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Trump administration still won't say whether it will uphold Obamacare in face of Idaho's rebellion

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 7:00 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 19:00

WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 29: (AFP-OUT) Alex Azar, new Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, speaks after being sworn in as President Donald J. Trump looks on January 29, 2018 at The White House in Washington, DC. (Photo by Chris Kleponis-Pool/Getty Images) — Alex Azar playing dumb.

An Idaho insurer is moving full steam ahead on a plan to sell insurance policies that do not comply with the requirements set out in the Affordable Care Act. Idaho went rogue last month, with Republican Gov. Butch Otter signing an executive order, in direct conflict with federal law, allowing Idaho insurers to sell policies that aren't compliant with the law. Those plans will cut at the heart of the consumer protections in the law—they would have annual and lifetime caps, they would allow insurers to sell junk policies and discriminate against people with pre-existing conditions by charging them more or denying them policies. In other words, back to pre-Obamacare days in Idaho.

Trump's new Secretary for Health and Human Services, Alex Azar, has repeatedly insisted that he will uphold the law of the land, but he continues to refuse to say how the administration will respond to Idaho.

Azar did not budge last week in his first meeting with reporters. "I just don't believe in premature opinions on complex, important topics—serious, weighty matters," he said. "Let's see where the state of Idaho ends up."
Nor would HHS elaborate on a conversation Azar had with Otter over the weekend while speaking at a gathering of governors in Washington. A department statement said the secretary "expressed sympathy" for challenges the ACA poses.

Azar has adopted his public wait-and-see stance even though Idaho Insurance Director Dean Cameron began conferring with federal officials before the governor's executive order. […]

On Valentine's Day, 15 national groups representing patients with serious diseases wrote Azar, urging him to "address this issue in a timely manner." A quartet of congressional Democrats were more pointed in a letter to him and CMS Administrator Seema Verma. Idaho's rules "eviscerate critical protections that are enshrined in federal law," they wrote, asking the department to explain their legality.

In a three-paragraph reply, Verma told the lawmakers that CMS "does not have any information to share."

Idaho is way ahead of Azar—Blue Cross is already going to hit the market with these plans. Whatever it is he's waiting for has already passed. Which suggests that the Trump administration isn't going to do a thing about this. It's going to be up to the courts.

Key Republican warns Trump against nominating his personal pilot to head FAA

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 6:30 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 18:30

MOON TOWNSHIP, PA - JUNE 11: Republican candidate for President Donald Trump arrives in his plane to speak to supporters at a rally at Atlantic Aviation on June 11, 2016 in Moon Township, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

Donald Trump has pushed—and so far failed to win—an unpopular plan to privatize the Federal Aviation Administration, but his desire to put his personal pilot in charge of the agency is a little extra. Call it “personalizing” the FAA, if you can’t privatize it. But that personalized plan isn't getting a great reception, either. Sen. John Thune politely but unmistakably dumped cold water on the idea in an interview with Politico:

The Senate Commerce Committee chairman did not explicitly say that John Dunkin, Trump's pilot, will not be confirmed if nominated for the post. But the South Dakota Republican said he has told the White House there are far easier battles for the president to fight in a Senate controlled by a threadbare 51-seat GOP majority.

"I'd prefer that they send somebody up that we can confirm easily. I've conveyed that to them," Thune said. "I'm sure that the Democrats would probably want to make it challenging" for Dunkin.

There would be plenty of material for Democrats to use to make it challenging:

Note that Trump may have personal reasons to want his own guy in as head of the FAA. He’s had a rocky relationship with the agency since before becoming president. He didn’t like it when the FAA stripped Trump-themed names from three aerial navigation points near Palm Beach International Airport — "DONLD," "TRMMP" and "UFIRD" — after Trump launched his presidential run with insults to Mexicans. He’s also complained about airplane noise, even accusing the airport director of "using his influence” with the FAA to “aim planes at Mar-a-Lago."

Putting your longtime pilot in charge of the FAA would be one way to ensure that no local airport director has the influence with the FAA to “aim planes at Mar-a-Lago.”

Alabama one-ups Kentucky on being evil to people on Medicaid

By Joan McCarter

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 6:00 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 18:00

SAN FRANCISCO, CA - SEPTEMBER 21: Protestors carry signs as they demonstrate against proposed cuts to Medical and Medicare outside San Francisco city hall on September 21, 2011 in San Francisco, California. Dozens of disabled people staged a protest aga

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Judy Solomon, Vice President for Health Policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, catches a Medicaid waiver proposal from Alabama's Republican Gov. Kay Ivey that would impose work requirements on a population that even Kentucky didn't include in its waiver: parents and care-takers .

Medicaid is seeking approval of a Section 1115 Demonstration project to require unemployed or underemployed able-bodied Parents or Caretaker Relatives (POCRs) to become gainfully employed, or participate in employment related activities such as: job search, training, education, vocational or volunteer opportunities to enhance their chances of full employment.

How many people does this potentially affect? Solomon estimates 75,000 parents. What makes it so much worse is what else she notes in her tweet:

"Its eligibility level for parents is 18% of the poverty line which is $3,740 a year for a family of 3. (That's not a typo -$3,740 a year)"

That's right, you have to make less than $3,740 A YEAR to qualify for Medicaid in Alabama as a family of three. And there are 75,000 people who qualify. Alabama expects a 20 percent drop in parents participating in Medicaid in five years, about 17,000 individuals.

Because being poor in Alabama wasn't already miserable enough.

Norway's doomsday seed vault is getting a $13 million upgrade to fight against climate change

By Craig Hunter

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 5:30 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 17:30

The doomsday seed vault in Norway is getting a $13 million upgrade designed to protect its priceless cache of seeds from the rising threat of climate change.

The work on the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, located nearly 400 feet beneath the earth’s surface inside a coal mine, was announced Monday as the international facility celebrated its 10th anniversary and its holding of more than 1 million seed samples.

The facility, which is fully funded by the Norwegian government, offers any government access to seeds in case of natural or man-made disaster. The concept was successfully tested in 2015, with a seed withdraw to help Syria re-establish crops wiped out by the country’s civil war.

The upgrades will include a concrete access tunnel, a service building for emergency power and refrigerating units, as well as other electrical equipment that will emit heat through the tunnel, Norway’s government said in a statement.

When it opened in 2008, the Global Seed Vault was seen as an impenetrable fortress guarding a collection of seeds essential to the world's food supply. But extraordinary temperatures in the Arctic early last year left glacial meltwater streaming into the vault's entryway, forcing Statsbygg, the agency that operates it, to take new steps to waterproof the 300-foot-long entrance tunnel. The repository, originally designed to stand at the ready without human intervention, is also now monitored 24 hours a day.

On Monday, more than 76,000 new seed samples ― each containing about 500 seeds ― were added to the vault’s collection, bringing the total of seed samples in storage to more than 1 million. The vault has the capacity for more than 4.5 million seed samples, according to its website.

“It is simply impressive that 1 million seed samples from all over the world have now found their way to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault,” Norway’s minister of agriculture and food, Jon Georg Dale, said in a statement. “It confirms the important role of the seed vault as a worldwide insurance for food supply for future generations and an ever-growing population.”

After discovering the flooded entryway last year, the Norwegian government began actively monitoring the state of the permafrost on the archipelago of Svalbard where the vault is located. By all accounts, they’ll continue to have their work cut out for them since climate change continues to warm the arctic in unprecedented ways.

Trump administration to states: Stop cracking down on predatory student loan companies

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 5:00 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 17:00

STANFORD, CA - JUNE 15: Graduating Stanford University students partcipate in the "Wacky Walk" before the start of the 123rd Stanford commencement ceremony June 15, 2014 in Stanford, California. Microsoft founder and chairman Bill Gates and wife Melinda Gates shared the stage to deliver the commencement speech to Stanford University graduates. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

States are increasingly stepping in to protect student borrowers from predatory loan collection companies, and the Trump administration is riding in to the rescue—of the loan companies, not the students.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is preparing to issue a declaration that companies collecting federal student loans are off limits for state lawmakers and regulators. The “notice of interpretation” argues that only the federal government, not the states, has the authority to oversee federal student loan servicers, according to a draft of the document obtained by POLITICO. That includes industry giants like Navient and Nelnet. [...]

But consumer advocates and nearly half of the nation’s attorneys general disagree, arguing that states have the right to oversee companies operating within their borders that collect loan payments from their residents.

The industry’s lobbying efforts last year drew criticism from a group of 25 state attorneys general, led by New York’s Eric Schneiderman. In a letter, the attorneys general urged DeVos “to reject an ongoing campaign by student loan servicers and debt collectors to secure immunity for themselves from state-level oversight and enforcement.”

The Education Department “cannot sweep away state laws that apply to student loan servicers and debt collectors,” said the letter, which was also signed by a handful of GOP attorneys general, including Ken Paxton of Texas, Herbert Slatery of Tennessee and Cynthia Coffman of Colorado.

In other words, if it’s states and the little people on one side and giant loan companies on the other, the Trump Education Department, representing the supposedly populist president from the supposed party of states’ rights, is definitely supporting the giant loan companies. But it’s going to be a fight, and a fight that at least a few state-level Republicans are willing to join.

ICE's chief is really pissed Oakland's mayor warned immigrant residents about raids

By Gabe Ortiz

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 4:30 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 16:30

Protesters march against President Donald Trump's immigration policy in Los Angeles, California on May 1, 2017, where tens of thousands are expected to take to the streets on May Day. / AFP PHOTO / Frederic J. Brown (Photo credit should read FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images)

A pissed-off Thomas Homan, mass deportation architect and acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is blaming Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf for the fact that his agents weren’t able to arrest more immigrants in a three-day sweep that targeted her city and other areas of Northern California. The day before they began, Schaaf warned immigrant residents that “credible sources” indicated sweeps were likely, and to take precautions to know their rights. “She and Police Chief Anne Kirkpatrick discussed the reports before Schaaf concluded that the information was solid enough to warrant going public,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported. They were right, and around 150 were eventually arrested:

As Schaaf decided whether to warn the community Saturday, she said she was thinking of the case of Maria Mendoza-Sanchez, a 46-year-old mother of four and nurse at an Oakland hospital, who, along with her husband, was deported to Mexico after more than 20 years in the United States. Neither she nor her husband had criminal records, as the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Neither did roughly half of the suspected undocumented immigrants rounded up in ICE’s latest North California operation — which, Schaaf said, is what she had feared.

“Maria Mendoza-Sanchez and her husband are an example of a couple that, under the previous administration, were considered low-priority for deportation,” Schaaf said. “And under this administration they were ripped away from their family. I was absolutely thinking of them when I made the decision to share the [ICE enforcement] information. I think it’s my responsibility as a person in power and privilege to share the information I have access to, to make sure people know what their rights are.”

These are the basic rights afforded anyone here, no matter their legal status. Homan doesn’t care. In fact, he’s said he’d “never back down” from his statement that immigrants with no criminal record should be living in perpetual fear, pledging to not only escalate enforcement in California because of the state’s numerous pro-immigrant policies, but promising that those raids would inevitably result in “collateral arrests,” a crass term describing when non-targets are swept up in targeted raids because they happened to be there at the time. Those were the arrests Schaff was trying to prevent, and considering ICE’s record, she likely did prevent many.

Anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assaults in America jumped steeply after Trump's election

By Hunter

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 4:10 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 16:10

Last February, over 100 tombstones were toppled in a Philadelphia Jewish cemetery.

There are things you can blame on Trump and things you can't, but the explosion of anti-Semitism in America last year is almost certainly tied to the Trump campaign's and administration's open embrace of xenophobic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, from the first days of his campaign to his post-Charlottesville refusal to condemn white nationalist marchers. The people rallying against immigrants and refugees are the same crowd of white supremacists that promote anti-Semitism as well; embracing one means emboldening the other.

Antisemitic incidents in the US surged 57% in 2017, the Anti-Defamation League said on Tuesday, the largest year-on-year increase since the Jewish civil rights group began collecting data in 1979.
Close to 2,000 cases of harassment, vandalism and physical assault were recorded, the highest number of antisemitic incidents since 1994, it said. [...]

The ADL’s report said US schools and colleges were particularly affected, with antisemitic incidents nearly doubling since 2016, often including swastikas drawn on school facilities or Jewish students’ notebooks. Sometimes vandalism included phrases such as: “Hitler was not wrong” or “white power”.

According to the ADL, the "dramatic increase in anti-Semitic acts of vandalism is particularly concerning because it indicates perpetrators feel emboldened enough to break the law." They also report that the months immediately surrounding Trump's inauguration saw the most incidents.

The three worst months were in first quarter of the year – with 208, 273, and 273 incidents in January, February, and March, respectively. These months include the 163 bomb threats against Jewish institutions.

Anti-hunger workers boo Trump administration's Depression-era plan for 'harvest boxes'

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 3:50 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 15:50

WELCH, WV - MAY 20: Residents search for free items at the Five Loaves and Two Fishes Food Bank outside of the struggling coal mining town of Welch on May 20, 2017 in Welch, West Virginia. The popular food bank has a monthly distribution which helps hundreds of local families, many working in the coal industry, make ends meet. West Virginia, a state where President Donald Trump won in a landslide by defeating Hillary Clinton 67.9 percent to 26.2 percent, is also one of the nations poorest states where nearly one in five West Virginians struggled to afford basic necessities in 2015. The state has continued to see a surge in male unemployment and an epidemic of opioid use among its population. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images) — Why doesn't the Trump administration just jump straight to making hungry people paw through boxes looking for a few useful items?

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A Trump administration representative got booed, laughed at and walked out on when he showed up at the National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference and touted the administration’s plan to take away low-income families’ choices about what to eat while harming local grocery stores. The Trump proposal is to replace some Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits with “harvest boxes” of shelf-stable foods. Because screw you, poor people, you’ll eat whatever we can buy at the biggest discount and if you don’t have a working kitchen, then screw you even more.

Anti-hunger professionals did not bother being polite about this idea:

At this week's conference, Brandon Lipps — who serves as both administrator of USDA's Food and Nutrition Service and as acting deputy undersecretary of food, nutrition and consumer services — spoke during the anti-hunger breakfast session on Monday. Lipps lauded federal nutrition programs for playing a crucial role in society, and emphasized a need to do a better job of helping people move out of poverty.

But the room erupted in boos and muted laughter as soon as he mentioned harvest boxes.

First of all, shut up with this “harvest box” nonsense. "Harvest": “the season when ripened crops are gathered” or “a crop or yield of one growing season.” There is no harvest at the canned food factory. If the Trump administration wants to pay local farmers to put together boxes of fresh fruits and vegetables, it will still be a terrible idea but they can call it a harvest box without being full-on liars. Powdered milk and canned peas is not a damn harvest box. “Harvest box” is intended to make us think of bounty and fresh food, and this plan is the exact opposite of that.

Lipps was unfazed by the raucous crowd. "As with any innovative idea, and we don't see those inside the Beltway very often, there are questions to be answered and details to be worked out,” he said calmly. “Your boos are welcome, but so are your good ideas. Please talk to us. All new ideas require dialogue."

The boos grew significantly louder when Lipps later suggested that food boxes would lower program costs while also keeping SNAP benefits at essentially the same level they are at now.

Freedom Caucus trying to figure out how to shorten their leash on Trump over gun safety

By Joan McCarter

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 3:10 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 15:10

PARKLAND, FL - FEBRUARY 20: Tyra Heman, a senior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, holds a sign that reads, 'Enough No Guns,' in front of the school where 17 people that were killed on February 14, on February 19, 2018 in Parkland, Florida. Police arrested 19-year-old former student Nikolas Cruz for killing 17 people at the high school. (Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

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The Freedom Caucus maniacs are concerned. They are worried that the occupier of the Oval Office might stray on a key issue. That issue is guns and the maniacs see nothing whatsoever wrong with the status quo of a nation awash in weapons of war and dozens, hundreds, thousands of innocents being sacrificed to their vision of Freedom. They worry that Trump might slip their control and do, well, something.

[A] group of the House's most conservative and Tea Party-sympathetic lawmakers are concerned the momentum might be headed in the wrong direction, and they're cooking up alternatives to rein in the president.
"We're pretty sure they're going to do something just for the sake of doing something," Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) said, leaving a raucous debate between Freedom Caucus members on how to address the White House's gun control push. Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC) said members were shocked by where Trump was willing to go on gun control. […]

Going down the list, Freedom Caucus members have found issue with almost all of Trump's gun control positions.

On his decision to use executive power to ban bump stocks without Congress's approval: "I would recommend him against that," Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) said.

What about Trump's consideration of raising the minimum age for buying assault rifles?

"I don't see that as being a starter," [NC Rep. Mark] Meadows said. "I think that's a little bit too controversial," Barton echoed.

What about the narrowest reinforcement of existing background check rules—the Fix NICS Act—which wouldn't actually establish any new gun control measures but just make sure federal and state agencies complied with current law?

There's a "due process issue," Meadows said. "Somebody saying you have a mental health issue and you actually having a mental health issue are two different things... What constitutes a mental health concern?"

West Virginia teachers get a win, but is the fight over?

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 2:50 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 14:50

David Reed, left, a teacher at Barrackville Elementary School, was part of the 1990 strike, and returned to almost the same spot outside the school, Thursday, Feb. 22, 2018, in Barrackville, W.Va., to protest PEIAâ€ˆand legislative changes. West Virginia public school teachers launched a statewide walkout Thursday that canceled classes in all 55 counties, protesting over pay hikes signed by the governor hours earlier that the teachers say don't go far enough. (Tammy Shriver/Times-West Virginian via AP)

The West Virginia teachers strike is ending … probably. Tuesday night, Gov. Jim Justice announced a deal for the teachers to get a five percent pay raise, with other state workers getting three percent. But, NPR reported, “it remains unknown whether leaders of the House and Senate will go along with the deal.” And it’s not clear that the teachers were satisfied, either. Health care was a key issue in their strike, and that remains unresolved, though Justice promised a task force to work on it.

The takeaway here is so mixed: immediate 5% raise and frozen PEIA is much better than the 5%-over-5-years and doubling insurance costs that caused the strike. But teachers and coaches I've talked tonight aren't happy. Some are even talking of picketing again tomorrow #55strong
— Scott Heins (@scottheins) February 28, 2018

UPDATE. Just spoke to a WV teacher: "All hell's breaking loose." Many teachers unsatisfied with deal, furious with gov and union leaders. Feel like other public workers got thrown under bus with lower raises. Angry there's no fix for health care. It sounds like a real mess.
— Dave Jamieson, LLC (@jamieson) February 28, 2018

State Sen. Richard Ojeda also expressed skepticism that the promised five percent raise would ever materialize, saying “Until I see a bill that is on paper that is going through the House and the Senate, it’s an empty promise.”

So we’ll see. Getting a Republican governor to back down to the extent that Justice did is a remarkable show of power by the teachers—but there are serious issues unresolved, and the follow-through on what they’ve been promised will tell the real story.

Ben Carson's entry in the Trump cabinet grifting competition: a $31,000 dining set

By Laura Clawson

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 2:30 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 14:30

WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 07: Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson testifies during a hearing before the Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies Subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations Committee June 7, 2017 on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. The subcommittee held a hearing on the FY2018 budget request for the Housing and Urban Development Department. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images) — Ben Carson

Ben Carson is the latest member of Donald Trump’s cabinet to jump onboard the “he spent how much on what, now?” train, but Carson has done it his own special way. Where other cabinet officials have made news with their private planes and round-the-clock security details, Carson (or his staff) has opted for household furniture. A HUD career official said recently that she was demoted for trying to block a redecoration of Carson’s office costing more than the $5,000 legal limit. And wow, we’re talking a lot more than that $5,000 limit. HUD spent $31,000 on a dining set for Carson’s office—including, for some reason, a hutch—for Carson’s office after Foster filed a whistleblower complaint and, of course, while Carson was pushing cuts to services for the vulnerable people his agency is supposed to be helping:

Mr. Carson “didn’t know the table had been purchased,” but does not believe the cost was too steep and does not intend to return it, said Raffi Williams, a HUD spokesman.

So, what, someone just freelanced, ordered a $31,000 dining set without consulting the guy whose office it was going into or mentioning to him that its cost was more than six times his entire office redecoration budget under the law, and when they told him after the fact, he was like “sure, that sounds reasonable”? This does not pass the smell test. If a department head does want to spend more than $5,000 on their office, by the way, they’re supposed to get congressional approval, which Carson and HUD did not do in this case. The explanation for that also fails to pass the smell test:

Mr. Williams said department officials did not request congressional approval because the dining set served a “building-wide need.” The table is inside the secretary’s 10th-floor office suite.

There’s a building-wide need for a brand-new hutch in Carson’s office? Are people allowed to come in and eat lunch at the table? Hold meetings there when the conference room is booked?

Black civil rights leaders, Catholic leaders arrested demonstrating in support of Dreamers

By Gabe Ortiz

Wednesday Feb 28, 2018 · 2:10 PM PST

2018/02/28 · 14:10

LOS ANGELES, CA - SEPTEMBER 10: Thousands of immigrants and supporters join the Defend DACA March to oppose the President Trump order to end DACA on September 10, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. The Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program provides undocumented people who arrived to the US as children temporary legal immigration status for protection from deportation to a country many have not known, and a work permit for a renewable two-year period. The order exposes about 800,000 so-called âdreamersâ who signed up for DACA to deportation. About a quarter of them live in California. Congress has the option to replace the policy with legislation before DACA expires on March 5, 2018. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images)

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It’s been more than a year since Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan lied to a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient and told her she shouldn’t worry about Donald Trump’s deportation force. Next week will mark six months since Trump ended the program, and Ryan has yet to pass permanent protections for Dreamers after saying Congress had to act. When leaders with the UndocuBlack Network tried to confront Ryan’s office on Tuesday, they were barred from entering. Undeterred, the activists—including minister Kirsten John Foy of the National Action Network and Tamika D. Mallory, co-president of the Women's March—decided to pray outside his office, only to be arrested by Capitol police:

Before being detained, Foy underscored the importance of bringing black undocumented voices to the forefront of the immigration debate.

"We can't have an honest discussion about immigration without talking about undocumented black immigrants," he said. "It seems as though even in discussions regarding immigration, black folks seem to be the least of these."

Ryan's office could not be reached for comment.

Profile in courage, that Ryan—but never can’t hide from the fact that his inaction is leaving 800,000 young immigrants in limbo, including the 11,000 black immigrants enrolled in DACA. Trump has also ended Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for over 50,000 Haitians who have lived and worked here legally for years, and overall an estimated 620,000 undocumented black immigrants are vulnerable to deportation. By continuing to do nothing to help them, Ryan isn’t just complicit in Trump’s mass deportation agenda, he’s also complicit in Trump’s racist agenda.

But immigrant communities and their allies are fighting back to stay here, where they belong. “We must fight for those who are undocumented in our communities so that they have a path to citizenship,” Mallory wrote in an op-ed before her arrest. “We must fight for a Dream Act that protects the immigration programs that serve black immigrants. Our leaders must protect the black and brown members of our community who came here as children and do not know any other place as home.”

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