of Senators including Iowa Republican Joni Ernst.  She broke ranks with her Republican colleagues to coauthor a letter with Democrats Leahy and Gillibrand.  The letter points out that "these 21 JAGs are being directed to practice wholly outside of their training, within the vast and complex immigration arena,"  going on to say that the senators are "deeply troubled" by the Defense Department's decision to send military attorneys to handle immigration matters in part because "pulling 21 trial counsel from military courtrooms to prosecute immigration cases is an inappropriate misapplication of military personnel.”  So far there’s been no response from Mattis or Trump.  As mentioned in Trump’s so called executive action, the one intended to make him appear kind for “undoing” his policy of separating minors from parents, the Jeff Sessions led Justice Department is trying to get Dolly Gee, the Judge responsible for monitoring compliance with the Flores Agreement, the agreement that dictates how immigrant minors should be treated, to lift some of that agreement’s requirements.  Specifically, Sessions is asking the judge to suspend requirements that immigrant kids can only be held in facilities that meet state child welfare licensing regulations. A suspension of that requirement would allow the government to keep underage migrants in detention alongside their parents in locations that are not intended to house children, places like the hot tent cities at military bases.  Additionally, Sessions is asking that the judge extend the period of time that children can be held in custody way beyond the current twenty day limit. The oh so charming Sessions, who has been known to lie when it suits his purpose and even when it’s downright stupid and he is likely to get caught, acknowledged to the Christian Broadcasting Network that he knows the pictures of all those kids crying didn’t make for good optics but that he never intended for the zero tolerance policy to separate children from parents.  He said this with a straight face despite having previously said on the air that the plan specifically did intend to break up families as part of the administration’s efforts to deter future illegal immigration.  First Lady Melania Trump tried to show that she really cares about children, that is children other than Barron, yesterday.  She went on a “humanitarian” visit to one center in Texas yesterday, a visit that the White House claims was all her idea and that had been scheduled days before the news about the imprisoned, separated children went viral.   The center she visited, one that was previously cited for failing to dispense medicine to its wards, currently houses only 55 adolescents.  After saying that everything looked hunky dory to her, she left early without hugging even one little child, missing her opportunity to have a Princess Di moment, mostly because local floods were hampering traffic but also because she really doesn’t get it. Then as she climbed the stairs to her plane, she was seen sporting a Zara jacket with the words “I really don’t care, do u” emblazoned on the back.  Her spokesperson later denied that the jacket was intended to send a message by saying that it was just a jacket something hard to believe given that former model Melania appears to spend a considerable amount of her time making sartorial choices. Trump doubled down by later tweeted that the words refer to the “Fake News Media. Melania has learned how dishonest they are, and she truly no longer cares.”  So much for the first lady’s attempt at appearing humanitarian.  The House’s attempts at passing immigration legislation are going about as well as Melania’s flood shortened visit.  As expected the House voted down the really harsh immigration plan put forth by hardliner Congressman Goodlatte and his Freedom Caucus cronies and pushed off plans to vote on the only alternative under consideration, the slightly less harsh plan that they are calling the moderate compromise.  Still by taking a vote, the House has for procedural reasons eliminated the chance that a discharge petition could proceed with a limited DACA only solution.  As of now it’s not clear that the so called moderate plan will pass because it doesn’t have and was never designed to obtain any Democratic support, the few remaining moderate Republicans don’t like it, the right wingers are still trying to pull it further to the right and lastly because Trump may have doomed it earlier in the day by tweet lamenting  “What is the purpose of the House doing good immigration bills when you need 9 votes by Democrats in the Senate, and the Dems are only looking to Obstruct (which they feel is good for them in the Mid-Terms).”  As to the 2000 plus children separated from their parents and dispersed to more than a dozen locations around the country, plans to reconnect them with their families remain murky in part because of shockingly inadequate record keeping and in part because at least so far it is not much of a government priority.         

Other Government News: Yesterday Budget director Mick Mulvaney announced the Trump administration’s first step in its plan to overhaul the government.  This step calls for combining the Departments of Education and Labor into the Department of Education and the Workforce.  The plan reflects the Trump administration’s view the purpose of education is to train workers for the workforce and nothing more.  That said the Department of Education has only been around as a separate entity since the Carter administration and other administrations have looked into combining departments.  However, given that this is Trump and he and Betsy DeVos aren’t all that interested in public sector education anyway, the plan is likely to meet a lot of resistance.  Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, is already on record saying that "in any normal administration, combining some of the core functions of the Education and Labor departments might make sense," but that "there is nothing normal about this administration, so we're extremely skeptical of the motives here given how hostile Betsy DeVos and President Trump have been to public education, workers and unions."   In other news, the House finally passed the farm bill, an otherwise ordinary occurrence that had been held up by those problematic Freedom Caucus members.  The bill had no Democratic support because it also contains new work requirements for food stamp recipients.  Twenty Republicans also voted against it but Freedom Caucus support brought it across the finishing line.

Manafort Update:  Paul Manafort is still in jail awaiting his trials and still hasn’t indicated any willingness to flip on Trump. However, the case against him got a boost yesterday when Washington DC Federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson declined a request by his lawyers to suppress evidence that had been seized from a storage unit by Special Counsel Mueller’s investigators.  Manafort’s lawyers had claimed that the person who had allowed the investigators into the unit had lacked the authority to grant access, the judge didn’t buy that argument since the guy in question had a key and authorization to access the locker so the evidence obtained during the search is now in.  As to fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen, he hasn’t flipped yet either but reports are that he is quite upset that Trump won’t pick up his legal expenses and with evidence mounting against him is getting closer to turning every day.  Or so we keep being told by his good friends at various press outlets.