Some Orchestra

Go to the Videotape:  The Trump administration has outdone itself and now may finally be facing some consequences.  Well maybe. Yesterday’s daily news conference was delayed a few times either because Sarah Huckabee Sanders was unwilling to stand up before the press and deny that separating children from parents was a bad thing or because someone, most likely Trump and/or his squirrelly anti-immigrant whisperer Steve Miller, thought that she wasn’t up to the task, so instead Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was flown in to face the music.  Speaking in a stern and disturbingly unemotional tone Nielsen stuck to the Trump line, that the administration had to separate children from their parents because that was the law, a law that she blamed on prior administrations and the failure of Congress, specifically Democrats, to pass new immigration legislation.  She refused to acknowledge that the decision to separate families was Trump’s, that he had the power to keep families intact or that the children were being used as bargaining chips in exchange for immigration legislation and wall funding.  She asserted that the children were being well cared for, denied knowing that any of them were being held in cages and appeared unable or unwilling to respond to any questions about where any of the youngest children or girls were being held, relevant because no probing members of the House or the Senate or the press have been able to visit or even locate the facilities housing those children.  Moments before Nielsen spoke, ProPublica released a truly gut wrenching videotape of crying children begging for their mamas and papas.  The tape, which had been secreted out of one of the facilities and provided to ProPublica by a public defender,  also included the voice of one young girl repeatedly pleading for help calling her tia (aunt) using a phone number that she had memorized.  While the children wailed uncontrollably, an official is heard in the background joking that the crying sounds like an orchestra.  For her part caustic right wing pundit Ann Coulter later weighed in claiming that those kids are just crisis actors.  As Nielsen asserted that all of the kids were happy, had toys, were being well fed and cared for and that the press was purposely manipulating the facts, the sound of the tape could be heard playing off of one or more of the reporters’ phones.  Nielsen also tried to sidestep any responsibility for the children, saying that once they were transferred into the hands of the Department of Health and Human Services, they fell out of her jurisdiction.  Though she promised that children would be reunited with their parents, she failed to mention that the overtaxed system wasn’t really working.  Parents and relatives have been kept from calling and locating children and many kids get lost in the system and end up staying in one or more shelters for months instead of days.  At current rates of incarceration a system that was built to deal with a few thousand children will soon be handling upwards of 30,000 unless something changes.  To that end, all 49 Democratic Senators, including those up for election in Republican strongholds, have signed on to Senator Diane Feinstein’s legislation banning the separation of children from parents absent any threat to their safety  A number of Republicans Senators, including Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, Ben Sasse, Susan Collins Lisa Murkowski and Jeff Flake have spoken out against the policy but to date none of them have expressed a willingness to join Feinstein and the Democrats.  Facing pressure from Texas Congressman Beto O’Rourke who is running against him for Senator, a panicky Ted Cruz has proposed his own, more conservative legislation, a plan that would keep families intact by providing more money for family incarceration.  Two Governors, John Hickenlooper, Colorado’s moderate Democrat and a possible presidential candidate, and Charlie Baker, Massachusetts’ Republican have pulled back from allowing their National Guards units to help with border protection and/or anything related to family separation.  Nevertheless Trump has dug in his heels and with the encouragement of his aides and advisors has decided not to relent.  Not only does he want to stick with breaking up families, but apparently under the guidance of Miller he plans to impose more restrictions going forward, part of his strategy to harden his base in the run up to the midterm elections. According to Marc Short, the White House Director of Legislative Affairs who plans to leave his post in the not too distant future, Trump will explain the “logic and history behind the decision to split up families” to Republican members of the House later today when they meet to discuss immigration legislation.  Good luck with that.  Last night The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board weighed in on the folly of Trump’s position by saying that “if Mr. Trump wants to lose the House and risk impeachment, he will take Mr. Bannon’s bad advice and keep giving Democrats a daily picture of children stripped from their parents.”  As to the history and logic of Trump’s position, Attorney General Sessions refuted claims that the current policy is reminiscent of anything that the Nazis ever did by claiming that the Nazis “were trying to keep Jews from leaving Germany.” Apparently Sessions is woefully ignorant of history and has no idea that those trains taking Jews to the death camps were headed  out of Germany.  Anyway, it’s fair to say that when you have to deny analogies to Nazi actions, you are not in a good space.  For his part Trump may not find the past all that objectionable.  Yesterday, he railed against German Chancellor Angela Merkel, claiming that due to her refugee policies, Germany was facing higher than ever crime rates, another one of his bold faced lies.  Merkel is facing a tough internal fight over German refugee related and though she is expected to survive she could do without Trump’s comments.  As to that Nazi analogy it’s not far off, Germany’s interior minister Horst Seehofer  said that  Rome, Vienna and Berlin should work together in the areas of security, fighting terrorism and the core issue of immigration.  Sebastian Kurz, Austria’s right wing Chancellor, happily added that in his view, “we need an ‘axis’ of the willing in the fight against illegal migration."  What could go wrong with that?  Sadly, it appears that Trump would happily join that axis.       

Gerrymandering:  Hopes that the Supreme Court would issue a ruling outlawing political gerrymandering were dashed, for now, on Monday when the court sidestepped the issue in two cases on procedural grounds.  One of those cases related to Wisconsin, the other to Maryland. The plaintiffs in Wisconsin had claimed that the gerrymander by their state legislature had harmed their interest “in their collective representation in the legislature,” and in influencing the legislature’s over-all “composition and policymaking.” Writing for the majority, Justice Roberts said that the Constitution “did not protect such vague, general rights; the plaintiffs had to assert a more specific legal injury in order to have their claim heard on the merits.”  He did give the plaintiffs a road map for how to rework their claims in such a way that the courts would hear them again at some future date, probably in a year or two.  One problem with that is that Justice Kennedy, who is viewed as the likely swing vote on any decision against gerrymandering, is rumored to be considering leaving the court sooner rather than later.  In any case, if Democrats want to retake the House in 2018 they will have to do so without any further court assistance.  

Major Don: In one other piece of news, Trump announced that he wants the Pentagon to immediately begin the creation of a sixth branch, a  Space Force, to protect US interests on the high frontier.  Although this sounds farfetched, its actually something that the Pentagon has been looking into.  In classic Trump form, he decided not to wait for the results of an ongoing Pentagon study.  He wants his Space Force and he wants it now.  Anyone interested in sending him out on the first official exploratory mission, one with no return trip, raise your hands now!   Take your protein pills, okay make that Diet Coke, and put your helmet on.