Immigration/Shut Down News
This is an article about a border town where the residents do not want the wall. They chafed at the feeling of enclosure they felt from the barbed wire the military placed on the fencing last month. This is the same place Neilson came just before the November election to unveil a plaque, trying to suggest this was the first part of Trump’s new wall. One resident: “Before we started this project here to do the replacement, Border Patrol came to visit us about three times to ask us to please participate in avoiding the drama. They came to say, three times, ‘You guys, just so you know, we’re starting this project, and it’s not the wall,” recounted Ms. Hurtado, a Democrat who did not vote for the president. “And then here comes Trump and says, ‘It’s the wall!’”
Jamelle Bouie’s debut op-ed for the New York Times argues that Pelosi was right to call the wall immoral: “It would stand as a lasting reminder of the white racial hostility surging through this moment in American history, a monument to this particular drive to preserve the United States as a white man’s country. In fact, you can almost think of the wall as a modern-day Confederate monument.”
On Wednesday Trump sent a letter to Pelosi stating that he would still address Congress for the State of the Union; she sent a return letter stating that he would not. Then Trump announced he will postpone the speech until after the shut down.
On Friday the Trump administration is starting a new asylum policy that will make asylum seekers wait in Mexico for their case to be processed: “The policy change means that people who are trying to exercise their legal right to seek asylum will be barred from the US for as much as a year while they wait for their claim to come before a judge. It is the most sweeping development in Trump’s ongoing crackdown on asylum seekers, who are largely from Central America, and disproportionately children and families.”
By Friday, Trump signed a bill reopening the government for three weeks. It was the same deal he turned down before the shutdown.
Russia Investigation
On Friday Roger Stone was indicted by the Special Counsel’s Grand Jury. He was accused on seven counts, including obstruction of justice, witness tampering and false statements to FBI and Congress FBI arrested him at his home just before 6AM. Some important quotes: “After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.”
“Shortly after Organization 1’s release, an associate of the high ranking Trump Campaign official sent a text message to STONE that read “well done.””
After continued threat’s by Trump to investigate Cohen’s father-in-law, Cohen notified Congress that he would not testify before them in February. Some speculate there are other reasons he backed out: the Special Counsel advising him not to; fear of hostile questions from Republicans; and to build the case for obstruction of justice by saying he feels afraid to testify due to Trump’s threats.
NBC news reports that career security specialists who decide security clearances have been overruled by the White House in over 30 cases, including for Kushner. The White House then asked the CIA to give Kushner the highest level of security clearance. They apparently refused and were shocked he was even granted Top Secret clearance based on his file: “questions about his family’s business, his foreign contacts, his foreign travel and meetings he had during the campaign, the sources said, declining to be more specific.”
Trump’s Job Approval: 39.3%