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Trump Administration Plans To Detain Immigrant Minors Indefinitely

September 8, 2018 Ilana Novick, Truthdig.com , , ,
NBC reported Thursday that the Department of Homeland Security has proposed a new regulation that will allow U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain immigrant minors and their parents indefinitely, flouting 20 years of precedent that mandates a limit of 20 days. The rule goes into effect in 60 days, NBC explains, and allows ICE to keep migrant parents with their children as their asylum cases wind through the court system. An unnamed official who spoke to NBC explained that “the purpose of the rulemaking is to terminate the 1997 Flores settlement agreement that said children could not be held in detention longer than 20 days.”

Another Win For Working People As VA Rescinds Executive Order Implementation

September 7, 2018 Staff, Afge.org , ,
WASHINGTON – In yet another rebuke of President Trump’s anti-democratic, anti-worker executive orders, last week the Department of Veterans Affairs rescinded the order denying employees their representational rights at work. Previously, the order had severely limited union officials’ access to office space, equipment, and official time to represent workers – but it was struck down on August 24 by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Kentaji Jackson Brown ruled that the Trump administration’s May 25 executive order on official time violated the U.S. Constitution and the separation of powers as established in lawand were invalid. And on Wednesday, August 29, the Office of Personnel Management directing agencies to rescind the provisions of the orders that were enjoined.

Women’s March Determined To Disrupt Brett Kavanaugh’s Confirmation Hearing, Dozens Arrested

September 6, 2018 Ashley Curtin, Nationofchange.org , , ,
Leaders of the Women’s March are determined to disrupt Brett Kavanuagh’s confirmation hearing for the Supreme Court and, while their presence was seen and heard on Day 1, more than 30 women were arrested yesterday. Alongside Women’s March co-founders Linda Sarsour and Bob Bland, women from many different backgrounds, including women from 20 different woman’s organizations from across the nation, gathered in Washington, D.C. at Kavanuagh’s confirmation hearing. Their goal: “to look our Senators in the eye and remind them that women across America are watching.” According to a press release, “women were dragged out of the hearing without warning from police officers.” “Women are disrupting this hearing today because our lives are at risk,” Rachel O’Leary Carmona, Chief Operating Officer of Women’s March, said. “Women will die if Kavanaugh is confirmed.”

As Civil Disobedience Dominates Kavanaugh Hearing, Trump Says “It’s Embarrassing For Country To Allow Protesters”

September 6, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org , ,
"Tireless and creative, rambunctious, confrontational, and peaceful protest is unnerving to him. It is one of many aspects of American life that he, simply, cannot control." With his deeply unpopular U.S. Supreme Court nominee, Judge Brett Kavanaugh, facing outraged protests at his confirmation hearing and veteran journalist Bob Woodward's book about the inner workings of the White House making waves, President Donald Trump launched his latest attacks on the First Amendment on Wednesday. According to reports from the Daily Beast and Hill Reporter, Trump took aim at protesters like the dozens who were dragged away in handcuffs from Kavanaugh's hearing on Tuesday and Wednesday.

What Brett Kavanaugh On Supreme Court Could Mean For Climate Regulations

September 5, 2018 Marianne Lavelle, Insideclimatenews.org , , ,
In his dozen years on the federal appeals court that hears the most disputes over government regulatory power, Judge Brett Kavanaugh has compiled an extensive record of skepticism toward the government's powers to act on climate change. In particular, while Kavanaugh has repeatedly voiced the belief that global warming is a serious problem, he has challenged the argument that Congress has given the Environmental Protection Agency authority to do something about it. That means the 53-year-old jurist, if approved by the Senate to fill the vacancy left by Justice Anthony Kennedy, could harden the high court for the next generation as a blockade to climate action that isn't explicitly mandated by Congress. Though Kennedy was hardly a reliable vote for environmental protection, he was the pivotal vote in Massachusetts v. EPA, the 5-4 decision that in 2007 established that greenhouse gases were a pollutant that fit "well within" the EPA's authority to regulate under the Clean Air Act.

Media Organizations Concerned About Confirmation Of U.S. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh

September 5, 2018 Free Press. , ,
We, the undersigned 24 organizations working in the public interest to protect net neutrality, write to express our strong concerns about the potential confirmation of U.S. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the United States Supreme Court. Judge Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the nation’s highest court could jeopardize protections for the rights of all Americans to freely navigate the internet and express themselves online. The United States Telecom Association. v. FCC case upheld the FCC’s 2015 Net Neutrality rules in all respects. But Judge Kavanaugh dissented when the case came before him, betraying his commitment to protect the alleged rights of the big cable and phone companies that provide broadband internet access rather than the communications rights of everyone in America who relies on an open internet.

‘I Came To Put My Body On The Line’: Both Inside And Outside Hearing, Women Lead Fight Against Kavanaugh Confirmation

September 5, 2018 By Julia Conley, Commondreams.org ,
Before being taken away from the hearing room, Shaunna Thomas, executive director of the women's advocacy group UltraViolet, told the committee, "Senators, on behalf of the millions of women across the country whose rights will be stripped by a Kavanaugh court, I demand you reject this nomination." Kavanaugh is widely seen as the key to completing Trump's campaign pledge to overturn Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 decision which affirmed that American women have the right to abortion care. While running for president in 2016, Trump told Fox Newsthat if he won, the reversal of the decision would "happen automatically in my opinion because I am putting pro-life justices on the court." Last year, Kavanaugh praised former Supreme Court Justice William Rehnquist's dissent in the Roe case and as a sitting federal judge ruled against a young immigrant held in U.S. custody who wanted to obtain an abortion, delaying her care.

Trump Regime To Formally Reject Palestinians’ Right Of Return

August 28, 2018 By Stephen Lendman, Stephenlendman.org , ,
According to the body, “there are few, if any, circumstances in which deprivation of the right to enter one’s own country could be reasonable.” Adopted near the end of Israel’s 1948 war, UN Resolution 194 resolved that Palestinian “refugees wishing to return to their homes and live at peace with their neighbors should be permitted to do so at the earliest practicable date, and that compensation should be paid for the property of those choosing not to return and for loss of or damage to property which, under principles of international law or equity, should be made good by the Governments or authorities responsible” – Article 11. In May 1949, UN Resolution 273 granted Israel UN membership conditional on accepting and implementing UN Resolutions 181 (partitioning Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states) and 194, granting Palestinians their universally recognized right of return.

Scoring Trump’s Tax Cuts So Far: $280K For Rich Lawmakers, Pennies For Working People

August 24, 2018 By Kayla Kitson, Otherwords.org , ,
The Trump-GOP tax law was sold as a boon for the middle class. But many months after its passage, there are no signs that working Americans are getting the pay raise they were promised. The Trump administration claimed the corporate tax cuts would eventually lead to wage increases of up to $9,000 a year for ordinary workers. But so far, workers’ wages remain stagnant. Tracking by Americans for Tax Fairness shows that only about 400 out of America’s 5.9 million employers have announced any wage increases or one-time bonuses related to the tax cuts. That’s about 0.007 percent. In fact, real wages have actually declined since last year after accounting for higher gas prices, prescription drug prices, and other rising costs. If that weren’t bad enough, Trump and the GOP now want to come after the services that working families rely on.

Will The Real John Brennan Please Stand Up?

August 22, 2018 Philip Giraldi, Unz.com , , ,
The battle between many former intelligence chiefs and the White House is becoming a gift that keeps on giving to the mass media, which is characteristically deeply immersed in Trump derangement syndrome in attacking the president for his having stripped former CIA Director John Brennan of his security clearance. One of the most ludicrous claims, cited in the Washington Post on Sunday, was that the Trump move was intended to “stifle free speech.” While I am quite prepared to believe a lot of things about the serial maladroit moves and explanations coming out of the White House, how one equates removing Brennan’s security clearance to compromising his ability to speak freely escapes me.

5 Ways Trump’s Clean Power Rollback Strips Away Health, Climate Protections

August 22, 2018 John H. Cushman Jr., Insideclimatenews.org , , , ,
The Trump administration has proposed to replace the nation's landmark climate regulations with a watered-down version that would do next to nothing to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants and wouldn't even set a specific national goal. If the new plan survives legal challenges, it would fulfill a campaign pledge to abort the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. And in combination with the freezing of automotive emissions standards announced a few weeks ago, it would gut any attempt to achieve through federal regulations the goals of the Paris climate agreement, which the Trump administration has also renounced. Given that the new rule does not challenge the finding that greenhouse gas pollution from coal-fired power plants causes global warming and endangers people and the planet, nor court rulings that the Clean Air Act requires the Environmental Protection Agency to bring it under control, the proposal is breathtaking in its embrace of apathy.

How Much Damage are Trump’s Solar Tariffs Doing to the U.S. Industry?

August 21, 2018 Dan Gearino, Insideclimatenews.org , , ,
The tariffs on imported solar panels imposed by the Trump administration six months ago have done little to dampen the booming solar market in the United States. Company executives and industry analysts say that the effects of the tariffs—increased prices for installations that could depress demand for solar projects and lead to thousands of job losses—have largely been cancelled out by other factors. Many developers had stockpiled cheap panels in anticipation of the import fees. China slowed the pace of domestic installations, creating a surplus of cheap panels that could spill into global markets. And U.S. consumers have a big incentive to install solar panels in the next 18 months, before U.S. tax incentives begin to phase out. So far, there's not enough data to tell how much the import fees are altering project costs, although it is clear that there has not been a dramatic shift.

So What Will The Sanctioned Supergroup Do?

August 20, 2018 Pepe Escobar, Atimes.com , ,
Those were the days, during the Cold War 1960s and 1970s, when the earth was actually ruled by rock supergroups – from Cream and Led Zeppelin to Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends – and the post-truth geopolitical remix of the supergroup. Meet The Sanctioned;  a multinational band starring multi-instrumentalists Vladimir Putin (Russia), Xi Jinping (China), Hassan Rouhani (Iran) and Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Turkey). As the whole rock universe knows, The Sanctioned run the relentless risk of being outshined – in the form of multi-layered sanctions – by undisputed glitter solo act Donald Trump (US). The two real virtuosos in the band relish playing in perfect synch. Putin may indulge only the occasional Jimmy Page solo (as in Caspian-launched missiles against Daesh in Syria); he’s more like Keith Emerson invoking the Russian classical composer Mussorgsky.

Manufacturing Consent For War On Iran: Pompeo’s New Iran Action Group

August 18, 2018 Trita Parsi, Informationclearinghouse.info , , , ,
August 16, 2018 "Information Clearing House" -  I wanted to share with you a few thoughts on the announcement of Mike Pompeo’s new Iran Action Group at the State Department. As if the parallels were not strong enough to the regime-change policy on Iraq, the announcement comes almost exactly on the anniversary of the CIA-led coup against Iran’s elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953. One thing stood out from Pompeo’s presser: As usual, it was heavy on accusations and demands, and rather empty on substance. In fact, it was not clear what exactly the group would be doing beyond what already has been announced. But there are reasons to believe that this is an important development. Fissures exist within the Trump administration between Trump himself (who likely does want to pivot to diplomacy with Iran as he did on North Korea) and members of his team (John Bolton, Pompeo and Brian Hook)...

The Trump-Media Logrolling

August 17, 2018 Osama Husseini, Husseini.posthaven.com ,
Today, hundreds of newspapers, at the initiative of the Boston Globe, are purporting to stand up for a free press against Trump's rhetoric. Today also marks exactly one month since I was dragged out of the July 16 Trump-Putin news conference in Helsinki and locked up until the middle of the night. As laid in my cell, I chuckled at the notion that the city was full of billboards proclaiming Finland was the "land of free press". So, I've grown an especially high sensitivity to both goonish behavior toward journalists trying to ask tough questions -- and to those professing they are defending a free press when they are actually engaging in a marketing campaign. As some have noted, the editorials today will likely help Trump whip up support among his base against a monolithic media.
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