Tag: Policy

GOP pollster Justin Wallin discusses the races to keep an eye on. FOX News Channel (FNC) is a 24-hour all-encompassing news service dedicated to delivering breaking news as well as political and business news. The number one network in cable,…

KELLY: So we started the week with zero tolerance and with families being separated at the border. KELLY: Eliana, what is your read on this about-face by the administration this week? JOHNSON: You know, this really seemed to me to be - regardless of what you think of the zero tolerance policy, to be a crisis in large part of the administration's own making. KELLY: Well... DIONNE: And I - could I say... KELLY: Please. KELLY: All right, now, to follow up on a point you made, Eliana, about Republican lawmakers, Congress was also trying to work on immigration this week. I think there was an idea when Trump came into office that the Republican Congress would be able to do whatever it wanted because the president didn't have clear policy views. DIONNE: ...Because I think you've got two big problems here. Problem one is this bill - this second bill which they can't get through is described as a compromise. It's a compromise among Republicans. DIONNE: And to you.

We’ll never know the truth behind Donald Trump’s humiliating reversal of his own brutal policy of separating thousands of immigrant children from their parents at the border. But we do know that Trump will lie about his actions, and will be utterly incompetent about fixing the crisis he created. Instead of imprisoning children separately, the United States will now imprison them together with their parents indefinitely. Yes there were legal constraints on jailing children for more than 20 days, whether alone or with their parents. You also should tell him to stop blaming other White House officials for his own disastrous policies. That’s a tough dilemma. For most normal adults, this is an astonishingly simple choice: do you prove your toughness by brutalizing children or do you treat them with the essential sympathy that we like to call human nature? But there was at least one glaring difference between the politics of these two supposedly tough dilemmas: President Bush was widely seen as protecting Americans from a threat that killed several thousand people. However, this is also not the end of the story for the thousands of children currently separated from their parents. Some people have suggested this crisis of Trump’s making is his own personal Katrina: the hurricane that laid bare the incompetence of the Bush administration.

In this photo provided by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, people who have been taken into custody related to cases of illegal entry into the United States sit in one of the cages at a facility in McAllen, Texas on Sunday. There you have the most contentious issue in U.S. politics over the last few weeks. Sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen have defended the Trump administration’s enforcement of the “zero-tolerance” policy. Late Sunday, however, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen tweeted: “We do not have a policy of separating families at the border. Period.” “For those seeking asylum at ports of entry, we have continued the policy from previous Administrations and will only separate if the child is in danger, there is no custodial relationship between ‘family’ members, or if the adult has broken a law,” Nielsen added. Therefore, it doesn’t matter whether we have a “policy” of separating families or not. If the policy is designed to arrest all who cross the border illegally, it will lead to families being separated. For those who didn’t see it, Laura Bush — wife of a Republican president who could hardly be called a liberal — wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post calling the situation cruel and immoral. She summarized the issue neatly: “The reason for these separations is a zero-tolerance policy for their parents, who are accused of illegally crossing our borders,” Bush wrote. For their parents.

While the president has falsely claimed that he has no choice on breaking up families because of a law passed by Democrats, Bush laid the blame squarely on the president's policies — namely, the Department of Justice’s "zero tolerance" policy with which it began. On Friday, Department of Homeland Security officials told reporters that 1,995 children had been separated from their parents over a six-week period, from April 19 to May 31. In her op-ed article, Bush appealed to Americans’ sense of morality and painted the policy as a dark stain on the nation’s history that she compared to the HIV/AIDS crisis and Japanese internment. "These images are eerily reminiscent of the Japanese-American internment camps of World War II, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in U.S. history. We also know that this treatment inflicts trauma; interned Japanese have been two times as likely to suffer cardiovascular disease or die prematurely than those who were not interned," she wrote. Rosalynn Carter called the policy of separating families "disgraceful and a shame to our country." Michelle Obama also weighed in to support Bush. The current first lady, Melania Trump, commented over the weekend on what's happening at the border, pushing for bipartisan cooperation to end the separation of migrant children from their parents at the border. "Mrs. Trump hates to see children separated from their families and hopes both sides of the aisle can finally come together to achieve successful immigration reform," according to a statement from her spokeswoman. "She believes we need to be a country that follows all laws, but also a country that governs with heart."

Wide Awoke appreciates that these are both horrifying and confusing times. Which, at best, is unfathomably deluded. Which, at best (or is that worst? ), makes the first lady a voice of morality. Melania Trump speaks out against child separations at border: 'Hate to see it' Read more What on earth is going on? For a start, this is hardly speaking out against anything, when what the first lady actually said was she “hates to see children separated from their parents” and hopes “both sides of the aisle” can come together. No matter how much Melania Trump hates seeing children held in cages with foil sheets for blankets, this is a gross mischaracterisation of a policy enacted by the Trump administration alone. To which she is intimately bonded. On the same day, former first lady Laura Bush also spoke out against the zero tolerance policy, describing it as “cruel”, “immoral” and “eerily reminiscent of the Japanese American internment camps of World War Two, now considered to have been one of the most shameful episodes in US history”. We should all “hate” the separation of children from their parents, not because we are women or men, mothers or father.

Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas) gives his thoughts on the Trump administration's policy of separating families at the border. » Subscribe to MSNBC: http://on.msnbc.com/SubscribeTomsnbc About: MSNBC is the premier destination for in-depth analysis of daily headlines, insightful political commentary and informed…

(CNN)The White House's "zero tolerance" immigration policy and resulting separations of undocumented parents and kids is exploding into the most emotive and politically unpredictable test yet of President Donald Trump's effort to change the character of America. It's not just the usual Democrats who are criticizing the administration -- some prominent Republicans, including first lady Melania Trump and former first lady Laura Bush, religious leaders and influential figures in Trump's conservative evangelical base are also speaking out. "It's an atrocious policy," former White House communications director and Trump ally Anthony Scaramucci said on CNN's "New Day" Monday. Current first lady Melania Trump also expressed concern about the situation, though she did not break with her husband's position that only Congress can stop the separations. But the separations storm is injecting an unpredictable dimension to a critical week ahead in the immigration debate that sources tell CNN will include a meeting between Trump and GOP lawmakers on Tuesday. The House could vote as early as this week on a plan that would address family separations although the legislation would do little to change the underlying practice that has been implemented under the Trump administration. If the administration continues that practice, parents and children would still be separated. Three sources told CNN that Trump will meet House Republicans at the Capitol on Tuesday to discuss next steps on immigration, a gathering that could seal the fate of the House's hard-fought compromise immigration bill. And so you have to pay attention to that," House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows told reporters Friday. After spending a week already earlier in the year trying and failing to fix the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, there is little appetite among Republican leaders for a new immigration debate before the midterms.

A Republican congressman from Texas who toured a tent-like shelter for hundreds of minors who entered the country illegally said on Saturday the facility is a byproduct of a flawed immigration strategy. Federal authorities are separating children from their parents as families arrive at the border. Hurd said the treatment of minors should not be used as a threatening means to prevent others from entering the US. “This is a symptom of a flawed strategy and in the land of the free and home of the brave we shouldn’t use kids as deterrence,” said Hurd, who represents a vast border district that includes the port of entry. The US Department of Health and Human Services announced earlier in the week that it intended to open the shelter. The port is located about 40 miles south-east of El Paso in an area that is mostly desert and where temperatures routinely approach 100F (37C). The tent-like structures that comprise the shelter have air conditioning. Jeff Sessions accused of political bias in hiring immigration judges Read more The administration’s decision to separate children, combined with the flow of unaccompanied minors attempting to cross the border illegally, has prompted a surge in the number of children in US shelters. A smarter immigration strategy would address root problems such as economic instability and a breakdown in the rule of law in Central America, he said, while noting the need to use advanced technology and manpower to guard the border. “Building a 30ft-high wall is a fourth-century solution to a 21st-century problem,” he said, referring to Trump’s call to build a wall along every mile of border with Mexico.

Senator Sanders spoke for nearly an hour with Washington Post national political correspondent James Hohmann on a number of topics and answered Twitter questions. Their initial conversation focused on this week’s primary results and the influence he and the organization that sprang from his presidential campaign — called Our Revolution – has had on politics. “The chairman of the DNC Tom Perez endorsed Andrew Cuomo, who’s locked in a pretty competitive primary with Cynthia Nixon. When you have the head of the DNC, and I’ve worked OK with Perez on some areas, but to endorse one candidate over the other is not what the chair of the DNC should be doing. And when I ran in 2016, three million people in New York state were ineligible to vote. Sanders immediately noted that he “hated” that term and then renewed his vow to prevent cuts in Social Security and Medicare. In my state of Vermont, you’ve got elderly people who are trying to get by on $12 or $13,000 a year Social Security. Sanders, who turns 77 in September, responded he would decide whether he will run “at the appropriate time.” “Number one, 2018, as I have said many times, is the most important midterm election in my lifetime and I’m going to do everything that I can to see that we end one party rule here in Washington where the Republicans, right-wing extremist Republicans control the Senate, the House, and the White House. And then I’m focusing on the important issues that need to be discussed. Believe me, there will be more than enough candidates, I’m quite confident, running for president and at the appropriate time, I will make that decision as to whether I do it or not.