Lawyers on the left and right agree: The idiot in chief has really outdone himself with his latest Twitter rant concerning his flailing Muslim ban effort. Not only did he explicitly contradict his own communications team's assertion that the order isn't a "ban," he castigated his Justice Department for rewriting the order, which he subsequently gave his imprimatur by signing it into law.

Thanks, Donald, you're really doing wonders for your case that's pending before the U.S. Supreme Court. In other tweets, he touted his administration's "EXTREME VETTING" and threatened to seek a "much tougher version" of the order.

Even Kellyanne Conway's husband, George Conway, once under consideration for a Justice Department post, advised Trump to shut the heck up, writes Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post:

“These tweets may make some ppl feel better, but they certainly won’t help OSG get 5 votes in SCOTUS, which is what actually matters. Sad,” he wrote, using abbreviations for Office of Solicitor General and the Supreme Court. [...]

Omar C. Jadwat, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, wrote that Trump’s tweets amounted to “a promise: let me do this and I’ll take it as license to do even worse.” In an interview, Jadwat said the president’s tweets “seem to undermine the picture the government’s been trying to paint.”

Of course, the whole point of rewriting the order was to make it seem more narrowly tailored and focused on safety rather than being broadly based on religious bias.

A Santa Ana mosque had a delicious community building treat to break the day’s Ramadan fast—tacos! The Islamic Center of Santa Ana was the site for this great event, set up by community activists Rida Hamida and Benjamin Vazquez. The Orange County Register points out that both communities have been under siege from bigotry and violence.

This event, named #TacoTrucksAtEveryMosque, was the brainchild of community activists Rida Hamida, a Palestinian-American and Benjamin Vazquez, a Santa Ana educator who have, for the last year, been working on bringing the Muslim and Latino communities together through storytelling and food. Resilience OC was also a partner in this event.

They plan to take this event to other Orange County mosques during Ramadan.

The most recent Orange County Hate Crime Report showed that Muslims and Latinos were the prime targets of hate incidents in 2016.

And both groups acknowledge that they have been guilty of the same kind of ignorant bigotry towards the other group. The coordinators have bigger plans than just this one mosque in one community. 

Resilience OC partnered with Hamida and Vazquez for the event, which will soon be extended to mosques in Anaheim, Garden Grove, Irvine and Mission Viejo. There are also requests from Altadena and Pasadena, Hamida said.

Vazquez, rubbing his belly after fasting since 4:50 a.m. Saturday, said, "We have a saying — la cultura cura — the culture cures. There's nothing better than two sides coming together to cure evil thoughts about each other."

I’ll take more of this on every corner.

Well, that was fast. When news broke about Phil Stair, the now former sales manager for the Genesee County Land Bank, blaming the Flint, Michigan water crisis on its predominantly Black residents, the response was strong and swift. Stair, who was recorded saying the contaminated water problem is due to “fucking n----rs” who “just don’t pay their bills,” was urged to resign with even Congressman Dan Kildee (D) publicly condemning Stair’s hateful rhetoric.

The audio footage, captured undercover by a local activist, shows Stair shamelessly using racist words and attitudes to blame the victim.

“Flint has the same problems as Detroit—fucking ni**ers don’t pay their bills, believe me, I deal with them,” Phil Stair7, sales manager for the Genesee County Land Bank said on May 26th during a conversation with Truth Against the Machine reporter and environmental activist Chelsea Lyons in Flint.

He was driving to a restaurant with Lyons and another individual, who he’d met that night, when he made the comments, which were recorded and later obtained by TATM.

Stair did go on to try and clarify: “I don’t want to call them ni**ers, shit I just went to Myrtle Beach, 24 guys, and I was the only white guy; I got friends, I mean, there’s trash and there’s people that do this shit. They just don’t pay their bills. Well, Detroit, didn’t collect on their bills, so they charged everybody else, but- Flint- Flint had to pay their bill to Detroit.”

The evidence was just too damning for Stair to deny. News of his resignation broke this morning on MLive.com after his boss, Michele M. Wildman, accepted his resignation:

Wildman addressed the county Board of Commissioners Monday morning, saying she accepted Stair's resignation and apologized for his remarks.

"I am deeply troubled by (the statements)," she said. "The citizens of Flint deserve to have trust in their public officials."

Good riddance.

You can listen to the record of Stair’s statements below:

It was refreshing to see this Meet The Press panelist masterfully steer a rather shallow discussion of the terrorist event in the United Kingdom into Trump's failure to address domestic terrorism by white supremacists. Chuck Todd was visibly taken aback.

Chuck Todd did not expect his shallow discussion on the UK terrorist attack to morph into a sensible commentary on Donald Trump's failure at home. Heather McGhee, President of Demos Action, did just that in this excerpted video.

After discussing Donald Trump's tweet storm in response to the attack in the United Kingdom, Chuck Todd sought a comment from Heather McGhee on Uk's Prime Minister Theresa May's call for tougher actions that likely would violate our civil liberties especially given our First Amendment, a restriction nonexistent in the UK.

Donald Trump Masterfully Called Out On Domestic Terrorism

"I think this is a question of context, balance, and approach," Heather McGhee said. "We have been so fortunate. I mean, I live in New York City. I would never have believed about how safe that I feel even today after September 11th. This is a moment for the people of the UK where they are experiencing a heightened sense of fragility walking into bars and concert and crossing the street on a bridge. And yet at the same time, I know that people in the communities of color in this country are also seeing that the president and the Right Wing are ignoring domestic extremism here in the United States. Whether or not it is the young man who was a person who was in the military who was killed by a white supremacist or the veteran who stepped in obviously in Portland Oregon. So, I think that there is a broad conversation to have about an administration that is tolerating Right Wing extremism and hate, as well as obviously the continued threat of a war that we are continuing to not prosecute well overseas."

Note how Ms. McGhee segued the dialogue into a valid domestic issue seldom addressed as such on our Sunday shows' panels. She changed the narrative to ensure the millions that are watching saw the attacks and Trump's security failures as a real problem here, domestic terrorism. It was obvious that Chuck Todd did not want to go there, but her weaving into the subject and unweaving at the end back to the overseas nature of terrorism was masterful. He was unable to stop her even though it was clear he wanted to interject.

Progressives don't get many opportunities to address the large audiences in one spot that are afforded the Sunday shows. They must make use of those opportunities to seamlessly get their message with the proper narrative and context in, just as Heather McGhee did on this panel.

When infrequent panelists like Rachel Maddow, Heather McGhee, and Joy-ann Reid appear on Meet the Press, the program is afforded so much more context to the subject as they usually expand an antiseptic discourse into one that applies to real people. We must encourage through our tweets and emails that these panelists appear more frequently.

Texas Republicans have done a bang-up job when it comes to passing incredibly outrageous and restrictive abortion legislation this year. Last month, they passed a series of dangerous anti-abortion bills that could actually become law including a ban on insurance coverage for abortions. Then they went so far as to try to make it legal to charge anyone connected with an unlawful abortion with a crime—and by anyone this includes the person who drove the woman to the procedure, and even the receptionist who booked the appointment. But as for addressing pregnancy deaths and trying to actually save women’s lives? Well, that’s too much of a stretch for these lawmakers.

Lawmakers in Texas largely failed to take any significant action to address the state’s skyrocketing rate of pregnancy-related deaths just months after researchers found it to be the highest in not only the U.S., but the developed world.

Legislators introduced proposals to address the issue after a University of Maryland-led study found that the state’s maternal mortality rate doubled between 2010 and 2012. But several key measures didn’t even make it to a vote, falling victim to Republican infighting over other issues.

What’s so hard about this? The state has the highest rate of pregnancy-related death in the developed world. Surely, since these lawmakers are so concerned about saving babies, they could actually find a way to give a crap about the women who are bearing them, too.

This is the ultimate hypocrisy. They don’t care about babies and they don’t care about women or their health. And once again this phenomenon is tied to race, with black women making up a significantly high percentage of the maternal deaths in the state. One Democrat thought that was worth learning more about. His colleagues? Not so much.

I submit the following *recent* quotes. I specifically dug up quotes from the last few years..so I did not include some of the classic but “goodies”….THESE people and their words are why we still need gay pride parades, books and organizations.

If you're involved in the gay and lesbian lifestyle, it's bondage. It is personal bondage, personal despair and personal enslavement. — Michele Bachman

And what a bizarre time we're in, Jan, when a judge will say to little children that you can't say the pledge of allegiance, but you must learn that homosexuality is normal and you should try it. — Michele Bachman

It isn't that some gay will get some rights. It's that everyone else in our state will lose rights. For instance, parents will lose the right to protect and direct the upbringing of their children. Because our K-12 public school system, of which ninety per cent of all youth are in the public school system, they will be required to learn that homosexuality is normal, equal and perhaps you should try it. And that will occur immediately, that all schools will begin teaching homosexuality.--Michele Bachman

Sometimes a meme that lights up social media needs to be posted as a story, so it can be seen by even more of the masses. This is one of them.

Too often, the way a girl is dressed takes priority over her education. Here is the the meme and text via the Facebook page of Kelsea Lafferty where it now has over 285k shares.

“When you interrupt a girl’s schools day to force her [to] change clothes, or send her home because her shorts are too short or her bra straps are visible, you are telling her that making sure boys have ‘distraction free’ learning environment is more important than her education. 

Instead of shaming girls for their bodies, teach boys that girls are not sexual objects!”

Here is one example of the above via Rosey Abuabara on Facebook:

Obviously, there are exceptions, but the meaning of this message is clear. Thank you to whomever created the meme. It needs to be said.

Wisconsin was the first state to provide legal protection from discrimination for LGB people. That happened in 1982. But the state has never sought to include transgender people as well.

If a miracle occurs and the bill actually passes, Wisconsin would become the 20th state to ban discrimination against transgender people.

Wisconsin's transgender residents would be legally protected from discrimination in employment, housing, school and other areas under a new Democratic proposal.

The bill would prohibit discrimination on the basis of a person's gender identity or expression and would add gender identity and gender expression as bases of discrimination in some existing state laws. Reps. Mark Spreitzer, D-Beloit, and JoCasta Zamarripa, D-Milwaukee, and Sen. Tim Carpenter, D-Milwaukee, released the bill for co-sponsorship on Thursday.

If the bill passes the Republican-controlled legislature, which we are not going to hold our breath for, it would have to be signed by Gov. Scott Walker, which is also highly improbable.

In Wisconsin we have a rich history of leadership on issues of nondiscrimination and today we seek to continue that tradition by including critical legal protections for the transgender community in our state law.

Some people face discrimination because they’re perceived as not fitting into a narrow norm of how someone else thinks that a man or a woman should look, dress or act. This bill rests on the simple concept that members of the transgender community are people.

--Rep. Spreitzer

The Privacy Protection and Gender Identity Anti-Discrimination Act is in circulation for co-sponsorship.

Spreitzer said recent legal battles — including a 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling this week in favor of a transgender Kenosha high school student who wanted the right to use the boys’ bathroom — highlight the need for explicit protections in the law for gender identity.

I wouldn’t change my daughter for the world. but I'd like to change the world for her to be treated equally.

--Annette Grunseth, mother of a transgender daughter

We’re not asking for any protections that aren’t afforded everybody in Wisconsin and America. We’re just asking for those protections to include who we are.

--Darla Lannert, OutReach

It is estimated that 58,000 transgender and non-binary people live in Wisconsin.

For far too long in Wisconsin, transgender people have been denied basic protections from discrimination in the workplace, housing, and public spaces. This bill would modernize Wisconsin’s nondiscrimination laws, level the playing field for transgender people and send a powerful message to companies, workers and students across the country that Wisconsin is open for business. It is time to extend full equality to transgender people across Wisconsin and I thank Rep. Spreitzer, Rep. Zamarripa and Sen. Carpenter for their leadership on this vital issue.

--Sarah McBride, HRC

Sandra Bland was on her way to her new job at her alma mater in Texas when she was racially profiled, brutalized, and then thrown in jail. This was the stop where the cop threatened to “light you up” for her daring to question him about his abusive, intimidating behavior. Sandra was found dead in her cell three days after that horrendous example of over-policing and power-tripping.

Sandra’s family agreed to a settlement of $1.9M but also managed to exact a promise that a bill, to be named in her honor, would be introduced in the Texas Legislature to address the systemic issues which led to her murder.

Bland family attorney Cannon Lambert said all parties have agreed to terms including a $1.9 million payout to the family  — $1.8 million from Waller County and $100,000 from DPS — and changes in jailing and law enforcement practices that could have statewide implications.

Representative Garnet Coleman promised that among other things, the legislation he’d offer would for sure deal with the very real problem of over-policing and lack of police accountability.

Legislation in Bland's honor is a term of the lawsuit settlement, and state Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat and chairman of the House County Affairs Committee, said he will introduce the Sandra Bland Act during the 2017 session. The bill will address protocols for dealing with mental health issues in the criminal justice system, look for ways to divert people to treatment over incarceration and emphasize police de-escalation. (my bold)

And indeed he did. Rep. Coleman’s comprehensive bill sought to deal with racial profiling, motor vehicle stops, complaints against officers, accountability in jails, police training, and also proposals for dealing with mental health issues.

Racial profiling

• Agencies would be required to provide a complaints process for all tickets, citations and warnings.
• Law enforcement agencies would be required to review data on stops to determine if there are racial disparities between drivers who are stopped and the racial and ethnic makeup of the county.
• Officers found to be profiling drivers would be required to go to counseling and training. If that officer is later found to be profiling again, the bill would mandate they be suspended "for not less than six months" and be required to go through counseling and training again.

The Sandra Bland Act now sits on Governor Greg Abbott’s desk awaiting his signature. All mention of police accountability and police reform have been stripped from the law.

And why were all measures having to do with over-policing removed from the bill? I give you one guess.

Whitmire struck some provisions in the original version of the bill amid criticism that it would hamper law enforcement's work, including requiring police officers to learn how to identify implicit bias. It also would have required counseling and training for officers who racially profiled drivers and prohibited what are called "pretext stops" — traffic stops for one offense that are used to investigate another.

None of those provisions were in the bill the Senate approved Thursday. A day earlier, Whitmire said that police groups opposed earlier provisions regarding consent searches and implicit bias and that the only way the legislation had a chance of passing was if it was written as a mental health bill. Two police organizations told the Tribune that language about racial profiling and bias came from a place of distrust of law enforcement.

Surely the GOP, the NRA, and police unions must sit atop the totem pole of evil. It seems that they exist for one purpose and one purpose only: to deprive us of good things. 

The so-called "Sandra Bland Act" evolved as it moved through the legislative process amid criticism from law enforcement officials. The version the Senate unanimously approved on Thursday — authored by state Sen. John Whitmire — would mandate that county jails divert people with mental health and substance abuse issues toward treatment, make it easier for defendants with a mental illness or intellectual disability to receive a personal bond and require that independent law enforcement agencies investigate jail deaths. (The agency would be any appointed by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and cannot be the agency that operates the county jail.)

Sandra’ s sister gave the family's reaction to the declawed, blame-shifting version of the SBA:

Saying she was speaking on behalf of the Bland family, Cooper said the legislation as it now stands "isolates the very person it seeks to honor" and makes compromises at the expense of the family. "It painfully misses the mark for us," she said.

And:

“What the bill does in its current state renders Sandy invisible,” Sharon Cooper, Bland’s sister, told the AP. “It’s frustrating and gut-wrenching.”

And that it does. They robbed her of her life and have now added egregious insult to murderous injury. In essence, the Texas Legislature has codified victim-blaming into law. Yes, the bill that the governor will sign into law essentially blames Sandra Bland’s death on her mental state. Nothing about the part an over-zealous, racist cop played in dragging her out of her car, brutalizing her,  arresting her and how that may have impacted her mental state.

Shouldn’t they be forced to remove her name from a law that so dishonors her?

Rest in peace, Sandra. #SayHerName. #JusticeforSandra.

Remember this: when Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Sec. John Kelly tell you that they are only targeting dangerous criminals and “bad hombres” for arrest and deportation, they are lying to you. USA Today shares one of the most egregious examples yet, that of an undocumented dad with no criminal record in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Despite living in the U.S. without permission, Felix Yulian "Julian" Motino tried to follow the rules by paying his taxes, working hard as a house painter, and taking care of his two U.S. citizen children. Motion and Alexis, his U.S. citizen wife of two years, had begun the process of trying to gain legal status for him during the Obama administration, but because of his undocumented status and a prior deportation order, were warned by friends the effort could be dangerous under Donald Trump.

Still, Julian was determined “to try to come out of the shadows” and the couple voluntarily scheduled an in-person appointment with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. It was there that their “worst nightmare came true”:

For 45 minutes, the couple provided documents that included their marriage certificate from May 15, 2015, utility bills bearing both of their names, her U.S. birth certificate and his Honduran passport. They thumbed through their wedding album and showed the agent photographs of themselves from the early years of their relationship.

The USCIS agent, named Carlos, said toward the end of the meeting that he had to make copies of their ID cards. The agent came back to his office and asked the couple to have a seat in the lobby, where his supervisor, Julie, would speak to them.

"Julie said, 'Felix, we need you to come outside into the hallway,' " said Alexis Motino, a 26-year-old Cincinnati native.

There, two officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement met him and said, "We need you to come with us."

The couple’s attorney, Matthew Benson, had gone with them to the USCIS appointment and immediately tried to intervene, arguing the Julian has been here for over a decade and has no criminal record. “Their marriage petition had just been approved minutes earlier.” But federal immigration officials refused to budge, and the father was in detention later that day.

"Our worst nightmare came true," said his wife Alexis. "After the interview went so well, we were elated. Then we got crushed."

Among the many lies that Donald Trump told on his way to the White House was that he would do many “bigly” things for “the blacks.” And back in February during Black History Month, he made a “yuge” deal of bringing together the heads of more than 70 presidents of Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) in the Oval Office to affirm his support for HBCUs and sign an executive order moving a federal office supporting the institutions from the Department of Education directly into the White House. Amid the pomp and circumstance of the signing he said, “We will make HBCUs a priority in the White House, an absolute priority." And guess what? No surprises here, he lied.

But for leaders and advocates of these institutions, the release of Trump's budget in late May did nothing of the sort. Not only was there no new funding for HBCUs in the budget, Trump called for slashing millions of dollars from federal programs that also support degree programs at the schools. Trump's plan appeared to boost Pell grants by extending their use to year-round—but meanwhile called for taking away $5 billion-plus in reserves from the Pell program and cutting at least $1.5 billion from other federal financial aid programs, including work study. Taken together, these cuts would disproportionately affect low-income students at black colleges, and cost the schools millions in revenue.

The question here really shouldn’t be why Trump isn’t living up to his promise to invest in HBCUs but rather why the leaders of these institutions were inclined to believe this known liar and racist in the first place. After all, absolutely nothing about Trump, from his campaign rhetoric to who he’s appointed to his administration, suggests remote concern for the students at black colleges. Less than one month into his term, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos showed she has no knowledge of history, segregation or racism when she called HBCUs “pioneers of school choice.” And just last month, Trump himself flip-flopped on support for HBCUs when he suggested that federal funding of them may be unconstitutional. Given that, how is it that anyone is seriously surprised at this move? 

This week, news broke that Trump plans to allow any employer to block contraception coverage for their workers. Many people (including myself!) are upset by this heinous rollback; it’s plain evil and discriminatory. This move will needlessly hurt millions of Americans who use birth control—especially in their bank accounts.

In a statement from Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Vice President for Public Policy and Government Relations Dana Singiser points out:

Birth control is essential for women’s health and lives, and should never be a decision made by a woman’s employer. In the last decade, we’ve made important progress advancing the cause of women’s health: Unintended pregnancy is at an all-time low today thanks in part to expanded access to birth control, an Affordable Care Act provision that saved women an estimated $1.4 billion in its first year alone.

A total of $1.4 billion in just one year alone! Considering that women are already woefully underpaid and under-compensated, this is no small sum. If Trump truly was about “America First” he wouldn’t even entertain such harmful policies that only serve to make women second-class citizens.