Late yesterday and earlier today by me: Trump to Further Curtail Documented Immigration and Gov. Gavin Newsom to End Death Penalty in California and Manafort Sentencing Underway.
Here are some more things in the news today...
William K. Rashbaum at the New York Times: New York Charges Paul Manafort with 16 Crimes; If He's Convicted, Trump Can't Pardon Him. "Paul J. Manafort, [Donald] Trump's former campaign chairman, has been charged in New York with mortgage fraud and more than a dozen other state felonies, the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance, Jr., said Wednesday, an effort to ensure he will still face prison time if Mr. Trump pardons him for his federal crimes." Welp!
[CN: Trans hatred] Chris Johnson at the Washington Blade: DOD Unveils Plan to Initiate Trump Transgender Policy on April 12.
With court orders barring [Donald] Trump from enforcing his transgender military ban out of the way, the Defense Department late Tuesday unveiled its plan to make the policy a reality, announcing it would begin April 12.
A 15-page memo signed by David Norquirst [pdf], who's performing the duties of deputy secretary of defense, spells out the timeline, procedures, and potential exemptions for implementing the plan ordered by Trump and created by former Defense Secretary James Mattis.
As stated on the first page of the memo, the new policy "is effective April 12, 2019." On the date, the policy of open transgender service as implemented June 30, 2016 during the Obama administration will come to an end after nearly three years.
The memo takes great pains to demonstrate the policy isn't a ban because it allows transgender people to enlist, provided they have no diagnosis of gender dysphoria and are willing to serve in their biological sex.
...Transgender advocates shredded the plan as a discriminatory effort to prohibit qualified individuals from joining the armed forces.
Harper Jean Tobin, director of policy for the National Center for Transgender Equality, said in a statement the policy represents a "looming purge" and "an unprecedented step backward in the social and civil progress of our country and our military."
"Throughout our nation's history, we have seen arbitrary barriers in our military replaced with inclusion and equal standards," Tobin said, "This is the first time in American history such a step forward has been reversed, and it is a severe blow to the military and to the nation's values."
There is much, much more at the link. This is a goddamn outrage. It is indecent and cruel. And it is a threat to national security.
[Content Note: Rape apologia]
Ughhhhhhh. "The Senate voted Tuesday to advance [Donald] Trump's judicial nominee Neomi Rao, who has a record of weakening protections for sexual assault survivors and once argued that women could avoid date rape by staying sober." https://t.co/FKU1P3eNX9
— Melissa McEwan (@Shakestweetz) March 13, 2019
Susan Davis at NPR: Speaker Pelosi Revokes Vice President Pence's House Office Space. "House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., has reclaimed office space her predecessor, Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., awarded to Vice President Pence. Republicans gave Pence, a former House member, a first-floor bonus office in the U.S. Capitol shortly after [Donald] Trump was inaugurated in 2017. The vice president rarely used the space, but it was a symbolic gesture of the warm relationship Pence enjoyed with Ryan and the House GOP. ...A placard above the door identifying it as Pence's House office was quietly removed in recent weeks. A House Democratic aide confirmed to NPR that the space will be reassigned." Snicker. So petty. Good.
[CN: Nativism; abuse. Covers entire section.]
Bob Ortega at CNN: ICE Supervisors Sometimes Skip Required Review of Detention Warrants, Emails Show. "Internal emails and other ICE documents he obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, since reviewed by CNN, show that other officers across the five-state region where Oxley worked had improperly signed warrants on behalf of their supervisors — especially on evenings or weekends. Some supervisors even gave their officers pre-signed blank warrants — in effect, illegally handing them the authority to begin the deportation process. ...Two other ICE employees told CNN that they're aware of similar incidents of supervisors elsewhere in the country providing pre-signed blank warrants or telling officers to sign for them without full review, and that the practice is ongoing."
Sam Levin at the Guardian: Vast License Plate Database Used to Track Undocumented Immigrants, Records Show. "The documents acquired by the ACLU show that ICE obtained access to a database with license plate information collected in dozens of counties across the United States — data that helped the agency to track people's locations in real time. Emails revealed that police have also informally given driver information to immigration officers requesting those details in communications that the ACLU said appeared to violate local laws and ICE's own privacy rules. The files, which the ACLU obtained through a records request, have raised fresh concerns about ICE's monitoring of immigrants and the way local police aid the Trump administration's deportation agenda."
[CN: Sexual assault] Tina Vasquez at Rewire.News: In Search of Justice: How DHS PREA Standards Don't Necessarily Protect Immigrants from Assault. "According to an ICE spokesperson, when an allegation of sexual assault or abuse is reported involving an ICE employee or contractor, the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) Office of Inspector General (OIG) has 'the first right of refusal' to investigate an allegation. Investigations declined by OIG are investigated by ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). ...But it is clear that when a PREA investigation launches, there are two sets of interviews: 'one administrative, one criminal,' Gammill said in an email. 'One investigation can conclude in a finding sooner than the other, and the conclusions can differ.'"
Take a minute and read these quotes.
It's easy to forget after 2 years of blustering and lies, but the only real evidence of bias was never about Trump. It's how Rudy Giuliani knew before Americans did that Jim Comey was going to do what he did. https://t.co/umomwWbXMT
— Philippe Reines (@PhilippeReines) March 12, 2019
Um, this is how it is supposed to work. Prosecutors look at the law and decide whether a person should be charged. That's exactly what the Obama DOJ did.
Put another way, would @realDonaldTrump want an FBI agent deciding if, say, Jared Kushner should be charged, or AG Barr? https://t.co/l8KfmldtEd
— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) March 13, 2019
Cary Aspinwall, Ariana Giorgi, and Dom DiFurio at the Dallas News: Several Boeing 737 Max 8 Pilots in U.S. Complained About Suspected Safety Flaw. "Pilots repeatedly voiced safety concerns about the Boeing 737 Max 8 to federal authorities, with one captain calling the flight manual 'inadequate and almost criminally insufficient' several months before Sunday's Ethiopian Air crash that killed 157 people, an investigation by The Dallas Morning News found. The News found five complaints about the Boeing model in a federal database where pilots can voluntarily report about aviation incidents without fear of repercussions. The complaints are about the safety mechanism cited in preliminary reports about an October Boeing 737 Max 8 crash in Indonesia that killed 189." Goddamn.
[CN: Extreme weather; moving GIF at link] Brian Kahn at Earther: The Central U.S. Is About to Get Hit with a Bomb Cyclone.
The country's midsection is about to be hit by a rare, potentially record setting bomb cyclone that will bring everything from rain to snow to hurricane-force winds and could leave severe flooding in its wake from Texas to Minnesota. So if you live in that area, listen up!
The mayhem is already beginning as moisture streams from the Pacific into the Southwest, where winter storm warnings are in effect as of Tuesday afternoon. Up to two feet of snow could fall in New Mexico's Sangre de Cristo Mountains, accompanied by winds whipping across ridge tops at speeds of up to 75 mph, according to the National Weather Service. That alone would be pretty wild, but it's only a precursor to Wednesday's weather mayhem.
As the storm pushes inland, its pressure — which drops as storms get stronger — is expected to dip into the range of 970 millibars. That's roughly on par with an average Category 2 Atlantic hurricane and could challenge the all-time low pressure record for Kansas. The drop will be driven by the storm's winds as they wrap around its core in a counter clockwise direction, bringing moist, warm air from the Gulf of Mexico in contact with cold air from the Upper Midwest and Canada.
The movement of the winds is called cyclonic, and pressure is expected to drop more than 24 millibars in 24 hours, which means this storm is shaping up to fulfill the criteria for a rare inland bomb cyclone. It could even take on a hurricane-like appearance.
Fucking hell!
Labels: climate change, ICE, judiciary, Manafort, Mike Pence Is Terrible, military, Nancy Pelosi, nativism, republicans, resistance, Today in Rape Culture, Today in Transphobia, Trump, Trump-Pence, We Resist