His first day on the job was yesterday, as “acting” head of the entire department. Normally an acting director is someone who’s already been at the agency for awhile, knows how things work, and can step into the director’s role in a pinch when there’s a vacancy to keep things running smoothly. (E.g., the deputy director.) The whole point of having an acting director is to have someone experienced do the job while the president looks for a permanent replacement. If the president ultimately decides he wants to bring in a permanent replacement who has no experience, that’s A-OK: Just follow the Constitution, submit his or her name to the Senate, and wait for confirmation. That’s the way things are supposed to work.
So how did we end up with a director at USCIS who has no experience but who also hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate?
Simple answer: The White House is using procedural chicanery to install Cuccinelli as acting director because they know he’ll be rejected by the Senate. This is, in other words, a blatant end-run around the Constitution’s advice-and-consent requirement for principal officers, because a Republican Senate won’t do the president’s bidding. If I were McConnell, I’d sue.
USCIS said in the announcement Monday that Cuccinelli would become acting director, but later clarified to POLITICO that his official title is “principal deputy director.”
The newly created position will allow Cuccinelli to run the agency without dismissing USCIS deputy Mark Koumans, according to one current and one former DHS official familiar with the plan. The officials expected the administration to make the “principal deputy director” position the top role in the department, which would allow Cuccinelli to become acting director under a provision of the Federal Vacancies Reform Act.
To see what’s going on here you’re better off reading law professor Steve Vladeck’s short but useful post at Lawfare on the loophole in the Federal Vacancies Reform Act that Trump is exploiting. The FVRA says that if the director of an agency resigns, as happened with USCIS, then the president can choose one of three temporary replacements while he looks for a permanent successor: (1) The director’s “first assistant,” i.e. the deputy director; (2) someone who already holds a job in the executive branch *and* was confirmed by the Senate for that position; (3) someone who’s been at the agency for at least 90 of the past 365 days. Those options are true to the spirit of the choice I described above. You can name someone “acting” director without Senate confirmation so long as they have experience, or you can name someone without experience so long as they have Senate confirmation. But it needs to be one or the other. You can’t lack both.
Cuccinelli lacks both. So how’d he land this job?
The answer, says Vladeck, is in the excerpt I quoted above. Trump essentially elevated Cuccinelli to the role of “first assistant” to the vacant directorship by creating the position of “principal deputy director” for him, something that can be done in this case via regulation rather than congressional statute. By doing that, he bumped the actual deputy director, Mark Koumans, down a notch on the bureaucratic ladder. With Cuccinelli now Koumans’s superior, he became the new “first assistant” to the vacant director — even though he never actually worked for the old director — and thus, for purposes of the FVRA, he can now be named acting director of the agency. Which, under the FVRA, could keep him in place for the next 210 days as a “temporary” appointee lacking any Senate confirmation.
And if Trump decides to ignore that 210-day limit and keep Cuccinelli on indefinitely, who’s going to stop him?
The entire point of this maneuver is to flout the constitutional requirement for Senate confirmation and appoint someone who’s accountable exclusively to the president. We went through this last year when Trump pulled a similar move at the DOJ with Matt Whitaker, appointing him to be Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff after Whitaker had said some skeptical things about the Mueller investigation on television and then eventually elevating Whitaker to the role of acting AG after the axe finally fell on Sessions. At least in that case Whitaker worked for Sessions and the DOJ for a year before being named acting AG. Cuccinelli is coming into USCIS completely cold, with Trump not even making a pretense that he’s interested in finding a permanent director anytime soon. What’s more, he’s doing this after members of his own party told him emphatically through the media that Cuccinelli would be DOA in a confirmation hearing because of his attacks on establishmentarians like Mitch McConnell in the past. Not only is he unconfirmed, in other words, he’s unconfirmable. The Senate has given its advice to the president informally and they do not consent to Cuccinelli’s appointment. His nomination has been effectively rejected. Trump doesn’t care, so long as he has a loophole in the FVRA he can exploit.
Given how blatant POTUS is being about dodging the constitutional “advice and consent” requirement *and* the FVRA’s “experience or Senate confirmation” statutory requirement, it’s a cinch that Cuccinelli’s appointment will be challenged in court. Question for legal eagles, then: Who’s best positioned to have standing here? I assume McConnell won’t sue no matter how annoyed he is, but wouldn’t someone affected by a USCIS policy conceivably have standing to sue on grounds that Cuccinelli’s orders lack the force of law because he was never lawfully appointed? Exit quotation:
Romney on Cuccinelli named acting director of USCIS to skirt sure doom in Senate confirmation vote: "I prefer votes in the Senate for positions of that nature”
It has become increasingly apparent that the major Silicon Valley tech companies hold a liberal bias against conservatives, and though those firms routinely deny it, the mask of unbiased nonpartisanship has continued to slip as these firms receive pushback for their one-sided ideological activities. The latest tech firm to let the mask slip is Google,…
A plan struck by President Trump between the United States and Mexico to help stem soaring levels of illegal immigration at the southern border will not impact an amnesty pipeline for unaccompanied minors and their illegal alien relatives — a tool often used by the MS-13 Gang to grow membership.
A recent deal Trump has settled with Mexican officials will allow the U.S. to return adult border crossers and the children they arrive at the southern border with to Mexico while they await their asylum and immigration proceedings.
Effectively, as Breitbart News has reported, the deal is likely to end the mass catch and release of illegal adult border crossers and the children they bring with them.
Unaffected by the deal, though, is an amnesty pipeline for Unaccompanied Alien Children (UACs) and the illegal alien sponsors and family members they are often released to in the U.S. that was out in place by a GOP-Democrat-approved spending bill months ago.
“The UACs are still going to be allowed in and even worse, because of the spending bill that passed a few months ago,” Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan told SiriusXM’s Breitbart News Tonight.
LISTEN:
The spending package, approved by Republicans and Democrats in Congress in February, prevents federal immigration officials from deporting any illegal alien who has contact with an unaccompanied minor that has been resettled in the U.S. after crossing the southern border.
Federal officials have repeatedly noted how the UAC program has been widely used by the MS-13 gang to import more gang members into the country.
Last year, New York City Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official Angel Melendez said there are roughly 22,000 UAC “potential recruits” who are resettled across the country every year out of about 40,000 total UACs. These are mostly young men trafficked across the southern border from Central America, especially El Salvador.
According to Vaughan, in about 80 percent of cases, an unaccompanied minor is released into the U.S. to an illegal alien sponsor. In the majority of those cases, the sponsor is a family member.
Illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has soared to record levels not seen since President Bill Clinton. Last month, alone, more than 132,000 border apprehensions were made and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has previously admitted that all adult border crossers arriving with children are being released into the interior of the country. At current illegal immigration levels, researchers project there to be more than a million illegal crossings by the end of the year.
John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.
Blexit founder Candace Owens slammed celebrities who threaten to boycott states that pass legislation prohibiting women from getting an abortion after their child’s heartbeat is detected.
Owens offered her remarks at Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) Young Women’s Leadership Summit in Dallas, Texas.
“I aspire to that much narcissism to think that [people] think that if I don’t show up today, then people should put laws in place,” quipped Owens regarding celebrities who threaten to boycott states in reaction to pro-life “heartbeat” legislation.
“Nobody cares what you think, nobody cares where you live, nobody cares where you work currently,” continued Owens, “The idea that [celebrities] are these mythical gods that everyone needs to respond to according to their opinions is wrong — it’s dying.”
“And personally, I think real estate will go up,” said Owens, “If I knew that Chelsea Handler and Alyssa Milano weren’t going to be there, I’d consider living there, in those states.”
Owens kicked off TPUSA’s Young Women’s Leadership Summit on Thursday in Dallas, Texas, where about 1,500 young women gathered from all over the country to hear from prominent figures in the conservative movement.
Former state legislator Joe Morrissey, who in 2014 was charged with sex with a minor, won Tuesday night’s Democratic primary for Virginia’s 16th Senate District, defeating an incumbent senator who had the support of Gov. Ralph Northam (D.).
Morrissey, who served in the House of Delegates earlier in the decade, defeated Democratic state senator Rosalyn Dance by over ten points. Dance had touted an endorsement from the scandal-plagued Northam and campaigned with the governor in the final weekend of the campaign.
"The Governor strongly supports Senator Dance for reelection," a campaign adviser for Northam told the Washington Post.
In 2015, Morrissey pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for contributing to the delinquency of a minor after he, who was in his fifties at the time, was accused of having sexual relations with a 17-year-old receptionist at his law office when Virginia’s age of consent is 18. He would later marry the receptionist and they have two children.
During the court proceedings, Morrissey also faced reprimands from bar prosecutor for allegations his "defense amounted to a ‘fraud perpetrated on the court.’" He would eventually have his law license revoked over the allegations, marking the second time Morrissey had been disbarred.
Despite the scandal and ensuing legal battle, Morrissey continued to serve in the legislature during a six-month jail term, and eventually he ran for Richmond mayor in 2016, coming in third.
He also created a stir when he and his wife and former receptionist Myrna took photographs in "old-timey" antebellum outfits, despite the fact that black women like Myrna were enslaved in Virginia before the Civil War.
Launching his campaign earlier this year, Morrissey vowed to advocate for a variety of progressive issues, if voters sent him back to the state legislature, including a higher minimum wage and marijuana decriminalization. He also focused his campaign on tackling local issues such as fighting potholes and lowering electric bills.
Morrissey will almost certainly win, since the seat has consistently been won by Democrats in previous general elections.
“From my standpoint, I don’t even know why we have federal elected officials,” said Uvalde, Texas, Mayor Don McLaughlin in an exclusive interview with CR.
Uvalde, Texas, is a small town of 17,000 inhabitants, and they are now overrun by illegal immigrants and an international cartel smuggling operation. Uvalde is 40-60 miles from the border, but it might as well be right at the border. “We are in no man’s land. The state is not doing anything; the federal government is not doing anything,” said the mayor, who is begging the politicians to get involved. “We are getting nothing. I’ve lived here all my life and have never seen anything like this. The people in the communities are getting scared. What is coming that we don’t see? Who knows? People up north and in D.C. have no clue what is going on here. They don’t realize that these people are not being screened for diseases. We’re fed up.”
Situated at the crossroads of major highways coming up from border towns in the Laredo and Del Rio border sectors, Uvalde has now become a dumping ground for migrants coming north. And they are not just coming from Central America. Del Rio has received hundreds of African migrants in recent weeks. Uvalde has a Border Patrol holding facility, and according to McLaughlin, whenever it is full, if the city doesn’t take charge, many immigrants are released in a Walmart parking lot. Mayor McLaughlin said his city must pick up the tab to have them bused to San Antonio. On Friday, local media reported how San Antonio has now received hundreds of African migrants.
“In Uvalde, Border Patrol told us if we didn’t have buses ready right at the holding facility, they would have released them in a parking lot at a Walmart or a Stripes. This is what’s happening in outlying areas, but thanks to our working relationship with Border Patrol, we make sure to have buses ready. We just don’t have the facilities for them. We have to pay for these buses out of our pockets, and are citizens are mad.”
But it’s the people they don’t see who concern residents of Uvalde the most. “In addition to those being released in parking lots to get bused into San Antonio, what we are really concerned about is the increased foot traffic to our community. We have checkpoints on highway 90 and 83. The migrants are walking around the checkpoints. Now we are starting to see more calls to police of people walking through the neighborhoods, [of] finding car doors open [and] storerooms open. The Border Patrol is seeing this on their cameras, but they just don’t have the agents to respond. The foot traffic around the checkpoints has increased by 100 percent.”
McLaughlin is worried about crime. “With the Border Patrol so busy with the family units, we are seeing an increase in the bad guys. Our DPS and local authorities in surrounding communities are having more car chases. When they crash the cars, all of the smugglers bail out. Border Patrol can’t always respond, so we need to take officers and deputies to track down these people. Three weeks ago, we had a group come right in middle of town, they bailed out and we had to put all our schools on lockdown. We caught all eight individuals, but it took all day.”
In addition, McLaughlin said that there are often dozens of illegal immigrants piled on freight trains coming into his town. He said Border Patrol often lacks the resources to to check the freight trains, but recently they have caught as many as 35 in a single group. “These are the bad guys with criminal records. According to Border Patrol, 99 percent of these guys on those trains are bad guys and have criminal records. They can’t get in any other way, so they’re sneaking in on freight trains.”
McLaughlin noted that he called his Republican congressman, William Hurd, as well as the two Texas senators, the governor, and the state attorney general, but can’t get any meaningful response from them. “I don’t hear any of them prioritizing this issue. We had a citizen last week who was just on his property right where they stopped the freight train. Some of the illegals got off the train, got on his property, and confronted him. One of them started to get aggressive and the guy threatened him. That night he and his family couldn’t sleep. His grandkids won’t even come over any more to swim in the pool unless he sits there with a shotgun. That’s how much traffic we’re getting here right in Uvalde. He’s a farmer who’s been here all his life and is now thinking of moving.”
“There are ranchers around here seeing more break-ins and vehicles being stolen. It’s just a sad situation. We’ve dealt with immigration all our life, but we never had a problem of this magnitude. And most of them who used to come through were congenial people and we didn’t have to worry. Now they are aggressive. Some are coming to hunting camps and robbing the hunters.”
I heard a similar story earlier this year from county officials in New Mexico on how they see a huge change in the attitude of some of the migrants coming in through this wave from the past, even though they’ve been dealing with illegal immigration for many years.
Then of course there are the drugs. “Border Patrol is so busy with the families that the cartels are increasing the flow of narcotics with impunity,” warns McLaughlin.
Finally, there are the health issues. “They are taking them into a 10×10 room and asking them if they are OK. They have no idea what diseases they are carrying. We had two people quarantined here in Uvalde with the mumps, and there might be a third case. They are not doing anything to check these people for other diseases.”
Hidalgo County, Texas, already has 46 confirmed cases of mumps in the country. As I reported before, while Border Patrol screens out those in need of triage, there is no mechanism to ensure that all these migrants who don’t exhibit apparent symptoms of diseases in front of them are safe to be released.
Now, with the influx of Africans, particularly into the Del Rio Sector, the mayor said there is widespread concern of other diseases such as Ebola.
The small-town mayor is simply stupefied that major Texas state and federal politicians of both parties are not making a bigger deal of what’s going on. “Why don’t they hold a press conference attracting national attention? It’s going to take someone being killed in our community before we get the national attention.”
The tragedy of towns like Uvalde and similar areas in Texas is that they have a great history of doing immigration the right way. “We’re close to 90 percent Hispanic, and our community does not want these people in town. They get very upset they are being released here. They ought to be doing it like their grandparents did. They did it legally. These people are mad as hell.”
President Donald Trump is claiming a big win with Mexico after the country agreed to send 6,000 troops to block migrants from crossing through. In return, Trump dropped his tariff threat. Ana Quintana of The Heritage Foundation joins us to analyze what happened. Read the interview, posted below, or listen on the podcast:
We also cover these stories:
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler, says the Justice Department is handing over more files from Mueller report.
The Supreme Court has rejected a challenge to a law requiring that gun silencers be registered.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his government would ban single-use plastics by 2021
Kate Trinko: In an interview Monday, President Donald Trump made it clear that he thinks he just pulled off a major win through his negotiations with Mexico. Here’s what he told CNBC.
Donald Trump: But I just want to say to the United States Chamber of Commerce, if we didn’t have tariffs, we wouldn’t have made a deal with Mexico. We got everything we wanted and we’re going to be a great partner to Mexico now because now they respect us.
They didn’t even respect us. They couldn’t believe how stupid we were with what’s going on, where somebody comes in from Mexico and just walks right into our country and we’re powerless to do anything, whereas they have very strong immigration laws.
They don’t have to take anybody. They can say, “Out, you get.” So we’re going to be essentially using, to a large extent, the very powerful immigration laws of Mexico.
And Mexico wants to do a good job. They’re moving 6,000 soldiers to their southern border. Do you think they agreed to do that before? And they’re paying them.
They’re moving 6,000 soldiers to their southern border. That means that people from Guatemala, the people from Honduras and El Salvador, in theory, if they do it right, they’re not going to be able to get through.
Nobody’s going to be able to get through. And then they’re also going to protect our southern border.
Trinko: Joining us to discuss the president’s negotiations is Ana Quintana. She’s the senior policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation who focuses on Latin America and the Western Hemisphere.
Ana, what do you think? Is Trump right that this was a major win for him?
Ana Quintana: I think this new deal with Mexico is a huge deal. It’s a pretty big win.
I think it’s significant what the Mexicans have agreed to do. Time will tell if they actually fulfill their obligations and they actually have the capacity to do so.
But they actually now have a timeline by which they need to deliver. They have measurable outcomes they need to achieve. So yeah, this is big.
Trinko: And for our listeners who haven’t been following this as closely, what exactly did Mexico agree to?
Quintana: Mexico has agreed to strengthen their southern border, their border specifically with Guatemala. It’s about a 600-mile-long border. They’ve agreed to deploy 6,000 National Guard troops.
This National Guard is a new unit that was created by the current president back in February. And the National Guard is a fusion of army, navy, and federal law enforcement. So it’s a mixed bag of Mexican security officials.
They will now be strengthening their southern border to act as a deterrent against Central Americans crossing the border.
Mexico has also agreed to deepen collaboration with the United States on countering trafficking networks inside of Mexico, specifically the trafficking networks and drug cartels that are involved with the moving of migrants and human smuggling and human trafficking.
I think that’s an incredibly important point because that allows the U.S. to increase oversight, increase presence within Mexico and within Mexican government institutions to specifically look at which cartels are doing this dirty work and how better to map this threat not just in Mexico but also inside the United States and in Central America.
A few weeks ago, also, there was an agreement to send a few hundred CBP officials to Guatemala. So that’s another significant uptick in presence.
What else has been agreed upon? Let me see because there was just so much that was done in this new agreement.
Also, the U.S. and Mexico have agreed that if the numbers do not significantly decline within the next 90 days, both countries will meet again to revisit this agreement and see what can be fixed.
But more broadly than that, I think you now see the Mexican government looking at the issue of illegal immigration from Central America as a national security challenge. Before, they would view it as a humanitarian issue.
I think the shift in paradigm, the shift in perspective will now enable and strengthen Mexico’s resolve to really deal with this.
Daniel Davis: So a week ago the Mexico’s foreign minister was in D.C. saying, “We’re not going to obey your commands. We’re not going to fold.”
Basically, they complied after it was clear that Trump was going to drop these tariffs.
What do you think made them do that? It kind of makes them look weak, but clearly, they thought it was worth it for them.
Quintana: I don’t necessarily think that [Marcelo] Ebrard, that the foreign minister said that. …
With the U.S. media with the way that things are being translated—I think what Ebrard was saying was that the tariffs were being put on the table and that they wanted to come to negotiate in peace. And this is Mexican typical diplomatic speak, right?
If you look at this from a Google translate perspective, which is what The New York Times and others have been doing, you’re going to misinterpret, you’re going to lose a lot of meaning rather.
So Ebrard and other Cabinet-level officials from Mexico spent all of last week inside of the United States negotiating. It was a high-level summit.
But I don’t necessarily think that it makes the Mexicans look weak. I think is that it finally gets Mexico to highlight a few inconsistencies and hypocrisy within their own policy.
Central American migration through Mexico, even though it ends up in the United States, Mexico by not deterring it is facilitating it and they’re creating problems for the United States. So if they actually want to be a partner to America, they need to stop it.
Trinko: And do you think the threat of tariffs is what drove this agreement to come into place?
Quintana: I’m not a fan of using tariffs. … The use of tariffs, the use of an economic penalty for a noneconomic issue, particularly with a country like Mexico that is a partner country, it’s unwise long term. But I think something pretty significant was achieved.
And I got to give the president credit on the fact that he was able to pull this off because, frankly, I don’t see many other tools in the U.S.’ toolkit that really could have achieved this.
Davis: The New York Times reported over the weekend:
The deal to avert tariffs that President Trump announced with great fanfare on Friday night consists largely of actions that Mexico had already promised to take in prior discussions with United States over the past several months, according to officials from both countries who are familiar with the negotiations.
President Trump took issue with that and he tweeted:
When will the Failing New York Times admit that their front page story on the New Mexico deal at the Border is a FRAUD and nothing more than a badly reported ‘hit job’ on me, since that has been going on since the first day I announced for the presidency!
So, Ana, is The New York Times correct that Mexico had already committed to do this and that Trump is just claiming victory?
Quintana: No. … One point that I forgot to bring up was the expansion of the “Remain in Mexico” policy where Mexico will agree to hold more Central Americans that are applying for asylum in the United States.
So there are small elements of previous agreements that are now a component of this new agreement.
But again, this goes back to The New York Times not having people on their staff that speak Spanish because within that article there are many factual errors. I read the article and I was like, “Oh, my God, this is completely wrong.”
You just watched the foreign minister’s press conference directly after the agreement was announced and you see that there are massive, massive childlike problems here. There’s just blatant lies.
And so no. I think this is a significant escalation, this is an exponential increase in cooperation between both countries and Mexico’s willingness to do more.
Trinko: So Mexico, they came out on Monday, they’re planning to evaluate whether this worked. You mentioned 90 days, they also said 45 days. Do you think this new agreement will actually deter people from coming to the border? What do you think?
Quintana: Yes. … If you are part of a trafficking network, it’s your job to bring people across the border illegally from Mexico to Guatemala, right?
This border is 500 miles, almost 600 miles of jungle. There’s barely any military or government presence there. There’s barely any presence there from the Guatemalan side and now you hear there’s going to be 6,000 new troops there at the border making sure people don’t cross.
That’s a deterrent factor, right?
If you now know that the Mexican government and the U.S. are increasing collaboration and mapping out these trafficking networks and undercutting their illicit financing mechanisms and undercutting so many of the other kind of factors and conditions that allow these people to thrive. Yeah, this is going to do a lot.
Are we going to see an immediate decline? I think it’s going to take some time. I don’t necessarily think 45 days is a sufficient window. I think 90 days is better because it gives you about three months to really see things being actionable and put into place.
But yeah, I think this is going to lead in the right direction.
Davis: And how do you think this will affect the U.S.-Mexico relationship in the longer term? Obviously, we want to see them as an ally. They’re our neighbor. And if you have to deal with the country being on your border forever you want to have good relations.
Obviously, this kind of drastic measure, the negotiation style, you don’t want it to be normative long term because that could be destructive.
So how do you see this fitting into a longer term relationship with Mexico?
Quintana: That’s a really good question. I think I agree with you to some degree that yes, you don’t necessarily want to make this commonplace. You don’t necessarily want it to be that bilateral relations are governed by threat of whatever to achieve X goal. I think now is a good opportunity.
And I think this also is not the defining factor of the bilateral relationship, nor is it the defining factor of the bilateral relationship throughout the Trump administration.
Throughout these past two years there’ve actually been a lot of positive diplomatic engagement. A lot of positive economic engagement as well.
The fact that USMCA was finally agreed upon, the Mexican Congress is about to pass it next week. That’s what they’ve declared to do.
I think there’s a lot of positives that are happening behind the scenes, which, thankfully, allow for, at times, some tough love to be implemented.
I just do hope that let’s say if the 90-day period does come up and there are some shortfalls on the Mexican side, that it’s not going to be for a lack of willingness from the Mexicans.
And I hope that there is a bit more of understanding from the U.S. government because we can’t just keep on being a hammer at this. Because you’re right, we share a 2,000-mile-long border. We are partners, we’re trade allies. There’s just such a deep relationship there.
Trinko: You recently went to El Salvador, which, of course, is one of the countries where migrants are coming from and coming to the U.S.-Mexico border.
Besides the fact that you heard a gunfight outside your hotel, which you detailed to us right before we recorded, did you get any insights into the migrant crisis from your time in El Salvador?
Quintana: Yeah. It wasn’t so much a gunfight because the gunfire was only going one direction. But who knows what happened there, but whatever. …
It’s really difficult to explain just how economically, how poor the economic conditions in that country are and just how dire the circumstances are.
I was talking to one person and we were talking about the issue of just clean water and how there are so many villages throughout El Salvador where people are literally drinking water where fertilizer and other companies and other waste treatment facilities are literally dumping that water into wells. And that’s the water that people are drinking.
And now, there’re new generations of villages of people with awful kidney issues. … These are people. And then there’s no medical care.
There are children who have died on the way to hospitals because there’s simply no bridges to join two cities or to connect two cities together.
And there are no chances at better improving yourself economically because the opportunities simply are not there. And that’s not even factoring in the violence and the insecurity crisis.
… The situation is quite dire and I think there’s a new possibility now in El Salvador for the conditions to actually improve.
Their new president was recently elected. I mean you guys, Daniel, you were able to interview him recently and I think he gave his perspective on what he wants to do in the country to help relieve the migration crisis. To help improve the economic conditions and security conditions in the country.
One of the first areas that he’s tackling is really government corruption. He, so far, I think, is saving the country about $5 million a year in firing employees who were just employees because they were relatives of the previous administration.
There are awful amounts of nepotism going on in that country. … I think it’s really hard to even describe how bad the situation is.
Trinko: Well, thank you so much for joining us, Ana. Definitely some sad food for thought with the description of the wells in El Salvador. I didn’t realize it was that bad. Thank you for joining us and sharing.
(Getty Images/Yawar Nazir)
A Florida strawberry farm has agreed to pay civil penalties and back pay to qualified U.S. workers to settle a claim it discriminated against American workers by employing temporary visa workers, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Tuesday.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D., N.Y.) compared pro-life beliefs to racism and suggested the pro-life viewpoint is "not acceptable" during an interview with the Des Moines Register.
Gillibrand’s comments came in response to a question about if having a litmus test for judicial nominees would threaten judicial independence. The senator has promised to only appoint justices who would uphold Roe v. Wade.
"I think there’s some issues that have such moral clarity that we have as a society decided that the other side is not acceptable. Imagine saying that it’s okay to appoint a judge who’s racist or anti-Semitic or homophobic. Asking someone to appoint someone who takes away basic human rights of any group of people in America—I don’t think that those are political issues anymore," Gillibrand said.
"And we believe in this country in the separation of church and state, and I respect the rights of every American to hold their religious beliefs true to themselves, but our country and our Constitution has always demanded that we have a separation of church and state," Gillibrand continued. "And all these efforts by President Trump and other ultra-radical conservative judges and justices to impose their faith on Americans is contrary to our Constitution and that’s what this is. And so I believe that for all of these issues, they are not issues that there is a fair other side. There is no moral equivalency when you come to racism, and I do not believe there is a moral equivalency when it comes to changing laws that deny women reproductive freedom."
Gillibrand said last month there is room for pro-life voters in the Democratic Party, but argued "imposing faith on other people" was "against Christian faith." She also committed to preventing states from passing anti-abortion laws as president, and called President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointments "anti-choice extremists."
Gillibrand has struggled to gain traction in the Democratic primary, only meeting the donor threshold to qualify for the first debate earlier this week, after all the other female Democratic candidates had already qualified.
Former Vice President Joe Biden is like a human wrecking ball. He has to be the most reckless, off-the-cuff candidate in recent history. The pundits may claim he’s a “gut politician,” but we all know the man cannot be trusted to speak words in front of other humans. Biden’s remarks at a campaign rally Tuesday…
