House sues members of Trump administration over 'sham' border-emergency declaration

The U.S. House of Representatives is suing members of President Trump’s administration over his national emergency declaration at the U.S.-Mexico border to divert funds for his signature border wall.
The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Washington, alleges the administration “flouted the fundamental separation-of-powers principles and usurped for itself legislative power specifically vested by the Constitution in Congress,” Politico reported.
The complaint names as defendants Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and the departments they oversee. Trump is not named as a defendant.
"The House has been injured, and will continue to be injured, by defendants' unconstitutional actions, which usurp the House's appropriations authority and mean that the relevant funds are no longer available to be spent on the purposes for which they were appropriated," the complaint says.
Trump declared a national emergency in February, a move that came after a partial government shutdown and was met with outcry from members of both parties who claimed he was interfering with Congress.
The declaration allows Trump to divert extra funds needed to build his long-promised border wall. He had requested $5.7 billion for construction, but Congress has granted only a fraction of that.
House Speak Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., announced her intention to sue the administration Thursday, the Politico reported.
"The President’s sham emergency declaration and unlawful transfers of funds have undermined our democracy, contravening the vote of the bipartisan Congress, the will of the American people and the letter of the Constitution,” Pelosi said in a statement.
In March, Congress passed a measure to block Trump’s emergency declaration, prompting him to issue his first veto. Attempts by House Democrats to override the veto failed.

Avocado on the Border Cartoons

Calif. County sues Dept. of Homeland Security over cost of asylum seeking migrants

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UPDATED 10:32 AM PT — Thursday, April 4, 2019

San Diego County is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over the rising cost of asylum seekers. The Southern California county filed a lawsuit Wednesday against the heads of the agencies within the department, claiming the county has suffered from the release of asylum-seeking migrants.
Many illegal immigrants can not be immediately deported and must be allowed to stay in the country to wait out their court case, because of loopholes in immigration law.
Due to limited funds and housing resources, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were forced to stop implementing their “safe release” policy last fall, which provided asylum seekers assistance to reach destinations outside of San Diego.
The county is now left to front the bill for the upkeep of migrant shelters and medical care, which is estimated to cost millions of dollars.

“Our Border Patrol — the job they’ve done is incredible…the job that ICE is doing is incredible, and we have run out of space. We can’t hold people anymore and Mexico can stop it so easily.”

–President Donald Trump

County officials are seeking a permanent injunction, which would require ICE to resume their “safe release” policy and to reimburse them.
This lawsuit is a dramatic shift for San Diego as supervisors last April voted to back the Trump administration’s lawsuit challenging California sanctuary laws.
San Diego County chairwoman Dianne Jacob claimed the lawsuit is not a matter of politics, but of the rising costs of asylum seekers in the county.

Court papers show Gillibrand’s father worked for Nxivm sex cult: report

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., speaks at an event in Washington on Monday. (Associated Press)

Court documents revealed this week confirmed that the father of 2020 Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand once worked as a lobbyist for a secretive sex cult, but left after the upstate New York group sued him, according to a report.
The documents backed up previous accounts that the New York Democrat's father, Doug Rutnik, worked for Albany-based Nxivm for four months in 2004 at a rate of $25,000 per month, Big League Politics reported.
Rutnik was sued when he attempted to distance himself from the group before reaching a settlement.
“Her father Doug Rutnik came to work as a consultant for NXIVM. ... He was fired, they sued him, and they had to pay him $100,000,” former NXIVM employee Frank Parlato told Big League Politics. “Her father’s wife, her stepmother, was also a member of NXIVM. ... Doug got her into the cult, Gillibrand’s father got Gillibrand’s future stepmother into the cult. Doug left the cult because he was sued. Clare Bronfman, after her father was sued, donated money to Gillibrand. Gillibrand accepted it.”
An unnamed witness described how Gillibrand once sat at a Nxivm table at a Hillary Clinton fundraiser, according to the political news site.
“Yeah the three front VIP tables were all brought by NXIVM and she was sitting with Nancy Salzman,” court documents said, referring to the former Nxivm co-founder who pleaded guilty in March to a single racketeering charge.
Gillibrand has sometimes been called a #MeToo champion for her advocacy on gender equality and women’s issues. She has denied having a connection to Nxivm and said she first heard of it through extensive media coverage.
"Senator Gillibrand had never heard of this group until she recently read about them in the newspaper," a spokesman for Gillibrand told the Washington Free Beacon in March 2018. "She is glad that federal and state prosecutors have taken action in this case."
The group and its leader Keith Raniere, known as Vanguard, have been accused by former members of forcing women to become sex slaves and branding women like cattle with Raniere’s initials. Some women said they were forced to hand over nude photos of themselves in case they disobeyed him and were forced to perform manual labor, according to the Post.
Other former members have described Nxivm as a “cult” centered around Raniere. Salzman admitted to a federal judge to spying on Nxivm’s perceived enemies and hacking into email accounts.
Her daughter Laura Salzman, 42, also entered a guilty plea last month to keeping her own personal female slave locked in a room for two years and threatening to deport her back to Mexico, court transcripts said.
Raniere was arrested in Mexico last year and is expected to go on trial in late April on multiple charges, including forced labor and possession of child pornography.

Acting director of ICE has nomination pulled by White House: report

The Trump administration on Thursday pulled the nomination of Ron Vitiello, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to be the agency's permanent leader, three people with knowledge of the move told the Associated Press.
It wasn’t clear why Vitiello’s nomination was pulled. The move initially set off confusion within the Department of Homeland Security, with some officials saying it was an error. He will remain acting director for the foreseeable future, the sources said.
Vitiello has spent more than 30 years in law enforcement, starting in 1985 with the U.S. Border Patrol. He was slated to travel with President Trump to the border Friday, but he is no longer going.
On Thursday, Vitiello told Fox News that ICE was seeking to increase its number of detention beds across the country as the flow of migrants across the U.S.-Mexico border has surged in recent weeks.
“The system’s in a meltdown," Vitiello told "America's Newsroom." “It’s an absolute crisis down there, it has humanitarian aspects, it has border security aspects, this policy can’t continue."
In response to the spike, Trump threatened to close the border entirely by the end of the week before extending his deadline to one year. Since Dec. 21, ICE has set free more than 125,000 people, which Trump called “catch and release.”
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Beto O'Rourke compares Trump administration rhetoric to Nazi Germany

Mexican Speed Freak?

Democratic 2020 contender Beto O'Rourke on Thursday compared President Trump's rhetoric regarding immigration to that of Nazi Germany.
Speaking to reporters in Iowa, the former congressman — in response to a question about how he would address attacks from Republicans — called out "the rhetoric of a president who not only describes immigrants as rapists and criminals but as animals and an infestation."
O'Rourke continued: "Seeking to ban all Muslims, all people of one religion, what other country on the face of the planet does that kind of thing? Or in our human history? Or in the history of the western world? Because they are somehow deficient or violent or a threat to us? Putting kids in cages, saying that Neonazis and Klansmen and white supremacists are 'very fine people'?"
"Now, I might expect someone to describe another human being as an infestation in the Third Reich," he said. "I would not expect that in the United States of America."
The Texan said that if people "don't call out racism — certainly at the highest levels of power, in this position of trust that the president enjoys — then we are going to continue to get its consequences," and added he will avoid using similar rhetoric because "if we descend into that pettiness and meanness and those personal attacks, I'm not sure that we can win."
O'Rourke, who launched his campaign in mid-March, said Americans need to call out what the Trump administration is doing to "define a better future for this country."
The failed Senate candidate's campaign announced on Wednesday that they've raised $9.4 million in the first 18 days of the campaign.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Liberal Thinking Cartoons

McConnell Deploys 'Nuclear Option' to Speed Approval of Trump Nominees

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell deployed the so-called 'nuclear option' Wednesday by changing the Republican-controlled chamber’s rules to speed approval of President Donald Trump’s nominees who have been slow-walked by Democrats.
'It is time for this sorry chapter to end,' said the Kentucky Republican, who noted the new rules will apply to future nominees by the president. 'It’s time to return this body to a more normal and reasonable process for fulfilling its constitutional responsibilities, no matter which party controls the White House.'

Under the new rule approved 51-48, debate time on the Senate floor for lower-level administration nominees will be cut to two hours from 30 hours. The Senate plans to vote later Wednesday to adopt the same rule for U.S. district court judges.
McConnell said the move is needed to allow Trump to staff his government. It will help McConnell fill scores of open judgeships -- a top priority -- without having to use months of the Senate calendar.
The GOP is leaving unchanged the requirement of 30 hours’ debate for Cabinet-level appointments, other senior appointments and higher court nominees.

Democrats called the rule change another power grab by McConnell, who used obstruction tactics numerous times himself when Barack Obama was president. McConnell refused to hold a hearing for Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland and blocked numerous other lower court nominees in the final two years of Obama’s presidency. The Supreme Court seat ultimately went to Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch.
Democrats suggested there isn’t a real problem in confirming presidential nominees. They point to statements by McConnell and Trump bragging about setting records for court confirmations, and to Trump appointees who have either left under ethical clouds or been blocked on the Senate floor.

'It’s going to make it easier to rush unqualified and extreme Trump nominees to the Senate before anybody notices,' said Democratic Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon.
McConnell’s blockade of key Obama nominations prompted then-Democratic Leader Harry Reid to deploy the nuclear option to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to advance most nominations. At the time, McConnell was livid. Now, he’s echoing Reid’s arguments about the need to prevent a minority from obstructing a president, and using the same tool Reid used to overturn Senate precedent.

McConnell also used the procedure -- which effectively breaks the Senate rules to change the rules -- in 2017 to eliminate the 60-vote threshold for Supreme Court nominations.
Still, a number of Republicans insist on keeping the legislative filibuster, which allows the minority party to demand a 60-vote threshold to advance a bill. McConnell himself made clear Wednesday he still opposes getting rid of the legislative filibuster.
'The legislative filibuster is central to the nature of the Senate,' McConnell said. 'It always has been and must always be the distinctive quality of this institution.'