Open Thread

The Open Thread for June 19, 2018

by Delaware Dem
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President Trump  “doubled down on his controversial policy of separating children from parents when families illegally cross the border, while also calling on Congress to change laws to end it,” The Hill reports.  “In a series of tweets, Trump appeared to justify the strategy by claiming criminals are using children in a Trojan Horse-style operation to cross the U.S. border.”

A new Quinnipiac poll finds that American voters oppose the policy of separating children and parents when families illegally cross the border into America by a wide margin, 66% to 27%.  However, Republican voters support the separation policy 55% to 35%, the only listed party, gender, education, age or racial group to support it.

American voters also support 79% to 15% allowing immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children, so-called “Dreamers,” to remain and ultimately to apply for citizenship.

A new Ipsos/Daily Beast poll finds 27% of Americans agree with President Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their parents, while 56% disagree.  Yet, Republicans leaned slightly more in favor, with 46% agreeing and 32% disagreeing. Meanwhile, just 14% of Democrats surveyed supported it and only 29% of Independents were in favor.

A new Monmouth poll finds that Democrats hold a 7 point lead over Republicans in the generic House ballot, 48% to 41%. This is similar to the 49% to 41% edge Democrats held six weeks ago in Monmouth’s polling.

The poll also finds that just 34% of the public approve of the tax reform plan passed by Congress last December and 41% disapprove.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) said he will not send the Massachusetts National Guard to the U.S.-Mexico border due to the “cruel and inhumane” decision by the Trump administration to separate children from their parents as families arrive at the border, NBC Boston reports.  Said Baker: “We told the National Guard to hold steady and to not go down to the border —period. We won’t be supporting that initiative unless they change the policy.”

“Leading figures of both parties demanded on Sunday that President Trump halt his administration’s practice of separating children from their parents when apprehended at the border, as the issue further polarized the already divisive immigration debate in Washington,” the New York Times reports.

“Republican lawmakers, the former first lady Laura Bush, a conservative newspaper and a onetime adviser to Mr. Trump joined Democrats in condemning family separations that have removed nearly 2,000 children from their parents in just six weeks. The administration argued that it was just enforcing the law, a false assertion that Mr. Trump has made repeatedly.”

“The issue took on special resonance on Father’s Day as Democratic lawmakers visited detention facilities in Texas and New Jersey to protest the separations and the House prepared to take up immigration legislation this week.”

Washington Post: Democrats intensify fight for immigrant children — and bash Trump, GOP ahead of midterms.

First Read: “The lowest points of Donald Trump’s presidency have tended to occur when a sizable portion of his own party has criticized him for his actions, policies and statements (even when the GOP doesn’t necessarily act on that criticism). Think Trump’s initial travel ban, the furor over Charlottesville, the Comey firing, the pardon of Joe Arpaio and the health care debate of 2017.”

“And Trump’s slight bump in his approval rating has coincided with a lack of intense GOP disagreement with Trump. Our June NBC/WSJ poll found the president’s job rating increasing to 44 percent among registered voters due in large part to his better numbers among Republicans and rural voters.”

“But is that about to change with fellow Republicans and conservatives increasingly criticizing — in varying degrees — the Trump policy of separating migrant children from their families at the border?”

President Trump “remained resistant on Monday in the face of growing public outcry over his administration’s policy of separating children from their parents at the border, repeating the false assertion that Democrats were the ones to blame for it, and suggesting that criminals — not parents — were toting juveniles to the United States,” the New York Times reports.

Said Trump: “They could be murderers and thieves and so much else. We want a safe country, and it starts with the borders, and that’s the way it is.”

Politico: “The defiant posture comes amid a torrent of criticism as stories and images have emerged of young children being ripped from their immigrant parents’ arms and put in detention facilities akin to prisons.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen pushed back Monday at the growing condemnation of her agency’s practice of separating migrant families at the border, telling a gathering of law enforcement officers, “We will not apologize for the job we do,” the Washington Post reports.

“In a speech at the meeting of National Sheriffs’ Association in New Orleans, Nielsen drew rousing applause when she directed her remarks at ‘a selected few in the media, Congress and the advocacy community’ whom she accused of mischaracterizing the Trump administration’s border crackdown.”

She added: “This department will no longer stand by and watch you attack law enforcement for enforcing the laws passed by Congress. We will not apologize for the job we do, or the job law enforcement does, or the job the American people expect us to do.”

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross failed to keep his promise to divest from his company holdings upon entering government, Forbes reports.  “Ross reportedly kept his stakes in companies co-owned by the Chinese government, a firm linked to Vladimir Putin’s inner circle, and a Cyprus bank caught up in the Robert Mueller investigation.”

John Oliver: “Democrats did not give them these laws, because—and I cannot stress this enough—there is no law that suddenly required separating parents from their children. This is a result of a deliberate policy choice by Jeff Sessions.”

“The Pentagon has quietly empowered the United States Cyber Command to take a far more aggressive approach to defending the nation against cyberattacks, a shift in strategy that could increase the risk of conflict with the foreign states that sponsor malicious hacking groups,” the New York Times reports.

“In the spring, as the Pentagon elevated the command’s status, it opened the door to nearly daily raids on foreign networks, seeking to disable cyberweapons before they can be unleashed, according to strategy documents and military and intelligence officials.”

 

Caitlin Owens: “The House plans to vote on two immigration bills this week: one written by House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte and favored by conservatives, and a compromise bill with buy-in from both conservatives and moderates.”

“GOP moderates will get the votes they wanted, but that doesn’t mean anything’s going to pass. Leadership agreed to do this to avoid the worst-case scenario of moderates filing a discharge petition — a way of forcing votes on bills they don’t like — which could have resulted in passage of the Democrats’ preferred immigration bill.”

“Even the optimists say that the compromise bill’s chance of passage is probably in Trump’s hands: He alone has the power to pressure reluctant House Republicans into voting for it. (Democrats are unlikely to support it.)”

Michael Avenatti, the attorney for adult film actress Stormy Daniels, announced that he would represent families separated at the U.S. border by immigration officials.

Said Avenatti: “If anyone knows of a parent that has had their child taken from them at the border and not returned, please have them contact me as I am entering this fight. This outrageous conduct must be brought to an immediate end.”

“Everywhere Booker goes, the subject of a 2020 presidential run follows. And in the year-and-a-half since President Trump was elected, Booker has spent about half his weekends on the road, visiting most states where a Democratic senator is facing a tough re-election fight, including multiple visits to Wisconsin, Ohio and Florida, as well as stops last year in Indiana and Montana, a recent swing through Minnesota and Missouri and a trip this weekend to Virginia,” CNN reports.

“In an interview aboard the Acela, Booker says he’ll make a decision about whether to run for president at the end of this year.”

Said Booker: “I’m not going to play coy. I’m sure after the midterm elections, I’ll give it a look.”

Politico: “Republicans on Capitol Hill are giving up on what might be their last best chance to overhaul Medicare, just as they’re losing their leading champion on the issue, House Speaker Paul Ryan. The quiet surrender on a subject that’s energized GOP fiscal hawks for the better part of a decade comes as new projections show Medicare’s trust fund in its worst shape since the recession, partly because of Republicans’ other chief obsession: their sweeping tax cuts.”

“That’s left conservatives unsure how to agitate for a politically unpopular Medicare overhaul — one that President Trump detests — and raises new questions about who will take up the entitlement reform mantle as Ryan heads for the exits.”

Karen Tumulty: “The first lady’s decision to step into the debate makes the silence of another Trump family member all the more telling. Where is Ivanka Trump, who is actually an official adviser to her father — and the one who claims that family issues are her portfolio?”

“All those photos of crying children don’t look so great on Instagram. Still, Ivanka, there is time to step up. You can do it. Be best.”

“The Supreme Court on Monday sidestepped a decision on when partisan gerrymandering goes too far, ruling against the challengers of a Republican-drawn map in Wisconsin, and a Democratic redistricting in Maryland,” the Washington Post reports.

“The decisions in the separate cases once again puts off a decision on when courts can find that partisan efforts to keep parties in power goes so far as to be unconstitutional.”

A new poll from the Global Strategy Group finds that the scandal that forced former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens (R) from office did some collateral damage to Republicans’ hopes of flipping a key Senate seat in Missouri.  “Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO) leads Missouri Attorney General Josh Hawley (R) by 47 percent to 41 percent in the poll[.] That’s up from a 46 percent to 44 percent lead in April, when the Greitens affair was just starting to boil over.

In the poll, McCaskill’s job favorability numbers have held steady, with slightly more voters approving than disapproving of her. But Hawley’s have slipped. In April, 30 percent of voters approved to 22 percent who disapproved. Now those have reversed, with 21 percent of voters approving and 29 percent disapproving.

It appears that’s mostly a factor of Greitens’ implosion. In mid-April, he was at 39 percent approval and 44 percent disapproval. By mid-June, weeks after he was forced to resign, he had sunk to 24 percent approval and 56 percent disapproval.”

Stan Greenberg: “Mr. Trump’s base strategy brands the Republican Party as sexist, racist, xenophobic and anti-immigrant, which magnifies the anti-Trump reaction among Democrats. But it also leaves a tenth who are conservative Catholics and a fifth who are nonreligious conservatives more tentative in their support of the Republican Party — and it pushes away the quarter of Republicans who remain ideologically moderate.”

“The harder the president bangs these drums, the more Democrats become enraged and a segment of Republicans gets demoralized. The more he trashes and defeats his Republican opponents in primaries, the more these voters may contemplate different political options.”

About Delaware Dem

Delaware politics from a liberal, progressive and Democratic perspective. Keep Delaware Blue.

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