Hullabaloo

Monday, February 27, 2017

 
GOP is the PR department for The Trump Presidency Inc™

by digby

People who think the government should be run like a business naturally believe that everyone answers to the president like he's the CEO of America. That isn't actually how it works:

White House press secretary Sean Spicer reportedly enlisted the CIA director and a Republican senator in an effort to discredit a newspaper report about the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia.

After the New York Times reported Feb. 15 that Trump campaign aides had “repeated contacts” with Russian intelligence officials, Spicer connected reporters from the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Senate Select Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr (R-NC), reported Axios.

Spicer also gave reporters’ phone numbers to Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, who offered to make the calls himself but “was in and out of an event,” according to a senior administration official who described the press secretary’s campaign to the website.

The Axios report adds new details and reveals Pompeo was involved in a pushback campaign reported Friday by the Washington Post.

Spicer personally picked up the phone and connected Pompeo and Burr with the reporters and then remained on the line for their brief conversations, Axios reported.

Those calls were orchestrated after White House chief of staff Reince Priebus tried unsuccessfully to get the FBI’s director and deputy director to speak with news organizations to dispute the accuracy of reporting on the alleged campaign ties to Russia, the Post reported.

Pompeo and Burr told the reporters simply that the Times report was not accurate but frustrated the journalists by declining to offer specifics.

And the Republicans in congress and the administration are happy to toss aside all the normal procedures and sell their reputations to protect that cretinous imbecile. Here's one now:

President Donald Trump’s connections to Russia have been well documented, but it doesn’t sound like Rep. Devin Nunes — the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and a Republican — is that eager to investigate them.

During a press conference with reporters on Monday, Rep. Nunes downplayed claims that the White House had asked members of the CIA and FBI to squelch reports of contact between Russia and members of Trump’s presidential campaign, saying that there was “nothing wrong” with what he characterized as attempts to have a better working relationship with the press. He also said that the committee wanted evidence of any American citizens who may have talked to Russian officials, implicitly broadening the issue beyond the Trump campaign and administration. He characterized the FBI as being “very upfront” with his committee about what they know about Trump’s potential connections with Russia, although he admitted that he’d like to know more.

When asked if they have any evidence of contacts specifically from the Trump campaign, Nunes replied: “It’s been looked into and there’s no evidence of anything there. Obviously we’d like to know if there is.” He also dismissed concerns that Flynn had violated the Logan Act as “ridiculous” and said that they would not subpoena Trump’s tax returns, which puts him at odds with Senate Intelligence Committee member Susan Collins, R-Maine. Throughout the press conference, Nunes insisted that both he and the White House were simply trying to be “transparent” and claimed to be confused as to why the Trump administration providing his phone number to a reporter would be a news story. He also repeated his earlier statements about wanting to avoid “McCarthyism” and “witch hunts” based on reports that Americans may have connections to the Russian regime.

“This is almost like McCarthyism revisited,” Nunes told reporters at the California Republican Party’s spring convention on Saturday. “We’re going to go on a witch hunt against, against innocent Americans?”

I don't think I need to articulate how inane this is. Trump has a responsibility to be transparent about his business dealings from which he continues to benefit directly. It's not a witch hunt to demand he do that.

Neither is it a witch hunt for the head of the Intelligence Committee to keep an open mind about the Russian connections at this early stage. It may turn out to be nothing but there is a process and he's supposed to recognize it. It's one thing for him to criticize the leaks. That's a legitimate complaint. It's not legitimate for him to exonerate the administration and the campaign before the facts are in.

But then, he should not be involved in the investigation in the first place because he was a member of the president's transition team. At the very least he should be strictly following protocol in order to avoid the appearance of being a partisan stooge as the head of the Intelligence Committee. But I guess that's old fashioned in the Trump era. A Republican's job is to defend The Trump Presidency Inc ™ and that's what he's going to do.


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digby 2/27/2017 01:30:00 PM

 
"People that wear uniforms like us" --- Donald Trump

by digby

I wrote about the latest anti-immigrant and deportation atrocities in the Trump regime for Salon this morning. It's ramping up people.


At Sunday night’s Oscars ceremony, actor Gael García Bernal told the worldwide audience, “As a Mexican, as a Latin American, as a migrant worker, as a human being, I am against any form of wall that wants to separate us.” Iranian-American engineer and entrepreneur Anousheh Ansari (the first Iranian to go to space!) read a statement from director Asghar Farhadi, whose film “The Salesman” won the foreign-language Oscar and who decided not to attend the event due to the Trump administration’s travel ban. His message said, in part:


My absence is out of respect for the people of my country and those of other six nations whom have been disrespected by the inhuman law that bans entry of immigrants to the U.S. Dividing the world into the “us” and “our enemies” categories creates fear. A deceitful justification for aggression and war. These wars prevent democracy and human rights in countries which have themselves been victims of aggression.

Farhadi released to the press a longer statement. And these comments from a Mexican and an Iranian are poignant in themselves. But they also illustrate that the Trump administration’s policy about undocumented workers and his policy banning travelers, immigrants and refugees from certain countries are actually the same policy. He is on a crusade to deport and ban a variety of foreigners of different statuses under various premises, for the supposed purpose of keeping what he calls “bad dudes” out of the United States.

We know that a serious concern about the threat of terrorism is not the motivation for the travel ban. In an echo of the George W. Bush administration’s treatment of intelligence analyses that showed little evidence that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear program, the Trump administration has apparently rejected a Department of Homeland Security report saying that “country of citizenship is unlikely to be a reliable indicator of potential terrorist activity.” Claiming that the report was politically motivated and poorly researched, a White House spokesman said, “The president asked for an intelligence assessment. This is not the intelligence assessment the president asked for.” That’s not how this works.

At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference gathering Trump gave a speech making it clear that he sees immigration of all kinds in the same light. He wove the various strands together using very similar language:


[L]et me state this as clearly as I can, we are going to keep radical Islamic terrorists the hell out of our country. We will not be deterred from this course, and in a matter of days, we will be taking brand-new action to protect our people and keep America safe, you will see the action. . . .

As we speak today, immigration officers are finding the gang members, the drug dealers and the criminal aliens and throwing them the hell out of our country. And we will not let them back in. They’re not coming back in, folks. They do; they’re going to have bigger problems than they ever dreamt of.

The merging of these separate strands of immigration policy beyond Trump’s rhetoric and into practice is beginning to become clear as reports of Customs and Border Patrol as well as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents implementation of draconian new policies all over the country have started filtering into the media. The early days of the Muslim ban were chaotic and at times abusive. But that could have been chalked up to bad communication and poor implementation. What we’re seeing now is much more systematic.


A report in The New York Times on Friday revealed that government agents are thrilled and having “fun” in their jobs since, as Sean Spicer said, Trump has “taken the shackles off.” Officers told reporters how ecstatic they were to be free to deport any undocumented immigrant they come across:


[F]or those with ICE badges, perhaps the biggest change was the erasing of the Obama administration’s hierarchy of priorities, which forced agents to concentrate on deporting gang members and other violent and serious criminals, and mostly leave everyone else alone.

This clearly indicates that what Trump and his Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers call “bad dudes” are all undocumented immigrants, and they want to deport every one of them. Horror stories are multiplying like the one of agents’ arresting a woman seeking shelter from an abusive boyfriend, and another tale of officials detaining a woman with no criminal history who was in the hospital seeking treatment for a brain tumor. Incidents of Customs and Border Patrol agents demanding that all passengers on a domestic flight provide their IDs when disembarking the airplane have been reported, which is highly unusual.

Trump’s new travel ban is scheduled to be released sometime in the next week, but it’s hard to imagine that it’s going to be much of an improvement over what’s already been happening. We hear stories daily of inept customs agents harassing innocent people, like a visiting scholar in Houston, who was mistakenly held and nearly sent back to France, or even someone as obviously American as Muhammad Ali Jr., son of the legendary boxer, who was reportedly asked, “Where did you get that name?”

The number of errors in both law and common sense among customs and border officials since Trump first implemented his ban does not bode well for an orderly or professional implementation. Now, according to Foreign Policy, the desperate need for thousands more agents has made it difficult to find people who can pass polygraph tests and background checks — so the administration wants to drop those requirements. What could possibly go wrong?

Donald Trump ran on an anti-immigrant platform and his voters consider that the most important issue facing the nation. He’s moving fast to fulfill those promises. But he also ran as the “law and order” candidate and his CPAC speech made it very clear that there’s a second phase to his program:


I’m also working with the Department of Justice to being reducing violent crime. I mean, can you believe what’s happening in Chicago as an example. . . . We will support the incredible men and women of law enforcement.

He’s not being coy. African-Americans and Latinos in urban neighborhoods can be sure that he plans to “take off the shackles” in this area, too.

At his recent rally in Melbourne, Florida, Trump said, “Basically people that wear uniforms like us.” He’s right. All through the government, career professionals are appalled by his approach to immigration, along with numerous other policies. But the federal police agencies are over the moon about Donald Trump. And that is very disturbing.
digby 2/27/2017 12:00:00 PM

 

Dubya steps up

by digby

It must be dire for Dubya to come out of retirement to say something:

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. That we need the media to hold people like me to account,” Bush told Matt Lauer on “The Today Show” Monday morning. “I mean, power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere.” 

Trump has raised alarm by his recent references to critical media outlets as “fake news” and as “the enemy of the people.” 

Bush also expressed concern about the extent of Trump’s relationship with Russia’s ruling class, which has been extensively chronicled and led to the resignations of former campaign manager Paul Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. 

“I think we all need answers,” Bush told Lauer. “I’m not sure the right avenue to take. I am sure, though, that that question needs to be answered.” 

Given Bush’s own record as the president who governed America during the infamous Sept. 11th terrorist attacks, his criticism of Trump’s proposed Muslim travel ban may have been the most pointed.
“I think it’s very hard to fight the war on terrorism if we’re in retreat,” Bush said.

Ok, first of all, look at those erudite, complete sentences.  My God:

"... power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it’s important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere."

They always used to compare him to Winston Churchill and I thought it was daft. But compared to what we have now, he really is.

More importantly, he is criticizing Trump which is unusual for him. He's been very reticent to offer an opinion since he left office.  He's showing some leadership by speaking out. I don't know if anyone in the GOP coalition cares anymore about anything but being crude and thuggish but maybe a few of them have fond memories of Dubya. Good for him.

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digby 2/27/2017 10:30:00 AM

 
An anniversary to learn from

by digby

History never repeats itself exactly, but some strategies are evergreen:

On February 27, 1933 the German Parliament building burned, Adolf Hitler rejoiced, and the Nazi era began. Hitler, who had just been named head of a government that was legally formed after the democratic elections of the previous November, seized the opportunity to change the system. “There will be no mercy now,” he exulted. “Anyone standing in our way will be cut down.”

The next day, at Hitler’s advice and urging, the German president issued a decree “for the protection of the people and the state.” It deprived all German citizens of basic rights such as freedom of expression and assembly and made them subject to “preventative detention” by the police. A week later, the Nazi party, having claimed that the fire was the beginning of a major terror campaign by the Left, won a decisive victory in parliamentary elections. Nazi paramilitaries and the police then began to arrest political enemies and place them in concentration camps. Shortly thereafter, the new parliament passed an “enabling act” that allowed Hitler to rule by decree.

After 1933, the Nazi regime made use of a supposed threat of terrorism against Germans from an imaginary international Jewish conspiracy. After five years of repressing Jews, in 1938 the German state began to deport them. On October 27 of that year, the German police arrested about 17,000 Jews from Poland and deported them across the Polish border. A young man named Herschel Grynszpan, sent to Paris by his parents, received a desperate postcard from his sister after his family was forced across the Polish border. He bought a gun, went to the German embassy, and shot a German diplomat. He called this an act of revenge for the suffering of his family and his people. Nazi propagandists presented it as evidence of an international Jewish conspiracy preparing a terror campaign against the entire German people. Josef Goebbels used it as the pretext to organize the events we remember as Kristallnacht, a massive national pogrom of Jews that left hundreds dead.

The Reichstag fire shows how quickly a modern republic can be transformed into an authoritarian regime. There is nothing new, to be sure, in the politics of exception. The American Founding Fathers knew that the democracy they were creating was vulnerable to an aspiring tyrant who might seize upon some dramatic event as grounds for the suspension of our rights. As James Madison nicely put it, tyranny arises “on some favorable emergency.” What changed with the Reichstag fire was the use of terrorism as a catalyst for regime change. To this day, we do not know who set the Reichstag fire: the lone anarchist executed by the Nazis or, as new scholarship by Benjamin Hett suggests, the Nazis themselves. What we do know is that it created the occasion for a leader to eliminate all opposition.

In 1989, two centuries after our Constitution was promulgated, the man who is now our president wrote that “civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins.” For much of the Western world, that was a moment when both security and liberty seemed to be expanding. 1989 was a year of liberation, as communist regimes came to an end in eastern Europe and new democracies were established. Yet that wave of democratization has since fallen under the glimmering shadow of the burning Reichstag. The aspiring tyrants of today have not forgotten the lesson of 1933: that acts of terror—real or fake, provoked or accidental—can provide the occasion to deal a death blow to democracy.

That's just the beginning of a great piece by Timothy Snyder in the New York Review of Books. Well Worth reading.

I don't know how this is going to go here. But it's the first time in my life that I've felt like the elements are lined up in a way that makes it very possible.

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digby 2/27/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

Shape, don't chase public opinion

by Tom Sullivan

"Democrats rely on polling to take the temperature; Republicans use polling to change it," Anat Shenker-Osorio wrote last week in The Hill. Republicans shape opinion; Democrats chase it. That's pandering, not leadership. People won't vote for that.

When Fight for $15, a movement to raise the minimum wage in the retail sector, came on the scene in 2012, the odds were against them. They faced prominent Democrats — including President Obama and Hillary Clinton — balking at what seemed too audacious a demand, out of step with public opinion.

But instead of using the moderation approach, the Fight for $15 movement used a bold strategy reminiscent of the right: They demanded a hike to $15 on the proposition that people who work for a living ought to earn a living — not as a means to grow or help the economy.

Screw "the economy." Help the people without whom there is no economy. Fight for $15 didn't chase public opinion. Fight for $15 reshaped it. Never out front of an issue, Democrats are always playing catch up. Always playing defense. Never offense. Obama and Clinton didn't lead on Fight for $15. They followed.

Osorio writes:

Democrats' reflexive desire to refashion their appeal to appease even a committed opposition in order to court a mythically fixed middle demonstrates lessons still not learned. The job of an effective message isn't to say what is popular; it is to make popular what we need said.

This requires understanding not merely where people are but where they are capable of going.

That takes vision. It takes leadership.


Undercover Blue 2/27/2017 06:00:00 AM

Sunday, February 26, 2017

 
Policy anarchy with people's lives in the balance

by digby

This would be how the sausage is made when the president is an imbecile:

A meeting Friday afternoon between President Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, his former rival in the GOP primaries, had no set agenda. But Kasich came armed with one anyway: his hope to blunt drastic changes to the nation’s health-care system envisioned by some conservatives in Washington.

Over the next 45 minutes, according to Kasich and others briefed on the session, the governor made his pitch while the president eagerly called in several top aides and then got Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on the phone. At one point, senior adviser Jared Kushner reminded his father-in-law that House Republicans are sketching out a different approach to providing access to coverage. “Well, I like this better,” Trump replied, according to a Kasich adviser.

The freewheeling session, which concluded with the president instructing Price and Chief of Staff Reince Priebus to meet with Kasich the next day, underscores the un­or­tho­dox way the White House is proceeding as Republicans work to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and replace it with something else. The day after Kasich delivered his impromptu tutorial, Trump spent lunch discussing the same topic with two other GOP governors with a very different vision — Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Rick Scott of Florida.

Scott said Sunday that he used the lunch to press for principles he has pushed publicly, such as financial compensation for states that did not expand Medicaid under the ACA and the importance of providing competition and cutting required benefits to allow people to “buy insurance that fits them.”

While leaving most of the detail work to lawmakers, top White House aides are divided on how dramatic an overhaul effort the party should pursue. And the biggest wild card remains the president himself, who has devoted only a modest amount of time to the grinding task of mastering health-care policy but has repeatedly suggested that his sweeping new plan is nearly complete.
[...]
This conundrum will be on full display Monday, when Trump meets at the White House with some of the nation’s largest health insurers. The session, which will include top executives from Blue Cross and Blue Shield, Cigna and Humana, is not expected to produce a major policy announcement. But it will provide an opportunity for one more important constituency to lobby the nation’s leader on an issue he has said is at the top of his agenda.

Democrats and their allies are already mobilizing supporters to hammer lawmakers about the possible impact of rolling back the ACA, holding more than 100 rallies across the country Saturday. And a new analysis for the National Governors Association that modeled the effect of imposing a cap on Medicaid spending — a key component of House Republicans’ strategy — provided Democrats with fresh ammunition because of its finding that the number of insured Americans could fall significantly.

Trump, for his part, continues to express confidence about his administration’s ostensible plan. He suggested Wednesday that it would be out within a few weeks.

“So we’re doing the health care — again, moving along very well — sometime during the month of March, maybe mid- to early March, we’ll be submitting something that I think people will be very impressed by,” he told reporters during a budget meeting in the Roosevelt Room.

Yet some lawmakers, state leaders and policy experts who have discussed the matter with either Trump or his top aides say the administration is largely delegating the development of an ACA substitute to Capitol Hill. The president, who attended part of a lengthy heath-care policy session his aides held at Mar-a-Lago a week ago, appears more interested in brokering specific questions, such as how to negotiate drug prices, than in steering the plan’s drafting.

“The legislative branch, the House first and foremost, is providing the policy,” said Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), who noted that the White House lacks “a big policy shop” and that Price and some key principals just recently got in place. Seema Verma, whom Trump has nominated to head the Centers for Medicare and Medi­caid Services, should play a key role in any reform effort if she is confirmed.

In the current process, the White House becomes “the political sounding board” in altering Obamacare, as the 2010 law is known, “and the final voice of reason is what the Senate can accept,” Cole said.

Within the administration, aides are debating how far and fast Republicans can afford to move when it comes to undoing key aspects of the ACA. White House officials declined to comment for this story.

Several people in Trump’s orbit are eager to make bold changes to reduce the government’s role in the health-care system. That camp includes Vice President Pence, who told conservative activists last week that “America’s Obamacare nightmare is about to end,” as well as Domestic Policy Council aides Andrew Bremberg and Katy Talento and National Economic Council aide Brian ­Blase.

Blase, who most recently worked as a senior research fellow at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center, published a paper in December titled “Replacing the Affordable Care Act the Right Way.” Its conservative blueprint emphasized the “need to reduce government bias towards comprehensive coverage” for all Americans and a revamping of Medicaid, which was expanded under the ACA and added 11 million Americans to the rolls.

“Medicaid needs fundamental reform with the goals of dramatically reducing the number of people enrolled in the program and providing a higher-quality program for remaining enrollees,” Blase wrote.

Other White House advisers, according to multiple individuals who asked for anonymity to describe private discussions, have emphasized the potential political costs to moving aggressively. That group includes Kushner, NEC Director Gary Cohn, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

Asked by George Stephanopoulos, host of ABC’s “This Week,” whether Trump “won’t touch Social Security, Medicare or Medicaid,” White House principal deputy press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “Look, the president is committed to doing that. . . . And I don’t see any reason to start thinking differently.”

[...]

Kasich has proposed paring back some of the ACA’s more generous aspects, such as reducing the number of benefits insurers are required to offer and potentially cutting the eligibility level for Medicaid recipients from 138 percent of the poverty level to 100 percent if there is a stable marketplace with adequate subsidies they can join. He also wants states to have more flexibility in how they manage their Medicaid programs, as well as aspects of the private insurance market.

But he has expressed skepticism about turning Medicaid funding into a block grant and opposes any move that would eliminate the coverage many adults in his state now have without a clear path to transition them to new plans.

“Frankly the reason why people are on Medicaid is because they don’t have any money,” he said Friday. “So what are we supposed to say, ‘Work harder?’ ”

Asked to describe Trump’s reaction to his overall approach, the Ohio governor replied, “What he said is, he found it interesting. . . . It takes time, so you have to explain it, and explain it again.”

What a trainwreck.




digby 2/26/2017 05:00:00 PM

 
A fine tuned machine

by digby

Gosh this seems like such a fun place to work:

Press secretary Sean Spicer is cracking down on leaks coming out of the West Wing, with increased security measures that include random phone checks of White House staffers, overseen by White House attorneys.

The push to snuff out leaks to the press comes after a week in which President Donald Trump strongly criticized the media for using unnamed sources in stories and expressed growing frustration with the unauthorized sharing of information by individuals in his administration.

Last week, after Spicer became aware that information had leaked out of a planning meeting with about a dozen of his communications staffers, he reconvened the group in his office to express his frustration over the number of private conversations and meetings that were showing up in unflattering news stories, according to sources in the room.

Upon entering Spicer’s office for what one person briefed on the gathering described as “an emergency meeting,” staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check," to prove they had nothing to hide.

Spicer, who consulted with White House counsel Don McGahn before calling the meeting, was accompanied by White House lawyers in the room, according to multiple sources.

There, he explicitly warned staffers that using texting apps like Confide — an encrypted and screenshot-protected messaging app that automatically deletes texts after they are sent — and Signal, another encrypted messaging system, was a violation of the Presidential Records Act, according to multiple sources in the room.

The phone checks included whatever electronics staffers were carrying when they were summoned to the unexpected follow-up meeting, including government-issued and personal cellphones.

Spicer also warned the group of more problems if news of the phone checks and the meeting about leaks was leaked to the media. It's not the first time that warnings about leaks have promptly leaked. The State Department's legal office issued a four-page memo warning of the dangers of leaks, and that memo was immediately posted by The Washington Post.

But with mounting tension inside the West Wing over stories portraying an administration lurching between crises and simmering in dysfunction, aides are increasingly frustrated by the pressure-cooker environment and worried about their futures there.

Within the communications office the mood has grown tense. During a recent staff meeting, Spicer harshly criticized some of the work a more junior spokesperson, Jessica Ditto, had done, causing her to cry, according to two people familiar with the incident. "The only time Jessica recalls almost getting emotional is when we had to relay the information on the death of Chief Ryan Owens," Spicer said, referring to the Navy SEAL killed in action in Yemen.

Spicer declined to comment about the leak crackdown.

The campaign to sniff out a series of damaging leaks, which Spicer is convinced originated from his communications department, has led to a tense environment in the West Wing. During meetings, the press secretary has repeatedly berated his aides, launching expletive-filled tirades in which he’s accused them of disclosing sensitive information to reporters and saying that they’ve disappointed him.

As word of the hunt has ripped through the office, talk has turned to the question of whether firings are to come.

Spicer was particularly incensed by revelations last week that Michael Dubke had been tapped as the new White House communications director — a hire that became public before it was officially announced.

“In general,” said one senior administration official, “there is a lot of insecurity.”

While other parts of the White House appear to be stabilizing, the press shop is often a center of frustration about how things are going — and not just from Spicer, who fumes to aides about stories he doesn’t like.

For Trump, a cable TV addict who has long obsessively tracked news coverage about himself, the ongoing turmoil in the White House communications wing threatens to derail the media narrative that will help to define the opening days of his presidency. His decision to hold a free-flowing news conference last week, two senior officials said, stemmed from a recognition that he was no longer breaking through in a news cycle that had turned against him.

“He reached a breaking point where he wanted to do it himself,” said one senior White House aide.

It has not been lost on senior White House officials that Spicer is overseeing an overwhelmed press office, where work often begins just after 6 a.m. and ends close to midnight.

To help streamline the office, the administration has tapped Dubke, a veteran under-the-radar Republican operative known for his organizational skills. Yet the move has infuriated Trump campaign aides, who argue that someone who’d been a vocal Trump supporter — which the establishment-minded Dubke hadn’t been — should have gotten the job.
“People are on fire about it,” one campaign veteran said of the Dubke hire.

Multiple former campaign aides said they were under the impression that RNC veterans pushed through Dubke, who is close with Republican strategist Karl Rove, with relatively little consultation with others in Trump world. (Several other people interviewed for the post, including Jarrod Agen, a spokesman for Vice President Mike Pence, and Scott Jennings, a former political aide in the George W. Bush White House.)

To some degree, the challenge Spicer and other press aides face is unique — they are working for a president who takes an unusually intense interest in the work his communications office does. Trump is known to watch Spicer’s daily press briefings while eating lunch in the White House dining room. While the president was critical of his press secretary in the administration’s first month — especially after he was parodied on “Saturday Night Live” — he more recently has offered the press secretary his private assurances that his job is safe.

The push to crack down on leaks follows a week in which the president ratcheted up his criticism of the press and condemned the free flow of information from parts of his administration. On Friday, Trump called the media the “enemy of the American people” during a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference in which he railed against journalists for using anonymous sources.

“I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake,” Trump said. “A few days ago, I called the fake news ‘the enemy of the people,’ and they are. They are the enemy of the people. Because they have no sources. They just make them up when there are none.”

Later on Friday, Spicer blocked certain media, including CNN, The New York Times, BuzzFeed and POLITICO, from attending an off-camera press briefing in his office. Time and The Associated Press boycotted the briefing out of solidarity.

On Saturday, Trump said he would not attend the annual White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington.

He's running the government like he ran the Trump Organization. Into the ground. Just as he promised.

Remember folks, this isn't normal.


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digby 2/26/2017 03:00:00 PM

 
Commander in Tweet

by digby

Oh my. It appears this sort of thing isn't just for Republicans after all:

The father of a Navy SEAL killed during a mission that Donald Trump approved just a week into his administration blames the president for his son’s death.

William Owens told The Miami Herald that he refused to meet with Trump when the remains of son, William “Ryan” Owens, were returned to Dover Air Force Base.

“I’m sorry, I don’t want to see him,” Owens recalled explaining to the chaplain. “I told them I don’t want to meet the president.”

“I told them I didn’t want to make a scene about it, but my conscience wouldn’t let me talk to him.”

Owens questioned Trump’s motivation for signing off on a mission just six days into his presidency.

“Why at this time did there have to be this stupid mission when it wasn’t even barely a week into his administration? Why?” he asked. “For two years prior, there were no boots on the ground in Yemen — everything was missiles and drones — because there was not a target worth one American life. Now, all of a sudden we had to make this grand display?”

Although U.S. military officials told The New York Times that “everything went wrong” during the mission, the Trump administration has called the operation a success. Administration officials have claimed that an investigation would tarnish the memory Owen’s son, but the father disagrees.

“Don’t hide behind my son’s death to prevent an investigation,” he remarked. “I want an investigation. … The government owes my son an investigation.”

In any other administration this would be a huge scandal, especially the fact that Trump was reportedly gobbling dinner when he made the decision and didn't even bother to go to the situation room when it was happening:

Amid claims that Mr Trump ordered the operation in the early hours of Sunday morning without sufficient intelligence, ground support or back-up, it has emerged that the President was not in the Situation Room at all.

“The President was here in the residence. He was kept in touch with his national security staff,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer told reporters.

“Secretary Mattis and others kept him updated on both the raid and the death of Chief Owens as well as the four other individuals that were injured. So he was kept apprised of the situation.”

It has also been pointed out that in the morning after the attack, one of the first things Mr Trump did was tweet angrily about the New York Times, writing:

Somebody with aptitude and conviction should buy the FAKE NEWS and failing @nytimes and either run it correctly or let it fold with dignity!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 29, 2017

Experts suggest different presidents have taken a different approach on how hands on they want to be in such situations. But as questions have emerged about who is leading America’s national security policy – Steve Bannon, Mr Trump’s white nationalist political advisor, has been made a member of the national security council’s so-called principals committee – US media has seized on the President’s absence.

“Usually, a President goes down to the Situation Room and is presented with what they call a full package for the attack. There’s a legal assessment of the legal authorities under which they’re doing these,” David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent of The New York Times, told PBS.

“There’s a risk assessment to the commandos who would be doing it. There is a risk assessment of what could happen to civilians who are in the area.”

He added: “It looks like President Trump got briefed on it, by and large, at a dinner, not in the Situation Room, not with legal advisers around.”

Mr Sanger said that present along with Mr Trump were Secretary of Defence Jim Mattis, Vice President Mike Pence, and Mr Bannon.

Remember this despicable lie?

In a June 22 speech, Trump said Clinton’s decisions as secretary of state "spread death, destruction and terrorism everywhere she touched. Among the victims was our late Ambassador Chris Stevens. I mean what she did with him was absolutely horrible. He was left helpless to die as Hillary Clinton soundly slept in her bed. That’s right. When the phone rang, as per the commercial, at 3:00 in the morning, Hillary Clinton was sleeping."

Yeah, that was bullshit:

The, attack took place at about 9:30 p.m. Benghazi time, or 3:30 in the afternoon Washington time on a Tuesday. Clinton was at her State Department office.

None of the numerous congressional investigations into the attacks have faulted Clinton for her actions as the attacks unfolded that day or said she could have done something different on Sept. 12 that would have saved lives.

Trump couldn't be bothered to walk down to the Situation Room for his first action as Commander in Chief. Which he causally ordered over dinner in between the appetizers and the soup.

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digby 2/26/2017 01:00:00 PM

 
Traister and The Handmaid's Tale

by digby

Rebecca Traister recently re-read "The Handmaid's Tale" in the wake of the Trump election:

In the first few weeks of the Trump administration, I reread The Handmaid’s Tale.

It had been almost exactly 30 years since I’d last visited Margaret Atwood’s fictional feminist dystopia, but I’d been thinking a lot about it. The book, like its authoritarian forerunner 1984, has recently returned to best-seller lists, only in part because a television adaptation is scheduled to air on Hulu in April. It will star Elisabeth Moss in the role of Offred, the heroine whose life, body, husband, daughter, and original name have been stolen from her in the futuristic, religiously ordered Republic of Gilead.

“We never wanted the show to be this relevant,” Moss has said of the television adaptation, which was written, green-lit, and already in production before Donald J. Trump was elected president. Before an Oklahoma lawmaker described women as “hosts” while defending his bill that would require women seeking abortions to gain written permission from the father of the child; before a Texas woman reporting abuse at the hands of her boyfriend was detained by immigration forces in the courtroom reserved for domestic-violence cases; before a report was released showing that violence and threats directed at abortion clinics are at their highest in 20 years; before Mitch McConnell silenced Elizabeth Warren while she read a letter by Coretta Scott King on the Senate floor; before a secretary of Education who has said she sees education as a means “to advance God’s kingdom” was confirmed; and before the First Lady of the United States opened her husband’s rally in Florida with the Lord’s Prayer. And these examples are just from the span of days during which I was rereading the book.

But the decision to bring The Handmaid’s Tale to screen, in advance of our present political circumstances, did not require some sort of mystical clairvoyance. The Handmaid’s Tale was born of, and now has been revivified in, a period of anti-feminist backlash — a response to the gains of women that certainly affected the 2016 election, but which had been playing out long before.

It's great stuff. Read the whole thing. She goes on to relate an interview with Phyllis Schlafly at the RNC six weeks before she died --- the same day the crowd spontaneously started chanting "lock her up!" and "Trump that bitch!" Schlafly was the model for one of the man characters in Atwood's book.

Traister has a more optimistic view of things than I do at the moment. (I'm usually fairly optimistic, but right now I'm having a hard time summoning up anything other than terror and despair.) She sees our story diverging from Atwood's dystopia because unlike the way Atwood portrays average women in the book in the pre-dystopian period, today's women are not apathetic about what's happening. I hope she's right. Certainly, if the resistance can keep up the level of energy we have been seeing, it's far more likely.


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digby 2/26/2017 11:30:00 AM

 
Anonymous fake news

by digby

Trump now:

“I want you all to know that we are fighting the fake news. It’s fake, phony, fake. A few days ago I called the fake news the enemy of the people, and they are. Because they have no sources. They just make it up when there are none. They make up sources. They’re very dishonest people. They did not explain that I called the fake news the enemy of the people. They dropped off the word fake. That’s the way they are. I’m not against the media. I’m not against the press. I don’t mind bad stories, if I deserve them. I love good stories. I don’t get too many of them. I am only against the fake news media or press. I’m agains the people that make up stories and make up sources. They shouldn’t be allowed to use sources unless they use somebody’s name. Let their name be put out there. There are some great reporters out there. You have no idea how bad it is. You have a lot of them…the Clinton News Network is one.”

Trump back in the day. Or should I say "John Barron" or "John Miller":

The rule of thumb is that anything he accuses of others of doing is something he is doing or has done himself. There's never been a more clear cut case of projection in history.


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digby 2/26/2017 09:00:00 AM

 

"This is my ballot."

by Tom Sullivan

During early voting here in 2008, this happened.

A young African-American woman approached one of our poll greetsrs outside the Board of Elections station downtown. The woman was nervous, almost trembling. This was her first vote, an important vote. She had lots of questions.

The greeter explained the voting process several times. Finally, the young woman practiced on a sample ballot before lining up inside to vote.

When she finished, she rushed back out onto the sidewalk and blurted, “You won’t believe what happened to me in there.”

An older white woman in line saw her sample ballot and snatched it and the pen from her hands. Telling the young voter she didn’t have to vote just for Democrats, the older woman filled in the “straight Republican” oval. (This was before GOP-led legislature eliminated straight-ticket voting in NC.)

The young woman pulled it back and said, “This is my ballot. I’m going to vote the way I want. You have your own ballot. You can vote the way you want.”

My wife took the younger woman by the shoulders and said, “I am so proud of you.” They hugged with tears in their eyes.

We are sometimes so cynical. We get so caught up in candidates and factions and policy fights we sometimes lose touch with what voting means to people. People bled and died to enforce that young woman's right to a voice in governing this country. As the story shows, there are still plenty of people out there not happy about sharing power with her or anyone else who looks different from them.

Yesterday's turnout was epic. As the Democratic National Committee went through the interminable process of electing new officers (Tom Perez won the chair's slot), Democrats here held annual precinct organizing meetings — usually pretty boring stuff. We had planned for large. What we got was huge. At our "cluster" meetup, 250 people showed up for meetings of eight precincts. The mayor was there and a city councilman, plus the district attorney and a superior court judge. And a lot of younger voters. When I asked how many were attending for the first time, almost half in the grade school auditorium put up their hands. As I wrote last Sunday, something (or someone) has brought people off their couches.

Many have voted for years. Others have not. Now they want to know how all this works.

One man wanted to know when we craft policy at the local level. Organizing strategy and election mechanics, yes. We don't really set policy. Voters elect candidates who do that. But it's funny, once they count on you to get them elected they are a lot more receptive to policy suggestions for some reason. I wrote about what that work looks like in North Carolina during the DNC platform fight last summer:

There is a massive logistical effort behind putting on elections, a lot of it volunteers and party-organized. Most voters are accustomed only to seeing the 4 or 5 retirees who work the polling station in their neighborhood on Election Day. Three election judges (a Republican Judge, a Democratic Judge, and a Chief Judge) plus an assistant or two. These people get paid (poorly) for the day, but that's not why they do it. They are putting in a 14-hour day because they believe what they are doing matters, that their community matters, and that democracy is important.

The handful of people you see every Election Day don't appear out of thin air. Precinct leaders from each party recruit them (plus multiple backups) in the odd-numbered years here and provide a list of their names to the county Board of Elections. I spend six weekends every other summer compiling the list for local Democrats. It's a chore and a half. Four or 5 people per precinct, plus backups. In my county there are 80 precincts. In North Carolina alone there are 2,709 precincts.

That's virtually an army division mobilized to put on a general election. In a single state.

But it's the small, human stories that make the work worth the effort. My wife got choked up last night talking about another of those "moments" outside the polling station.

She and a partner saw a sullen-looking, African-American teenager round the corner. He didn't seem happy to be there.

"Are you coming to vote?" they asked.

He looked down and said nothing. They explained the ballot gently and mentioned candidates they knew personally. By his age, it would have to be his first time. Barack Obama was running for reelection. It was 2012.

A well-dressed couple approached from another direction. His parents. Attorneys maybe. The three went in to vote together.

When the young man came out, he carried himself differently. The sullenness was gone.

"Did you get voted?" the team asked.

"Yeah!" he said, and broke into a wide grin.

"Feels good, doesn't it?"

"Yeah!" he said.

Broad grins all around.


Undercover Blue 2/26/2017 06:00:00 AM

Saturday, February 25, 2017

 

Saturday Night at the Movies

Pre-Oscar marathon: Top 10 Movies about the movies

By Dennis Hartley

I felt it apropos on this Oscar Eve to honor Hollywood's annual declaration of its deep and abiding love for itself with my picks for the top 10 movies that are all about...the movies. As usual, in alphabetical order:

Cinema Paradiso - Writer-director Giuseppe Tornatore’s 1988 love letter to the cinema may be too sappy for some, but for those of us who (to quote Pauline Kael) “lost it at the movies” it’s chicken soup for the soul. A film director (Jacques Perrin) returns to his home town in Sicily for a funeral, triggering flashbacks from his youth. He reassesses the relationships with two key people in his life: his first love, and the person who instilled his life-long love of the movies. Beautifully acted and directed; keep the Kleenex handy!

Day for Night- The late French film scholar and director Francois Truffaut was, first and foremost, a movie fan. And while one could argue that many of his own movies are rife with homage to the filmmakers who inspired him, this 1973 entry is his most unabashed and heartfelt declaration of love for the medium (as well as his most-imitated work). Truffaut casts himself as (wait for it) a director who is in the midst of a production with an international cast called Meet Pamela. His “Pamela” is a beautiful but unstable young British actress (Jacqueline Bisset) who is gingerly stepping back into the spotlight after recovering from a highly publicized nervous breakdown. His petulant, emotionally immature leading man (Jean-Pierre Leaud) is a fool for love, which constantly distracts him from his work. He also has to coddle an aging Italian movie queen (Valentia Cortese) who is showing up on set three sheets to the wind and flubbing her scenes. Truffaut cleverly mirrors the backstage travails of his cast and crew with those of the characters in the “film-within-the-film”. Somehow, it all manages to fall together…but getting there is half the fun. Truffaut gives us a genuine sense of what a director “does” (in case you were wondering) and how a good one can coax magic from seemingly inextricable chaos.

Ed Wood - Director Tim Burton and his favorite leading man Johnny Depp have worked together on so many films over the last 20-odd years that they must be joined at the hip. For my money, this affectionate 1994 biopic about the man who directed “the worst film of all time” remains their best collaboration. It’s also unique in Burton’s canon in that it is somewhat grounded in reality (while I wish his legion of fiercely loyal fans all the best, Burton’s predilection for the overly-precious phantasmagoric and quirkily macabre is an acquired taste that I’ve personally failed to acquire). Depp gives a brilliant performance as Edward D. Wood, Jr., who unleashed the infamously inept yet 100% certified camp classic, Plan 9 From Outer Space on an unsuspecting movie-going public back in the late 1950s. While there are lots of belly laughs, none of them are at the expense of the off-beat characters. There’s no mean-spiritedness here; that’s what makes the film so endearing. Martin Landau nearly steals the film with his droll Oscar-winning turn as Bela Lugosi. Bill Murray, Sarah Jessica Parker, Patricia Arquette and Jeffrey Jones also shine.

8 1/2 - Where does creative inspiration come from? It’s a simple question, but one of the most difficult to answer. Federico Fellini’s semi-autobiographical 1963 classic probably comes closest to “showing” us…in his inimitable fashion. Marcello Mastroianni is fabulous as a successful director who wrestles with a creative block whilst being hounded by the press and various hangers-on. Like many Fellini films (all Fellini films?), the deeper you go, the less you comprehend. Yet (almost perversely), you can’t take your eyes off the screen; with Fellini, there is an implied contract between the director and the viewer that, no matter what ensues, if you’ve bought the ticket, you have to take the ride.

Hearts Of The West - Jeff Bridges stars as a Depression-era Iowan rube, a wannabe pulp western writer with the unlikely name of Lewis Tater (the scene where he asks the barber to cut his hair to make him look “just like Zane Grey” is priceless.) Tater gets fleeced by a mail-order scam promising enrollment in what turns out to be a bogus university “out West”. Serendipity lands him a job as a stuntman in Hollywood. The film also features one of Andy Griffith’s best performances. Veteran scene-stealer Alan Arkin is a riot as a perpetually apoplectic director. The breezy direction by Howard Zeiff (Private Benjamin), witty script by Rob Thompson and a great cast help make this one a winner.

The Kid Stays in the Picture- Look in the dictionary under "raconteur" and you will likely see a picture of the subject of this winning 2002 documentary by co-directors Nanette Burstein and Brett Morgen. While it is basically a 90-minute monolog from legendary producer Robert Evans (The Godfather, Rosemary's Baby, Love Story , Chinatown , etc.) talking about his life, loves and career, it adds up to a surprisingly intimate and fascinating "insider" purview of the Hollywood machine. Evans spins quite the tale of a powerful mogul's rise and fall; by turns heartbreaking and hilarious. He's so charming and entertaining that you won’t stop to ponder whether he's making half this shit up. Visually inventive, thoroughly engaging, and required viewing for movie buffs.

Living in Oblivion- This criminally underappreciated 1995 sleeper from writer-director Tom DiCillo deserves a wider audience. Sort of the Day for Night of indie cinema, the film centers on a NYC-based filmmaker (a wonderful Steve Buscemi) helming a no-budget feature. Much to his escalating chagrin, the harried director seems to be stuck in a hellish loop chasing an ever-elusive “perfect take” for a couple of crucial scenes. DiCillo uses a clever construct that really keeps you on your toes (that’s all I’m prepared to say…no spoilers). DiCillo’s smart screenplay is full of quotable lines, and quite funny. Fabulous performances from a cast that reads like a “Who’s Who” of indie filmdom: Catherine Keener, Dermot Mulroney, Kevin Corrigan, James Le Gros and Peter Dinklage (in his first billed film role!). Dinklage delivers a hilarious rant about the stereotypical casting of dwarves in dream sequences. It has been rumored that Le Gros’ character (an arrogant Hollywood hotshot who has deigned to grace the low-budget production with his presence) was based on the director’s experience working with Brad Pitt (who starred in DeCillo’s 1991 debut feature, Johnny Suede). If that is really true, all I can say is…ouch!

The Story of Film: An Odyssey is one long-ass movie. Consider the title. It literally is the story of film, from the 1890s through last Tuesday. At 15 hours, it is nearly as epic an undertaking for the viewer as it must have been for director-writer-narrator Mark Cousins. Originally aired as a 15-part TV series in the UK, it made the rounds on the festival circuit as a five-part presentation. While the usual suspects are well-represented, Cousins’ choices for in-depth analysis are atypical (he has a predilection for African and Middle-Eastern cinema). That quirkiness is what I found most endearing about this idiosyncratic opus; world cinema enjoys equal time with Hollywood. The film is not without tics. Cousins’ oddly cadenced Irish brogue requires steely acclimation, and he has a tendency to over-use the word “masterpiece”. Of course, he “left out” many directors and films I would have included. Nits aside, this is obviously a labor of love by someone passionate about film, and if you claim to be, you have an obligation to see this.

The Stunt Man - “How tall was King Kong?” That’s the $64,000 question, posed by Eli Cross (Peter O’Toole), the larger-than-life director of the film-within-the-film in Richard Rush’s 1980 drama. Once you discover that King Kong was but “3 foot, six inches tall”, it becomes clear that the fictional director’s query is actually code for a much bigger question: “What is reality?” That is the question to ponder as you take this wild ride through the Dream Factory. Because from the moment our protagonist, a fugitive on the run from the cops (Steve Railsback) tumbles ass over teakettle onto Mr. Cross’s set, where he is in the midst of filming an art-house flavored WW I action adventure, his (and the audience’s) concept of what is real and what isn’t becomes hazy, to say the least. O’Toole chews major scenery, ably supported by a cast that includes Barbara Hershey and Allen Garfield. Despite the lukewarm reviews from critics upon original release, it has since gained status as a cult classic. This is a movie for people who love the movies.

Sunset Boulevard- Leave it to that great ironist Billy Wilder to direct a film that garnered a Best Picture nomination from the very Hollywood studio system it so mercilessly skewers (however, you’ll note that they didn’t let him win…did they?). Gloria Swanson’s turn as a fading, high-maintenance movie queen mesmerizes, William Holden embodies the quintessential noir sap, and veteran scene-stealer Erich von Stroheim redefines the meaning of “droll” in this tragicomic journey down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams.

digby 2/25/2017 06:30:00 PM

 
Little men in uniforms

by digby

Remember when Trump said he was going to be the "law and order"president? Well, he's making good on that promise:

The White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, said on Tuesday that the president wanted to “take the shackles off” of agents, an expression the officers themselves used time and again in interviews to describe their newfound freedom.

“Morale amongst our agents and officers has increased exponentially since the signing of the orders,” the unions representing ICE and Border Patrol agents said in a joint statement after President Trump issued the executive orders on immigration late last month.

Two memos released this past week by the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE and the Border Patrol, provided more details about how it would carry out its plan, which includes Mr. Trump’s signature campaign pledge — a wall along the entire southern border — as well as speedier deportations and greater reliance on local police officers.

But for those with ICE badges, perhaps the biggest change was the erasing of the Obama administration’s hierarchy of priorities, which forced agents to concentrate on deporting gang members and other violent and serious criminals, and mostly leave everyone else alone.

A whirlwind of activity has overtaken ICE headquarters in Washington in recent weeks, with employees attending back-to-back meetings about how to quickly carry out President Trump’s plans. “Some people are like: ‘This is great. Let’s give them all the tools they need,’” said a senior staff member at headquarters, who joined the department under the administration of George W. Bush.

But, the official added, “other people are a little bit more hesitant and fearful about how quickly things are moving.”

Two officials in Washington said that the shift — and the new enthusiasm that has come with it — seems to have encouraged pro-Trump political comments and banter that struck the officials as brazen or gung-ho, like remarks about their jobs becoming “fun.” Those who take less of a hard line on unauthorized immigrants feel silenced, the officials said.

ICE has more than 20,000 employees, spread across 400 offices in the United States and 46 foreign countries, and the Trump administration has called for the hiring of 10,000 more. ICE officers see themselves as protecting the country and enforcing its laws, but also, several agents said, defending the legal immigration system, with its yearslong waits to enter the country, from people who skip the line.

John F. Kelly, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement after the first large-scale roundups of the Trump administration: “President Trump has been clear in affirming the critical mission of D.H.S. in protecting the nation.”

“There is no greater calling than to serve and protect our nation,” he added, “a mission that the men and women of ICE perform with professionalism and courage every single day.”

Agents are, in fact, predominantly male and have often served in the military, with a police department or both. New agents take a five-week Spanish language program as well as firearms training; they also learn driving maneuvers and have to pass seven written examinations and a physical-fitness test that includes an obstacle course.

The element of surprise is central to their work, and the sight of even a single white van emblazoned with the words Department of Homeland Security can create fear and cause people to flee. To minimize public contact, the arrests are frequently made in the early morning hours.

A supervisor in Northern California described a typical operation, with teams of at least five members rising before dawn, meeting as early as 4 a.m. to make arrests before their targets depart for work. To avoid distressing families and children, the agents prefer to apprehend people outside their homes, approaching them as soon as they step onto a public sidewalk and, once identified, placing them in handcuffs.

But arrests can appear dramatic, as agents arrive in large numbers, armed with semiautomatic handguns and wearing dark bulletproof vests with ICE in bright white letters on them. When they do have to enter a home, officers knock loudly and announce themselves as the police, a term they can legally use. Many times, children are awakened in the process, and watch as a parent is taken away.

Some of the more visible ICE operations in recent weeks have ricocheted around the internet, and sometimes drawn a backlash. At Kennedy Airport, Customs and Border Protection agents checked documents of passengers getting off a flight from San Francisco because ICE, a sister agency, thought a person with a deportation order might be on the plane. They did not find the person they were looking for.

These are customs agents forcibly checking the ID of every passenger deplaning from Delta flight 1583 tonight at JFK. A domestic flight. pic.twitter.com/fHMgyzCjo5

— Britton Taylor (@brittontaylor) February 23, 2017

After the arrests outside the church in Alexandria, Va., Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, wrote a letter to Mr. Kelly, saying the action “raises a concern that, unlike previous actions, ICE agents are detaining Virginia residents without cause or specific allegations of criminal activity.”

Bystanders are now being taken in if they are suspected to be undocumented, even if they have committed no crime, known within the agency as “collateral” arrests. While these arrests occurred under the Obama administration, they were officially discouraged, to the frustration of many agents. “Which part of illegal don’t people understand?” an agent in Arizona asked.

But officers said their work had become more political than ever, and they bristled at what they considered stereotypes of indiscriminate enforcers who want to sweep grandmothers off the street or separate families.

Perhaps their biggest challenge, said the supervisor in California, is the agency’s steadily deteriorating relationship with other law enforcement agencies, especially in liberal-leaning cities that have vowed to protect immigrants from deportation, known as sanctuary cities.

In one city alone, the supervisor said, the police once transferred 35 undocumented immigrants a day into federal custody, compared with roughly five per week during the final years of the Obama presidency.

On Thursday, Los Angeles, a sanctuary city, asked that ICE agents stop calling themselves police officers, saying it was damaging residents’ trust of the city’s own police officers.

Although all of the agents interviewed felt the old priorities had kept them from doing their jobs, John Sandweg, an acting director of ICE in the Obama administration, defended the rules as making the best use of limited resources. Without them, he said, fewer dangerous people might get deported. “There are 10 seats on the bus, they go to the first 10 you grab,” Mr. Sandweg said. “It diminishes the chances that it’s a violent offender.”

He said that he had spent a lot of time on the road, speaking at town halls where he heard a great deal from the rank-and-file agents about the priorities. “Certainly they were not terribly popular,” he said. “They wanted unfettered discretion.”

Agents said that even with the added freedom, they would still go after the people who presented the greatest danger to the public. And what Mr. Sandweg called unfettered discretion, they called enforcing the law.

“The discretion has come back to us; it’s up to us to make decisions in the field,” a 15-year veteran in California said. “We’re trusted again.”

These are your American gestapo. I'm sorry to have to bring that  allusion into it, but there's just no avoiding it.

*Note that tweet above refers to a domestic flight.  No border involved.

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digby 2/25/2017 05:00:00 PM