Womp Womp

Tender  Mercies:  Yesterday, during a Fox News panel discussion former Trump campaign manager and long term Trump supporter Corey Lewandowski reacted to reports that an undocumented child with Down’s Syndrome had sobbed while being separated from her mother by mocking her panic, sarcastically uttering  “womp, womp.”  He then went on to defend his disturbing insensitivity by saying "When you cross the border illegally, when you commit a crime, you are taken away from your family because that's how this country works."  Lewandowski’s total lack of compassion explains  his love for Trump and typifies the overall reaction of the Trump administration to the news reports about the treatment of undocumented children.  Yesterday, the NY Times included an article about Stephen Miller and Jeff Session’s long term fight against immigration and their deep seated belief that immigrants, particularly immigrants from undeveloped countries, are just criminal elements who should be kept out of the US at all costs. From their perspective a few bad news stories about children being torn from their mothers arms, thrown into ill equipped detention centers, and the absence of a system or policies to provide for reunification is just not a bigly deal and certainly isn’t enough to cause them to change their minds about the “sacred, solemn inviable obligation to enforce the laws of the US to stop illegal immigration.”  Miller in particular wants us all to know that there is no straying from this mission and sadly in Trump he’s found a soulmate.  As to Trump, despite concerns allegedly raised by favorite daughter Ivanka,  the outcry from dozens of Senators from both sides of the aisle, the withdrawal of national guard support by a growing list of Republican and Democratic Governors and the criticism of all of the prior first ladies and various medical associations, Trump doesn’t give a hoot.  He wants his wall, he wants it now and he really doesn’t care if any of those “brown” kids are collateral damage. That’s basically the message that he delivered during his late afternoon meetings, first with Republican members of the Senate and then with Republican members of the House.  Following a day where he once again laid into Democrats, blaming them for forcing him to “follow the law” that’s not a law, and for failing to cooperate by passing immigration legislation, he ripped into the Republican Senators for failing to provide him with the full $25 billion he wants for his wall.  During his visit with House members he refused to throw his support to one of the two immigration bills under their consideration, saying that he’d be happy with either one as long as he gets his full wall funding and as long as the path to citizenship for the Dreamers remains very long and preferably full of pitfalls.  As to stopping the separation of children, the House and Senate continue to dither.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and a number of other Republican Senators have signed a letter asking Trump to put his zero tolerance, child separation policy on hold while they work up some legislation, but McConnell can’t quite figure out what that legislation should say though he’s leaning towards the Senator Cruz approach and isn’t satisfied with the Senator Feinstein plan because he believes it’s too broad.  Minority leader Schumer just wants Trump to stop the policy, pointing out that the legislative process will take too long and is essentially unnecessary given that a statement from Trump is all it would take.  As to the so called Cruz plan, Senator Cruz supports families remaining intact during their incarceration and calls for the hiring of hundreds of more judges to expedite their processing, i.e. get them out of the country quickly.  Critics believe that his plan would lead to rapid deportation by a “kangaroo” court system which is probably Cruz’s intent .  For his part early yesterday during a speech to small business owners a seriously off kilter Trump, attacked Cruz’s judge hiring plan, alleging that all of those new judges would be corrupt so what’s the point.  He then hugged the flag, literally. As to the children, the ones being used by pawns in order to facilitate Trump’s wall funding, no one outside of the government has seen or even figured out where the separated young girls are being held likely because Trump’s team has figured out that seeing young girls in cages would be even more disturbing, especially for teetering Republican soccer moms, than seeing similarly caged young boys, but news about the facilities holding babies and toddlers did leak out.  Apparently, the most vulnerable are being held in three facilities that are being euphemistically called “tender age shelters.” Reports are that the centers are clean but that the children aren’t being held or cuddled, good only if your objective is to raise a generation of people with detachment disorders.   No plans are in place to return these children to their parents anytime soon, but no worries there because a fourth shelter will be up and running soon. As to reunification, one mother Beata Mariana de Jesus Mejia-Mejia, a Guatemalan woman whose 7-year-old son was forcibly taken from her after the two of them crossed into the US to seek asylum is suing the government, saying that the separation violated rights given to her by both the Constitution and international conventions.  She’s been released on bail but it has been a month since she’s seen her son. Officials won’t even tell her where he is.  The ACLU has filed a case on behalf of a Congolese woman who was separated from her 7-year-old daughter for four months. That lawsuit seeks to halt the practice of separations altogether. A judge in that case ruled in a preliminary hearing that the separation of the mother and child “shocks the conscience,” and said the “separations may violate the Constitution’s due-process clause.” NY Governor Cuomo said that NYS, also plans to sue the Trump administration over the practice.

Human Rights:  Calling it a “cesspool of political bias” yesterday UN Ambassador Nikki Haley announced the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council over the council’s unending criticism of Israel. To give this decision some perspective it’s worth noting that the US has always had problems with the council.  The US didn’t join until 2009, three years after the council was formed and it’s fair to say that the council has a history of overlooking some countries abuses while constantly criticizing all things Israel.  That said, the fact that the withdrawal came just one day after Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, the UN’s Human Rights Commissioner called Trump’s child separation policy “cruel and unconscionable” makes the decision look petty instead of justified. Withdrawing from the council will probably limit the US’s ability to effectively call out other country’s for their abusive human rights behavior but that’s unlikely to concern Trump given his preference for autocrats and dictators as well as his general disdain for multilateral organizations.  

Staffing:  While most attention has been focused on immigration and the “children” problem, the Senate has been looking into that other big problem, the FBI’s unfair treatment of Trump, the treatment that helped him beat Hillary Clinton in the last election.  Yesterday, FBI Peter Strzok, the agent who foolishly texted his scathing politician critical messages, some of which burned Trump, to his girlfriend  was escorted out of FBI headquarters.  He’s not fired yet but is under investigation.  Though he wasn’t frog marched anywhere, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Joe Hagin announced that he will be jumping ship shortly.  Hagin, a Bush era Republican, was responsible for organizing Trump’s Singapore and Saudi Arabia trip.  He’s either returning to the private sector or looking for another government job, anything that will get him out of the White House.  Though he has no stated plans to follow suit,  reports are that Chief of Staff Kelly has been spending an unusual amount of his day time hours in the gym and that he’s said that he really doesn’t care if Trump continues to do the kind of things that would get him impeached.  On the cabinet front, there’s been surprisingly little news about EPA head Scott Pruitt this week but there have been a few reports about some of his colleagues.  Department of the Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and his wife are involved in a real estate joint venture with Halliburton, one that has raised all kinds of conflict of interest concerns but none that Trump cares about.  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross apparently engaged in some odd trading activity early in his term, shorting stock in Navigator Holdings a day after a reporter from the New York Times contacted him seeking comment about his stake in the company and its dealings with a Russian energy firm. The transaction at issue was worth between $100,000 and $250,000, according to disclosure forms Ross filed with the Office of Government Ethics.  Again, no one in Trumpland seems to care because that swamp thing isn’t real. The embattled Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen has hired a new lawyer named Guy Petrillo.  Petrillo is a former chief of the criminal division of the Southern District of NY.  Depending on who is reading the tea leaves, this means that Cohen is about to cooperate with the Feds or that he’s planning to fight any future charges.  The guessing game continues.