Border Wall Cartoons

Miffed over border wall talk, top Mexican official floats American entry fee

A top Mexican official on Tuesday said that Mexico may consider charging a fee for Americans entering the country in what could be seen as a retaliation to President Trump's call for a border wall.
Foreign Secretary Luis Videgaray, in a meeting with Mexico's top legislators, called Trump's plan an "unfriendly, hostile" act, and called on his colleagues to consider the entry fee.
"We could explore — not necessarily a visa, that could impede a lot of people from coming to Mexico — but we could perhaps (have) a fee associated with entry,” Videgaray said. “This is something that I'm sure will be part of our discussion, and I believe we can find points of agreement."
Videgaray went on to say that Mexico would not pay a cent towards the wall. He said if talks between the U.S. and Mexico fail to satisfy both countries, the Mexican government would consider reducing security cooperation.
"If the negotiation on other themes — immigration, the border, trade — isn't satisfactory to Mexico's interests, we will have to review our existing cooperation," Videgaray said. "This would be especially in the security areas ... and that involves the national immigration agency, the federal police and of course, the armed forces."
Trump has asked congress to include a down payment on the wall in the spending bill but because of scrutiny from both sides, the President announced Monday that he’d be willing to wait until September to revisit the issue of funding; however, his stance on Mexico’s role in paying for the wall hasn’t changed.

Judge William Orrick III: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

1
Judge William Orrick was appointed to his current position by President Barack Obama.
At the time of the appointment, Orrick was working at the law firm Coblentz, Patch, Duffy & Bass LLP. He has previously served as deputy assistant attorney general for the Civil Division of the United States Department of Justice.
Obama nominated Orrick in June 2012, but Orrick was not approved until February 2013. This was mainly a party line vote, though Republican Jeff Flake broke with his party to vote to confirm Orrick.

 2
When Barack Obama was running for president, Judge William Orrick reportedly helped raise money for him and donated some of his own money as well.
According to Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group, Orrick donated approximately $30,000 to committees supporting Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign for president. In addition, he helped raise $200,000 in contributions to the Obama campaign.
This had not been Orrick’s first time raising money for a Democratic politician. During the 2004 election, he helped raise funds for John Kerry, according to Public Citizen.

3
In 2010, Arizona passed a controversial immigration law known as SB 1070.
This was a strict immigration bill which required that police officers attempt to determine a person’s immigration status when they are stopped for unrelated reasons if there is a reasonable suspicion that the person may be undocumented. It also barred state and local officials from restricting the enforcement of federal immigration laws.
The Department of Justice ultimately filed a lawsuit against the state of Arizona because of this bill. Orrick, who worked at the Justice Department at the time, was involved in coordinating the Obama administration’s argument against SB 1070, according to the Washington Examiner.
Orrick himself said during his Senate confirmation process, “Regarding Arizona, I attended meetings where the impact of SB 1070 on the operations of DHS and law enforcement was discussed [and] where the preemption analysis of the lawyers working on this issue was discussed.”

4
In 2015, Judge William Orrick issued a temporary restraining order against a pro-life group that had been releasing undercover videos about Planned Parenthood.
At the time, The Center for Medical Progress had been putting out highly-edited videos that they claimed showed Planned Parenthood had been illegally selling fetal tissue. Orrick issued a restraining order, saying that he reached this decision due to concerns over the safety of the leaders of the National Abortion Federation.
“NAF would be likely to suffer irreparable injury, absent an ex parte temporary restraining order, in the form of harassment, intimidation, violence, invasion of privacy, and injury to reputation, and the requested relief is in the public interest,” Orrick said at the time, according to CNN.
The National Abortion Federation said in their restraining order request that the videos had been illegally recorded.
At the time that this decision was reached, conservative website The Federalist found that Orrick’s wife, Caroline Farrow Orrick, is pro-choice.

 5
During his Senate confirmation process, Judge William Orrick promised to never let his political views influence the way he rules on cases.
“My varied legal background is evidence that I will treat all litigants fairly and with respect, and that I will not let my personal views interfere with the administration of justice,” he said. “… I have great respect for every type of client I have represented. I have never let my political beliefs affect my legal judgment, and believe that politics have no place in the courtroom.”
Orrick went on to say that district judges must “bind themselves tightly” to precedent.
When asked what his policy on immigration-related cases would be, Orrick said he would recuse himself “from any case that was pending in OIL [Office of Immigration Litigation] while I was Deputy Assistant Attorney General and from any other case as required by the Code of Conduct for United States Judge as well as other relevant Canons and statutory provisions.”

Judge Who Blocked Trump Sanctuary City Order Bundled $200K for Obama

Federal Judge William Orrick III, who on Tuesday blocked President Trump's order to withhold federal funds from sanctuary cities, reportedly bundled hundreds of thousands of dollars for President Barack Obama.
Orrick, of the Northern District of California, issued an injunction against the Trump administration after the city of San Francisco and county of Santa Clara sued over the president's plan to withhold federal funds from municipalities that harbor illegal immigrants.
As FoxNews.com reported:

The ruling from U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco said that Trump's order targeted broad categories of federal funding for sanctuary governments, and that plaintiffs challenging the order were likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional.
The decision will block the measure for now, while the federal lawsuit works its way through the courts.
The news comes on the heels of the Department of Justice threatening on Friday to cut off funding to eight so-called “sanctuary cities,” unless they were able to provide proof to the federal government that they weren’t looking the other way when it came to undocumented immigrants.

---

The same judge issued a restraining order in 2015 against the advocacy group responsible for undercover videos purporting to show Planned Parenthood employees plotting to sell baby organs.
At the time, The Federalist found that Orrick raised at least $200,000 for Obama and donated more than $30,000 to groups supporting him.

California judge blocks Trump order on sanctuary city money

A California judge on Tuesday blocked President Trump’s executive order that sought to withhold federal funds from so-called “sanctuary cities.”
The ruling from U.S. District Judge William Orrick III in San Francisco said that Trump's order targeted broad categories of federal funding for sanctuary governments, and that plaintiffs challenging the order were likely to succeed in proving it unconstitutional.
The decision will block the measure for now, while the federal lawsuit works its way through the courts.
READ THE DECISION
The news comes on the heels of the Department of Justice threatening on Friday to cut off funding to eight so-called “sanctuary cities,” unless they were able to provide proof to the federal government that they weren’t looking the other way when it came to undocumented immigrants.
San Francisco and Santa Clara County argued that the administration warning threatened billions of dollars in funding for each of them, making it difficult to plan budgets.
"It's not like it's just some small amount of money," John Keker, an attorney for Santa Clara County, told Orrick at the April 14 hearing.
Chad Readler, acting assistant attorney general, said the county and San Francisco were interpreting the executive order too broadly. The funding cutoff applies to three Justice Department and Homeland Security Department grants that require complying with a federal law that local governments not block officials from providing people's immigration status, he said.
The order would affect less than $1 million in funding for Santa Clara County and possibly no money for San Francisco, Readler said.
Readler argued the Trump administration was using a “bully pulpit” to "encourage communities and states to comply with the law.”
In his ruling, Orrick sided with San Francisco and Santa Clara, saying the order "by its plain language, attempts to reach all federal grants, not merely the three mentioned at the hearing."
"The rest of the order is broader still, addressing all federal funding," Orrick said. "And if there was doubt about the scope of the order, the president and attorney general have erased it with their public comments."
He said: "Federal funding that bears no meaningful relationship to immigration enforcement cannot be threatened merely because a jurisdiction chooses an immigration enforcement strategy of which the president disapproves."
The judge clarified that the injunction “does not impact the Government’s ability to use lawful means to enforce existing conditions of federal grants … nor does it restrict the Secretary from developing regulations or preparing guidance on designating a jurisdiction as a 'sanctuary jurisdiction.'”
The Trump administration says sanctuary cities allow dangerous criminals back on the street and that the order is needed to keep the country safe. San Francisco and other sanctuary cities say turning local police into immigration officers erodes trust that's needed to get people to report crime.
The order also has led to lawsuits by Seattle; two Massachusetts cities, Lawrence and Chelsea; and a third San Francisco Bay Area government, the city of Richmond. The San Francisco and Santa Clara County suits were the first to get a hearing before a judge.
San Francisco and the county argued in court documents that the president did not have the authority to set conditions on the allocation of federal funds and could not force local officials to enforce federal immigration law.
They also said Trump's order applied to local governments that didn't detain immigrants for possible deportation in response to federal requests, not just those that refused to provide people's immigration status.
The Department of Justice responded that the city and county's lawsuits were premature because decisions about withholding funds and what local governments qualified as sanctuary cities had yet to be made.
The sanctuary city order was among a flurry of immigration measures Trump has signed since taking office in January, including a ban on travelers from several Muslim-majority countries.
A federal appeals court blocked the original travel ban. The administration then revised it, but the new version also is stalled in court.

Burning Books Nazi Cartoons

New Orleans begins to take down prominent Confederate monuments (Nazi did it)

Do like the Nazi did in world war 2, if you don't like what's in a book burn it!

New Orleans planned to begin removing the first of four prominent Confederate monuments early Monday, the latest Southern institution to sever itself from symbols viewed by many as a representation racism and white supremacy.
Workers were to begin removing the first memorial, one that commemorates whites who tried to topple a biracial post-Civil War government in New Orleans, overnight in an attempt to avoid disruption from supporters who want the monuments to stay, some of whom city officials said have made death threats.
Three other statues to Confederate Generals Robert E. Lee and P.G.T. Beauregard and Confederate States of America President Jefferson Davis will be removed in later days now that legal challenges have been overcome.
"There's a better way to use the property these monuments are on and a way that better reflects who we are," New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu said in an interview Sunday with The Associated Press.
Nationally, the debate over Confederate symbols has become heated since nine parishioners were killed at a black church in South Carolina in June 2015. South Carolina removed the Confederate flag from its statehouse grounds in the weeks after, and several Southern cities have since considered removing monuments. The University of Mississippi took down its state flag because it includes the Confederate emblem.
New Orleans is a majority African-American city although the number of black residents has fallen since 2005's Hurricane Katrina drove many people from the city.
The majority black City Council in 2015 voted 6-1 to approve plans to take the statues down, but legal battles over their fate have prevented the removal until now, said Landrieu, who proposed the monuments' removal and rode to victory twice with overwhelming support from the city's black residents.
People who want the Confederate memorials removed say they are offensive artifacts honoring the region's slave-owning past. But others call the monuments part of the city's history and say they should be protected historic structures.
Since officials announced the removals, contractors hired by the city have faced death threats and intimidation in this deep South city where passions about the Civil War still run deep.
Landrieu refused to say who the city would be using to remove the statues because of the intimidation attempts. And the removal will begin at night to ensure police can secure the sites to protect workers, and to ease the burden on traffic for people who live and work in the city, Landrieu said.
"All of what we will do in the next days will be designed to make sure that we protect everybody, that the workers are safe, the folks around the monuments are safe and that nobody gets hurt," Landrieu said.
Landrieu said the memorials don't represent his city as it approaches its 300th anniversary next year. The mayor said the city would remove the monuments, store them and preserve them until an "appropriate" place to display them is determined.
"The monuments are an aberration," he said. "They're actually a denial of our history and they were done in a time when people who still controlled the Confederacy were in charge of this city and it only represents a four-year period in our 1000-year march to where we are today."
The first memorial to come down will be the Liberty Monument, an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League.
Landrieu has called the Liberty Monument "the most offensive of the four" and said it was erected to "revere white supremacy."
"If there was ever a statue that needed to be taken down, it's that one," he said.
The Crescent City White League attempted to overthrow a biracial Reconstruction government in New Orleans after the Civil War. That attempt failed, but white supremacist Democrats later took control of the state.
An inscription added in 1932 said the Yankees withdrew federal troops and "recognized white supremacy in the South" after the group challenged Louisiana's biracial government after the Civil War. In 1993, these words were covered by a granite slab with a new inscription, saying the obelisk honors "Americans on both sides" who died and that the conflict "should teach us lessons for the future."
The Liberty Monument had been the target of a previous lawsuit after the city removed it from a location on the main downtown thoroughfare of Canal Street during a federally-financed paving project in 1989. The city didn't put the monument back up until it was sued, and moved the monument to an obscure spot on a side street near the entrance to a parking garage.

French presidential election: Le Pen, Macron win first round to advance to runoff

Macron, Le Pen to face each other in May 7 runoff vote

French politics was shaken to its core Sunday as far-right populist Marine Le Pen and centrist Emmanuel Macron advanced to a runoff presidential election after the first round of voting.
As it became clear that Le Pen would be one of the top two vote-getters, her rivals on the left and right urged voters to block her path to power in the May 7 runoff, saying her virulently nationalist anti-EU and anti-immigration politics would spell disaster for France.

"Extremism can only bring unhappiness and division to France," defeated conservative candidate Francois Fillon said. "As such, there is no other choice than to vote against the extreme right."

With 90 percent of votes counted, the Interior Ministry said Macron had nearly 24 percent, giving him a slight cushion over Le Pen's 22 percent. Fillon, with just under 20 percent, was slightly ahead of the far-left's Jean-Luc Melenchon, who had 19 percent.
The selection of Le Pen and Macron marked the first time in the 59-year history of the French Fifth Republic that neither of the country's two main parties, the Socialists and the Republicans, made the second round of presidential balloting. Macron, a 39-year-old investment banker, made the runoff on the back of a grassroots campaign without the support of a major political party.
With Le Pen wanting France to leave the EU and Macron wanting even closer cooperation between the bloc's 28 nations, Sunday's outcome meant the May 7 runoff will have undertones of a referendum on France's EU membership.

The euro jumped 2 percent to more than $1.09 after the initial results were announced because Macron has vowed to reinforce France's commitments to the EU and euro -- and opinion polls give him a big lead heading into the second round.
While Le Pen faces the runoff as the underdog, it's already stunning that she brought her once-taboo party so close to the Elysee Palace. She hopes to win over far-left and other voters angry at the global elite and distrustful of the untested Macron.
Le Pen, in a chest-thumping speech to cheering supporters, declared that she embodies "the great alternative" for French voters. She portrayed her duel with Macron as a battle between "patriots" and "wild deregulation" -- warning of job losses overseas, mass migration straining resources at home and "the free circulation of terrorists."
"The time has come to free the French people," she said at her election day headquarters in the northern French town of Henin-Beaumont, adding that nothing short of "the survival of France" will be at stake in the presidential runoff.
Her supporters burst into a rendition of the French national anthem, chanted "We will win!" and waved French flags and blue flags with "Marine President" on them.

With a wink at his cheering, flag-waving supporters who yelled "We will win!" in his election day headquarters in Paris, Macron promised to be a president "who protects, who transforms and builds" if elected.

"You are the faces of French hope," he said. His wife, Brigitte, joined him on stage before his speech -- the only couple among the leading candidates to do so on Sunday night.
France is now steaming into unchartered territory, because whoever wins on May 7 cannot count on the backing of France's political mainstream parties. Even under a constitution that concentrates power in the president's hands, both Macron and Le Pen will need legislators in parliament to pass laws and implement much of their programs.

France's legislative election in June now takes on a vital importance, with huge questions about whether Le Pen and even the more moderate Macron will be able to rally sufficient lawmakers to their causes.

In Paris, protesters angry at Le Pen's advance -- some from anarchist and anti-fascist groups -- scuffled with police. Officers fired tear gas to disperse the rowdy crowd. Two people were injured and police detained three people as demonstrators burned cars, danced around bonfires and dodged riot police. At a peaceful protest by around 300 people at the Place de la Republique some sang "No Marine and no Macron!" and "Now burn your voting cards."

Macron supporters at his Paris election-day headquarters went wild as polling agency projections showed the ex-finance minister making the runoff, cheering, singing "La Marseillaise" anthem, waving French tricolor and European flags and shouting "Macron, president!"

Mathilde Jullien, 23, said she is convinced Macron will beat Le Pen.

"He represents France's future, a future within Europe," she said. "He will win because he is able to unite people from the right and the left against the threat of the National Front and he proposes real solutions for France's economy."

Fillon, the Republican candidate said he would vote for Macron on May 7 because Le Pen's program "would bankrupt France" and throw the EU into chaos. He also cited the history of "violence and intolerance" of Le Pen's far-right National Front party, founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, who was trounced in the presidential runoff in 2002.

In a defiant speech to supporters, Melenchon refused to cede defeat before the official count confirmed pollsters' projections and did not say how he would vote in the next round.

In a brief televised message, Socialist Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve urged voters to back Macron to defeat the National Front's "funereal project of regression for France and of division of the French."

Socialist presidential candidate Benoit Hamon, who was far behind in Sunday's results, quickly conceded defeat. Declaring "the left is not dead!" he also urged supporters to back Macron.

Voting took place amid heightened security in the first election under France's state of emergency, which has been in place since gun-and-bomb attacks in Paris in 2015. On Thursday, a gunman killed a police officer and wounded two others on Paris' iconic Champs-Elysees boulevard before he was fatally shot.