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newstwitter-blog · 8 years

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

New Post has been published on http://www.news-twitter.com/2017/02/06/washington-post-inside-the-worlds-largest-refugee-camp-one-mans-quest-to-explain-donald-trump-to-those-now-banned-from-america-48/

Washington Post: Inside the world’s largest refugee camp, one man’s quest to explain Donald Trump to those now banned from America

(Kevin Sieff,Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

DADAAB REFUGEE CAMP, Kenya — He had become a minor celebrity in the world’s biggest refugee camp, the small man staring at his battered cellphone, who had somehow managed to become an expert on America from inside his tiny hut in the desert.

His fame was attached to one particularly arcane category of knowledge. Mohammed Rashid, a refugee since age 14 and now 38 years old, had become an authority on the U.S. process of screening and resettling refugees. It was a niche that begot his nickname, which stirred some mixture of pride and sadness in him each time he heard it: “Mr. Resettlement.”

Now, in the wake of President Trump’s executive order suspending admission of refugees, Rashid’s expertise had become even more vital to the people of Dadaab, a sprawling agglomeration of tents and stick huts the size of 12,000 football fields. It was his role to translate Trump’s policy to those who had been waiting years for their flights to the United States. About 14,500 people in the camp are in the U.S. refugee pipeline, including Rashid’s family of five.

“What will happen with Trump?” Rahma Noor Farrah, a 25-year-old with bright purple eye shadow and a pink headscarf, asked Rashid. It was three days after the executive order had been issued, and she had spotted him in the camp’s market, a dusty street lined by corrugated metal stalls.

“We are going to have a rough time together,” he said.

Rashid had applied for resettlement in 2010. Farrah had applied in 2007. They had inched forward in the process, interview after interview, promising that they weren’t terrorists, recounting the horrors that had broken their families.

“There’s no hope as long as Trump is there,” Farrah said.

“We need to see what happens after 120 days,” Rashid said, feigning optimism. That was how long Trump had said he would suspend the refugee program, while U.S. officials reviewed its anti-terrorist provisions. The order also banned most visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries for 90 days.

Rashid had stayed up late over the weekend, reading about the new policy on his 5-year-old Nokia phone, a quest he began by typing “Trump News” into Google.

He read about travelers stuck at U.S. airports and protests at arrival terminals, trying his best to imagine those places, even though he’d never been on an airplane. He read @SenJohnMcCain criticizing the order. He read @realDonaldTrump saying the United States was now safer. He tried not to curse.

At night, during the few hours of electricity in the camp, Rashid watched CNN on his television, a gift from his brother, who had been resettled in Seattle four years ago and told Rashid upon arriving there, “We are behind the world, brother.”

Now, Rashid waited for any indication that the airport protests had been successful. He would fall asleep in front of the TV, then wake up and check his phone.

“All day with him it is news, news, news,” said his wife, Dahabo Abdulahi, shaking her head.

***

Dadaab is a constellation of four camps, separated by bursts of thorny acacia trees and wide expanses of orange sand. Some areas remain as empty as they were when Rashid fled Somalia in 1992, as it was devoured by a civil war that left his mother and two sisters dead. But much of Dadaab is now a vast city of mud huts, tents, market stalls and U.N. offices. Nearly 300,000 refugees live here, most of them Somalis.

The Kenyan government has threatened for years to close the camp. Its new deadline is May.

Rashid grew up in the camp, attending school in white tents donated by foreign aid groups. But even after 25 years, it doesn’t feel like home. His wife was raped here in the late 1990s when she went to collect firewood. His father was beaten and robbed while transporting food on a donkey cart. Rashid secures his hut, made of mud, sticks and corrugated metal, with a makeshift fence of tree branches and a metal door with a padlock.

Food distribution at Dadaab becomes violent as men run for their rations. Food rations at the camp were recently cut in half, making life for the 270,000 refugees there even more difficult. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

In 2010, the United Nations acknowledged his family’s procession of traumas with a one-page letter — they had been chosen for resettlement in America.

Rashid learned as much as he could about the U.S. refugee screening system, a labyrinthine process that involves eight federal agencies, six security databases, five background checks and four biometric security checks. His family got their medical exams. They sat for interviews with American caseworkers, who asked whether he had ever been a terrorist. Rashid said no. He said he was an English teacher.

While he was waiting for his final approval in 2015, Rashid and his wife had a third child. According to U.S. policy, American officials would have to meet the baby before Rashid’s family got on a plane. The visit still hasn’t happened, because of the limited number of caseworkers and the many people waiting for the relatively few refugee approvals each year.

On his Nokia, Rashid checked his status on the U.S. refugee resettlement website every other day. The words never changed.

“Security status: currently clear,” it said.

“On hold.”

“Please be patient.”

***

On Tuesday, four days after Trump’s travel ban announcement, Rashid rode his bicycle, a clunky brown contraption with a red plastic flower on the handlebars, to the Horyaal Primary School.

On the blackboard he wrote: “The eye is a sense organ. It is used for seeing.”

The students read the line aloud. Rashid walked around the room, where 40 children, all native Somali speakers, were crammed onto eight benches.

Mohammed Rashid teaches an English class in the Dadaab refugee camp. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

He was trying to focus on the lesson, but his mind was on Trump’s new policy. While the children copied notes from the board, Rashid pulled out his Nokia.

He read on CNN.com that the protests were gaining strength.

He read on Facebook that more than 100 Somali refugees, whose flights were scheduled for the following week, were stuck in Nairobi.

After class, he walked outside.

“Mr. Resettlement,” Abdi Nasir Abukar, another teacher, called to him from a bench. “You’re going to go crazy thinking about America. You’re going to become a mad old man picking rubbish from the ground.”

Abukar, 29, had a different plan. He was going back to Somalia. The United Nations was offering about $400 as humanitarian assistance for each person who returned to parts of Somalia it considered relatively secure.

Rashid thought a move back to Somalia was too risky. In late January, al-Shabab militants had set off a car bomb at a hotel in Mogadishu, killing 28. Weeks earlier, they had attacked the city’s port, leaving 16 dead.

“You made your own choice,” he said to Abukar.

Out of earshot, Rashid said softly:

“He’s the crazy one.”

***

Mohammed Rashid talks to two young women who also applied for refugee status in the United States. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

During a lunch break, Rashid went to a restaurant in the camp with sky-blue wallpaper and a television playing a Somali-language news channel.

“Put on CNN,” Rashid said.

A waiter slid a metal plate of rice on his table as the television flashed to a reporter at an American diner, asking a bearded man what he thought about Trump’s travel ban.

“There’s a lot of bad people in those countries,” the man said.

Rashid looked down at his rice.

“Some Americans don’t seem like they know anything about the world,” he said.

Behind him, at a different table, an old man recognized Rashid.

“What can we expect to happen?” the man asked. “Will the Europeans take us?”

“I am advising everyone to be patient,” Rashid said, and then he thumbed his phone again.

A stream of pictures and headlines passed in front of him. White House press secretary Sean Spicer had said the executive order wasn’t a Muslim ban. The Somali-born British track star Mo Farah had been detained at an airport. On Facebook, Rashid’s friends in Seattle had posted a photo in front of the Space Needle.

“Look at them enjoying,” he said.

Then he pulled up the U.S. refugee resettlement website. It took a long time to load. His hands shook.

“Please be patient,” it said.

***

As the week continued, it appeared to Rashid that the world’s interest in the refugee suspension was fading.

On his phone, he read that the protests were shrinking. On television, the coverage shifted to Trump’s Supreme Court pick.

He was running out of answers for the people who stopped him in the camp.

“People keep asking me, ‘What do you think?’ ” Rashid said, his expression suddenly severe. “But I’m just a refugee like them.”

But then Saturday morning, he woke up to a flurry of news articles about a judge’s decision to halt the executive order. He read as much as he could. Then he went to the monthly food distribution, where he and hundreds of other refugees waited for bags of donated corn and beans in the 100-degree heat.

While they waited, people kept coming up to Rashid, he recalled.

“I told them: ‘It’s finally good news. The judge has stopped Trump.’ ”

He knew the court order was tenuous. He kept checking his phone to see whether the news had changed again. But by late afternoon, he read that passengers from the seven banned countries were allowed to board their fights to the United States.

The door had cracked open again. This time, Rashid hoped, it would last long enough for his family to pass through.

“That’s one of the things I love about America,” he explained over the phone. “No one is above the law.”

Trump’s refugee ban is a matter of life and death for some

They were freed from Boko Haram’s rape camps. But their nightmare isn’t over.

U.S.-funded Somali intelligence agency has been using kids as spies

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

Like Washington Post World on Facebook and stay updated on foreign news

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socialjusticeartshare · 5 years

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They were one of the first families separated at the border; 2 1/2 years later, they’re still apart

FORT MYERS, Fla. – She tries to avoid the word. What she says is that her mom is in Guatemala. Or that her mom has been deported and will try to come back soon.

By Kevin Sieff The Washington Post

But when her teacher, or her social worker, or her best friend Ashley asks, Adelaida sounds it out – one of the first words she learned in English. “They separated us.”

Adelaida Reynoso and her mother, María, were among the first migrant families broken up by the Trump administration, on July 31, 2017, long before the government acknowledged it was separating parents and children at the border.

They haven’t seen each other since.

Adelaida is now 9, a third-grader in southwest Florida, one of the top students in her class, carrying a thick English dictionary in a purple backpack. María, now 31, was deported alone to rural Guatemala. She has met with lawyers and smugglers and priests about reuniting with her daughter. Nothing has worked.

Despite a massive legal effort and protest movement, many of the migrant families split up at the border remain apart. The children have now spent enough time in the United States to narrate their stories of separation in fluent English. Their parents are back in Central America, watching sons and daughters grow up over grainy video calls.

One call came last month, from Sacapulas, Guatemala, to Fort Myers, Florida, as Adelaida leaped off the school bus on a quiet, palm tree-lined street.

“I want to show you my papers from class,” the girl told her mother. “It’s the report about how I behave.”

She held the black cellphone in front of her. On the screen, her mother’s face was blurry, a sliver of the Guatemalan countryside in the background.

“I got a 100 and a 92 and two A’s.”

“How smart,” her mom’s voice crackled through the phone.

Adelaida wore a red polo shirt and a pony tail. She waved her books in front of the phone. She showed her mother her bus stop, a stretch of sidewalk outside the two-bedroom apartment she shared with 11 people, including two aunts and an uncle.

“Do you have any homework?” María asked.

“No, they didn’t give us any today,” Adelaida said.

María summoned her most maternal voice.

“When you get home, you need to wash your hair,” she said.

They stared at each other and said nothing. Adelaida moved her finger over the image of her mother’s face, caressing the screen.

“You’re always in my heart,” Adelaida said.

It’s the same every afternoon. Adelaida spends her days at Manatee Elementary, her English vocabulary overtaking her Spanish. Then she goes home and looks at her mother’s face on the phone.

Some days, Adelaida gets angry. When other kids in class talk about their mothers. When her aunt kisses her cousin Angel good night, but not her.

María can see her daughter’s eyes getting big and glassy, her face turning red.

“I need you by my side,” Adelaida exclaims.

“I’m trying,” María responds. She hangs up and cries.

– – –

The Trump administration said in 2018 that nearly 3,000 children had been separated from their parents at the border – the parents detained or deported, the children sent to foster care or family members in the United States.

A court ordered the government to reunite them, in the United States or their home countries. ACLU and other lawyers searched for parents and children, and have reunited most.

But the actual number of separated families was much higher. María and Adelaida’s case was one of the hidden ones. They weren’t acknowledged in reports to Congress. They weren’t given the option of reuniting in the United States.

Then, last year, officials gave the lawyers a batch of Excel spreadsheets identifying 1,556 earlier cases of separation, above the 3,000 previously acknowledged. Many of these newly identified families remain split up.

Lawyers traversed Central America with only scraps of information: misspelled names and phone numbers no longer in use.

Some parents have disappeared. Others have gone into hiding to avoid the threats they once tried to escape.

The lawyers found María in December.

She’s a small woman with big brown eyes who keeps her cellphone tucked into a hand-stitched skirt. She lives in a cinder block hut at the top of a hill at the edge of Sacapulas. She’s lost weight.

“You could just see how fragile she had become, how profoundly sad,” said Rebeca Sanchez-Ralda, an attorney with Brooklyn-based Justice in Motion.

After María was deported, she tried twice more to cross the border. She told immigration agents she was trying to get to her daughter. Each time, she was deported again.

María had her interview with an asylum officer on Aug. 16, 2017. She kept a copy of the transcript.

“I hope you or the officer can give me the opportunity to stay here with my daughter,” she told the interpreter. “I don’t want to return to the things that happened in Guatemala.”

Other separated parents – the ones initially recognized by the administration – have joined a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU. Some asked to be reunited with their children in the United States.

A federal judge ruled in favor of 11 of them. Nine of them landed in Los Angeles last month. Twenty-nine others, aided by American lawyers, crossed the border last year.

But María wasn’t a part of the ACLU lawsuit, or any other petition, because her case hadn’t been recorded.

“This is a group who the government kept hidden from us, the court, Congress and the public,” said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney. “And these children were even younger than the original group, hundreds just babies and toddlers.”

After each deportation, María returned to the hut in Sacapulas and picked up the phone to tell her daughter she had failed.

“I tried my best, but it didn’t work,” she said.

She asked Adelaida if she wanted to return to Guatemala. But by then the girl had astonished her teachers, acing math tests fast enough to read chapter books while the other kids are still working.

“She’s one of those kids who just does everything right,” said her principal, Scott LeMaster.

Adelaida tells María she should come to Fort Myers, where “they protect us.”

“I tell my mom, ‘No, you need to come here, because there, there’s a little danger.”

They’ve now spent nearly a third of her life apart. Adelaida has grown six inches. She’s lost her baby teeth. She’s learned to ride a bicycle. She sends her mother photos of her Florida life.

There’s Adelaida on the Fourth of July, watching fireworks. In a white dress as the flower girl at a wedding. Holding a stack of library books. Blowing out the candles on her birthday cake, when she turned 7. When she turned 8. When she turned 9.

“She’s such an intelligent girl,” María said. “I know she’s better off there. But seeing (the pictures) – sometimes it only makes things harder.”

– – –

The threats started even before Adelaida was born.

When María was pregnant, she says, Adelaida’s father tried to force her to have an abortion. He was married. When Adelaida was a baby, María says, he entered their home with a pistol and threatened to kill them both.

María and Adelaida fled to Guatemala City, where they were threatened by a gang. María and her younger sister Patricia, with a baby of her own, decided it was time to try for the United States. They paid a smuggler $8,000; they planned to request asylum at the border.

Once María was in custody, she said, an immigration agent approached.

“He said, ‘I’m taking your daughter with me,’ and he took her arm. I started screaming. He wouldn’t say where she was going or for how long.”

Adelaida started wailing.

“I didn’t want to leave my mom,” she said. “When I was almost going to say goodbye, they took me, so I couldn’t.”

Patricia Reynoso, Adelaida’s aunt, tried to reason with the agent. She wasn’t sure why María was separated from Adelaida, but she was allowed to stay with her daughter.

“The agent looked at me and said, ‘I’m a father. I don’t want to be doing this, but it’s my job,’ ” Patricia said.

Adelaida was flown to New York, where she was placed with a foster family.

María was taken to a detention center in southern Arizona, where she pursued her asylum case. She told the asylum officer about Adelaida’s father: “He said he was going to kill me. And that I was not going to know how or when.”

The officer put a check next to the box: “Reasonable fear of torture established.”

The officer asked where Adelaida was now.

“I was told that she was going to be taken away because I had to serve my sentence,” María responded. “I asked if I would see her and I was told they don’t know, that I was not going to see my daughter again.”

María borrowed $3,000 to hire a lawyer. But after seven months, he told her to drop her case to avoid being detained for a much longer period.

“I know she wanted to be reunited with her child,” attorney Israel Hernandez said in an email.”But with the new Trump rules and lack of evidence to support (her) claim, it was difficult.”

The guidance confused María. She had a folder full of documentation to support to her case.

“It all happened quickly,” she said. “The lawyer told the judge that I was dropping my case.”

Within days, she was on a plane to Guatemala.

Adelaida was sent to Florida, where she moved in with her aunt, Patricia, in the crowded two-bedroom apartment. Another aunt moved in, and then an uncle. Other housemates were strangers.

She started attending Manatee Elementary – but at 6, she couldn’t read or write in any language. “She needs to improve all the Spanish skills and the English skills as well,” an instructor wrote.

Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which facilitated the family separation policy, gave Patricia a pamphlet in Spanish on how to support Adelaida. It was called “How to Help My Child.”

“Spend time together as a family,” it suggested. “Make time for your family to eat together and play and take trips.”

– – –

One Saturday afternoon last month, two police cars drove into Adelaida’s apartment complex in Fort Myers. Adelaida stood near the window in a gray dress with a koala. Her shoulders trembled. Every time she sees a man in uniform, she feels a shock of fear.

The officers had made the building a frequent stop. It is overwhelmingly Guatemalan, often with 10 people or more crammed into small apartments.

Women walk around in Mayan fabrics. Many speak indigenous languages, not Spanish. The men work mostly in landscaping and construction. There are dozens of children, most newly arrived from the border, with asylum cases pending.

“When I just arrived, I was a little afraid,” Adelaida says. “There were so many boys.”

Sometimes when she gets scared, she sneaks away to her room and squeezes her stuffed bear.

“I pretend it’s my mom,” she says. “I dream that we are playing together.”

This corner of Fort Myers has become what Guatemalans call a ciudad espejo – a “mirror city” in which Guatemalan villages are replicated on this side of the United States border. A pipeline has formed between the northern Guatemalan departments of Quiche and Huehuetenango and the city of Fort Myers.

Almost half of María’s class is Guatemalan, mostly children who arrived in the United States over the last two years. LeMaster, the principal, has come to feel as if he’s on the front lines of the country’s immigration crisis, 1,500 miles from the border.

“Here it just comes and smacks you in the face,” he said. “We have 6-, 7- and 8-year-olds arriving who have never been to school a day in their lives.”

When the government began separating families, Manatee Elementary saw the consequences. In his Wednesday staff meetings, Le Master told the school’s teachers: “We need to be aware that some of these kids are missing water and clothes, and others are missing both of their parents.”

Adelaida says “about half” of her classmates “don’t have their moms.”

“It’s hard because sometimes the kids with moms make fun of us.”

She told her aunt. Patricia gave her advice: “Tell the other kids that your mom is coming.”

It was confusing for Adelaida. Was her mom coming or not? She did what her aunt advised. The bullying stopped. But Adelaida’s pleas became more frequent.

“I need you by my side,” she screamed at her mother last month.

“I know,” María said. She had run out of responses.

An American attorney had suggested María might be able to petition to return to the United States, now that her case was finally recognized. But there was no timeline, and no certainty. She was reluctant to mention it to Adelaida.

“I miss you more than you miss me,” Adelaida said.

“No, I miss you mooooore,” María said.

Their calls could go on like that for an hour. But lately, Adelaida had homework to do and friends to play with and books to read. The Florida Standards Assessments test was coming up and she was nervous. She excused herself.

“I remember less and less about Guatemala,” she said. “When I left, I was small.”

She paused.

“And sometimes it’s hard to think about what happened.”

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#separated families #separated at the border #kids separated

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engrqamarabbasme · 5 years

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Terrorised by drug cartels, the youth of Ayahualtempa are being armed with rifles. But is it merely a desperate attempt at preservation or just media stunt, asks Kevin Sieff from The Independent - News https://ift.tt/2uBAwSQ

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bountyofbeads · 5 years

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🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕

Great reporting on how U.S. policy is driving human smuggling and Trump’s immigration policies to fight corruption in Central American countries are also fueling the immigration crisis. NO AMOUNT OF BORDER WALL WILL SOLVE THE ISSUE.

USAID helped set up microfinance in Guatemala. Now it’s funding illegal migration.

By Kevin Sieff | Published November 04 at 3:56 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 5, 2019 |

NEBAJ, Guatemala — The winding roads into the valley of Nebaj are lined with advertisements for cheap loans. Banks and cooperatives and microfinance operations make their pitches: “Credit in three days.” “Funding for your small business.” “We’ve lowered our interest rates!”

U.S. officials have long touted the power of finance to lift people out of poverty — and backed loans to farmers and small-business owners across the developing world. But here in the Guatemala Highlands, the epicenter of the country’s migrant exodus, those loans often fund a different activity, the region’s most profitable: smuggling migrants north to the United States.

Over the past nine months, the number of Guatemalans who have reached the U.S. border has swelled to more than 250,000. They include many of the country’s poorest people — subsistence farmers who have somehow managed to scrape together up to $12,000 to fund the journey north.

What enables those payments is a vast system of credit that includes financial institutions set up and supported by the United States and the World Bank, part of the global boom in microfinance over the past two decades. The U.S. government and the World Bank have each extended tens of millions of dollars in funding and loan guarantees, money that helped create what is now Guatemala’s biggest microfinance organization, Fundación Génesis Empresarial, and backed one of its largest banks, Banrural.

But in Nebaj and communities like it around the country, those financial institutions now serve Guatemalans eager to migrate.

Access to credit has helped make this Central American nation the largest single source of migrants to the United States over the past year. About 2 percent of the population has been apprehended at the U.S. border since 2018.

It has also had devastating consequences for those who fail in their journeys — those who are deported before they earn enough to pay back their loans. They become ensnared by debt, losing savings, businesses and homes, which makes them more likely to try to migrate again.

“We do our best to keep our loans from funding migration or paying smugglers,” said Jorge Guzmán, the manager of the Banrural bank in Nebaj. “But there’s only so much we can do to monitor.”

U.S. officials say they stopped supporting direct-lending microfinance programs in Guatemala more than 10 years ago. The World Bank funded Génesis Empresarial as recently as last year.

Increasing access to finance among the world’s poorest people has been a crucial tool for development, U.S. and World Bank officials say. Vetting borrowers, they say, has always been the responsibility of the banks and microfinance outfits they have supported.

SURRENDERING A DEED TO PAY A SMUGGLER

After years of failing to find a job in Nebaj that paid more than subsistence wages, José Ceto decided this year that it was his turn to migrate. He sent a Facebook message to a friend asking for help contacting a local smuggler. Within hours, that smuggler quoted him a price: 50,000 quetzales, or $6,500.

Then Ceto did what aspiring migrants here have done for years. He went to the local branch of Banrural.

He told a loan officer that he needed the money to improve his family farm. He presented his family’s land deed as collateral.

Within a week, he was holding a plastic bag full of cash. He drove with it to the smuggler’s home.

“I have a university degree in tourism,” Ceto said in an interview. “But what use is that if I can’t find a job?”

For years, Banrural received backing and loan guarantees from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). It partnered with the U.N. World Food Program to offer credit to farmers. It was prized by the Guatemalan government: Former Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom once called it “our administration’s financial arm.”

But for Ceto, Banrural was simply the easiest way to finance his journey. He left Nebaj in March.

A succession of smugglers, claiming to provide protection from criminal organizations, escorted him through Mexico to the U.S. border. He swam across the Rio Grande.

Then he was apprehended by the U.S. Border Patrol south of Houston and deported within days.

Banrural had given Ceto six months to repay his loan, at a monthly interest rate of 1.5 percent, before it would seize his property. So he did what many in Nebaj do: He took out another loan. He borrowed 50,000 quetzales, or $6,500, from another major Guatemalan bank, Bantrab, to pay off the first loan.

But he grew increasingly aware that the only way to repay his debt would be to migrate once again to the United States.

“I’m planning to try again,” he said.

He keeps the smuggler’s number in his phone.

Analysts say the ability to borrow to fund migration has opened a gateway to middle-class life for some Guatemalans. For others, it has led to spiraling debts and repeated attempts to cross the border.

“This is an investment model that does work for some people,” said David Stoll, an anthropologist at Middlebury College in Vermont who has written a book on the link between microfinance and migration in Nebaj. “But when it doesn’t work, there’s no safety net.

"That often means they double down.”

MIGRANT DEBTS ARE DRIVING DISPLACEMENT

Francisco Raymundo’s first loan came from Fundación Génesis Empresarial, an organization created with support from USAID. Over 30 years, it grew to become Guatemala’s largest nonprofit microfinance institution.

Raymundo’s 2015 loan was for 75,000 quetzales, he said, or roughly $10,000. He bought a plot of land, where his family built a home. The plan was to pay the money back, bit by bit, through his construction work.

Others in Nebaj have gone to Génesis for similar loans, claiming they would be spent on construction projects or businesses, but instead using the money to pay a smuggler. Raymundo’s path was more complicated.

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, development organizations devoted growing resources to what advocates called “access to credit” or “financial inclusion.” In 2006, the Bangladeshi economist Muhammad Yunus, one of the forefathers of microfinance, won the Nobel Peace Prize for his “efforts to create economic and social development from below.”

That idea seemed a perfect fit in Guatemala, where rural, indigenous people such as Raymundo have been systematically excluded from the economy and its nascent credit markets.

Some of the world’s largest financial institutions recognized the need and contacted Génesis to help. The International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank, lent the foundation $10 million last year to “broaden access to finance for micro and small businesses.”

“In the case of Génesis, the [organization’s] credit policy explicitly prohibits staff from financing illegal migration,” said an IFC spokesman, who did not provide his name in accordance with the institution’s policy.

“Access to finance is a fundamental building block in economic development,” the spokesman told The Washington Post. “An expanding body of evidence demonstrates that the poor benefit enormously from savings, insurance and basic payment services.”

It isn’t only financial institutions that are funding migration. Migrants also borrow from family and friends who serve as informal lenders, a shadow microfinance network that has ballooned in recent years — and can be just as unforgiving of delinquent loans.

In Nebaj, microfinance became a crowded, fiercely competitive market. Some cooperatives put out slick television advertisements with actors. More billboards with catchy slogans appeared: “We believe in you!” and “Multiply your investment!” But in most cases, they were for-profit endeavors, which could seize the property of debtors who defaulted.

In parts of South Asia and Africa — and in Nebaj in 2008 — a surge in delinquent microloans provoked crises for some of the world’s poorest people. But here the sector has ballooned once again, in part because of the surge in migration.

Guatemalans can multiply their purchasing power almost seven times by working in the United States and sending their wages home, researchers from Harvard University, the World Bank and the Center for Global Development reported this year.

“Nothing else that most of these households could invest in can compete with those astonishing returns to investment,” said Michael Clemens, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and one of the study’s authors. “So it absolutely makes sense that when some families are able to access capital through microlending, they invest it in migration.”

A spokesman for USAID said the agency has “not had any direct-lending microfinance programs in Guatemala for more than 10 years.”

“USAID helped to establish Fundación Génesis Empresarial and Banrural more than 20 years ago,” said the spokesman, who did not provide his name per the organization’s rules. “These are now significant, independent lending institutions in Guatemala contributing to private-sector growth in the country.”

Marcela Escobari, who headed USAID’s Bureau for Latin America and the Caribbean under the Obama administration, said some microfinance organizations became increasingly driven by profit, relying less on USAID support and more on capital markets.

“It exploded too much and without the care to understand the development implications,” she said. “There’s a lot of money to be made on poor people, but there need to be checks and balances.”

'PAYING BACK ONE LOAN WITH ANOTHER'

Raymundo’s Génesis loan had an interest rate of 5 percent per month, consistent with the rates advertised on the foundation’s website. But his construction work dwindled. Many days, he earned only $5.

The family owed Génesis the principal, plus rapidly accruing interest, but they lived in a place virtually devoid of economic opportunity. The loan became an impossible burden.

So Raymundo borrowed 48,000 quetzales, or about $6,300, from a cousin, who set a monthly interest rate of 10 percent, and took the money to a smuggler a few blocks away.

Guatemalans use the word “prestamistas” to describe the informal moneylenders who are still less discerning than banks or cooperatives. Some are friends or relatives or religious leaders. Their high interest rates have become an accepted part of the shadow financial industry, a premium accepted by the country’s riskiest borrowers.

Raymundo arrived at the border in South Texas with his son, Wilson, now 8, in September 2017. They were separated by U.S. Border Patrol agents. Wilson was sent to a foster home in Michigan; Raymundo was deported alone.

When Raymundo returned to Nebaj, not only were his relatives scrambling to locate and retrieve Wilson from the United States, but they were also trying to figure out how to pay back the $6,300 they had used to pay the smuggler and the $10,000 they still owed Génesis.

Raymundo’s wife, Sabina Ceto — no relation to José — took out more small loans and fell deeper into debt. They borrowed 15,000 quetzales, or about $2,000, from Banrural and 10,000 quetzales, or $1,300, from Compartamos, a Mexican bank.

Compartamos — Spanish for “let’s share” — also received a flurry of USAID grants. It later stirred controversy for imposing interest rates of roughly 100 percent per year.

Yunus once criticized the bank for “raking in money off poor people desperate for cash.”

Just as Nebaj’s system of credit and loans finances migration, it is also used to temporarily cushion the financial shock of being deported. Those loans only worsened Raymundo’s situation.

The family used well-known loopholes to secure the loans. Sabina Ceto lied to her loan officer; she said she needed the money for a family business. She enlisted six female relatives to apply for their own loans, each for about $150. Many of Guatemala’s lenders prefer to lend to women, in part because they are considered more likely to return the money. International aid agencies have also provided funding aimed at encouraging female entrepreneurs.

Wilson was finally sent back to Nebaj from Michigan in early 2018. By the time he returned, the family had to sell their home to start paying back their mountain of debt. For a brief time, they were homeless.

Across Guatemala, loan defaults are driving a widening displacement crisis. At least 354 people were deported from the United States to Nebaj during the first four months of 2019. Many returned with spiraling debts.

One former loan officer at Fundación Génesis Empresarial estimated that 30 percent of the outfit’s loans go to migrants.

“It’s pretty obvious how the money is being used,” said the officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk freely. “We just went along with it, and most could usually pay back the loans.”

A spokeswoman for Génesis denied that the organization lent money to migrants. Adela de Rizzo wrote in an email that the bank works “to disincentivize migration, working with Guatemalans who want to stay here.”

Guzmán, the local Banrural manager, said that the bank does what it can to vet loan applicants but that the system isn’t foolproof.

“We know some people are lying to us about how they’ll use the money,” he said.

Génesis, Banrural, Compartamos and other financial institutions with offices in Nebaj declined to comment on individual cases, citing privacy concerns.

‘THE EASIEST WAY OUT IS TO MIGRATE AGAIN ’

Some activists in Guatemala have become outspoken critics of the lending practices.

“These banks give the appearance of trying to help the poor. But in the end, they profit from the desperation of migrants,” said Juan José Hurtado Paz y Paz, director of Pop No’j, a national association of indigenous peoples. “The more people who default on their loans, the more people who lose their homes and land.”

Some families who have lost loved ones to migration have been saddled with insurmountable debts.

Sixteen-year-old Juan de León Gutiérrez died in May of a suspected brain tumor while in Border Patrol custody in Texas. Days after his body was repatriated, his father said, the family’s lender called to remind him that the money they had borrowed was still due.

“I’m sorry about Juan,” the lender said, according to Tanerjo de León Gutiérrez, Juan’s father. “But there’s no way out of the deal.”

In Nebaj, the Raymundo family now rents a small house with no running water for $100 per month. Even after losing their home, they still have more to pay back — they’re on the hook for about a dozen loans from three financial institutions.

Most of the time, they try to cut costs by limiting themselves to two meals a day.

“The easiest way out of this is to migrate again,” said Raymundo. “But I’ve already been deported, so what we’re thinking now is that maybe my wife would go with our daughter.”

Sabina Ceto leafed through her folder of loan paperwork. She arrived at the pile of documents from Compartamos. The bank had a special program for women in Nebaj, and it gave Ceto a pink folder with little fishes on it to keep track of her loans.

“To control your loans and savings,” it says in typed white letters on the top of the folder.

And inside, in bold: “With consistency and discipline, you can achieve your goals!”

______

Photos by Sarah L. Voisin. Photo editing by Chloe Coleman. Design by Dwuan June.

🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕🍂🥐🍁☕

How U.S. apathy helped kill a pioneering anti-corruption campaign in Guatemala

By Mary Beth Sheridan | Published

June 14 at 12:00 PM ET | Washington Post | Posted November 5, 2019 |

GUATEMALA CITY —

Two years ago, Guatemalan President Jimmy Morales was facing a potentially ruinous situation. His predecessor had been jailed on corruption charges. He was in danger of being next.

Prosecutors were alleging that Morales had accepted nearly $1 million in illegal campaign funds. But these weren’t just any prosecutors. They were part of a crusading, U.N.-backed anti-corruption commission that had helped indict hundreds of Guatemalan politicians, business executives and drug traffickers. For years, it had enjoyed broad international support, including from President Barack Obama’s administration.

Today, after an intense effort by Morales to lobby the Trump administration, it’s the corruption-busters themselves who are on the ropes. Morales has vowed to shut down the widely praised commission.

What has stunned Guatemalans isn’t just the commission’s demise, but the Trump administration’s role in it. The U.S. government has been largely silent as Morales’s government has ramped up pressure on the anticorruption team — kicking its leader out of the country and sending armored Jeeps to patrol outside its headquarters.

Morales, a former TV comedian, has proved skillful in his dealings with Washington. His envoys have argued that the commission represented out-of-control U.N. interference, winning a sympathetic ear from Trump officials wary of the world body, U.S. officials say.

Guatemala also moved its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem just after the Trump administration did — providing a rare sign of support amid a wave of global condemnation. Relations grew so warm that Guatemalan diplomats hosted Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, at a $5,000 dinner, according to government documents and interviews.

“The Guatemalans were really smart about it,” said a U.S. congressional aide involved in Latin American policy, one of several current and former officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

As Guatemala prepares for a presidential election on Sunday, its once-vaunted anti-corruption campaign is in disarray. A candidate who had worked closely with the U.N.-backed commission has been tossed off the ballot. The front-runner, Sandra Torres, has been accused of campaign finance violations dating back to 2015. (She denies the allegations.)

The ramifications of the commission’s disappearance could go well beyond this Central American country.

Guatemala is the No. 1 source of migrants detained on the southwestern U.S. border — a reflection of the poverty and violence in a country long dominated by a corruption-riddled elite.

Narco-corruption is so flagrant that in April, U.S. authorities charged a presidential candidate with trying to cut a deal to give control of Guatemala’s ports and airports to the notorious Sinaloa cartel.

“The U.S. interest is in getting rid of drugs, not having migration coming from Guatemala to the United States, and not letting criminal organizations increase their control over the political system,” said Mark Schneider, a Latin America expert with long experience in the U.S. government.

“That’s what’s being undermined now.”

THE BEGINNING OF THE END

The International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala was a bold experiment for a nation in trouble. CICIG, as it’s also known, was launched in 2007 to fight networks of corrupt politicians, drug traffickers and military veterans that emerged from Guatemala’s 36-year civil war. The George W. Bush administration was an early supporter.

“They realized that Guatemala could become a narco-state,” said Helen Mack, a human rights activist who was involved in the commission’s founding.

In its pact with the United Nations, Guatemala agreed to extraordinary outside interference in its justice system.

The commission’s international lawyers could co-prosecute cases with Guatemalans. Its experts helped federal prosecutors develop modern tools like a wiretapping unit. In 2013, a new commissioner took over — Iván Velásquez, a Colombian famed for investigating official corruption and drug lords like Pablo Escobar.

The U.S. government has been the top donor to the commission, providing over $44 million since its formation. But American support went beyond funding. In 2015, Vice President Joe Biden repeatedly pressured Guatemala’s president at the time, Otto Pérez Molina, to extend the commission’s two-year mandate after he considered letting it lapse.

Biden “told me it was practically a condition” for receiving U.S. aid, Pérez Molina later told the Reuters news agency.

Pérez Molina was promptly caught up in a massive corruption case built by Velásquez and Thelma Aldana, the country’s tough-talking attorney general. The president resigned, and CICIG became the most popular institution in Guatemala, according to opinion polls.

Soon, the prosecutors had a different target: the new president, Jimmy Morales, and his family.

MAKING HEADWAY WITH U.S.

By late 2017, officials in Washington were starting to worry. Velásquez seemed to be locked in an escalating and personal conflict with the Guatemalan leader.

It started with jailing the president’s 23-year-old son in January of that year during a fraud investigation involving Christmas gift baskets. (He declared his innocence.)

A few months later, Morales met top officials at the United Nations to complain about the commission’s leader. With head-snapping speed, Velásquez and Aldana appeared on television, accusing the president of campaign finance crimes. (He says he’s innocent.)

Guatemala’s Congress rejected their request to lift Morales’s immunity from prosecution. But the president was furious.

In a visit to Guatemala in early 2018, Nikki Haley, then the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, praised the commission but warned its officials to lower their profile. “They don’t need to be in the paper every day,” she said to reporters.

By that point, “a really ugly battle” had broken out in Washington over the commission, according to the U.S. congressional aide.

Haley “approached this as another example of runaway bureaucracy” involving the United Nations, said one senior U.S. official. Veteran Latin America hands at the State Department defended the commission.

Chaney Denton, a spokeswoman for Haley, said: “She advocated linking our funding to serious reforms of CICIG, so it no longer engaged in prosecutorial abuses and it stopped grandstanding on behalf of the commissioner.”

Denton declined to elaborate, but Morales sent envoys to convince Washington that Velásquez was a leftist bent on undermining the conservative government, said a former U.S. official involved in Latin America policy. The president’s allies in Guatemala spent heavily on American lobbyists. As the allegations flew, Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) temporarily froze $6 million in U.S. aid for the anti-corruption commission over concerns of Russian manipulation. But the State Department found no evidence of wrongdoing.

Morales’s most high-profile gesture was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, despite Palestinian claims to part of the city. Trump met with Morales to thank him. Sheldon Adelson, a GOP megadonor and Trump confidant, provided the Guatemalan leader a Boeing 767 to visit his country’s new embassy, according to the Guatemalan Foreign Ministry.

“CICIG got lost in that,” said a second congressional aide.

In June 2018, Guatemala’s ambassador to Washington, Manuel Espina, hosted Kushner at a $5,000 dinner for 10 Latin American ambassadors, according to government documents. The dinner conversation centered on persuading the countries to move their embassies in Israel to Jerusalem, according to interviews with two guests.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment. In the end, according to current and former officials, there was never a high-level meeting to alter American policy. Kushner, who was focused on Israel, may not have even realized how much the commission mattered to the Guatemalans. “I don’t think, in Jared’s mind, he ever did anything CICIG-related,” said a former senior U.S. official.

But the Guatemalans interpreted their access “as a signal they had a green light” to do what they wanted at home, the ex-official said. (The Guatemalan government did not respond to a request for comment.)

On Aug. 31, 2018, Morales’s government dispatched U.S.-donated armored Jeeps — some with roof-mounted machine guns — to patrol outside the anti-corruption commission’s 12-foot-high perimeter wall. Hours later, the president declared he would not renew its mandate, charging that it had engaged in “selective criminal prosecution.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted the next day: “We greatly appreciate Guatemala’s efforts in counternarcotics and security.”

He didn’t mention CICIG.

THE FINAL CHAPTER?

Even some supporters question whether Velásquez and Aldana made a strategic blunder in pursuing the president and his family. After all, the commission needs Guatemala’s approval to function.

“If this causes you to disappear from the country, it’s probably not the best decision to make,” said Arturo Matute, a political analyst.

The prosecutors also angered the small but powerful economic elite by investigating their secret contributions to Morales’s campaign.

“These weren’t exorbitant amounts,” said Marco Augusto García, who until recently led one of Guatemala’s biggest business chambers. He argued that the commission should have focused on more-serious crimes.

Velásquez, who now works from a U.N. office in New York, responds: “Nobody is above the law. ” Illegal campaign financing, he said, is particularly worrying because it creates “a malfunction in a democracy” by giving one candidate an edge. And such donations feed future corruption.

Morales last fall barred Velásquez from Guatemala. The countries in the G-13 group — the largest donors to Guatemala — issued a statement “lamenting” that decision and the closure of the commission. The United States was the only member nation that didn’t sign.

Asked about the U.S. position on CICIG, the State Department’s Western Hemisphere bureau said that “the United States remains committed to supporting Guatemalan institutions and the Guatemalan people in their ongoing fight against corruption and impunity.”

Aldana, 63, decided to run for president as a pro-CICIG candidate. But she was recently knocked off the ballot after being accused of embezzlement, lying and tax evasion in connection with her work as attorney general. (She says she’s innocent.) The judge who issued the arrest warrant is under investigation after allegedly receiving millions of dollars in bribes, according to Guatemalan media.

As for Morales, he is not eligible for reelection. He will lose his immunity from prosecution when his term ends in January.

But he will not have to worry about the anti-corruption commission. It’s slated for closure on Sept. 3.

Gabriela Martinez in Mexico City and Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years

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Vox Sentences is your daily digest for what’s happening in the world. Sign up for the Vox Sentences newsletter, delivered straight to your inbox Monday through Friday, or view the Vox Sentences archive for past editions.

Natural-born citizens are losing their passports; Syrian civilians are at risk in a final effort to rid the country of rebels.

Getty Images

The Trump administration is calling the citizenships of “hundreds, even thousands” of Hispanic Americans born along the Texas-Mexico border into question. Immigration lawyers say their clients are being interviewed, denied entry into the US, losing their passports, and even being thrown into deportation proceedings. [Washington Post / Kevin Sieff]

Immigration officials are also saying that birth certificates are not sufficient evidence and asking citizens to provide random documents such as baptismal certificates, prenatal care information, and rental agreements from when they were infants. [Daily Beast]

The State Department claims it has not changed “policy or practice regarding the adjudication of passport applications.” Rather, officials say they are investigating “an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud.” [CNN / Maegan Vazquez]

And technically, they haven’t changed policy. Officials began this practice under the Bush and Obama administrations when they discovered up to 250 midwives were signing fraudulent birth certificates for babies really born in Mexico. The problem is, however, that these medical professionals also signed many valid certificates. [AP / Christopher Sherman]

What differs here is the frequency at which passports are being revoked. There has allegedly been a “surge” of denials. The Trump administration is also looking into the citizenships of up to 15,000 babies delivered by a South Texas obstetrician. [Slate / Elliot Hannon]

The case against the midwives was settled in 2009 after the ACLU brought a lawsuit. But the passport denials persisted and continue to persist at a higher level today. [HuffPost / Liza Hearon]

The entire issue is indicative of President Trump’s desire use “the full extent of the power given … by law” to shape the system of American citizenship and “challenge the citizenship and voting rights” of specific groups. [Vox / Dara Lind]

The news, but shorter, delivered straight to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our Privacy Policy and European users agree to the data transfer policy. For more newsletters, check out our newsletters page.

The Syrian government is mounting a campaign for the final push against rebels in the Idlib governorate, the last rebel-held territory in the country. Civilians are “terrified” and fear that this will be “a battle soaked in blood.” [The Nation / Loubna Mrie]

Russian forces are teaming up with Syria for this “all-out offensive” to “wipe out those terrorist groups.” Russia is also trying to broker a deal with Turkey to accept civilians fleeing the conflict, though the neighboring country has stated it will not open its borders. [Al Jazeera]

The UN is calling for action to avoid what could likely be a “perfect storm” and add to the already 400,000 dead or missing civilians. [BBC]

There is some conjecture that President Trump is looking to distract from Russia’s involvement in the Syrian conflict. But it’s safe to say little focus has been given to the 2.9 million civilians at risk who are trying to flee. [CNN / Nic Robertson]

California has become the first state in the US to pass a resolution that condemns the nonconsensual normalization of intersex children through cosmetic medical procedures. [USA Today / Susan Miller]

Snapchat, the Weather Channel, Citi Bike, and other apps have been hit with an anti-Semitic campaign: New York users saw that their city was renamed “Jewtropolis” on maps this morning. [The Verge / Jacob Kastrenakes]

Hassan Al-Kontar, a Syrian refugee, is facing deportation from Malaysia to Syria and, as a result, has been stuck in the Kuala Lumpur airport since March. In that time, he’s received many marriage proposals. [Vice / Nyima Pratten]

Apple will likely unveil its new slew of iPhones on September 13. As with every new iPhone rollout, this year’s models are supposed to be the “most impressive yet.” [CNBC / Sara Salinas]

“Taking on Trump is not a matter of having … the best-articulated policy proposals: it is a matter of putting forward a vision that offers the opposite of the Trumpian pull of the imaginary past. That vision — the promise of something yet unknown — is, in fact, the stuff of politics.” [Masha Gessen on the Cuomo-Nixon debate and the “definition of politics” / New Yorker]

Political correctness can sometimes feel like a tug-of-war between inclusivity and free speech. Experts discuss the concepts behind the fraught term on this week’s episode of Explained, now on Netflix.

How Republicans are undermining the 2020 census, explained with a cartoon

From midlife crises to cowboy dreams: August’s biggest new albums

China’s brutal crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority, explained

Trump’s Justice Department is threatening cities that allow safe injection sites

It feels like the world is ending — and I can’t stop reading about it

Original Source -> Vox Sentences: Syria’s final push

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

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democratsunited-blog · 6 years

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Democrats call for hearings into border passport denials

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=8871

Democrats call for hearings into border passport denials

By Kevin Sieff and Gabriel Pogrund | Washington Post

MEXICO CITY – Congressional Democrats on Thursday called for hearings into the government’s policy of denying U.S. passports to Hispanic-Americans along the U.S.-Mexico border and questioning the citizenship of hundreds, and possibly thousands, of Americans.

Texas congressmen said the government’s policy, reported by The Washington Post on Wednesday, is part of a systemic anti-Hispanic bias that has guided the administration’s immigration policy, and suggested they would propose legislation to address the policy.

Start your day with the news you need from the Bay Area and beyond. Sign up for our Morning Report weekday newsletter.

“This represents an unacceptable targeting of people based on their ethnic heritage. It violates the constitution. It should be investigated by Congress in both chambers, and we should take action to stop it as soon as possible through legislation if necessary,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas.

But Republican leadership in the House and Senate is unlikely to bow to Democratic demands on any proposed legislation on the issue.

The State Department is denying passports to a large number of people with official U.S. birth certificates that state they were born in South Texas over the last 70 years. The government alleges that decades ago, midwives and some doctors in the region provided fraudulent birth certificates to babies who were actually born in Mexico. In some cases, in the 1990s, several of those birth attendants pleaded guilty to fraud.

But the same midwives and doctors accused of fraud also delivered tens of thousands of babies in Texas, and, decades later, it is nearly impossible to distinguish between the relatively small number of fraudulent birth certificates and the swell of legal ones. That has left U.S. military veterans, Border Patrol agents and police officers on a frenzied quest to prove that they were born in the United States.

The policy of targeting people with birth certificates signed by midwives existed under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, but in 2009 the U.S. government reached a settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union that appeared to resolve the issue. Lawyers along the border say the number of passport denials declined during the last year of the Obama administration, and it became easier for those questioned to substantiate their birth in the United States without going to court.

Under the Trump administration, attorneys say, the number of denials has risen and the government has made it difficult for people to receive their passports without suing the State Department – an expensive experience for Americans whose citizenship is being questioned. Lawyers also say that some people who have been denied passports have landed in deportation proceedings.

Senator Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., tweeted: “@realDonaldTrump’s war on Latino Americans gets even uglier. What happened to ‘unalienable rights?’ ”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas echoed the State Department’s concerns about fraud.

“It is important to ensure that the rights of all U.S. citizens are respected and protected, while also preventing fraud by people who are not in our country legally,” Cruz said. “If U.S. citizens are being denied their passports, that needs to stop. But if someone is not a U.S. citizen, then their passport request should be denied.”

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, did not respond to a request for comment.

The State Department declined to provide information about the number of people denied passports because they were delivered by midwives along the border. It said its policy has not changed.

“The U.S.-Mexico border region happens to be an area of the country where there has been a significant incidence of citizenship fraud,” it said in a statement to The Post. That explanation did not allay concerns among congressional Democrats.

“The idea that because some few people falsified documents, has created a presumption that all documents issued in a region are to be questioned is like saying someone is guilty until proven innocent,” said Rep. Vicente González, D-Texas. “I plan to work with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to utilize our powers of congressional oversight and end these unwarranted actions that have gone on for far too long.”

Other members of Congress said they would like to hold hearings on the topic.

“We’re challenging citizens of the U.S. who have been citizens of this country for years and have gotten a passport in years past,” said Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. “There’s no basis saying they’re violating security. I’m going to ask for hearings to be held on the judiciary committee and immigration subcommittee on homeland security.

“I am really concerned about this. It is another telltale sign of the administration trying to block legal immigration and citizens just because they happen to be Hispanic or Muslim and that’s tragic and that’s not America,” she said.

The Washington Post’s Gabriel Pogrund reported from Washington.

Read full story here

#Democrats

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oldguardaudio · 6 years

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A little FAKE NEWS for ya? Hillary Clinton warns of ‘a full-fledged crisis in our democracy’ at Yale

FAKE NEWS uncovered at HoakAndChange.com

Help Hillary lost and can’t shut up at HoaxAndChange.com

Foul Mouth Crooked Hillary @ HoaxAndChange.com

Listen to The Big Idea

Hillary Clinton warns of ‘a full-fledged crisis in our democracy’ at Yale

Clinton brings Russian hat to Yale commencement: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’

BY JAMES HOHMANN with Breanne Deppisch and Joanie Greve

THE BIG IDEA: Hillary Clinton is not over it.

“Let me just get this out of the way: No, I’m not over it. I still think about the 2016 election. I still regret the mistakes I made,” the failed Democratic nominee told graduating seniors at Yale University on Sunday afternoon.

“Right now, we’re living through a full-fledged crisis in our democracy,” she told 1,360 seniors. “Now there are not tanks in the streets, but what’s happening right now goes to the heart of who we are as a nation. I say this not as a Democrat who lost an election but as an American afraid of losing a country.”

— The former secretary of state opened with a cascade of jokes related to the election. “I am thrilled for all of you, even the three of you who live in Michigan and didn’t request your absentee ballots in time,” she said.

As a tradition, Yalies wear humorous and playful hats during the Class Day ceremony. Clinton brought a Russian fur hat, known as an ushanka, with a Soviet-era hammer and sickle emblem. “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em,” she said.

A graduate of Yale Law School herself, Clinton also mused about some of the ways students in New Haven might have coped with her loss – sprinkling in a reference to a campus watering hole. “I had my fair share of chardonnay,” she said. “You went through penny drinks at Woads.”

— President Trump seems happy to have her as a continuing foil. One reason she has not faded into the backdrop is that he continues to routinely attack her, at times as if the campaign never ended. Crowds still chant “lock her up” at his rallies. The president called her “crooked” on Twitter yesterday and said she’s the one who should be investigated.

— In her speech, Clinton declared that she was not going to get political. Then, in the very next sentence, she said the right deserves more blame for the radicalization of American politics than the left. A minute after that, she advocated for gun control.

“Our country is more polarized than ever,” she declared. “We have sorted ourselves into opposing camps, and that divides how we see the world. There are more liberals and conservatives than there used to be and fewer centrists. Our political parties are more ideologically and geographically consistent … The divides on race and religion are starker than ever before. As the middle shrank, partisan animosity grew.”

Those familiar with the Civil War, or the mistreatment of Native Americans or the internment of Japanese Americans, among other dark chapters in the past, might quibble with such hyperbole. But she was on a roll.

“This isn’t simply a ‘both sides’ problem. The radicalization of American politics hasn’t been symmetrical,” said Clinton. There are leaders in our country who blatantly incite people with hateful rhetoric, who fear change, who see the world in zero sum terms, so that if others are gaining they must be losing. That’s a recipe for polarization and conflict.”

— Her tone was more in sadness than anger. She read from a teleprompter. She never named Trump, but everyone in the audience knew that was who she was referring to.

— Eighteen months after her unexpected defeat, Clinton’s reading choices suggest that she’s still down the rabbit hole.

She quoted from “Fascism: A Warning,” the new book by Madeleine Albright, her husband’s secretary of state: “…This proposition that we are all created equal is the single most effective antidote to the self-centered moral numbness that allows fascism to thrive.”

Then Clinton referenced not one, but two books, by Yale history professor Timothy Snyder: “On Tyranny” and “The Road to Unfreedom.” Quoting the former, she said: “To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle.”

“Professor Snyder … is sounding the alarm as loudly as he can,” Clinton said. “Because attempting to erase the line between fact and fiction, truth and reality is a core feature of authoritarianism! The goal is to make us question logic and reason and to sow mistrust toward the people we need to rely on: our leaders, the press, experts who seek to guide public policy based on evidence, even ourselves.”

She also cited Rex Tillerson’s commencement speech at the Virginia Military Institute last week, in which the secretary of state said the country will be “on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom” if leaders don’t speak the truth. “Perhaps a tad late, but he’s absolutely right,” said Clinton.

Hillary Clinton poses for a photo with Yale senior Ryan Liu after her speech. (Peter Hvizdak/New Haven Register/AP)

— Clinton has been warning of “a vast right-wing conspiracy” since she was first lady. Now she’s worried this polarization poses an existential threat. “Our social fabric is fraying, and the bonds of community that hold us together are fractured,” she said. “This isn’t just a problem because it leads to unpleasant conversations over the Thanksgiving dinner table. It’s a problem because it undermines the civic spirit that makes democracy possible.”

— She said it will take an epidemic of “radical empathy” to heal America’s wounds. “As hard as it is, this is a moment to reach across divides of race, class and politics,” she said, “to try to see the world through the eyes of people very different from ourselves, to return to rational debate, to find a way to disagree without being disagreeable [and] to try to recapture a sense of community and common humanity.

“There are certain things that are so essential that they should transcend politics,” she continued, “waging a war on the rule of law and a free press, delegitimizing elections, perpetrating shameless corruption and rejecting the idea that our leaders should be public servants undermines our national unity. Attacking truth and reason, evidence and facts should alarm us all.”

— Clinton, whose brand became closely identified with her 1990s book “It Takes a Village,” called for the country to take on a more communitarian outlook. “Leaders can’t just ask am I better off than I was two years or four years ago. We have to ask: are we all better off? Are weas a country better, stronger and fairer?”

Democratic candidates might be able to use this frame in 2018 to push back on positive macroeconomic indicators. “You’ve learned you don’t need to be an immigrant to be outraged when a classmate’s father … is unjustly deported,” she told the graduates. “You don’t need to be a person of color to understand that when black students feel singled out and targeted, we still have work to do. And you don’t need to experience gun violence … Enough is enough.”

— “Resilience” has emerged as a favorite HRC buzzword. “Building democratic resilience,” she said, requires calling out “actual fake news,” speaking out about the vital role of higher education in society and voting.

— Clinton told the students to play the long game. “There are many fights to fight, and more seem to arise every day,” she said. “It will take work to keep up the pressure, to stay vigilant, to neither close our eyes, nor numb our hearts or throw up our hands and say, ‘Someone else take over from here.’ … We need to be ready to lose some fights because we will…

“Everyone gets knocked down,” she added. “What matters is whether you get back up and keep going. This may be hard for a group of Yale soon-to-be graduates to accept but, yes, you will make mistakes in life. You will even fail. It happens to all of us no matter how qualified or capable we are. Take it from me!”

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Kilauea’s expanding lava flow injures man

GET SMART FAST:

Lava spatter struck a Hawaiian man and shattered his leg in the first known injury related to Kilauea’s recent volcanic activity.Lava spatter can weigh as much as a refrigerator — but kill you in even the smallest amounts. (Amy B Wang)

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro won reelection in a vote condemned internationally. Opposition parties were largely blocked from fielding candidates and sought a boycott of the vote amid concerns Maduro was trying to cement dictatorial power. Washington will not recognize the results and is considering additional sanctions, including an oil embargo. (Anthony Faiola)

Politicians in Mexico are being slaughtered by the dozens, and the country’s parties are facing challenges recruiting replacements. At least 36 candidates have been killed since September, making this the most violent election season in recent history. (Kevin Sieff)

Greece’s most liberal mayor was hospitalized after a group of far-right protesters beat him up, kicking the 75-year-old leader in the head and legs and beating him repeatedly with bottles. Yiannis Boutaris described what happened to him as a “nightmare.” (Amanda Erickson)

More than 7 million people in the U.S. may have had their driver’s licenses suspended or revoked because of traffic debt, according to a new Post study — a controversial practice that some say unfairly punishes the poor. (Justin Wm. Moyer)

Microsoft has secured a lucrative agreement to provide U.S. spy agencies with its cloud-computing platform and services, bolstering its prospects as tech giants battle to win a cloud contract with the Pentagon that is expected to be worth billions. (Aaron Gregg)

A cougar killed a mountain biker and injured another in Washington state this weekend. The attack is so unusual that officials said they will conduct a necropsy on the animal’s brain to determine whether it was sick or if “something else was going on.” (Kristine Phillips)

Trump demands campaign surveillance probe

THERE’S A BEAR IN THE WOODS:

— Under pressure from Trump, the Justice Department asked its inspector general to assess whether political motivation tainted the FBI investigation into ties between Russia and the Trump campaign — a remarkable step that law enforcement officials hope might avert a constitutional crisis. Trump made the following “demand” on Sunday afternoon as part of a weekend of social media attacks on the special counsel’s probe:

“Hours later, the Justice Department responded by saying it had asked its inspector general to expand an ongoing review of the applications to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser ‘to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election,'” Matt Zapotosky, Robert Costa and David Nakamura report. “The department noted that a U.S. attorney would be consulted if evidence of criminal conduct was found.”

Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein released a statement: “If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action.”

The background: “Sunday’s developments came in the wake of reports that a longtime U.S. intelligence source assisted the investigation into Russian election interference now overseen by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. The Washington Post reported Friday that the source, a retired American professor, had contacts with three Trump advisers during the 2016 campaign. Trump and his allies have seized on the informant’s role to claim that the FBI spied on his campaign. There is no evidence to indicate an intelligence source was embedded within the campaign, as the president has suggested.

“The quick move Sunday by the Justice Department could forestall a bigger showdown. Late last month, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) issued a subpoena to the Justice Department seeking all documents related to the professor. So far, he has been rebuffed by department officials, who have said that exposing the source or the source’s work could put him and his contacts in danger and jeopardize international intelligence partnerships. … Some Justice Department officials feared that the president’s tweet signaled that he might overrule them and order the department to turn over the material Nunes seeks. If that occurs, it is possible that senior officials could resign in protest — or refuse the president’s order and force him to fire them.”

— Why this is a really big deal: “It wasn’t that long ago that both the executive branch and the legislature in this country considered the protection of intelligence sources a matter of surpassing national importance,” Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes write in a smart analysis on their Lawfare blog. “But what happens when the intentional outing of U.S. intelligence assets is the province … of senior officials in two branches of this country’s government who are most responsible for protecting those assets? … And what happens when they do so for frankly political reasons: to protect the president from a properly predicated counterintelligence investigation involving the activity of an adversary foreign power? … [It’s] fair to say that there are profound risks at many levels. Most immediately, there’s the risk to the source himself. That is presumably manageable. The bigger problem may be the threat to those who have worked with the source in the past. … In addition, there’s the problem of the message to other potential sources. One way to think about this problem is to ask yourself this question: How confident are you that the U.S. intelligence community could protect you in exchange your help? This is what FBI Director Chris Wray was talking about the other day when he told the Senate Appropriations Committee that, ‘The day that we can’t protect human sources is the day the American people start becoming less safe.’”

— Rudy Giuliani told several news outlets that Mueller’s team plans to wrap up the obstruction portion of their probe by Sept. 1, but that’s contingent upon Trump agreeing to be interviewed. The New York Times’s Michael S. Schmidt and Maggie Haberman report: “[Mueller’s office shared] its timeline about two weeks ago amid negotiations over whether Mr. Trump will be questioned by investigators, Mr. Giuliani said … Mr. Giuliani’s comments were an apparent attempt to publicly pressure Mr. Mueller amid their interview negotiations. Mr. Giuliani sought to frame the outcome of the obstruction investigation as pitting the credibility of one man against another: Mr. Trump vs. [James] Comey … ‘We want the concentration of this to be on Comey versus the president’s credibility, and I think we win that and people get that,’ Mr. Giuliani said, adding that he also hoped that the Justice Department would open a criminal investigation into Mr. Comey for perjury and for his role in the sharing of information … about his encounters with the president[.]”

— Speaking with The Post, Giuliani acknowledged the timeline could change “significantly” if Trump fails to cooperate: “It would depend on if they subpoena him. And if they subpoena him, there will be litigation. So no timeline on that,” Giuliani said. “That’d be unfortunate, but it could happen.”

— “Michael Flynn pleaded guilty. Now his supporters are trying to exonerate him,” by Ashley Parker and Josh Dawsey: “Hashtags. Tweets. Speeches. A book foreword. Friends and family of former national security adviser Michael Flynn are waging a campaign to try to exonerate the retired lieutenant general — and, possibly, land him a presidential pardon. The push comes as Flynn himself — who in December pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak — is also trying to rehabilitate his public image, including appearing with a long-shot Republican House candidate, delivering a private foreign policy speech in Manhattan and writing the foreword to a friend’s self-published manifesto supporting President Trump. But the largely social-media-based effort has, at times, put Flynn’s advocates, and occasionally Flynn, at odds with his own legal team, which believes that any public attention to Flynn’s case is not helpful as he awaits sentencing and has counseled that he and his family to remain quiet.”

Donald Trump Jr. waves to the audience during a fundraiser for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach. (Charlie Riedel/AP)

FOLLOW THE MONEY:

— The Republican National Committee paid nearly half a million dollars to the law firm representing Hope Hicks and others in the Russia investigations, according to a new federal filing. Michelle Ye Hee Lee and Anu Narayanswamy report: “The RNC’s $451,780 payment to Trout Cacheris & Janis adds to the mounting legal fees associated with the investigations by [Mueller] and several congressional committees … Hicks hired Robert Trout, founder of the law firm, as her personal attorney in September[.] The report of the payments for legal and compliance services, contained in the [FEC] report filed Sunday, is the first public disclosure of RNC payments to the law firm since Hicks hired Trout.”

— Payments made to Michael Cohen have put a spotlight on the New York-based investment firm Columbus Nova — which is linked to Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg: Rosalind S. Helderman, Michael Kranish and Steven Mufson report: “In June 2017, [the president’s personal lawyer] had an invitation for one of his other clients: Would he like to attend a fundraiser for Trump’s reelection? Andrew Intrater — the chief executive of Columbus Nova … paid the $35,000 donation to attend the event, which also benefited the Republican National Committee. Intrater also made a $250,000 donation to Trump’s inaugural committee, a contribution that gave him prime access to the January 2017 festivities. He brought with him as a guest his cousin, Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, whose conglomerate Renova Group is the biggest client of Columbus Nova. And Columbus Nova paid Cohen $500,000 in the first half of 2017 to bring in new investors. … Vekselberg and Renova Group were sanctioned in April by the Treasury Department … Meanwhile, federal officials working with [Mueller] questioned Vekselberg when his plane landed at a New York-area airport earlier this year and have also interviewed Intrater.”

— “Invitations from one of China’s biggest state-owned banks asked wealthy clients to pay $150,000 for a ticket to attend a Republican Party fundraiser in the US and meet [Trump],” the Financial Times’s Gabriel Wildau reports. “The invite from the private banking unit of China Construction Bank, the country’s second-largest state-owned lender, offered participants the chance to take photos with Mr Trump and mingle with US political and business figures. It also said that representatives from ZTE Group, the Chinese telecom company that is facing crippling US sanctions, would attend the event, to be held in Dallas. … The invitation for the May 31 event says that participation is open to Chinese nationals, even though US law forbids campaign donations by foreigners.”

— In case you missed it: Donald Trump Jr. met in Trump Tower in the summer of 2016 with a representative of two wealthy Arab princes who said they were eager to help his father win election. The New York Times’s Mark Mazzetti, Ronen Bergman and David D. Kirkpatrick reported on the Sunday front page: “The meeting was convened primarily to offer help to the Trump team, and it forged relationships between the men and Trump insiders that would develop over the coming months — past the election and well into [Trump’s] first year in office … [Former Blackwater chief and private security contractor Erik Prince] arranged the meeting[.] The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president. … It is unclear whether such a proposal was executed, and the details of who commissioned it remain in dispute. But Donald Trump Jr. responded approvingly … and after those initial offers of help, Mr. Nader was quickly embraced as a close ally by Trump campaign advisers — meeting frequently with [Kushner and Michael Flynn].”

Steven Mnuchin waves to reporters as he arrives to a hotel after meeting with Chinese officials in Beijing. (Andy Wong/AP)

TRUMP BLINKS IN CHINA TRADE DISPUTE:

— “We’re putting the trade war on hold,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced on “Fox News Sunday” after the U.S. and China agreed on a broad outline to reduce the trade deficit and ease access for U.S. companies to compete in Beijing. David J. Lynch reports: “Mnuchin said the two sides have agreed on a ‘framework’ to avoid the sanctions that requires China to lower tariffs on unspecified American goods, protect U.S. technology and buy more made-in-the-USA items. ‘Right now we have agreed to put the tariffs on hold while we try to execute the framework,’ Mnuchin said … Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross will be dispatched to Beijing ‘immediately’ to work out the details of accelerated Chinese purchases. …

“Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said Friday that China had agreed to buy ‘at least $200 billion’ more from the United States each year. On Sunday, Kudlow appeared to back away from that claim, saying on ABC News’s ‘This Week’ that ‘there’s no agreement for a deal. We never anticipated one. There’s a communique between the two great countries. That’s all.’”

— “China is winning Trump’s trade war,” by Wonkblog’s Heather Long: “Notice China didn’t agree to a specific amount. … China’s ‘concessions’ are things it planned to do anyway. The Chinese have one of the fastest-growing economies and middle classes in the world. Chinese factories and cities need more energy, and its people want more meat. It’s no surprise then that China said it was interested in buying more U.S. energy and agricultural products. The Trump administration is trying to cast that as a win because the United States will be able to sell more to China, but it was almost certain that the Chinese were going to buy more of that stuff anyway.” Heather notes that there was no tangible agreement on intellectual property, which was a central rationale for starting the trade war.”

— Trump tweets that China agreed to buy massive amounts of additional agricultural products:

— But one reason the Chinese have so much leverage in trade talks is North Korea.

President Trump, first lady Melania Trump, Vice President Pence and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrive at Joint Base Andrews, Md. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post)

THE LATEST ON THE SUMMIT:

— Trump spoke to South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Saturday to seek advice about North Korea, where recent actions from Kim Jong Un have sowed doubt about the dictator’s willingness to denuclearize his country. David Nakamura and Carol D. Leonnig report: “On the call, which lasted less than 30 minutes, Trump sought Moon’s interpretation of Pyongyang’s shift to a harder-line position last week, a sharp contrast to the more positive and constructive tone after Moon met with [Kim] last month … North Korea’s actions in recent days, including its cancellation of a working-level meeting with South Korean officials and a threat to call off Kim’s summit with Trump on June 12, has alarmed the Trump administration and created new complications in the preparations, with just over three weeks left. An advance team from the United States is in Singapore to work out logistics, Trump administration officials said.

“[National security adviser John Bolton] has been telling colleagues that he doesn’t trust that the summit will go well, and he has reiterated his long-standing belief that he does not trust the North Koreans … Aides emphasized that Trump remains committed to meeting with Kim … but that time is running out to nail down an agenda and finalize several outstanding issues. The senior U.S. official said Pyongyang appears to be trying to extract more concessions from the United States before the summit, or to be building a narrative to blame Trump if things go poorly in Singapore or to pull out of the summit entirely.”

— Trump, increasingly concerned that his historic summit with Kim could turn into an embarrassment, has begun pressing his aides about whether he should take the risk of going forward with the meeting. The New York Times’s David Sanger reports: “Mr. Trump’s aides … [are] concerned about what kind of grasp Mr. Trump has on the details of the North Korea program, and what he must insist upon as the key components of denuclearization. … [Aides] who have recently left the administration say Mr. Trump has resisted the kind of detailed briefings about enrichment capabilities, plutonium reprocessing, nuclear weapons production and missile programs that Mr. Obama and President George W. Bush regularly sat through. Grappling with North Korea in negotiations is a new experience not just for Mr. Trump, but also for everyone else in the upper ranks of his administration. South Korean officials say that [Bolton] has been in near daily contact with his counterpart in Seoul, trying to work out a strategy.”

— Bigger picture: Trump keeps shooting himself in the foot. Philip Rucker and Ashley Parker observe: “As an emboldened Trump reaches for historic triumphs in hopes of bolstering his party’s prospects in November’s midterm elections … [his] agenda has been undermined by mixed messages and internal squabbles from within his administration — all compounded by the president’s own lack of discipline and his inconsistent ideology. Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University, said ‘the one consistent policy that Trump seems to have is that America is getting a raw deal in the world, but how to address that raw deal varies day to day and hour to hour. It is enormously important to have message discipline, and this administration is fundamentally unable to have it.’”

‘Idiotic comments’: Both sides disagree on path forward after school shooting

GUN VIOLENCE:

— Incoming NRA president Oliver North blamed the rise of school shootings on a “a culture of violence” and young boys who “have been on Ritalin” since early childhood. “They’ve been drugged in many cases,” North said on “Fox News Sunday,” speaking two days after the latest school massacre killed 10 people in Texas. Frances Stead Sellers and Michael Scherer report: “Instead, [North] said, schools should look at fortifying their campuses, considering ingress and egress points and people’s ability to enter buildings carrying weapons. … Santa Fe High School was considered a hardened target, with an active-shooter plan and two armed police officers on patrol. In the fall, school district leaders made plans to eventually arm teachers and staff under the state’s school marshal program.”

— On ABC’s “This Week,” Texas Lt Gov. Dan Patrick (R) blamed the “social acceptance of abortion” and violent video games for the spike in campus massacres: “Should we be surprised in this nation? We have devalued life, whether it’s through abortion, whether it’s the breakup of families or violent movies, and particularly violent video games …” Patrick also suggested staggering school start times to funnel students through fewer doors — a move he said would allow for easier weapon detection.

— Parents of victims of gun violence responded with scathing criticism: “I think those are the most idiotic comments I have ever heard regarding gun safety,” said Fred Guttenberg, whose daughter Jaime was killed in the Parkland, Fla., shooting. “He should be removed from office.”

— Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) placed blame for Congress’s inaction on guns squarely on the NRA: “It’s a three-letter word,” Sanders said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “It’s the NRA, and it’s Trump and the Republicans who don’t have the guts to stand up to these people.”

— Stat du jour: “2018 has been deadlier for schoolchildren than service members.” (Philip Bump)

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) questions Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen during a Senate hearing last week. (Erin Schaff/Reuters)

THE MIDTERMS:

— Democrats plan to highlight allegations of corruption surrounding the Trump administration as they continue unveiling their party platform ahead of the midterms: “The first planks of the ‘A Better Deal’ platform, released last year, focused on the party’s economic agenda. Now, with questions about pay-to-play politics swirling around President Trump and his current and former aides, Democrats are set to introduce anti-corruption proposals Monday billed as ‘A Better Deal for Our Democracy,’ Mike DeBonis reports. “According to a senior Democratic official familiar with the announcement, the new agenda will include proposals that would eliminate loopholes that allow lobbyists and lawmakers to buy and sell influence without the public’s knowledge. The message: Elect Democrats in November to ‘clean up the chaos and corruption in Washington.’ One proposal — which would tighten the federal laws governing lobbying disclosures and foreign-agent registration — responds to the apparent sale of influence by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal lawyer.”

— On the other side of the aisle, immigration is now on the front burner for 20 moderate Republicans. Mike explains: “Before they were ‘dreamers,’ they were just neighbors to California Republican Rep. Jeff Denham. They played basketball with his kids. They were the pride of the immigrant families upon which the Central Valley’s agricultural economy relies. And now, under threat of deportation, young undocumented immigrants want answers from Denham — even at his son’s recent birthday party … Denham and nearly two dozen of his fellow Republican lawmakers have now joined together, spurred by pressure back home and frustrated by the GOP leadership’s lack of action on a heated issue that has long stymied the party … ‘We’ve had it,’ said Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), who has joined Denham and the others pressing for a bill. ‘We’re boiling over. It’s got to get done.’

— The Bernie Sanders-inspired grass-roots group “Our Revolution” is in disarray, reports Politico’s Edward-Isaac Dovere. “Our Revolution has shown no ability to tip a major Democratic election in its favor — despite possessing Sanders’ email list, the envy of the Democratic Party — and can claim no major wins in 2018 as its own. The result has left many Sanders supporters disillusioned, feeling that the group that was supposed to harness the senator’s grass-roots movement is failing in its mission. The problems have also fueled doubts about Sanders’ organizational ability heading into 2020, even after his out-of-nowhere near-march to the nomination two years ago. Critics of the Vermont independent had been worried he’d have a juggernaut-in-waiting to fuel a second presidential campaign, but that anxiety has faded after watching Our Revolution the past year and a half.” Among Dovere’s findings: “Board members and Sanders presidential delegates from 2016 have raised questions about whether the group’s president, Nina Turner, is using her position to prepare for a presidential run of her own, and to settle scores with the Democratic National Committee from 2016.”

— Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) stumped for Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) in Kansas City on Saturday night — part of an effort by McCaskill to beat back criticism that she hasn’t done enough to reach out to black voters. The Kansas City Star’s Brian Lowry reports: “The event comes after a prolonged period of tension between McCaskill and local African American leaders who have felt overlooked during her reelection campaign. ‘Our complaint is we just haven’t seen enough of her,’ said Rev. Daniel Childs Jr., a former president of the Metropolitan Kansas City Baptists Ministers Union. McCaskill has worked to dispel this perception in recent weeks. Ahead of the Booker event, she held a meeting Saturday with Freedom Inc., a Kansas City political organization dedicated to the concerns of the African American community.”

— Florida Gov. Rick Scott (R), running for Senate, steadfastly avoided mentioning Trump by name in his keynote speech at a massive GOP fundraiser, which drew some 400 attendees — and the president himself, who called in via the cellphone of Attorney General Pam Bondi. “I’ll be there fairly soon,” Trump told the crowd. “We’ll hold a special event there in the near future … We’ll be in Tampa very soon.” (Tampa Bay Times)

SOCIAL MEDIA SPEED READ:

Kellyanne Conway’s husband George, a prominent Republican lawyer, retweeted this post by a former Justice Department national security lawyer:

George Conway also pushed back on former George W. White House press secretary Ari Fleischer’s claim that Mueller’s team is partisan:

Lawfare executive editor Susan Hennessey, who used to be an attorney for the National Security Agency, reacted to Rosenstein’s announcement:

From former government ethics director Walter Shaub:

From conservative foreign policy scholar Max Boot:

One of Trump’s strongest allies in the House, Freedom Caucus member Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), praised Trump’s order:

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) was one of many who criticized the U.S. caving to China on tariffs for little tangible in return:

The head of The Post’s fact checking unit noted that Trump did not deny the NYT story about his son meeting with emissaries of Gulf states offering campaign help:

From a Democratic congressman on the House Judiciary and Foreign Affairs committees:

Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) seems to have been up real early on Sunday:

Actor Michael McKean mocked longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone for saying that he expects to be indicted on a charge of some “extraneous crime”:

A Yahoo News reporter said the Stone euphemism should enter the lexicon:

George H.W. Bush has arrived in Maine for the summer. It’s his first trip back since his wife passed away:

John McCain wished his wife a happy birthday:

Meghan McCain reacted to being parodied on “SNL”:

An official BBC account threw shade at Trump, comparing the crowd size of his inauguration to the one outside the royal wedding:

GOOD READS FROM ELSEWHERE:

— The Atlantic, “How a Norwegian Retiree Got Caught Up in a Spy Scandal,” by Reid Standish: “A tale of intrigue on the Arctic border — and a new confrontation with Russia.”

— ICYMI: “New clues bolster belief that ISIS leader is still alive — and busy with a chilling new mission,” by Joby Warrick and Souad Mekhennet: “[The] prolonged absences [of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi] have given wings to countless false reports portraying Baghdadi as either dead, or gravely wounded and incapacitated. Despite such rumors, U.S. counterterrorism officials are convinced that Baghdadi is alive and is helping direct long-term strategy for the dwindling numbers of Islamic State fighters … [and] has shifted his attention in recent months to crafting an ideological framework that will survive the physical destruction of the caliphate in Iraq and Syria. Viewed together, such actions convey the impression of a disciplined retreat, with Baghdadi helping manage preparations for a shift from caliphate to underground insurgency and international terrorist movement, current and former U.S. officials said.”

HOT ON THE LEFT:

“A Border Patrol agent detained two U.S. citizens at a gas station after hearing them speak Spanish,” fromAmy B Wang: “A Montana woman said she plans to take legal action after a Border Patrol agent detained and questioned her and a friend — both U.S. citizens — when he overheard them speaking Spanish at a [Montana] gas station. Ana Suda said she and her friend [were] making a midnight run to the store to pick up some eggs and milk … when a uniformed Border Patrol agent interrupted them [to ask for her ID]. ‘ … I looked at him like, ‘Are you serious?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, very serious.’ In [a] video Suda recorded, she asks the agent why he is detaining them, and he says it is specifically because he heard them speaking Spanish. Suda asks whether they are being racially profiled; the agent says no.” “It has nothing to do with that,” he tells her. “It’s the fact that it has to do with you guys speaking Spanish in the store, in a state where it’s predominantly English-speaking.”

HOT ON THE RIGHT:

“Parents outraged at school’s silent tribute for Gaza victims,” from the New York Post: “Students at the elite Beacon School were asked to pause from their studies last week to pay tribute to the victims of violence in Gaza … The school-wide announcement Tuesday stunned some students and has outraged parents who question why the school is entering into the divisive Palestinian-Israeli conflict with what they see as an anti-Jewish bent. ‘I am extremely upset because I did not send my child to a New York City public school to pray for Hamas operatives,’ said one father …. ‘I just don’t think any school should be promoting a moment of silence for terrorists. What if it was [ISIS]?’ said one student’s mother, who is Jewish. The Zionist Organization of America, a pro-Israel group, said it would send a letter to the Beacon School demanding an apology.”

DAYBOOK: Trump is going to CIA headquarters at 10 a.m. for Gina Haspel’s swearing-in as CIA director. Then he’s welcoming NASCAR champion Martin Truex Jr. at 2 p.m. for an event on the South Lawn of the White House. At 6:30 p.m., the president will have dinner with governors to discuss border security.

NEWS YOU CAN USE IF YOU LIVE IN D.C.:

— Here comes the sun: After last week’s rainy stretch, today will be partly sunny with temperatures near 80 degrees. Showers are possible later tonight. As the Capital Weather Gang puts it: “A second straight mostly rain-free day? Pinch me.”

— The seven-day rainy spell that broke Sunday set a record here in Washington, Martin Weil reports: “The record was for the number of consecutive days not just with rain, but with a substantial amount of it. In precise numerical terms it was for successive days with at least one quarter inch.”

— “Warm-and-fuzzy vs. driven by data: These mayoral candidates are total opposites,” by Patricia Wilson: Alexandria Mayor Allison Silberberg faces a robust challenge from Vice Mayor Justin Wilson after almost three years of public clashes. “Their Democratic primary battle — essentially the election in deep-blue Alexandria — could be seen as a referendum on how city hall should operate in 21st-century, small-city America, where growth is both a threat to a cherished way of life and a necessary economic engine for local governments perpetually short of cash.”

VIDEOS OF THE DAY:

John Oliver devoted 20 minutes of his HBO show last night to covering “the addiction industry” and problems with rehab:

Rehab: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)

There was a star-studded cast for SNL’s cold open, which imagined a meeting between Trump, Giuliani, Cohen and Don Jr.:

Donald Trump Robert Mueller Cold Open – SNL

And Tina Fey went back into character as Sarah Palin:

Sarah Palin Advice – SNL

“Weekend Update” celebrated the one-year anniversary of Mueller’s probe:

Weekend Update on One-Year Anniversary of Robert Mueller Investigation – SNL

And this was the show’s take on the royal wedding:

Royal Wedding – SNL

Preakness was shrouded in fog on Saturday, but it was still quite a race. If you missed it, here’s the exciting call:

A little FAKE NEWS for ya? Hillary Clinton warns of ‘a full-fledged crisis in our democracy’ at Yale A little FAKE NEWS for ya? Hillary Clinton warns of ‘a full-fledged crisis in our democracy’ at Yale…

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kvetchlandia · 3 years

Photo

Jeanloup Sieff Photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Paris 1972

“Photography is something you learn to love very quickly. I know that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken and I will take them all.“ Jacques-Henri Lartigue

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warganenews · 7 years

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The U.N. asked for billions to avert four hunger crises. The money didn’t arrive.

#The U.N. asked for billions to avert four #hunger crises. The money didn’t arrive.

U.N. Secretary General António Guterres arrives in Mogadishu to get a firsthand look at the hunger crisis in Somalia. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

At the beginning of this year, the United Nations made one of its boldest requests ever for funding. It needed billions of dollars to fund a humanitarian response, said Secretary General António Guterres, or as many as 20 million people might…

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newstfionline · 7 years

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Opposition candidate Odinga rejects Kenya vote again as fears of violence grow

By Kevin Sieff and Rael Ombuor, Washington Post, August 10, 2017

NAIROBI--A day before Kenya is due to announce the official outcome of its recent presidential election, the country’s longtime opposition leader on Thursday reasserted his conviction that the results have been rigged.

NASA, the party led by Raila Odinga, declared that he had won Tuesday’s vote by a wide margin, even though provisional results indicate that the incumbent, President Uhuru Kenyatta, won by a margin of nearly 10 percent. That message laid the groundwork for a potentially explosive reaction when the official results are announced Friday.

In a nation with a recent history of solid economic growth and relative political stability, Kenya’s elections nearly always expose the tense, fractured tribal politics that lie just under the surface here. In 2007, a disputed election led to about 1,400 deaths, and charges were brought at the International Criminal Court--including against Kenyatta and his running mate, William Ruto--that were dropped for lack of evidence.

This time, much will hinge on the direction Odinga, 72, gives his followers, who have already taken to the streets in periodic bursts, confronting police who have responded with tear gas and, less frequently, live ammunition. International election monitors, including former U.S. secretary of state John F. Kerry, have encouraged Odinga and Kenyatta to advocate a peaceful response by their parties and supporters.

But at a news conference Thursday, Odinga’s team described what it said was a vast coverup by the country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission, citing as its source an anonymous whistleblower inside the commission. According to Musalia Mudavadi, one of Odinga’s advisers, the “authentic and legitimate results” were manipulated or hidden by the body.

The commission’s unofficial results showed Kenyatta, 55, leading with 54.3 percent of the votes, ahead of Odinga’s 45 percent. By Odinga’s count, those figures would be roughly reversed.

Given Kenya’s wide political divisions, analysts worry that another disputed election will only increase tensions between ethnic groups and further diminish faith in the central government.

Odinga has not said clearly how he will respond if Kenyatta is declared the winner. In 2013, he took his complaints to the Kenyan courts, which eventually dismissed his case. This time--likely to be his last bid for the presidency--some worry he’ll take a more aggressive approach.

In Kibera, Odinga’s young followers call him “Baba,” or father, and say they will wait on his guidance after results are released Friday.

“When he says jump, we will ask, ‘How high?’” said Gordon Odhiambo, 27.

#Kenya #Kenya election #Raila Odinga

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New Post has been published on News Twitter

Washington Post: Inside the world’s largest refugee camp, one man’s quest to explain Donald Trump to those now banned from America

(Kevin Sieff,Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

“We are going to have a rough time together,” he said.

“There’s no hope as long as Trump is there,” Farrah said.

Rashid had stayed up late over the weekend, reading about the new policy on his 5-year-old Nokia phone, a quest he began by typing “Trump News” into Google.

Now, Rashid waited for any indication that the airport protests had been successful. He would fall asleep in front of the TV, then wake up and check his phone.

“All day with him it is news, news, news,” said his wife, Dahabo Abdulahi, shaking her head.

***

The Kenyan government has threatened for years to close the camp. Its new deadline is May.

In 2010, the United Nations acknowledged his family’s procession of traumas with a one-page letter — they had been chosen for resettlement in America.

On his Nokia, Rashid checked his status on the U.S. refugee resettlement website every other day. The words never changed.

“Security status: currently clear,” it said.

“On hold.”

“Please be patient.”

***

On Tuesday, four days after Trump’s travel ban announcement, Rashid rode his bicycle, a clunky brown contraption with a red plastic flower on the handlebars, to the Horyaal Primary School.

On the blackboard he wrote: “The eye is a sense organ. It is used for seeing.”

The students read the line aloud. Rashid walked around the room, where 40 children, all native Somali speakers, were crammed onto eight benches.

Mohammed Rashid teaches an English class in the Dadaab refugee camp. (Kevin Sieff/The Washington Post)

He was trying to focus on the lesson, but his mind was on Trump’s new policy. While the children copied notes from the board, Rashid pulled out his Nokia.

He read on CNN.com that the protests were gaining strength.

He read on Facebook that more than 100 Somali refugees, whose flights were scheduled for the following week, were stuck in Nairobi.

After class, he walked outside.

“You made your own choice,” he said to Abukar.

Out of earshot, Rashid said softly:

“He’s the crazy one.”

***