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Sunday, Mar. 11, 2018
All Gave Some~Some Gave All
*****
Thomas Cole: Artist, Romantic, Anti-Jacobin
The American manufacturing renaissance is still defying expectations.
Nonfarm payrolls increase by 313,000 in February vs. 200,000 est.
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Nonfarm payrolls rose by 313,000 in February while the unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent, the lowest since December 2000.
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Wage growth was muted, however, with average hourly earnings up 2.6 percent on an annualized basis, 0.2 percentage points below expectations.
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Stock market futures surged following the Bureau of Labor Statistics report.
Jeff Cox| @JeffCoxCNBCcom
Nonfarm payrolls increase by 313,000 in February The economy added 313,000 jobs in February, crushing expectations, while the unemployment rate remained at 4.1 percent, according to a Labor Department report Friday that could help quell inflation fears.
Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting nonfarm payroll growth of 200,000 and the unemployment rate to decline one-tenth of a percent to 4 percent.
An increase in the labor force participation rate to its highest level since September 2017 helped keep the headline unemployment number steady, as the number of those counted as not in the workforce tumbled by 653,000 to just over 95 million.
The total counted as "employed" in the household survey surged by 785,000 to a record 155.2 million.
Economists surveyed by Reuters had been expecting nonfarm payroll growth of 200,000 and the unemployment rate to decline one-tenth of a percent to 4 percent.
An increase in the labor force participation rate to its highest level since September 2017 helped keep the headline unemployment number steady, as the number of those counted as not in the workforce tumbled by 653,000 to just over 95 million.
The total counted as "employed" in the household survey surged by 785,000 to a record 155.2 million.
A separate measure that takes into account those out of the workforce and the underemployed — sometimes referred to as the "real" unemployment rate — held steady at 8.2 percent.
Stocks surged following the report, with the Dow industrials opening more than 150 points higher after being slightly negative before the news.
"The underlying economic growth is quite strong, but there's no real pressures from a wages and inflation standpoint," said Greg Peters, senior investment officer at PGIM Fixed Income. "It's very good for risk assets."
Construction jobs led the way, with 61,000 new positions, followed by retail and professional and business services (50,000 apiece), manufacturing (31,000) and financial activities (28,000). Health care added 19,000 while mining saw 9,000 new jobs.
"The jobs streak remains intact, and it's punctuating what has been a tremendous start to the year," said Mike Loewengart, vice president of investment strategy at E*Trade.
Investors were watching the report closely not only for clues about job growth but also whether wage pressures were continuing to build. Wage growth came in less than expected, rising 0.1 percent for the month and 2.6 percent on an annualized basis.
The average work week rose by 0.1 hours to 34.5 hours.
The surge in job creation coming without an accompanying rise in wage pressures fits in well with the Wall Street hopes of a "Goldilocks" economy.
"The labor market tightens but wage growth moderated. Good news for both sides of the street, Main Street and Wall Street," said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial.
In addition to the big job growth, previous months' counts were revised substantially higher. December went from 160,000 to 175,000 while January saw a boost from the initially reported 200,000 to 239,000. That brings the three-month average to 242,000.
The February report was the biggest beat against expectations since December 2009, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
Stocks sold off aggressively a month ago after January's payrolls report showed average hourly earnings rose 2.8 percent annually, the biggest gain since June 2009.
Multiple Federal Reserve officials have said recently they see the jobs market at or even beyond full employment. The unemployment rate was last this low in December 2000. However, sustained wage growth has been absent, keeping the Fed on a pace of consistent but gradual rate hikes.
Stocks surged following the report, with the Dow industrials opening more than 150 points higher after being slightly negative before the news.
"The underlying economic growth is quite strong, but there's no real pressures from a wages and inflation standpoint," said Greg Peters, senior investment officer at PGIM Fixed Income. "It's very good for risk assets."
Construction jobs led the way, with 61,000 new positions, followed by retail and professional and business services (50,000 apiece), manufacturing (31,000) and financial activities (28,000). Health care added 19,000 while mining saw 9,000 new jobs.
"The jobs streak remains intact, and it's punctuating what has been a tremendous start to the year," said Mike Loewengart, vice president of investment strategy at E*Trade.
Investors were watching the report closely not only for clues about job growth but also whether wage pressures were continuing to build. Wage growth came in less than expected, rising 0.1 percent for the month and 2.6 percent on an annualized basis.
The average work week rose by 0.1 hours to 34.5 hours.
The surge in job creation coming without an accompanying rise in wage pressures fits in well with the Wall Street hopes of a "Goldilocks" economy.
"The labor market tightens but wage growth moderated. Good news for both sides of the street, Main Street and Wall Street," said Quincy Krosby, chief market strategist at Prudential Financial.
In addition to the big job growth, previous months' counts were revised substantially higher. December went from 160,000 to 175,000 while January saw a boost from the initially reported 200,000 to 239,000. That brings the three-month average to 242,000.
The February report was the biggest beat against expectations since December 2009, according to Bespoke Investment Group.
Stocks sold off aggressively a month ago after January's payrolls report showed average hourly earnings rose 2.8 percent annually, the biggest gain since June 2009.
Multiple Federal Reserve officials have said recently they see the jobs market at or even beyond full employment. The unemployment rate was last this low in December 2000. However, sustained wage growth has been absent, keeping the Fed on a pace of consistent but gradual rate hikes.
It is so strange that the same liberals who were silent about anti-Semitism during the eight years of Obama, the most anti-Semitic administration in my lifetime, will come up with any lame example in an attempt to label the Trump administration as hating Jews.
The latest sick try involved the Huffington Post, which has a history of anti-Semitism, calling the use of the word “globalist” by Mick Mulvaney in reference to parting economic advisor Gary Cohn, an anti-Semitic code word.
It was very obvious that Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) used the term globalist as the opposite of Donald Trump’s “America First” policies. Heck I have used it in that context, but of course, the liberal Trump haters dug up a rare anti-Semitic use to trash the administration.
According to the Huffington Post writers Nina Golgowski and Luke O’Brienwho at times quoted Jacob Sugarman of Alternet who first came up with the Mick Mulvaney lie:
The term “globalist” was used to describe an outgoing Trump administration official during Wednesday’s White House press briefing, raising eyebrows on social media because the term is increasingly used in xenophobic and anti-Semitic contexts.
The word came up when a reporter asked press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders whether a similar candidate will take the place of the outgoing director of President Donald Trump’s National Economic Council, Gary Cohn, who is Jewish.
“He was a noted free trader, a globalist. Will the president seek another globalist, another free trader?” Fox News reporter John Roberts asked. [Note John Roberts works for FNC, so the Huffington Post was trying tto kill two birds with one slander].
Its use also came one day after Mick Mulvaney, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, used the word “globalist,” in quotations, to describe Cohn in a statement that was posted by his department on Twitter.
According to these fakakta meshuggenehs using globalist in quotations is an anti-Semitic buzz word. What putzes! (since they are such Jewish experts let them figure out the Yiddish but it’s not nice).
There are too many anti-Semitic code words in today’s vernacular, and as someone who includes Jewish issues as part of his blog content I have been called them all. The most common ones are “neocon” “international bankers” “rich people from metropolitan areas” or cosmopolitan areas (this was an Obama favorite). It was vice.com who decided the terms “Global Special Interests,” or “globalist’ was an anti-Semitic buzzword. But as someone who had been called almost every anti-Semitic term in the book, the haters missed slamming me with the globalist charge.
It’s ironic that Huffington Post, whose editorials are anti-Semitic on a regular basis, would dream of labeling anyone else as a Jew hater.
One of its columnists, M.J. Rosenberg, is so anti-Semitic he was thrown out of Media Matters. Rosenberg is famous for using anti-Semitic buzzwords portraying both Israel and American Jews as warmongers and claiming that Jews control the media and government. Rosenberg’s most famous line was claiming that anyone who supports Israel was an “Israel-firster” more loyal to Israel than the United States. He eventually dropped the term but kept the fake charge.
If Huffington Post is so concerned about anti-Semitism why would they invite M.J. Rosenberg to infect their pages?
In 2014 the Huffington Post published a “list post” called “The 7 Most Exclusive Secret Societies in History.” The post pointed to six secret societies that actually existed. However, the seventh, “the Elders of Zion,” never existed anywhere except in the bigoted minds of anti-Semites. The author of the piece eventually explained that the Elders are fictional, However, the fictional label follows a description of existing secret societies, providing a false context for the faux organization which the quick disclaimer does not adequately address.
There used to be a site called Huff-Watch. Until 2015 the site alerted its readers of the hatred oozing out of the Huffington Post, some of which was hatred against Jews.
Here’s the bottom line–whether or not “globalist” is an anti-Semitic code word really doesn’t matter because I guarantee that the only people who connected it to Jews were the two Huffington Post writers, the writer from Alternet, Israel’s far-left newspaper Haaretz and the liberals who made the connection via Twitter as a way to trash the Trump administration.
Mulvaney does not have a record as an anti-Semite and didn’t use globalist in an anti-Semitic manner. Plus during his congressional career, he was known as a supporter of Israel.
On the other hand, the Huffington Post has always been loaded with Jew-hatred, and never attacked liberals who are actually anti-Semitic like Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, or much of the CBC. Perhaps the Huffington Post should worry about their own house before they make false charges against others.
To put it in a way these supposed Jewish mavens that work at the Huffington Post might understand, Hey Zhlubs, next time you have the chutzpah to tell a bubbehmyseh about the administration, luzzem! Instead, gay cocken ofn yahm!
Liberals Are Mad About Trump’s North Korea Meeting,
Yet Obama Did the Same
After months of arguing over their missile sizes, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has invited President Trump to meet, and Trump has agreed. North Korea promised not to test any missiles or nuclear weapons during the talks, and says they’re willing to discuss denuclearization. Kim said in a message directed at South Korean that he is ”committed to denuclearization”.
The announcement was made by South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong after he personally delivered the message to Trump.
No President has even proposed meeting with North Korea’s “Supreme Leader,” but because Trump could be the first, liberals have a problem with it.
Rachel Maddow seethed on her MSNBC show, questioning Trump’s intelligence for agreeing to the meeting. Here’s what she said: “You might think another president in this circumstance, you can imagine a president asking himself or herself, ‘why has no other American president ever agreed to do this? Why has no sitting American president ever met with a leader from North Korea? Why has that never happened in all the decades North Korea existed as a nation? Should I take that to mean that this might be particularly risky or even an unwise move?’”
She continued, “I think a lot of people probably suspect tonight that those are not the kinds of questions that this president asked himself before agreeing to this meeting. But this is the president we have and he said yes to North Korea.”
Maddow wasn’t the only one criticizing Trump’s decision to try to prevent a nuclear apocalypse. Here’s an Obama lackey spouting off:
Funny – they do realize that presidents meet with dictators all the time, right?
NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)But that’s not all. In 2010, Obama met with Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, a leader who tortured hundreds of his own people. In 2016, he hosted, in the words of the LA Times, a “cavalcade of dictators.” Among them were 10 heads of state from various southeast Asian countries that Obama was working with in finalizing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement.
Present were Cambodia’s Hun Sen, a former member of the Khmer Rouge, the communist group responsible for the Cambodian genocide, in which a quarter of the entire population was killed. Brunei’s Hassanal Bolkiah, who personally banned public Christmas celebrations in his country, and whose nation enforces strict Sharia law (death penalty of adultery, homosexuality, blasphemy, and apostasy), was also present.
Most of the other leaders had some serious allegations of corruption levied against them.
Where was Rachel when Obama was meeting them? Certainly not criticizing Obama’s decision.
Are liberals total hypocrites on Trump’s decision to meet with North Korea?
NRA Gave $7 Million to Hundreds of Schools
(AP)
The National Rifle Association has given more than $7 million in grants to hundreds of U.S. schools in recent years, according to an Associated Press analysis, but few have shown any indication that they'll follow the lead of businesses that are cutting ties with the group following last month's massacre at a Florida high school.
Florida's Broward County school district is believed to be the first to stop accepting NRA money after a gunman killed 17 people at one of its schools Feb. 14. The teen charged in the shooting had been on a school rifle team that received NRA funding.
Denver Public Schools followed Thursday, saying it will turn down several NRA grants that were to be awarded this year. But officials in many other districts say they have no plans to back away.
The AP analysis of the NRA Foundation's public tax records finds that about 500 schools received more than $7.3 million from 2010 through 2016, mostly through competitive grants meant to promote shooting sports. The grants have gone to a wide array of school programs, including the Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps, rifle teams, hunting safety courses and agriculture clubs.
"Whatever I think of the NRA, they're providing legitimate educational services," said Billy Townsend, a school board member in Florida's Polk County district, whose JROTC programs received $33,000, primarily to buy air rifles. "If the NRA wanted to provide air rifles for our ROTC folks in the future, I wouldn't have a problem with that."
The grants awarded to schools are just a small share of the $61 million the NRA Foundation has given to a variety of local groups since 2010. But it has grown rapidly, increasing nearly fourfold from 2010 to 2014 in what some opponents say is a thinly veiled attempt to recruit the next generation of NRA members.
The NRA Foundation did not return calls seeking comment.
Broward announced Tuesday that it would no longer accept NRA grants, following more than a dozen major businesses that have split with the group in recent weeks. Companies including Delta Air Lines, MetLife insurance and the Hertz car agency have said they will no longer offer discounts to NRA members.
Annual reports from the pro-gun group say its grant program was started in 1992 and raises money through local Friends of NRA chapters. It says half the proceeds from local fundraisers go to local grants and half goes to the national organization. Tax records show roughly $19 million in grants going to the group's Virginia headquarters in 2015 and in 2016.
Besides schools, other typical recipients include 4-H groups, which have received $12.2 million since 2010, Boy Scout troops and councils, which received $4 million, and private gun clubs. Overall, about half the grants go to programs directed at youth.
The NRA's school grants increased dramatically after the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. Soon after the massacre, the group unrolled new funding to help schools improve security. But the foundation's tax records show it gave just three grants under the School Shield program, and none have been issued since 2014.
Nearly half of the 773 grants awarded to schools have gone to JROTC programs, which put students through a basic military curriculum and offer an array of small competitive clubs, like the rifle team at Broward's Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. But JROTC leaders say few students ultimately enlist in the military, and the primary goal is to teach students skills like discipline and leadership.
"The safety that we're teaching, the good citizenship that we're teaching here, those are the things you don't hear about," said Gunnery Sgt. Jim Flores, a JROTC instructor at Cibola High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico. "The majority of people walk out of here awesome young men and women, respectful of authority, things of that nature. Not so much little tin soldiers."
In some parts of the country, shooting clubs draw the same sort of following as any school sport. Bill Nolte, superintendent of the Haywood County district in North Carolina, says he still shows up at school sportsman's club tourneys even though his son graduated. Starting in sixth grade, students can join the clubs to compete in shooting events, archery and orienteering. For many families, Nolte said, it's just like any other weekend sports event.
"You take your lawn chair and your coffee in a thermos, and do much like you would do if you were going to a youth soccer or travel basketball or baseball event," Nolte said, adding that NRA grants have helped buy firearms and ammunition and cover other costs that otherwise would fall to the parents. "We are constantly seeking revenue for sportsman's club just like we do for cheerleading and track."
Districts that tallied the largest sums of NRA money typically used it for JROTC programs, including $126,000 given to Albuquerque schools, $126,000 to Broward County and $125,000 to Anchorage, Alaska. The most awarded to a single district was $230,000, given to Roseville schools near Sacramento, California, which say much of the funding went toward ammunition and gear for trap-shooting teams.
Grants are often provided as equipment rather than cash, with schools given rifles, ammunition, safety gear and updates to shooting ranges. Nationally, about $1.3 million was provided as cash, while $6 million was provided through equipment, training and other costs.
Ron Severson, superintendent of the Roseville Joint Union High School District, says no parents have raised concerns over the funding, but administrators may reconsider it in the wake of the Florida shooting.
"After we get through this spring, we will probably take some time to assess how to move forward," he said.
School board members in some districts said they didn't know about the grants. Donna Corbett, a Democrat on the school board in southern Indiana's New Albany-Floyd County School Corporation, said she never heard about $65,000 that went to a JROTC program at one of the high schools. Corbett said she plans to raise the issue with her board but feels conflicted about it.
"I am not a big NRA fan, but I also realize that ROTC is a good program," she said. "I'm not sure I would be willing to pull it to the detriment of the kids and their programs."
In some ways, the issue reflects the nation's deep political divide over guns. Nearly three-quarters of the schools that received grants are in counties that voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election, while a quarter are in counties that voted for Democrat Hillary Clinton, according to the AP analysis. Most are in medium-sized counties or rural areas, with few near major cities.
In Massachusetts, for example, known for its strict gun laws, no schools have received NRA grants since 2010, tax records show. Terry Ryan, a school board member in the Westford district northwest of Boston, says a local teacher considered applying for a grant in 2014, but the district ultimately didn't pursue it.
"We were not interested in any way, shape or form endorsing the NRA or its philosophy," Ryan said in an interview.
By contrast, parent Jana Cox in Louisiana's Caddo Parish says few in the area would have a problem with the $24,000 in NRA grants that have gone to school JROTC programs.
"Everybody here has guns," Cox said. "This is north Louisiana. You've got a lot of hunters and you've got a lot of guns."
Without NRA grants, some programs would struggle to stay afloat, officials say. For JROTC groups, which receive most of their money from their respective military branches, the grants have become more important as federal budgets have been cut. Programs at some high schools in Virginia, Missouri and other states have folded in recent years amid the pinch.
Lt. Colonel Ralph Ingles, head of the JROTC program at Albuquerque schools, says the Florida shooting has sparked a conversation about NRA grants, but he doesn't anticipate cutting ties anytime soon.
"I don't see anybody really backing down," he said. "I think it's just ingrained that we're going to continue to move forward in a positive
CALI VS. USA
Can leftists win the legal fight over sanctuary cities?
Matthew Vadum
Can leftists win the legal fight over sanctuary cities?
Matthew Vadum
The Trump administration launched a long overdue legal assault this week on grotesquely unconstitutional new state laws in California that punish compliance with federal immigration laws and provide legal cover for state and local officials to continue brazenly flouting immigration laws and obstructing federal agents trying to enforce them.
Under the longstanding doctrine in American constitutional law known as “dual sovereignty,” states cannot be compelled to enforce federal immigration laws, but they are obliged not to hinder their enforcement. The so-called sanctuary cities that form the bulk of the sanctuary movement really ought to be called traitor cities because they are in open rebellion against the United States, just like the slave states that seceded from the Union before the Civil War.
The sanctuary movement gave illegal aliens permission to rob, rape, and murder Americans by, among other things, stigmatizing immigration enforcement. Some left-wingers use the dreadful euphemism "civil liberties safe zones" to describe sanctuary jurisdictions. The phrase deliberately blurs the distinction between citizens and non-citizens by implying illegal aliens somehow possess a civil right to be present in the U.S.
“Immigration law “is the province of the federal government” and while there may be “a wide variety of political opinions out there on immigration,” the law is on “the books and its purpose is clear,” U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told law enforcement officers attending the California Peace Officers Association’s 26th Annual Law Enforcement Legislative Day on Wednesday in the state capital of Sacramento.
Sessions continued:
There is no nullification. There is no secession. Federal law is "the supreme law of the land." I would invite any doubters to Gettysburg, and to the graves of John C. Calhoun and Abraham Lincoln. A refusal to apprehend and deport those, especially the criminal element, effectively rejects all immigration law and creates an open borders system. Open borders is a radical, irrational idea that cannot be accepted.
The United States of America is not "an idea;" it is a secular nation-state with a Constitution, laws, and borders, all of which are designed to protect our nation's interests.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a radical leftist, bristled at the attorney general’s Civil War rhetoric, moaning that he has no “credibility.”
“As far as I’m concerned, Jeff Sessions should be advised, and I’ll advise him right now, that it’s a bad idea for him to start talking about anything to do with the history of slavery or Reconstruction or the Civil War in the United States,” Harris said in the leftist echo chamber known as MSNBC.
“His credibility is pretty much shot on those issues.”
“I think that these folks are really mired in rolling back the clock in time, and that’s not going to happen,” Harris said.
“California represents the future, and they don’t like it,” the deluded lawmaker said. “Jeff Sessions has clearly put a target on the back of California, and California’s going to fight.”
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) blasted the lawsuit, describing it as “an act of war” against California that is part of “a reign of terror” against illegal aliens.
But California cannot win this battle without tearing the republic apart. Either the Golden State is part of the United States of America, bound by its laws and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, or it is not.
This cannot end well for California where radical leftist office-holders like Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (D) are doubling down in their reckless defiance of the federal government. Schaaf now tips off illegal aliens about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids to applause from the mainstream media.
Schaaf piously insists her actions have not endangered ICE officers. “How can it be dangerous and illegal simply to tell people what the law is, what their rights are, what their resources are?” she said disingenuously. “That’s all I did.”
California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the former San Francisco mayor who is running for governor, hailed Schaaf. "We can and must protect immigrant families from Donald Trump's mass deportations,” he said. “I want to thank Mayor Schaaf for her courage and hope more local leaders will follow her lead."
The new federal lawsuit unveiled by Sessions targets three new statutes in the chaotic, crime-ridden, failing “sanctuary state” that is home to more than 2 million aliens whom the Left is using taxpayer money to groom as loyal voters for Democratic Party candidates. The state laws curb the power of California’s state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of federal immigration authorities, and punish employers for cooperating with those authorities. The seditious laws were enacted to sabotage immigration enforcement efforts and in the process protect Democrats’ base.
The legal action seeks to strike down AB 450, which prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials—including officials conducting worksite enforcement efforts. It attacks SB 54, which prevents state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to the feds about the release date of deportable criminal aliens in their custody. The suit also places a bullseye on AB 103, which imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme of the federal detention of aliens held in facilities pursuant to federal contracts.
“We are a strong, prosperous, and orderly nation,” Sessions said. “And such a nation must have a lawful system of immigration,” he said. “I am not aware of any advanced nation that does not understand this fundamental tenet.”
Americans are “right to insist that this country should end the illegality, create a rational immigration flow, and protect the nation from criminal aliens,” Sessions said.
He continued:
It cannot be that someone who illegally crosses the border and two days later arrives in Sacramento, Dubuque, Louisville, and Central Islip is home free – never to be removed. It cannot be the policy of a great nation to up and reward those who unlawfully enter its country with legal status, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and work permits. Meanwhile those who engage in this process lawfully and patiently and wait their turn are discriminated against at every turn.
The United States of America is not "an idea;" it is a secular nation-state with a Constitution, laws, and borders, all of which are designed to protect our nation's interests.
Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), a radical leftist, bristled at the attorney general’s Civil War rhetoric, moaning that he has no “credibility.”
“As far as I’m concerned, Jeff Sessions should be advised, and I’ll advise him right now, that it’s a bad idea for him to start talking about anything to do with the history of slavery or Reconstruction or the Civil War in the United States,” Harris said in the leftist echo chamber known as MSNBC.
“His credibility is pretty much shot on those issues.”
“I think that these folks are really mired in rolling back the clock in time, and that’s not going to happen,” Harris said.
“California represents the future, and they don’t like it,” the deluded lawmaker said. “Jeff Sessions has clearly put a target on the back of California, and California’s going to fight.”
Gov. Jerry Brown (D) blasted the lawsuit, describing it as “an act of war” against California that is part of “a reign of terror” against illegal aliens.
But California cannot win this battle without tearing the republic apart. Either the Golden State is part of the United States of America, bound by its laws and the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, or it is not.
This cannot end well for California where radical leftist office-holders like Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf (D) are doubling down in their reckless defiance of the federal government. Schaaf now tips off illegal aliens about U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids to applause from the mainstream media.
Schaaf piously insists her actions have not endangered ICE officers. “How can it be dangerous and illegal simply to tell people what the law is, what their rights are, what their resources are?” she said disingenuously. “That’s all I did.”
California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), the former San Francisco mayor who is running for governor, hailed Schaaf. "We can and must protect immigrant families from Donald Trump's mass deportations,” he said. “I want to thank Mayor Schaaf for her courage and hope more local leaders will follow her lead."
The new federal lawsuit unveiled by Sessions targets three new statutes in the chaotic, crime-ridden, failing “sanctuary state” that is home to more than 2 million aliens whom the Left is using taxpayer money to groom as loyal voters for Democratic Party candidates. The state laws curb the power of California’s state and local law enforcement to hold, question, and transfer detainees at the request of federal immigration authorities, and punish employers for cooperating with those authorities. The seditious laws were enacted to sabotage immigration enforcement efforts and in the process protect Democrats’ base.
The legal action seeks to strike down AB 450, which prohibits private employers from voluntarily cooperating with federal immigration officials—including officials conducting worksite enforcement efforts. It attacks SB 54, which prevents state and local law enforcement officials from providing information to the feds about the release date of deportable criminal aliens in their custody. The suit also places a bullseye on AB 103, which imposes a state-run inspection and review scheme of the federal detention of aliens held in facilities pursuant to federal contracts.
“We are a strong, prosperous, and orderly nation,” Sessions said. “And such a nation must have a lawful system of immigration,” he said. “I am not aware of any advanced nation that does not understand this fundamental tenet.”
Americans are “right to insist that this country should end the illegality, create a rational immigration flow, and protect the nation from criminal aliens,” Sessions said.
He continued:
It cannot be that someone who illegally crosses the border and two days later arrives in Sacramento, Dubuque, Louisville, and Central Islip is home free – never to be removed. It cannot be the policy of a great nation to up and reward those who unlawfully enter its country with legal status, Social Security, welfare, food stamps, and work permits. Meanwhile those who engage in this process lawfully and patiently and wait their turn are discriminated against at every turn.
Meanwhile, the Trump administration won a rare legal victory on the Left Coast in a sanctuary jurisdictions case.
In a lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Xavier Becerra against Attorney General Jeff Sessions, U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California Judge William H. Orrick ruled Monday that he could not compel the federal government to hand over a specific $1 million grant it is withholding because the state is shielding illegal aliens from federal immigration authorities.
“The weighty and novel constitutional issues posed in this litigation deserve a complete record before they are adjudicated,” the slippery black-robed politician wrote, Anthony Kennedy-style.
This decision may be good news for the Trump administration even though Orrick of March 2018 is rather baldly contradicting Orrick of November 2017.
The judge, who was appointed by President Obama, already ruled on the “weighty and novel constitutional issues” he references pretty conclusively a few months ago, coming down hard against Trump’s executive order. (The judge’s rulings on sanctuary jurisdictions may be read at the court’s website.)
In a separate lawsuit brought by Santa Clara County and San Francisco against President Trump, Orrick granted summary judgment on Nov. 20, 2017 to the two localities. The judge made permanent his previously issued preliminary injunction against Executive Order 13768.
EO 13768, signed by President Trump on Jan. 25, 2017, states it is official administration policy that:
Sanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate Federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States. These jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.
Section 9(a) of EO 13768 is the specific provision by which federal monies are being withheld from sanctuary jurisdictions. It is also the provision specifically enjoined until the end of time by Orrick three-and-a-half months ago.
Section 9(a) states that to enforce the funding ban, “the Attorney General and the [Homeland Security] Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.”
Orrick found Section 9(a) was “unconstitutional on its face” and that the counties proved it “has caused and will cause them constitutional injuries by violating the separation of powers doctrine and depriving them of their Tenth and Fifth Amendment rights.”
Maybe between Nov. 20 and March 5, the legal meaning of the infamous Section 9(a) somehow changed in Orrick’s calculating mind. Maybe the permanent injunction isn’t so permanent anymore; intellectual consistency is not, after all, something for which left-wing jurists are known.
For what it’s worth, in the California v. Sessions lawsuit, Becerra appeared to be taunting Sessions in the title of the proceeding itself by referring to the Alabama-born official by his full, mouthful of a name, to wit, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. As a white man from the Deep South, Sessions is an irresistible target for slimy leftists like Becerra (and Harris).
During Sessions’ U.S. Senate confirmation process, left-wingers relished using the then-nominee’s Southern-sounding, eight-syllable name over and over again as they tried to tar the public servant as a vicious racist. Never mind that Sessions desegregated his state’s schools and crippled the state’s Ku Klux Klan before coming to Washington.
Lawbreaking officials in California may be about to get a surprise, courtesy of the Trump administration.
It was previously reported that federal prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdictions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-January.
Jailing the leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions who obstruct ICE agents is long overdue.
Oakland’s Libby Schaaf should be the first leftist politician in California to be perp-walked.
Section 9(a) of EO 13768 is the specific provision by which federal monies are being withheld from sanctuary jurisdictions. It is also the provision specifically enjoined until the end of time by Orrick three-and-a-half months ago.
Section 9(a) states that to enforce the funding ban, “the Attorney General and the [Homeland Security] Secretary, in their discretion and to the extent consistent with law, shall ensure that jurisdictions that willfully refuse to comply with 8 U.S.C. 1373 (sanctuary jurisdictions) are not eligible to receive Federal grants, except as deemed necessary for law enforcement purposes by the Attorney General or the Secretary.”
Orrick found Section 9(a) was “unconstitutional on its face” and that the counties proved it “has caused and will cause them constitutional injuries by violating the separation of powers doctrine and depriving them of their Tenth and Fifth Amendment rights.”
Maybe between Nov. 20 and March 5, the legal meaning of the infamous Section 9(a) somehow changed in Orrick’s calculating mind. Maybe the permanent injunction isn’t so permanent anymore; intellectual consistency is not, after all, something for which left-wing jurists are known.
For what it’s worth, in the California v. Sessions lawsuit, Becerra appeared to be taunting Sessions in the title of the proceeding itself by referring to the Alabama-born official by his full, mouthful of a name, to wit, Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. As a white man from the Deep South, Sessions is an irresistible target for slimy leftists like Becerra (and Harris).
During Sessions’ U.S. Senate confirmation process, left-wingers relished using the then-nominee’s Southern-sounding, eight-syllable name over and over again as they tried to tar the public servant as a vicious racist. Never mind that Sessions desegregated his state’s schools and crippled the state’s Ku Klux Klan before coming to Washington.
Lawbreaking officials in California may be about to get a surprise, courtesy of the Trump administration.
It was previously reported that federal prosecutors are considering filing criminal charges against elected officials harboring illegal aliens in sanctuary jurisdictions, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told the Senate Judiciary Committee in mid-January.
Jailing the leaders of sanctuary jurisdictions who obstruct ICE agents is long overdue.
Oakland’s Libby Schaaf should be the first leftist politician in California to be perp-walked.
Trump Pardons Kristian Saucier – The Second of His Presidency
It’s Friday, so that means the news cycle has gone into overdrive just before the weekend.
We just reported on a big story by Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair alleging that President Trump plans to interview candidates for White House chief of staff this weekend, setting the stage for a major West Wing shakeup down the line. Rumor has it that, in addition to current Chief of Staff John Kelly, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and Ivanka Trump may soon lose their jobs.
Then there’s North Korea, with the biggest news being that President Trump has agreed to meet with Kim Jong-un as part of his ongoing efforts to push the rogue nation into dropping its nuclear program.
Amidst all this news, and with Washington abuzz with endless commentary on Trump’s North Korean gambit, the President just quietly fulfilled a promise he made on the campaign trail on 2016.
If you remember, Navy sailor Kristian Saucier was sentenced to a year in prison for taking pictures inside the submarine he was serving in. He ended up pleading guilty to unauthorized possession and retention of national defense information.
President Trump often characterized this sentence as unfair compared to the criminal activity of Hillary Clinton, who was let off the hook with not so much as a stern rebuke from former FBI Director James Comey. And now Trump has come to the rescue of this unfortunate sailor.
President Trump issued the second pardon of his presidency Friday to former Navy sailor Kristian Saucier, who learned the news while driving a garbage truck, the only job he could find with a felony conviction.
Saucier was sentenced to a year in prison during the 2016 campaign for taking pictures inside a nuclear submarine. Trump invoked his case repeatedly on the campaign trail, saying he was “ruined” for doing “nothing” compared to Hillary Clinton.
Saucier was sentenced to a year in prison during the 2016 campaign for taking pictures inside a nuclear submarine. Trump invoked his case repeatedly on the campaign trail, saying he was “ruined” for doing “nothing” compared to Hillary Clinton.
Trump Accepts Kim’s Offer to Meet
North Korea's Dear Leader has baited the President of the United States into a trap.
By James Joyner
hareTweet
Has North Korea’s Dear Leader has baited the President of the United States into a trapNYT (“Trump Accepts Kim Jong-un’s Invitation to Discuss North Korean Nuclear Program“):
North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has invited President Trump to meet for negotiations over its nuclear program, an audacious diplomatic overture that would bring together two strong-willed, idiosyncratic leaders who have traded threats of war.
The White House said that Mr. Trump had accepted the invitation, and Chung Eui-yong, a South Korean official who conveyed it, told reporters that the president would meet with Mr. Kim within two months.
“He expressed his eagerness to meet President Trump as soon as possible,” Mr. Chung said at the White House on Thursday evening after meeting the president. Mr. Trump, he said, agreed to “meet Kim Jong-un by May to achieve permanent denuclearization.”
The president expressed his optimism about the meeting in a post on Twitter, saying that Mr. Kim had “talked about denuclearization with the South Korean Representatives, not just a freeze.”
“Also, no missile testing by North Korea during this period of time,” Mr. Trump added. “Great progress being made but sanctions will remain until an agreement is reached. Meeting being planned!”
Mr. Chung, whose talks with Mr. Kim on Monday in Pyongyang resulted in the invitation, noted that the North Korean leader said he understood that joint military exercises with the United States and South Korea would go ahead as scheduled after the end of the Paralympic Games this month.
For Mr. Trump, a meeting with Mr. Kim, a leader he has threatened with “fire and fury” and has derided as “Little Rocket Man,” is a breathtaking gamble. No sitting American president has ever met a North Korean leader, and Mr. Trump himself has repeatedly vowed that he would not commit the error of his predecessors by being drawn into a protracted negotiation in which North Korea extracted concessions from the United States but held on to key elements of its nuclear program.
Meeting Mr. Kim now, rather than at the end of a negotiation when the United States would presumably have extracted concessions from North Korea, is an enormous gesture by the president. But Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim share a penchant for bold, dramatic moves, and their personal participation in a negotiation could take it in unexpected directions.
That’s putting it mildly. Candidate Barack Obama was repeatedly lampooned, by Democratic and Republican opponents alike, for his assertions that he would be willing to meet with the likes of Iran’s ayatollahs “without preconditions.” Presidents simply don’t do that, as it lends the prestige of the office to the opponent while risking colossal embarrassment. While Obama never admitted the mistake—apparently, that’s no longer allowed in American politics—he would later explain that “without preconditions” didn’t mean “without any preconditions” and that, of course, he wouldn’t meet before the outlines of a deal had been negotiated.
Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program for the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, is regarded by most national security professionals as the go-to guy on these issues. He’s yet to pen a piece for Foreign Policy, where he writes regularly, but he took to Twitter last night to point out the problem with Trump’s move:
North Korea has been seeking a summit with an American president for more than twenty years. It has literally been a top foreign policy goal of Pyongyang since Kim Jong Il invited Bill Clinton
I wonder if Trump’s “aides” have explained that to him. Or, if in their toddler-handling, they have led him to believe that this offer is something unusual. Or perhaps he imagines that only he can go Pyongyang.
This is literally how the North Korean film “The Country I Saw” ends. An American President visits Pyongyang, compelled by North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs to treat a Kim as an equal.
To be clear — we need to talk to North Korea. But Kim is not inviting Trump so that he can surrender North Korea’s weapons. Kim is inviting Trump to demonstrate that his investment in nuclear and missile capabilities has forced the United States to treat him as an equal.
WaPo‘s Karen DeYoung offers a slightly different take (“Trump’s bellicosity secures a diplomatic coup — for now“):
For the moment, at least, it appears to be a clear-cut victory — the biggest foreign policy win of his young administration. President Trump has brought his arch-nemesis, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, a.k.a. “Little Rocket Man,” to the table to negotiate away his nuclear arsenal.
Optimists declared a major breakthrough. Even pessimists acknowledged that Trump’s hard line against Pyongyang, after decades of less forceful U.S. effort, played a significant role in moving one of the world’s most vexing and threatening problems in a potentially positive direction.
But in the afterglow of the surprise announcement — hinted by Trump in a teasing visit to the White House press room and soon confirmed by South Korea’s national security adviser, standing in the West Wing driveway — questions were fast and furious.
Were direct talks between Kim and Trump, two notably volatile leaders who have traded public insults for more than a year, the best way to start what are sure to be complicated negotiations? Was the administration, whose thin bench of experienced experts seems to be growing slimmer by the day, ready to face those wily and untrustworthy North Koreans? The talks, U.S. and South Korean officials said, would take place before the end of May.
By some assessments, this is really a victory for Kim, who for years has sought proof of his status and North Korea’s power by dangling the offer of leader-to-leader talks with the United States.
Some analysts said it remains unclear what Trump is prepared to put on the table opposite Kim’s apparent offer to stop testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and discuss denuclearization. “Sanctions? Normalization? Peace treaty?” tweeted Victor Cha, the expert who was once Trump’s choice as ambassador to South Korea, before he voiced concern that the White House was contemplating a pre-emptive military strike against Pyongyang.
According to a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, the answer is not very much.
There would be no reward for talks themselves, the official said. Trump would expect a dismantled nuclear weapons program, with complete “verification,” and “will settle for nothing less.”
But “President Trump has a reputation for making deals,” the official added. “Kim Jong Un is the one person able to make decisions in their uniquely totalitarian system and so it made sense to accept the invitation with the one person who can make decisions instead of repeating the long slog of the past.”
Trump has a vibrant track record of surprise announcements that have distracted attention, at least temporarily, from concern over tariffs and border walls and the growing threat to his presidency posed by the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
At the same time, he has claimed a long string of successes over the past 14 months that others have challenged as lacking a strategy for long-term sustainability, from the currently robust economy to the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The North Korea gambit may be his highest-wire act of all.
“A Trump-Kim summit is a major diplomatic gamble,” tweeted Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for New American Security. “But let’s see if it actually comes off. Recall that yesterday, we were set to impose steel tariffs on Canada.”
Among experts, there were widely divergent views of what had happened, and why, and what the risks were.
“Beyond the initial shock value of the invitation from Kim Jong Un to Trump,” and Trump’s acceptance, “I think the real underlying questions are still what are they going to negotiate,” said Lisa Collins, a fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Two months doesn’t give working-level officials much time to pull things together.”
“It’s certainly the start of talks. Whether or not it’s a true breakthrough in terms of change in North Korea’s calculus, I’m still a little skeptical,” she said. “I tend to be more of a pessimist.
Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, said it was “absolutely right to extend the nuclear and missile test pause” declared by Pyongyang during talks last week with the Seoul government. “It will help repair ties with South Korea and keeps us back from the brink of war.”
“Unfortunately,” Mount said, “denuclearization is a distant fantasy.” The administration “has not equipped itself for success. They have not laid the groundwork for credibility in talks [and] lack leadership with experience in international negotiation. . . . In accepting the invitation outright, Trump has already lost much of his leverage over the terms and agenda of the talks.”
The “better play,” he said, “is to start by offering a credible plan to stabilize the peninsula and halt nuclear and missile tests sustainably, and then build out to a more ambitious agreement.”
The notion that “there would be no reward for the talks themselves” is laughable: the talks themselves are the reward! The administration’s desired end state—“a dismantled nuclear weapons program, with complete verification”—is the Holy Grail US administrations have been seeking for the last quarter century. If we can achieve that—and it’s admittedly highly unlikely—then legitimating Kim would have been a worthwhile tradeoff. But, again, there’s a reason US Presidents don’t show up for summits before their team has a deal in place.
Optimists declared a major breakthrough. Even pessimists acknowledged that Trump’s hard line against Pyongyang, after decades of less forceful U.S. effort, played a significant role in moving one of the world’s most vexing and threatening problems in a potentially positive direction.
But in the afterglow of the surprise announcement — hinted by Trump in a teasing visit to the White House press room and soon confirmed by South Korea’s national security adviser, standing in the West Wing driveway — questions were fast and furious.
Were direct talks between Kim and Trump, two notably volatile leaders who have traded public insults for more than a year, the best way to start what are sure to be complicated negotiations? Was the administration, whose thin bench of experienced experts seems to be growing slimmer by the day, ready to face those wily and untrustworthy North Koreans? The talks, U.S. and South Korean officials said, would take place before the end of May.
By some assessments, this is really a victory for Kim, who for years has sought proof of his status and North Korea’s power by dangling the offer of leader-to-leader talks with the United States.
Some analysts said it remains unclear what Trump is prepared to put on the table opposite Kim’s apparent offer to stop testing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and discuss denuclearization. “Sanctions? Normalization? Peace treaty?” tweeted Victor Cha, the expert who was once Trump’s choice as ambassador to South Korea, before he voiced concern that the White House was contemplating a pre-emptive military strike against Pyongyang.
According to a senior administration official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity, the answer is not very much.
There would be no reward for talks themselves, the official said. Trump would expect a dismantled nuclear weapons program, with complete “verification,” and “will settle for nothing less.”
But “President Trump has a reputation for making deals,” the official added. “Kim Jong Un is the one person able to make decisions in their uniquely totalitarian system and so it made sense to accept the invitation with the one person who can make decisions instead of repeating the long slog of the past.”
Trump has a vibrant track record of surprise announcements that have distracted attention, at least temporarily, from concern over tariffs and border walls and the growing threat to his presidency posed by the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
At the same time, he has claimed a long string of successes over the past 14 months that others have challenged as lacking a strategy for long-term sustainability, from the currently robust economy to the defeat of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
The North Korea gambit may be his highest-wire act of all.
“A Trump-Kim summit is a major diplomatic gamble,” tweeted Richard Fontaine, president of the Center for New American Security. “But let’s see if it actually comes off. Recall that yesterday, we were set to impose steel tariffs on Canada.”
Among experts, there were widely divergent views of what had happened, and why, and what the risks were.
“Beyond the initial shock value of the invitation from Kim Jong Un to Trump,” and Trump’s acceptance, “I think the real underlying questions are still what are they going to negotiate,” said Lisa Collins, a fellow with the Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “Two months doesn’t give working-level officials much time to pull things together.”
“It’s certainly the start of talks. Whether or not it’s a true breakthrough in terms of change in North Korea’s calculus, I’m still a little skeptical,” she said. “I tend to be more of a pessimist.
Adam Mount, a senior fellow at the Federation of American Scientists, said it was “absolutely right to extend the nuclear and missile test pause” declared by Pyongyang during talks last week with the Seoul government. “It will help repair ties with South Korea and keeps us back from the brink of war.”
“Unfortunately,” Mount said, “denuclearization is a distant fantasy.” The administration “has not equipped itself for success. They have not laid the groundwork for credibility in talks [and] lack leadership with experience in international negotiation. . . . In accepting the invitation outright, Trump has already lost much of his leverage over the terms and agenda of the talks.”
The “better play,” he said, “is to start by offering a credible plan to stabilize the peninsula and halt nuclear and missile tests sustainably, and then build out to a more ambitious agreement.”
The notion that “there would be no reward for the talks themselves” is laughable: the talks themselves are the reward! The administration’s desired end state—“a dismantled nuclear weapons program, with complete verification”—is the Holy Grail US administrations have been seeking for the last quarter century. If we can achieve that—and it’s admittedly highly unlikely—then legitimating Kim would have been a worthwhile tradeoff. But, again, there’s a reason US Presidents don’t show up for summits before their team has a deal in place.
James Joyner is a Security Studies professor at Marine Corps University Command and Staff College and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm vet. He's a widower and father of two young daughters. He earned his PhD from The University of Alabama. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.
G’ day…Ciao…Helen and Moe Lauzier
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