California GOP Mayor Says Attracting Asians And ‘The Gays’ Helps Reduce Crime

California GOP Mayor Says Attracting Asians And ‘The Gays’ Helps Reduce Crime

22:25 Add Comment

One Republican mayor in California has a plan to make his desert city great again: Bring in more Asian and gay people.


In a recent interview with Vice magazine, Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris said that increasing the Asian population and “the gays,” as he called members of the LGBTQ community, can do a lot of good for a city like Lancaster, which, as Vice pointed out, is now known for its neo-Nazis and meth labs.


“Good things happen when you’re able to increase your Asian population to a certain threshold: Crime rates go down, education levels go up,” Parris told Vice. “Interestingly, the same thing happens with the gays. That’s why I put the new performing arts center right downtown.”


Parris, who’s been described by friends as a “staunch, conservative, Republican, no bull kind of guy,” according to a 2009 Los Angeles Times profile, is no stranger to questionable actions or comments.


The mayor once played recordings of birds chirping on speakers along a city boulevard for five hours a day for 10 months because he believed the sounds would calm residents and reduce crime, according to The Wall Street Journal. In 2014, he was criticized for calling a black City Council candidate a “gang candidate” who would turn Lancaster into a “magnet for street gangs.”



Parris’ comments to Vice about Asian people reflect his ambitious plans to boost the economy by drawing more Chinese people and businesses to the desert city, about 45 miles north of Los Angeles.


The mayor, who’s made business trips to China and has attempted to learn Mandarin, convinced BYD, a Chinese manufacturer of batteries and electric cars, to open up a factory in Lancaster in 2013, according to the L.A. Times. He’s also promoted “birth tourism” in Lancaster for wealthy Chinese families to boost revenue at a local hospital. In a 2013 op-ed published in the local news site My Antelope Valley, Parris said it would “be a blessing” if those children, who would receive citizenship after being born in the U.S., returned to Lancaster “to seek higher education, start a business and raise a family.”


“To me it made perfect sense,” he told Vice in response to the backlash he faced for his outreach to China. “You have affluent Chinese coming over here, and their children become U.S. citizens. We don’t want that?!? … What we should be doing is saying, ‘If you have a Ph.D. in money, we’ll pay you to come.’ Seriously!”


Though Parris’ comments show that he favors Chinese immigrants, they also reveal his apparent prejudices.


The Lancaster mayor seems to label people with racial stereotypes: He views all Chinese people through the Asian “model minority” myth (which research has dispelled) and generalizes LGBTQ people as artistic, creative types ― and it may be the reason he was quick to label the African-American council candidate a “magnet for street gangs.”


Read Vice’s full profile on Parris here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rWkTlI
via IFTTT
Lawrence O'Donnell Says He's Staying At MSNBC

Lawrence O'Donnell Says He's Staying At MSNBC

21:40 Add Comment

Lawrence O’Donnell told audiences Wednesday that he will be staying at MSNBC for “the next couple of years,” ending weeks of speculation about the longtime host’s future at the network.


Last month, sources told Yashar Ali in an article for HuffPost that network executives had not been in touch with the “Last Word” host as his contract neared its expiration. The lack of negotiation with a highly rated anchor like O’Donnell was considered unusual, as competing networks could lure talent away with counter-offers.


O’Donnell put those rumors to rest, addressing his future at the network both on the air and on Twitter. 


“I will be sitting right here talking about the James Comey hearing and everything else that happens next week and everything that happens for the next couple of years,” O’Donnell said. 










O’Donnell, who has a 10 p.m. prime-time slot, brings in the second-highest ratings for MSNBC, after Rachel Maddow. He’s been on the network since its inception and has hosted “The Last Word” since 2010.


A vocal opponent of President Donald Trump for years, O’Donnell often used his airtime to address public Twitter feuds he had with the former “Celebrity Apprentice” host. Trump has called for NBC to fire O’Donnell and threatened to sue him for questioning his wealth. But the MSNBC host has continued to rail against the president night after night, recently calling him “the laziest, most ignorant president in history.”


MSNBC did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Wednesday. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2spHHa2
via IFTTT
Hillary Clinton Serves Donald Trump's Covfefe Right Back At Him

Hillary Clinton Serves Donald Trump's Covfefe Right Back At Him

21:00 Add Comment





Hillary Clinton is pouring some cold covfefe on President Donald Trump


Trump’s mysterious early-morning “covfefe” tweet was widely considered a typo, but White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer insisted later in the day that the word had a specific meaning. 


“The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant,” he said. 


So what did Trump mean? 


“I thought it was a hidden message to the Russians,” Clinton said during an appearance at the Code Conference


Later in the day, Trump took to Twitter to blast Clinton as a “terrible candidate.”


She fired back:  





-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rH86Ut
via IFTTT

Police Release Video Of Tiger Woods' DUI Arrest

20:50 Add Comment





Police in Jupiter, Florida, have released dashcam footage showing the DUI arrest of golf great Tiger Woods.


The 41-year-old was found early Monday asleep in his Mercedes, which was stopped in the right lane of a road. The engine was running, the blinker was on and the car had two flat tires along with some other damage, CBS 12 in West Palm Beach reported. 


The newly released police video shows Woods being cooperative but having difficulty following instructions and showing signs of confusion: 





In the video, Woods tells police he had not been drinking, which was confirmed by a Breathalyzer test. However, the golfer released a statement saying he was on prescribed medication and having an “unexpected reaction.”


Woods apologized to his family, friends and fans, thanked police and vowed to “do everything in my power to ensure this never happens again.” 


The golfer is widely considered one of the greatest to ever swing a club, but his career has been derailed in recent years by a series of injuries as well as some well-publicized personal problems, including a divorce


He had a fourth back surgery in April, which ESPN reports will keep him out of golf for the rest of the year. 


Woods has a court appearance scheduled for July 5. 

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rWvih6
via IFTTT
6 Relaxation Hacks For People Who Hate Meditating

6 Relaxation Hacks For People Who Hate Meditating

20:00 Add Comment

If you suffer from stress and anxiety, odds are someone in your life has mentioned meditation as a way to cope with it. Psychiatrists often recommend this therapy, and for good reason — research based on 19,000 meditation studies found mindful meditation can in fact ease psychological stress.


Despite that data, however, meditation isn’t for everyone. And it may not serve some people who experience the most severe bouts of stress.


I have chronic generalized anxiety, which means I’m always experiencing a level of tension or stress. For the most part I can manage it, but every now and then, it’ll hit hard without warning, and uproot my day completely.


In college, my therapist recommended I try meditation to curb my anxiety. At first, I was happy to oblige. I tried a variety of styles, from Zen meditation, which has you focus on breathing, to primordial sound mediation, which involves, well, making primordial sounds.


It didn’t work. I’d often find myself more anxious at the end of a 15-minute meditation session than I had been at the beginning. And I’m not alone: In general, it can be more difficult for people with chronic anxiety to meditate, because they have more stress-ridden thoughts than the average person, according to clinical psychologist Mitch Abblett. 


That said, there are plenty of ways to achieve the same level of relaxation without sitting cross-legged on the floor. They’re all rooted in a technique called “the distraction method.” It’s part of Dr. Albert Ellis’ Rational Emotive Behavioral Therapy, which works under the assumption that a person’s way of thinking is intrinsically tied to their emotional functioning. 


The method consists of doing basic activities can help you take a step back from your anxiety. Psychologist Anjhula Mya Singh Bais explains the distractions can help people to “objectively view issues causing disturbances in a manner that is both pragmatic and helpful in a low intensity, low pressure and low stakes environment.”



What she means is by doing something simple and functional, you may be able to relax, regroup and perhaps reexamine the issue that was causing your anxiety from a much more levelheaded place.



Here are six suggestions for activities that may calm your brain without meditation, based on expert opinions and my personal experience


1. Arts and crafts — including but not limited to coloring, pottery and knitting


Working with your hands diverts energy into something productive, and often results in a cool or even beautiful creation.


“Being artistic calms the nervous system because when we’re focused on creative activities, our attention moves away from constant worrying,” New York therapist Kimberly Hershenson says. “This helps the nervous system regulate, allowing our brain to clear space to process difficult issues.”


2. All varieties of yoga


There are a multitude of benefits that come from practicing yoga, and a quieter mind is just one of them. It’s basically active meditation, which is great for the anxiety-prone, because it allows you to focus on your breathing and body without getting stuck in your head.


“Yoga helps build concentration and is a great way to improve overall focus,” explains Silvia Polivoy, clinical psychologist and co-founder of the Thevine Spiritual Center. “In addition, it enhances memory and improves brain power.”


If you’re new to yoga, I highly recommend starting with Lesley Fightmaster’s online videos.


3. Go for a walk


It may sound simple, but similar to yoga, walking outside (without your phone) allows you to refocus your anxious energy on a physical act and take in the world around you. Here’s a great way to start, courtesy of psychotherapist Melissa Divaris Thompson:


“The more you can get into nature the better. Walk with consciousness. Notice how your breath feels. Notice your feet walking on the surface with each step.”


4. Singing, humming and whistling


I often sing and whistle to bring myself back into the present. It automatically lightens my mood and regulates my breathing if I’m hyperventilating. The best part is you don’t have to be a good singer for it to work for you.


5. Free-writing before bed


This one’s especially great for people with anxiety that affects their sleep. David Ezell, the clinical director and CEO of Darien Wellness, recommends writing with a pen and paper to get away from distracting screens.


“The objective is to relieve the pressure of thoughts analogous to a water tank too full of H2O,” he writes in an email. “I tell my patients to see their arm as a pipe and the notebook the reservoir into which the water flows.”


6. Cooking


Cooking is filled with basic tasks that let you focus on all sorts of sights, smells, tastes and textures. Once you’re done, you can practice mindfulness while you eat.


Your personal distraction method may not be on this list. But if you keep experimenting with different strategies, you’ll be sure to find it.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rW6uG9
via IFTTT
Why Trump's Evangelical Base Won't Much Care If We Leave The Paris Accord

Why Trump's Evangelical Base Won't Much Care If We Leave The Paris Accord

20:00 Add Comment

President Donald Trump is reportedly planning to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on climate change, a move that is unlikely to ruffle his evangelical base.



Under the terms of the deal, the U.S. cannot officially withdraw until November 2019. But in signaling an exit from the deal, Trump would make good on one of his major campaign promises and win the favor of the 22 Republican senators who last week wrote him a letter urging him to do so.








Trump has said he believes climate change is a hoax invented by the Chinese to compromise U.S. manufacturing.


The claim seems outlandish, but more than a third of white evangelicals agree that climate change probably isn’t occurring.


Among white evangelical Christians ― more than 80 percent of whom threw their support behind Trump in the election ― climate change is an issue of little import. According to Pew Research Center, white evangelicals are the least likely of any U.S. religious group to believe climate change is occurring.


Just 28 percent of white evangelicals believe the Earth is warming primarily due to human activity, compared with 56 percent of black Protestants and 41 percent of white mainline Protestants who say it is.


Thirty-three percent of white evangelicals say the Earth’s warming is mostly due to natural patterns, and 37 percent don’t believe that climate change is occurring.


Evangelical leaders were also among those who applauded Trump’s decision to nominate Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, despite the former Oklahoma attorney general’s track record of climate denial.


As attorney general, Pruitt sued the EPA more than a dozen times and once sent a letter on behalf of an Oklahoma-based oil company accusing the agency of overestimating the air pollution caused by fracking.





In a letter published in the Baptist Press in December, nearly 50 evangelical leaders said Pruitt “has been misrepresented as denying ‘settled science,’ when he has actually called for a continuing debate.”


The quotations around “settled science” point to another misconception white evangelical Christians tend to have about climate change. The group is roughly split in their perception of whether scientists generally agree or disagree that the Earth is warming due to human activity. Slightly more ― 47 percent versus 45 percent ― believe scientists disagree on this. 


In reality, more than 97 percent of actively publishing climate scientists agree that the Earth’s warming is due to human activity.


Climate skepticism among someChristians may be partly theological. Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) said during a town hall in Coldwater, Michigan, last week that God can solve the problem of climate change if the global phenomenon truly exists. 



The 66-year-old Republican, who is a climate change skeptic, said he believes “there’s been climate change since the beginning of time.”


“As a Christian, I believe that there is a creator in God who is much bigger than us. And I’m confident that, if there’s a real problem, he can take care of it.”


Of course, there are many, many Christians ― including white evangelicals ― who accept that the climate is changing and who have urged the president to take measures to protect the environment.










Trump recently met with Pope Francis, who gave the U.S. president a copy of his 2015 encyclical on the environment, “Laudato Si.” The encyclical is a fiery and urgent call to action on climate change.


Just days before his expected withdrawal from the Paris Agreement ― which the pope has passionately supported ― Trump promised the pontiff he’d be reading the encyclical.


The Paris Agreement has been signed by 195 nations, and 147 have ratified it.



-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rGNa07
via IFTTT
At Pro-Trade Think Tank, Wilbur Ross Soothes Business Fears Over NAFTA Talks

At Pro-Trade Think Tank, Wilbur Ross Soothes Business Fears Over NAFTA Talks

19:30 Add Comment





WASHINGTON ― Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said that a commitment to “do no harm” would guide efforts to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement and that elements of the now-defunct Trans-Pacific Partnership would serve as a “starting point” in talks with Canada and Mexico.


The remarks on Wednesday at the Bipartisan Policy Center, which supports international trade agreements, struck a marked contrast with President Donald Trump’s nationalist bromides on trade. The comments will undoubtedly allay the fears of big-business interests that support NAFTA, some of which were well-represented in the room.


But Ross’ pronouncements are also liable to vindicate the fears of liberal trade skeptics already worried that the Trump administration’s version of revising NAFTA will amount to simply expanding NAFTA’s reach to new sectors of the economy. That runs counter to their wishes for measures more likely to save the jobs of less-educated workers, whether in manufacturing plants or call centers.


The Trump administration’s first objective will be to “do no harm, because there were some things that were achieved under NAFTA and under other trade agreements,” Ross told Jason Grumet, founder of the Bipartisan Policy Center, which receives foundation, corporate and individual funding.


Grumet subsequently told Ross that a “lot of people in this room and others are really comforted by” that assurance.


Indeed, two business leaders who support NAFTA ― Chip Bowling, chairman of the Corn Board of the National Corn Growers Association, and Jack Gerard, president of the American Petroleum Institute, an oil industry trade group ― were in the room.


Grumet had interviewed them just before Ross’ arrival, allowing them to deliver a swan song to the much-maligned trade deal. Bowling hammered home just how important NAFTA was in opening up export markets for U.S. farmers, while Gerard waxed lyrical about the efficient supply chains NAFTA has made available for U.S. oil and gas producers and refiners.


Both men suggested that the changes they’d most favor would involve streamlining NAFTA to further integrate the United States’ economy with those of Canada and Mexico.


“It works very well for us right now. You can always strengthen an agreement,” Bowling said.


Here, too, Ross seemed to suggest that the administration is open to a strategy that might please some in the business community who benefit from NAFTA.


Ross said that bringing NAFTA up to speed with TPP, which would have created intellectual property protections and removed barriers to digital trade, would be the first order of business. Mexico and Canada had signed on to TPP, a 12-nation Pacific Rim trade agreement, before Trump shelved it in his first days in office, after campaigning against both NAFTA and TPP. But many business leaders wanted those two TPP provisions, so now they could get their way with a “repaired” NAFTA.


According to Ross, “there were a number of concessions to NAFTA countries made in connection with the TPP. And so we would view those as a starting point for discussion.


“It’s an old agreement. It didn’t address digital economy. It didn’t address much in the way of services, especially didn’t address much in the way of financial services. So there are some big holes in it.”



The comments provide fuel for the fears of progressive trade critics, such as Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch, who worry that the administration will revise NAFTA only to make it a more TPP-like accord, which they say would have expanded opportunities for business without protecting workers. Absent meaningful improvements in Mexican labor and environmental standards and a restoration of preferential treatment for U.S. goods in federal government procurement, Wallach and others argue, there is little chance that a re-negotiation will meaningfully benefit the American workers hardest hit by the 1994 trade pact.


Ross did note some of the priorities of groups like Public Citizen. He rattled off a list of NAFTA provisions in need of revision, including “intellectual property rights, customs procedures, sanitary and phytosanitary regulations, labor issues, environmental issues.” He also emphasized the importance of improving overall enforcement of trade treaties.


But Ross said that adding new provisions to NAFTA would be the “easiest” place to begin negotiations.


Wallach saw signs that the Trump administration might be using TPP as a model for NAFTA reform in a leaked March draft of a letter to Congress providing 90-day notice of NAFTA negotiation.


“They’d take the pieces of TPP that Mexico, the U.S. and Canada had agreed to and enact them bit by bit through the NAFTA renegotiation,” Wallach said in April.


The actual letter that U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer finally sent to Congress earlier this month was a fraction of the length of the March draft and, as a result, lacked many of its detailed descriptions. But it included some language about modernizing trade that resembled wording in the letter the Obama administration sent to Congress in 2009 when it notified lawmakers it would begin negotiations over TPP.


At other points in the conversation with Grumet, Ross defied the views of his hosts.


After Ross mentioned that a major goal of trade talks would be to reduce the United States’ trade deficit with its NAFTA partners, Grumet asked him whether trade deficits are necessarily negative.


The Bipartisan Policy Center, like many centrist, business-friendly Washington think tanks, produces research arguing that trade deficits can often correspond to high economic growth and need not be viewed as inherently problematic. BPC senior director Steve Bell sent a letter on May 10 to the Department of Commerce’s Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee making exactly that point.


Ross flatly rejected the idea.


“There’s no question that trade surpluses are more beneficial to a country than trade deficits,” he said.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rGQYy9
via IFTTT
Trump's EPA Chief Aided Polluters For Years. Now Suddenly He Says The Mess Is A Priority

Trump's EPA Chief Aided Polluters For Years. Now Suddenly He Says The Mess Is A Priority

18:00 Add Comment





WASHINGTON — If you listen to Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, the biggest environmental problem facing the United States isn’t climate change (he doesn’t think that’s real, anyway), or lead-tainted drinking water or brain-damaging pesticides. It’s that Barack Obama didn’t clean up the more than 1,300 most contaminated and hazardous sites across the country.


A Fox News headline earlier this month declared that Pruitt was here to clean up the Obama administration’s “toxic mess.” The former Oklahoma attorney general would have the American people believe that what the Superfund program really needs isn’t funding, it’s the right attitude.


“It’s not a matter of money,” Pruitt told Fox News. “It’s a matter of leadership and attitude and management.”


Pruitt has been fixated on the EPA’s Superfund, which is responsible for cleaning up highly contaminated sites, since taking over as agency chief in February. He’s called it “absolutely essential” and has repeatedly stressed that it’s part of EPA’s core mission. During an April visit to a lead- and arsenic-laden Superfund site in East Chicago, Indiana, Pruitt said he went there “because it’s important that we restore confidence to people in this community that we’re going to get it right going forward.” And he has blamed “poor leadership” and “poor focus” on the part of the Obama administration for there being more Superfund sites today than when Obama took office.



Superfund is an important part of EPA’s work, but Pruitt’s position fails to account for the history of the program. And every decision he’s made about it so far suggests he’s not serious about making it better. While he initially vowed to protect Superfund dollars, the 2018 budget the Trump administration released this month would slash EPA’s overall funding by 31.4 percent — to its lowest level in four decades — and cut Superfund from $1.09 billion to $762 million.


The administration argues that it can do more with less — that the EPA will “identify efficiencies in administrative costs” and “optimize” its use of settlements with polluters. The budget will also provide the agency with an “opportunity” to “identify what barriers have been preventing sites from returning to communities and design solutions to overcome those barriers,” the White House wrote in its justification for slashing Superfund.


Pruitt celebrated the budget proposal, saying in a statement that it “respects the American taxpayer” and “supports EPA’s highest priorities.”


But Superfund experts say Pruitt doesn’t seem to understand the basics of the program, which is designed to deal with expensive, complicated contamination cleanups that often have no responsible party and are not being handled at the state or local level.


“A cut to the program literally means longer exposure and preventing economic recovery for communities,” former EPA official Mathy Stanislaus told HuffPost. “The response should be fact-based. Tell me how the facts support cutting funding to a program that already has a backlog of sites?” Stanislaus oversaw Superfund as part of the EPA’s Office of Land and Emergency Management under Obama.



I don’t see how this program maintains its viability in any great way with these kinds of proposed cuts.
Christine Todd Whitman, EPA administrator under President George W. Bush


Christine Todd Whitman, who served as EPA administrator under President George W. Bush, said Superfund is yet another issue on which the Trump administration’s words and actions don’t match up.


“I don’t see how this program maintains its viability in any great way with these kinds of proposed cuts,” Whitman told HuffPost during a press call last week that included former leaders of several federal agencies. “And it just doesn’t make sense when they are talking about trying to address this problem.”



Established in 1980 in response to several environmental disasters, Superfund — formally the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act — is responsible for addressing areas contaminated with lead, radiation, mercury and other toxic pollutants, often left behind by industrial operations. The law authorized the federal government to force parties responsible for contamination to pay for cleanup costs and created a tax on the petroleum and chemical industries, two heavy polluters, to be pooled and used to clean up sites where a responsible party could not be found, called “orphan” sites. Areas requiring long-term remediation are put on the National Priorities List (NPL), but they often take years or even decades to clean up.


In many ways, Pruitt’s obsession with Superfund makes sense. As of 2015, 53 million Americans — 17 percent of the population — lived within three miles of a Superfund site. And the large number of toxic sites that remain on the NPL is something Pruitt has realized he can pin on past administrations for failing to address. 


Let’s look and think what the past administration achieved,” Pruitt said during a visit to a Pennsylvania coal mine last month, noting that there are still 1,322 sites. “Some of those have been on the list for 30 to 40 years.”  


It’s true that the number of NPL sites increased during Obama’s two terms, from about 1,260 at the end of fiscal year 2008. But for Pruitt to point his finger at Obama shows the EPA administrator’s willingness to ignore the Superfund listing process and the extent of contamination in many areas, as well as the challenge he now faces as head of the agency.


The number of sites proposed for and listed on the NPL simply reflects that those areas have been found to pose a risk to human or environmental health, and it “has nothing to do with ‘management,’” Stanislaus told HuffPost.


Superfund’s problems have almost everything to do with resources, which have all but vanished over the last two decades. In 1995, Congress allowed the so-called “polluter pays” tax — which generated billions of dollars to fund orphan cleanups — to expire. The trust fund dried up several years later, with cleanup costs now falling largely on taxpayers via federal budget allocations. As money for cleanups has shriveled, fewer sites have been remediated.


From 1999 to 2013, federal appropriations to Superfund declined from about $2 billion to $1.1 billion per year, according to a 2010 Government Accountability Office report. In 1999, the program completed 85 site cleanups, compared with just eight in 2014.



Over the years, several Democratic legislators have pushed for reinstating the Superfund tax, a move supported by the Obama administration, but the efforts failed.


Whitman fears the program won’t be able to function with additional cuts to staff and enforcement. She said enforcement is “critical” to get polluters to pay up.


But Pruitt, a longtime ally of the fossil fuel industry who sued the agency he now runs more than a dozen times as Oklahoma’s attorney general, insists Superfund will become self-sustaining under his watch. “The great thing about this is we have private funding. There are people out there responsible for these sites to clean up,” he told Fox News. “The moneys are there to do so.”


Stanislaus said there are some sites that provide the economic incentive for private interests to invest in redevelopment. “But to say that there’s this hidden pot of gold out there that can be brought to bear on a site, I don’t know what fantasy island that comes from, frankly.”


Nor does it seem likely that the Trump administration, which is stacked with industry lobbyists and fossil fuel allies, is going to be cracking down on polluters and forcing them to pay for cleanups. Ken Cook, president of the nonprofit Environmental Working Group, said in a statement that “there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell that polluters will be forced to pay for cleaning up their toxic messes that endanger Americans’ health” under Trump and Pruitt’s watch.


Those appointed to help Pruitt in his Superfund efforts so far have been less than inspiring choices. This month, Trump nominated Susan Bodine, chief counsel for the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, whom The Intercept described as a “lobbyist for Superfund polluters,” to serve as assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance. And Pruitt has chosen Albert Kelly, a longtime banker with no apparent experience in environmental policy, to lead a new Superfund task force.


The task force, which was announced last week, will provide recommendations to the agency on how to “streamline and improve the Superfund program” within 30 days. In a statement accompanying his announcement, Pruitt said he is “confident that, with a renewed sense of urgency, leadership and fresh ideas, the Superfund program can reach its full potential of returning formerly contaminated sites to communities for their beneficial use.”


Wilma Subra, a Louisiana-based chemist and Superfund expert, told HuffPost that it’s not clear what Pruitt means when he says he will reprioritize Superfund cleanups or if he will change the general understanding of what it takes for a site to be considered clean and thus eligible to be removed from the list. Until that’s more clear, Subra said, Pruitt’s claims are just a “talking point.”


“Is it going to be a little small slice of [Superfund] he’s going to prioritize, and the rest is going to sit there and languish?” she asked.


Stanislaus shares her concern that Pruitt may shortcut cleanups in order to cut costs. Doing so, Stanislaus said, would be “shortsighted” and come with health and economic consequences. Likewise, research has shown that investing in a Superfund site can increase property values and fuel job growth. Not to mention the positive effects that cleanup efforts have on human health.


Andrew Rosenburg, director of the Center for Science and Democracy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said Pruitt’s Superfund talk is “smoke and mirrors.”


“To simply wave your hands and say ‘We’re going to clean it up’ at the same time as you’re reducing the resources, both people and money available to do it, is frankly nonsense,” Rosenburg told HuffPost.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2soSaCN
via IFTTT
How Did This Happen?

How Did This Happen?

16:55 Add Comment

For those of us lucky to be awake Tuesday night, for the semi-frequent late-night Twitter outburst from President Donald Trump, we received the gift of “covfefe.” Yes, Trump’s attempt to type the word “coverage” went somewhat awry, giving the Twitter wags a good chuckle before winking out for a good night’s sleep. You had the funny feeling that there would be a high-level meeting the next morning to “spin” this misspelling as a masterstroke of political letters (and that is apparently what happened), but that would surely be that. Right?


Wrong! Sometime between Trump’s tweet and the next morning, a think piece was penned, positioning “covfefe” as the unified field theorem of Donald Trump. Who wrote it? You know who wrote it. The man who writes the takes that make the whole world groan: New CNN hire Chris Cillizza.



This story is really super important to him!






”And ... they couldn’t!” Orchestra sting, curtain closes, END OF ACT ONE.  


Yes, the inability to come up with a “good answer” on a misspelled tweet really is something ― or at least it would be in an administration that isn’t a daily omnishambles. But let’s leave that aside for the time being and instead reflect upon this new “Peak Cillizza” era we seem to be entering and the way we find ourselves wondering, “How did this happen?” with increasing frequency. With the help of the Eat the Press telestrator, we shall meditate upon this question, until we are weeping.


So, then: How did this happen?




Per HuffPost’s Lydia O’Connor: “There’s zero evidence Ivanka Trump will help make the fight against climate change a pillar of her father’s administration, despite what some headlines may have led readers to believe.”



How did this happen?


 



How did this happen?



(In fairness, sociopaths usually are the biggest winners in Washington.)


How did this happen?  



How did this happen?




(See here for more on how Chris Cillizza ― who does not know any actual people ― constantly makes evidence-free assertions about them.)



How did this happen?



How did this happen?



How did this happen?


 



Hoooooly crap, you guys! How did this happen?



And how ― how on earth! ― did this happen? 



Meanwhile:






Keep leaking us the good stuff, Tiffany. 


In short: Congratulations to The Washington Post.


This has been: “How did this happen?”



~~~~~


Jason Linkins edits “Eat the Press” for HuffPost and co-hosts the HuffPost Politics podcast “So, That Happened.” Subscribe here, and listen to the latest episode below. 





-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rFXIw8
via IFTTT
Noose Found In African-American History Museum Exhibit In D.C.

Noose Found In African-American History Museum Exhibit In D.C.

16:25 Add Comment

For the second time in a week, a noose was found on the grounds of a Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C.


When visitors walked into an exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture on Wednesday, they saw a small noose lying on the floor. It had been left in an exhibit with galleries from the segregation era, Smithsonian spokeswoman Linda St. Thomas told HuffPost.


Two of the visitors who discovered the noose “were very upset,” St. Thomas said. The gallery was “closed pretty quickly” and remained closed for about an hour. 


It’s the second time in less than a week that a noose has been found on or around museum grounds on the National Mall. Last Friday, a noose was hanging from a tree outside the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, St. Thomas said.


“We don’t know how long that was there,” St. Thomas said of Friday’s discovery. “It was in a public space outside, but this [newly discovered noose] was obviously intended to be in the segregation exhibition.” 


St. Thomas said the museum has “full security,” including metal detectors and bag screening. But a small noose would not have set off any immediate alarms, she said.


The U.S. Park Police are now investigating the incident.


This is a developing story and will be updated.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2sfATfZ
via IFTTT
Trump Expected To Delay U.S. Embassy Move To Jerusalem

Trump Expected To Delay U.S. Embassy Move To Jerusalem

16:15 Add Comment

WASHINGTON, May 31 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump is expected this week to delay relocating the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv, U.S. officials and a diplomatic source said on Wednesday, despite his campaign pledge to go ahead with the controversial move.


With a deadline for a decision looming, Trump is likely to continue his predecessors’ policy of signing a six-month waiver overriding a 1995 law requiring that the embassy be transferred to Jerusalem, an action that would have complicated his efforts to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, the sources said.


Trump has yet to make his decision official but is required by law to act by Friday, according to one U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.


Barring a last-minute surprise, Trump is expected to renew the waiver. His administration intends to make clear, however, that Trump remains committed to the promise he made during the 2016 presidential campaign, though it will not set a specific timetable for doing so, officials said.


Asked whether Trump would sign the waiver, White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters on Wednesday:


“Once we have a decision, we’ll put it out,” adding there would be “something very soon on that.”


While there have been divisions among Trump’s aides on the issue, the view that appears to have prevailed is that the United States should keep the embassy in Tel Aviv for now to avoid angering the Palestinians, Arab governments and Western allies while the president seeks to nurture peace efforts.


Trump avoided any public mention of a potential embassy move during his visit to Israel and the West Bank in May. Despite that, most experts are skeptical of Trump’s chances for achieving a peace deal that eluded other U.S. presidents.


The status of Jerusalem is one of the major stumbling blocks. Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem during the 1967 Middle East war and later annexed it, a move not recognized internationally. Israel considers all of the city its indivisible capital.


PRO-ISRAEL RHETORIC


The Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state. Jerusalem is home to holy sites of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions.


Shifting the U.S. Embassy would be widely seen as Washington’s recognition of the Israeli position on Jerusalem’s status, which successive U.S. administrations have said must be decided in negotiations between the two sides.


Former President Barack Obama renewed the waiver in December, setting off a six-month clock for Trump. CNN was first to report that Trump was expected to sign the waiver.


On the campaign trail, Trump’s pro-Israel rhetoric raised expectations that he would act quickly to move the embassy. But after he took office in January, the issue lost momentum as he met Arab leaders who warned it would be hard to rejuvenate long-stalled peace efforts unless he acted as a fair mediator.


Some of Trump’s top aides have pushed for him to keep his campaign promise, not only because it would be welcomed by most Israelis but to satisfy the pro-Israel, right-wing base that helped him win the presidency. The State Department, however recommended against an embassy move, one U.S. official said.


“The president is still committed to moving the embassy,” one U.S. official said. “It’s not a question of whether but when it will be done.”


The Jerusalem Embassy Act passed by Congress in 1995 mandating relocation of embassy to Jerusalem allows the president to waive the requirement in accordance with U.S. national security interests.


(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick and Arshad Mohammed; Editing by Yara Bayoumy and Sandra Maler)






-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2qCCxqN
via IFTTT
Iconic Photo Shows Mother Of Portland Victim Embracing Woman In Headscarf At Vigil

Iconic Photo Shows Mother Of Portland Victim Embracing Woman In Headscarf At Vigil

16:15 Add Comment

“Tell everyone on the train I love them.”


Those were the reported last words of Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23, who died from a stab wound on Friday, May 26, according to a bystander. The recent college grad was one of the victims in a hate-fueled attack on a train in Portland, Oregon, that targeted two young women, one of whom was wearing a headscarf and was Muslim.


Friends and family described Namkai-Meche as having a “huge heart” and “a joyful and magical spirit” ― qualities he appears to have shared with his mother, Asha Deliverance.


Deliverance and hundreds of other Portlanders gathered for a vigil on Saturday to honor the lives of Namkai-Meche and Rick Best, 53, who was also killed in the attack after defending the young women. Micah Fletcher, 21, was also injured in the incident and survived.


During the vigil, Deliverance cried, embraced people in the crowd, and encouraged those gathered to “Give it up for love.”


A one point a woman wearing a white headscarf approached the grieving mother, who warmly leaned forward and embraced her.






On Monday, Deliverance penned an open letter to President Donald Trump, urging him to be a be a “President for all Americans.”


“Please encourage all Americans to protect and watch out for one another,” the letter reads in part. “Please condemn any acts of violence, which result directly from hate speech & hate groups. I am praying you will use your leadership to do so.”


Namkai-Meche, Best and Fletcher intervened on Friday when Jeremy Joseph Christian, the accused attacker, reportedly made anti-Muslim comments directed at the two girls, one of whom was wearing a hijab. All three were injured in the altercation, Namkai-Meche and Best fatally so.


Namkai-Meche was a recent college grad who worked at an consulting firm focused on environmental issues. The 23-year-old’s family released a statement on Saturday, urging people to “use this tragedy as an opportunity for reflection and change.”





Best, an Army veteran and a married father of four, worked for the city of Portland and was remembered as a “hero” by his family. “He couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. He died fighting the good fight protecting the innocent,” his eldest son, Erik, told KATU News.


Fletcher, a student at Portland State University, said he’s still “healing” and trying to make sense of what happened. “I got stabbed in the neck on my way to work, randomly, by a stranger I don’t know, for trying to just be a nice person,” he told USA Today.


A LaunchGood fund initiated by two Muslim nonprofit groups had raised more than $500,000 to support the victims families as of Wednesday afternoon.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2qC9S9f
via IFTTT
While You Obsessed Over Trump's Scandals, He's Fundamentally Changed The Country

While You Obsessed Over Trump's Scandals, He's Fundamentally Changed The Country

16:05 Add Comment

On the morning of May 12, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed that he had instructed federal prosecutors to begin pursuing lengthier prison sentences for drug offenders.


It was a draconian change in approach that flew in the face of a growing bipartisan agreement on sentencing reform. “He’s completely discarded what has been an emerging consensus about how best to keep the country safe,” said Matthew Miller, a former Department of Justice spokesman. “[O]ne of the most extreme voices in the country on criminal justice policy just happened to be put into the most important job for shaping its future.”


The move was then largely buried under an avalanche of Donald Trump-related news.


Just hours after Sessions’ policy was revealed, the president tweeted that he may have taped conversations with his recently-fired FBI director, James Comey. With less than 140 characters, Washington was abuzz again over Trump’s potential ties to Russia, which Comey had been investigating.






This is a defining feature of the Trump administration: While scandal and squabble, palace intrigue and provocative tweets suck much of the oxygen out of the room ― and leave the impression of mass government disfunction ― a wide array of fundamentally Trump-minded reform is taking place.


“All of this smoke is missing the steady progress that the modern Republican Party is achieving,” said Grover Norquist, the longtime anti-tax advocate. “The idea that Trump isn’t getting anywhere is wrong. Those free market guys are picking up maybe not all the marbles in the world, but a large quantity of them. And we haven’t thrown away any marbles.”


One reason behind the perception that Trump’s agenda has largely foundered is that it’s made painfully little legislative progress. His efforts to push health care reform through Congress have advanced incrementally, but many hurdles remain. Tax reform appears unlikely to come before the summer, if at all. Trump’s budget won’t get a vote, and his relationship with Congress seems to fall somewhere between fractious and nonexistent.


But legislative progress is only one vehicle that moves a president’s agenda. And there have been profound policy changes on a variety of administrative fronts, often obscured by scandals emerging from the White House.



All of this smoke is missing the steady progress that the modern Republican Party is achieving.
Grover Norquist


Take reports that Trump will leave the Paris Agreement on climate change, the milestone global accord to lower carbon emissions in the face of overwhelming evidence of human-caused global warming.


The president’s retrenchment will have immense, generations-long geopolitical ripple effects. Yet on Wednesday morning, it competed for media attention alongside the fallout from Trump’s bizarre Twitter typo the night before and the backlash against comedian Kathy Griffin’s vulgar depiction of a severed Trump head.


On regulatory policy, Trump’s impact has far outpaced the coverage it’s often received. He’s made it harder for workers to set up retirement accounts and has delayed the implementation of workplace safety rules. He repealed a regulation protecting workers from wage theft and allowed employers with spotty labor records to get government contracts. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration has hit the brakes on a rule that would require firms to report worker injury data online. Trump has given coal companies permission to dump debris into local streams and canceled requirements for reporting methane emissions. Both the Dakota Access and Keystone pipelines have been allowed to proceed, and coal companies have been allowed to again lease on public lands.


Elsewhere, Trump has made moves that will fundamentally alter the way our economy operates and individuals live their lives. His appointment of Ajit Pai to head the Federal Communications Commission is one of them. Pai is poised to dismantle net neutrality rules, moving away from treating online content as a public utility and toward a system that allows cable and telecom industry interests to control content and traffic. “That appointment,” Norquist said, “is [determining] 16 percent of the economy.”  


Much attention has focused on the way the courts and Congress have stymied Trump’s immigration policy. But even absent a travel ban or a border wall, he has dramatically altered the government’s approach. Deportations of undocumented immigrants have grown steadily under Trump’s watch, especially among noncriminals.


And Trump has had a profound impact on women’s health. He drastically expanded the so-called global gag rule, restricting a larger pool of funding from groups that mention or promote abortion, and he is poised to gut a mandate requiring employers to cover birth control for employees, broadening exemptions to the requirement that extend well beyond religious-affiliated groups.


These are just the domestic consequences of Trump’s presidency. On foreign affairs, his reach is far greater and restraint more limited.


Trump’s ability to do all this is not, as his administration would argue, evidence of an unappreciated wizardry at governance. He has simply utilized the powers afforded to the executive branch.


“He has a lot of leeway, and that’s why winning the White House is so important and losing it is so painful,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a former top aide to former President Barack Obama. “The fact is, the bureaucracy is set up in the way that career professionals at government agencies are able to get things done in the way that the class of clowns around Trump aren’t able to.”


Indeed, the Trump administration has seemed to make the most progress when the epicenter of action is removed from the White House itself.


Kevin Ring, the president of the nonprofit Families Against Mandatory Minimums, said he was heartened to see Republicans and Democrats alike pushing back on Sessions’ sentencing guidelines. The impact of the policy change may be overstated, he says, as lawyers and judges could still determine they don’t want to abide by the tougher sentencing guidelines. But Ring concedes that Sessions had proved himself to be a competent and effective governing agent in ways that set him far apart from his boss.


“In every other battle, it is like, ‘Who is winning, Jared [Kushner] or [Steve] Bannon?’ Who is winning Trump’s blessing? And without it, they can’t go forward,” Ring said. “Sessions is at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue [where the DOJ is located] and doing whatever he wants. Which is not to say he isn’t doing what Trump wants. But he certainly has enough authority and discretion to move full speed ahead on all these fronts.”


At some point, Trump, Sessions and the rest of the Cabinet will run out of the low-hanging regulatory changes they can easily make. At that juncture, they will be limited in the policies they can promulgate. But by then, they will have already instituted substantial reforms, many of them without the public’s knowledge and hard to reverse.


Democratic operatives are waking up to the idea that the party should stop acting as if Trump is a rudderless president, desperately trying to pass an agenda as it’s anchored down by continuous scandal ― but rather, prosecute a case against Trump’s actual policy achievements.


“Democrats aren’t making a mistake by focusing on Russia, because it is potentially the biggest political scandal in U.S. history,” said Pfeiffer. “And the pressure they are putting forward has led to new revelations. But there will be a time when voters are interested in stuff beyond this. We aren’t there yet, but it would be incumbent upon the party to point this out.”


Want more updates from Sam Stein? Sign up for his newsletter, Spam Stein, here.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2rVG1Zs
via IFTTT
Democrats Have Buyer's Remorse About Trump's Homeland Security Chief

Democrats Have Buyer's Remorse About Trump's Homeland Security Chief

16:05 Add Comment





WASHINGTON ― When 37 Democrats cast their votes to confirm Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly in January, they did so in spite of heavy opposition to the policies he would be tasked to carry out: more deportations, a southern border wall and a travel ban targeting Muslims.


Their hope was that the former Marine general would be a moderating influence on President Donald Trump and a better option than other names floated for the post. Kelly wasn’t known for being a virulent crusader against unauthorized immigration, and he had experience with Central and South America as former head of the U.S. Southern Command. He said in his confirmation hearing that he opposed a registry based on ethnicity or religion, which Trump once floated for Muslims.


Four months later, some of the Senate Democrats who voted for Kelly are exasperated, disappointed and, in some cases, even wondering if they made a mistake. Arrests of non-criminal undocumented immigrants are up significantly, plans for a border wall are underway, and Kelly has joined Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions in framing immigration almost exclusively in terms of crime. He defended the now-blocked ban on refugees and most travelers from several Muslim-majority nations and joked with Trump about using a saber “on the press.”


“I think the secretary has gone above and beyond even what the president’s dictates are and I’m disappointed in the way he’s acted,” Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), who supported Kelly’s confirmation, told HuffPost.


The senator said he wouldn’t vote for Kelly if he had the chance now.


Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) voted for Kelly as well, but went on to publicly spar with him over the deportation of a Honduran mother and child who had been detained in Pennsylvania. Casey wouldn’t go so far as to say he regretted his vote, remarking instead that he would “try to work with Secretary Kelly and encourage him and the Administration to move in a better direction.”


But the senator acknowledged that he’s frustrated by the administration’s decisions to deport children and families. His “hope that Secretary Kelly would be more evenhanded on enforcement ... hasn’t been borne out.”


“The administration’s approach is not only wrong, but it also doesn’t make our nation safer,” said Casey via email. “When you talk to Secretary Kelly, he says he’s just following order[s] but he was confirmed to lead, not just to go along with some wrongheaded immigration approach that was cooked up during the campaign.”


Kelly, more than most figures in Trump’s orbit, illustrates the stain that the administration’s policies can leave on an individual’s public standing. The secretary has been at the forefront of both the legally contentious travel ban and the highly controversial crackdown on undocumented immigrants. His willingness to defend both has given him a reputation as the kind, respected face of draconian initiatives.



He was confirmed to lead, not just to go along with some wrongheaded immigration approach that was cooked up during the campaign.
Sen. Bob Casey


Kelly has chafed at such criticisms. He has argued that if agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Protection encounter people who are removable from the U.S., they must work to remove them. His officials have said that even people without criminal records and with longstanding ties to the U.S. can fit that category under the law and they won’t be exempt from removal, although they were often passed over under President Barack Obama.


This focus on what the law broadly directs has come up repeatedly, including when Kelly responded to Casey’s call to stop the deportation of the Honduran mother and child.


“I say it over and over again: If the laws are not good laws, then change them,” Kelly declared during a speech in early May. “Don’t call me, or Twitter or tweet, or go to the press with outrageous stories about how we do business or why we’re deporting somebody.”


Homeland Security spokeswoman Joanne Talbot made the same point in a statement to HuffPost: “Secretary Kelly has said that if lawmakers do not like the laws they’ve passed and we are charged to enforce, then they should work to adopt legislation instead of asking DHS to ignore existing law and court orders. The Secretary— like all DHS law enforcement officers— has taken an oath to follow the Constitution.”


Kelly “firmly believes that the policies adopted by the President to secure our borders and combat terrorism and transnational criminal organization are Constitutional,” Talbot said.



Other Democratic senators still support for Kelly and say that some of their hopes for the secretary have been borne out, at least behind the scenes. At a hearing last week, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who voted for Kelly’s confirmation, told the secretary that he and many of his colleagues “are so proud that you have agreed to serve in this position, makes us all feel a lot better.”


Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mt.) was similarly enthusiastic at that hearing.


“When I voted for your confirmation, Mr. Secretary ― and I would do it again today ― I said you are one of the adults in the room that I am dependent on to make good decisions for this country’s security,” Tester said. “I still believe that.”


Even one of the toughest critics of Trump’s immigration policies suggested that Kelly has been a moderating influence. At the time he voted for Kelly, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said he wouldn’t have backed him if the confirmation vote were “a referendum on President Donald Trump’s immigration policy.” Earlier this month, Durbin told HuffPost that behind the scenes, when senators have brought specific cases to Kelly, “he has dealt with them quickly and honestly, and that’s all I can ask.”


Even as the controversies piled up, Durbin was willing to give the secretary a bit more leeway to make his mark.


“I’ve maintained a closer-than-usual relationship with him and frequent conversation, and I think there have been forces within the administration which want to move him into a more radical position,” Durbin said. “Am I happy with everything he’s done? No. But I want to continue to work with him.”


According to Democratic House members, Kelly has insinuated in private meetings that he helped save the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which allows some undocumented young people to stay in the U.S. Trump promised to end the program immediately and yet he still hasn’t. In March, Kelly repeatedly told House Democrats that he was the “best thing that ever happened to DACA folks,” Rep. Tony Cárdenas (D-Calif.) said at the time.


Kelly’s critics say no one should be surprised by the early results of his tenure. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) was one of 11 Democrats to vote against his confirmation. Her staff emailed other Democratic senators ahead of the vote to note that at his confirmation hearing, Kelly hadn’t committed to not sharing the personal information of DACA recipients with ICE or to shield them from deportation.


She told HuffPost that those concerns persist today, as do concerns about the travel ban, standards for hiring border patrol agents and Kelly’s “ability to manage the department as it relates to giving clear guidance to the tens of thousands of people that work in that department about the policies of the administration writ large and his policies as the director of that agency.”


Whether surprising or not, Kelly’s actions are disappointing to immigration reform supporters who had been cautiously optimistic about him. Rep. Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) said that Kelly’s experience with Central America should have given him “a better appreciation of the factors pushing refugees to flee the region and factors driving migration in other parts of the world.”


“[B]ut there have been no indications of compassion, expertise, or cooperation coming from the DHS Secretary or his senior staff,” Gutiérrez said in an email. “DHS seems to wish Congress would just go away and stop asking them about what they are doing and why, which is not an option.”


Immigrant rights advocates argue that Kelly is wrong to claim his hands are tied by the law. He has the discretion to avoid deporting certain people and focus on others, as previous homeland security secretaries did, said Clarissa Martínez-de-Castro of the National Council of La Raza. Thus far, she doesn’t think he has used it.


“There was a sense that perhaps given his experience he would bring a more tempered approach to the issue of immigration and immigration enforcement,” Martínez-de-Castro said. “I think that based on what we’ve seen, now the question is whether he is a helpless executioner or a willing one of what are, at the very least, ethically questionable policies.”

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.



from The Huffington Post | The Full Feed http://ift.tt/2qC27QO
via IFTTT