“Maybe Hate Is What We Need”: Part 2 of the Complete (and growing) Timeline of Trump Hatred.
A History of Donald Trump’s racism. Here is part 2 covering the start of the Trump Presidency.
25 January 2017: Trump Supporter attacks Muslim Stewardess:
At JFK International Airport in New York, a female Delta employee, wearing a hijab in accordance with her Muslim faith, was “physically and verbally” attacked by 57-year-old Robin Rhodes of Worcester, Mass., “for no apparent reason,” prosecutors said at the time. When the victim asked Brown what she did to him, he replied: “You did nothing, but … [Expletive] Islam. [Expletive] ISIS. Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you.”
Rhodes ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of “menacing,” and he was sentenced to probation.
30 January 2017: Trump fires Sally Yates:
Trump fires Acting Attorney General Sally Yates. According to his statement, the reason was that she had “betrayed the Department of Justice” by refusing to defend Trump’s travel ban in court.
February 2017: Charlottesville votes to remove a Confederate Statue:
The Charlottesville City Council votes to remove a statue of Confederate war hero Robert E. Lee.
February 2017: Milo Yiannopoulos talk at UC Berkeley cancelled after protests erupt:
A talk at the University of California at Berkeley by Milo Yiannopoulos , a polarizing Breitbart News editor, was canceled Wednesday out of safety concerns after protesters hurled smoke bombs, broke windows and started a bonfire.
The decision was made two hours before the Wednesday night event because a crowd of more than 1,500 had gathered outside the venue, the university said in a statement.
“Of paramount importance this evening was the campus’s commitment to ensure the safety and security of those attending the event, the speaker, those who came to engage in lawful protest, as well as members of the public and the Berkeley campus community,” it said.
The 32-year-old right-wing provocateur is a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump and a self-proclaimed internet troll whose comments have been criticized as racist, misogynist, anti-Muslim and white supremacist. He was banned from Twitter after leading a harassment campaign against “Ghostbusters” actress Leslie Jones.
Hundreds of peaceful demonstrators carrying signs that read “Hate Speech Is Not Free Speech” had been protesting for hours before the event. A smaller group of protesters dressed in black and in hooded sweatshirts showed up as night fell and used metal barricades to break windows, threw smoke bombs and flares and set a large bonfire outside the building.
Yiannopoulos’ visit to Berkeley was sponsored by the campus Republican club. The university has stressed it did not invite him and does not endorse his ideas but is committed to free speech and rejected calls to cancel the event.
“The event has been cancelled,” Yiannopoulos posted on his Facebook page. “I’ll let you know more when the facts become clear. One thing we do know for sure: the Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.”
19 February 2017: Black Trump Supporter threatens local Mosque:
After 35-year-old Gerald Wallace called a mosque in Miami Gardens, Florida, and threatened to “shoot all y’all,” he told the FBI and police that he made the call because he “got angry” from a local TV news report about a terrorist act. At a rally in Florida the day before, Trump falsely claimed that Muslim refugees had just launched a terrorist attack in Sweden.
Wallace’s attorney, Katie Carmon, later tried to convince a federal judge that the threat to kill worshippers could be “protected speech” due to the “very distinctly political climate” at the time. “There are courts considering President Trump’s travel ban … and the president himself has made some very pointed statements about what he thinks about people of this descent,” Carmon argued in court.
Wallace, who is African American, ultimately pleaded guilty to obstructing the free exercise of his victims’ religious beliefs, and he was sentenced to one year in prison.
20 February 2017: Trump continues his attacks on the media:
Give the public a break — The FAKE NEWS media is trying to say that large scale immigration in Sweden is working out just beautifully. NOT!
23 February 2017: Trump Supporter attacks Gay Couple in Key West:
Kevin Seymour and his partner Kevin price were riding their bicycles in Key West, Florida, when a man on a moped, 30-year-old Brandon Davis of North Carolina, hurled anti-gay slurs at them and “intentionally” ran into Seymour’s bike, shouting, “You live in Trump country now,” according to police reports and Davis’ attorney. Davis ultimately pleaded guilty to a charge of battery evidencing prejudice, but in court, he expressed remorse and was sentenced to four years of probation.
March 2017: Lawsuit filed to stop the removal of the Charlottesville statue:
Several groups and individuals filed a lawsuit against the Charlottesville City Council. They said that the removal would violate the terms of the statue’s donor and that it would go against laws surrounding war statues.
March 2017: H.R. McMaster talked Trump out of blocking Obama’s access to intelligence: Report:
Ex-national security adviser H.R. McMaster talked President Trump out of blocking former President Barack Obama’s access to intelligence briefings last year, according to a report Monday.
Around March 2017, when Trump accused his predecessor, without evidence, of wiretapping Trump Tower, some of his associates in the White House were pushing their boss to pull the security clearances of Obama administration officials they saw as political rivals.
Some even suggested that Obama should lose access to intelligence briefings, an extreme move as all living ex-presidents can get them. But, the New Yorker reports, Trump was told of the importance of allowing former presidents to keep access to intelligence as they sometimes meet with foreign leaders, and with McMaster’s insistence, decided not to make a move against Obama.
4 March 2017: Pro-Trump rally in Berkeley turns violent as protesters clash with the president’s supporters:
Supporters of the president and anti-Trump protesters clashed violently Saturday in Berkeley, Calif., on a day that numerous pro-Trump rallies took place across the country.
A planned “March 4 Trump” demonstration held at the city’s Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park — several blocks from the University of California at Berkeley campus — escalated after fights broke out between those who had shown up for the event and counter-protesters, which led to at least 10 arrests.
Photos and video from the afternoon showed police outfitted in riot gear, as shouting matches erupted within the crowd of a few hundred people, according to police. People could be seen kicking and hitting one another, either with their bare hands or with the signs they had been carrying.
Seven people received medical attention for injuries, but none needed or wanted to be taken to the hospital, police said.
Of the arrests, five were for battery, four for assault with a deadly weapon (including one person who had a dagger) and one for resisting arrest, according to Berkeley police.
Among the items confiscated from the crowd were metal pipes, baseball bats, two-by-four blocks of wood and bricks, police added.
Throughout the afternoon, images of the Berkeley clashes circulated on social media. At one point, Berkeley police released an alert to quash a rumor spreading online that someone had died of a stab wound at the rally.
5 March 2017: Trump wants Congress to find out if Obama wiretapped him:
Press Secretary Sean Spicer says the White House is requesting that the congressional intelligence committees examine Trump’s allegations that Obama wiretapped Trump during the campaign as part of their investigation into Russia’s election activity.
5 March 2017: Trump blasts Obama for hot mic moment from 2012:
President Trump is no stranger to hot mic moments — and he isn’t letting one of his predecessor’s rest.
Trump recalls a March 2012 conversation involving then-President Obama and then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev.
“Who was it that secretly said to Russian President, ‘Tell Vladimir that after the election I’ll have more flexibility?’” Trump wrote.
7 March 2017: Boris Epshteyn threatens to pull all West Wing officials from appearing on Fox News:
White House official Boris Epshteyn, a combative Trump loyalist tasked with plugging the president’s message on television, threatened earlier this year to pull all West Wing officials from appearing on Fox News after a tense appearance on anchor Bill Hemmer’s show.
Epshteyn, according to multiple sources familiar with the exchange, got in a yelling match with a Fox News booker after Hemmer pressed him for details of President Donald Trump’s controversial executive order cracking down on immigration from Muslim-majority countries — a topic he was not expecting to be grilled on.
“Am I someone you want to make angry?” Epshteyn told the booker, the sources said. When he threatened to pull White House officials from the network, the fed-up booker had had enough.
“Go right ahead,” the booker fired back, the sources said, aware that Epshteyn had no power to follow through on a threat that would have upended the administration’s relationship with a sympathetic news network.
16 March 2017: The White House doubles down on Trump’s Wiretapping claims:
Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary, told reporters “there’s more to come” as far as evidence to support Mr. Trump’s claim of wiretapping.
That evening, Mr. Trump was asked about his wiretapping accusations during an interview with Fox News, and responded by saying he had been “seeing a lot of things.”
“I think you’re going to find some very interesting items coming to the forefront over the next two weeks,” Mr. Trump said.
22 March 2017: Racist Maryland man who fatally stabbed black New Yorker admits his intent to kill African-American men:
A white Army vet intent on killing black men stalked one potential victim before setting his sights on another — quenching his racist thirst by driving a sword through a man in Midtown, police said.
The 26-inch weapon — with an 18-inch blade — pierced the victim’s chest just above his heart and exited his back before pinging against the sidewalk on Monday night.
White supremacist James Jackson, 28, wanted maximum exposure for his crime, telling investigators he rode 200 miles on a bus from Baltimore because New York is the “media capital of the world.”
“He wanted to make a statement,” said Assistant Chief William Aubry, head of the Manhattan detectives squad.
25 March 2017: Violence erupts at pro-Trump rally in Huntington Beach:
Violence erupted at a Make America Great Again rally in Huntington Beach on Saturday after a protester opposed to President Trump allegedly doused a female organizer of the event with pepper spray, sparking a brawl that ended with several arrests.
A group of flag-waving Trump supporters tackled the man with the pepper spray, who was wearing a black mask, and started punching and kicking him, according to witnesses. Several other fights also broke out between demonstrators.
The crowd chased the masked man, who jumped over a fence and started running along Pacific Coast Highway, where he was detained by California Highway Patrol officers.
A handful of counter-protesters fled the scene.
Travis Guenther, whose wife was also pepper-sprayed, said he was among those who chased the masked man and struck him with a flag that said, “Trump, Make America Great Again.”
“I hit him five times with the flag over his head,” said Guenther, who yelled at the man as he was detained by law enforcement officials.
“How is your head?” he asked the man.
“We’re not xenophobic,” Guenther said. “We’re not racist. We’re just proud Americans.”
Jennifer Sterling of Huntington Beach, the organizer who was hit with pepper spray, seemed unfazed by the incident, which involved a small number of protesters.
“It was a quick reaction,” she said. “There was about 12 of them.”
Sterling said the rally was not simply for Trump but also a patriotic rally, celebrating first responders, military veterans, the vice president and the president. The noontime rally and march at Bolsa Chica State Beach was one of about 40 affiliated events scheduled nationwide.
The dozen or so counter-demonstrators — including one who wore a patch that said, “Only You Can Resist Racists Liars” — were overwhelmed by several hundred Trump supporters. They all refused to identify themselves, but one told a reporter that the group only used pepper spray after they were shoved and punched by their rivals.
But Steele Vaz, 17, of Huntington Beach said he saw masked people spray and punch Sterling and got in the middle to try and break it up.
“I was here to support [Trump] but I didn’t know it was going to be violent,” said Steele, who was there with his family. “They sprayed her. They were punching her.”
His mother Arlet Vaz said she was proud of her son’ actions.
“He did the right thing,” she said. “He’ll defend anybody.”
Vaz said this won’t stop the family from attending more pro-Trump rallies.
“There is even more reason to go,” she said.
Capt. Kevin Pearsall of California State Parks said six people were originally detained but only four were arrested. He said three men were arrested on suspicion of illegal use of a Taser, and one woman was arrested on suspicion of assault and battery. None of their names were immediately released.
Pearsall said all of those arrested were counter-demonstrators.
28 March 2017: The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration tried to prevent Sally Yates from testifying before the House intelligence committee:
The Washington Post reports that the Trump administration has tried to prevent former acting Attorney General Sally Yates from testifying before the House intelligence committee.
Yates — who was fired by Trump in January after she instructed Justice Department lawyers not to defend the administration’s executive order temporarily blocking immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries — was scheduled to testify before the committee in a public hearing that was canceled by Nunes. The White House denied that it had tried to block Yates from testifying, calling the Post’s story “entirely false.”
8 April 2017: Sebastian Gorka made Hungarian Nazi group ‘Proud’ by Wearing its Medal:
A group with alleged historical links to Nazi Germany has told NBC News it was “proud” when President Donald Trump’s deputy assistant wore its medal.
Controversy has swirled around Sebastian Gorka, one of Trump’s top counterterrorism advisers, ever since he attended the president’s Jan. 20 Inaugural Ball wearing the honorary medal of Hungarian nationalist organization Vitezi Rend.
“When he appeared on U.S. television … with the medal of the Vitez Order … it made me really proud,” Vitezi Rend spokesman Andras Horvath said in the Hungarian capital of Budapest. Vitezi Rend is also known as the Order of Vitez.
15 April 2017: 21 arrested as hundreds of Trump supporters and counter-protesters clash at Berkeley rally:
Hundreds of pro-Trump demonstrators and counter-protesters clashed Saturday at a “Patriots Day” rally in Berkeley, the third time the groups engaged in violent confrontations on city streets in recent months.
Fistfights broke out near Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, where Trump supporters had scheduled a rally. Fireworks and smoke bombs were thrown into the crowd, and a few demonstrators were doused with pepper spray.
Both groups threw rocks and sticks at each other and used a large trash bin as a battering ram as the crowd moved around the perimeter of the park. One bank boarded up its ATMs before the rally as a precaution.
About 250 police officers were deployed to the scene by mid-afternoon after officials sought assistance from the neighboring Oakland Police Department.
Twenty-one people were arrested, including some on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, according to Officer Byron White of the Berkeley Police Department. Eleven people were injured with at least six taken to a hospital for treatment, including one stabbing victim.
Police confiscated knives, stun guns and poles, White said.
23 April 2017: Trump endorses Marine Le Pen:
In an Associated Press interview, Trump expresses strong support for far-right candidate Marine Le Pen in upcoming French elections; Le Pen is supported by Putin and promises to remove France from the EU, a long-term goal for Putin. Le Pen had also visited Trump Tower in January, according to AP and Politico.
May 2017: Protests over the Charlottesville statue:
A group protesting the removal of the statue gathered, carrying torches, in what was then called Robert E. Lee Park, where the statue is located. They were met by counter-protesters.
1 May 2017: American University investigating on-campus racist incident involving bananas:
American University Public Safety is investigating a racist incident involving bananas that were discovered early this morning, according to a memorandum sent today to the University community from Interim Vice President of Campus Life Fanta Aw.
Aw said in the memorandum that multiple bananas were found hanging from string tied in the shape of nooses in three places on campus. Some of the bananas were marked with the letters “AKA,” the letters for the predominantly African-American sorority Alpha Kappa Alpha. The incident also coincided with Taylor Dumpson’s first day in office as Student Government president. She is the first African-American female president of SG.
Bananas were found at the shuttle bus stop at Letts-Anderson Halls, in front of Mary Graydon Center (MGC), and near the East Quad Building, said Camille Lepre, the University’s assistant vice president of communications.
“We will update our community in the days to come,” Lepre said. “We are reviewing video from the area that may help us identify suspects.”
3 May 2017: The F.B.I. Joins in the investigation with American University to investigate Bananas incident on campus:
The F.B.I. is helping American University in Washington, D.C., investigate an episode in which bananas were found hanging from nooses on campus this week, a spokeswoman for the agency said on Wednesday.
3 May 2017: Drunk Trump Supporter attacks Muslim Family in Texas:
In South Padre Island, Texas, 35-year-old Alexander Jennes Downing of Waterford, Connecticut, was captured on cellphone video taunting and aggressively approaching a Muslim family, repeatedly shouting, “Donald Trump will stop you!” and other Trump-related remarks. Police arrested downing, of Waterford, Connecticut, for public intoxication. It’s unclear what came of the charge.
7 May 2017: Kushner sister revives controversy over visa program for wealthy:
A much-criticized visa program that allows foreigners to win fast-track immigration in return for investing $500,000 in U.S. properties was extended in a bill signed by President Trump just one day before a sister of senior White House adviser Jared Kushner pitched the program to Chinese investors.
Trump, who advocates for restrictive immigration policies, extended the EB-5 investor program without long-promised changes as part of a massive federal spending bill. The program has offered wealthy foreigners a way around complicated U.S. immigration rules, allowing them to live in the United States and seek permanent residency in return for substantial investments.
9 May 2017: Judicial Watch files a FOIA Lawsuit for Yates’s government emails:
Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog organization, has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit to gain access to the emails of the former acting Attorney General Sally Yates.
According to the group’s statement, which came the day after Yates testified to a Senate panel about Russian interference in last year’s election, Judicial Watch filed suit against the Department of Justice after it “failed to respond to a February 1, 2017, FOIA request seeking access to her emails between January 21, 2017, and January 31, 2017.”
“Between her involvements in the Russian surveillance scandal and her lawless effort to thwart President Trump’s immigration executive order, Sally Yates short tenure as the acting Attorney General was remarkably troubling,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.
“Her email traffic might provide a window into how the anti-Trump ‘deep state’ abused the Justice Department,” he added.
23 May 2017: Murder of black student in Maryland sparks FBI hate crime investigation:
The FBI is investigating the fatal stabbing of a black student as a possible hate crime, after discovering the suspect may have been a member of an online white supremacist organisation.
Richard Collins III died after being stabbed on the campus of the University of Maryland, where he was visiting friends. The 23-year-old, who had recently been commissioned into the army as a lieutenant, was due to take part in a graduation ceremony at nearby Bowie State University.
Police have arrested 22-year-old Sean Urbanski and charged him over the fatal stabbing, which took place on Saturday morning.
Reports said the FBI had been asked to join the investigation after it was revealed that Mr. Urbanski was allegedly a member of a white supremacist group on Facebook.
The Associated Press said the University of Maryland Police Chief David Mitchell, said he had asked the FBI to assist after being told that Mr. Urbanski belonged to a group called “Alt-Reich: Nation”, where members post disparaging material about African Americans and others.
“We are here to evaluate that as an ongoing concern with respect to whether or not this was a hate crime,” said Gordon Johnson, special agent in charge of the FBI field office in Baltimore.
25 May 2017: Trump chastises fellow NATO members, demands they meet payment obligations:
President Trump exported the confrontational, nationalist rhetoric of his campaign across the Atlantic on Thursday, scolding European leaders for not footing more of the bill for their own defense and lecturing them to stop taking advantage of U.S. taxpayers.
Speaking in front of a twisted shard of the World Trade Center at NATO’s gleaming new headquarters in Brussels, Trump upbraided America’s longtime allies for “not paying what they should be paying.” He used a ceremony dedicating the memorial to NATO’s resolve in the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States as a platform to exhort leaders to “focus on terrorism and immigration” to ensure their security.
26 May 2017: Tillerson declines to host Ramadan Event at State Department:
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has declined a request to host an event to mark Islam’s holy month of Ramadan, two U.S. officials said, apparently breaking with a bipartisan tradition in place with few exceptions for nearly 20 years.
Since 1999, Republican and Democratic secretaries of state have nearly always hosted either an iftar dinner to break the day’s fast during Ramadan or a reception marking the Eid al-Fitr holiday at the end of the month, at the State Department.
26 May 2017: 2 killed in stabbing on MAX train in Northeast Portland as man directs slurs at Muslim women, police say:
Two men were killed in a stabbing on a MAX train Friday when they tried to intervene as another man yelled racial slurs at two young women who appeared to be Muslim, including one wearing a hijab, police said.
A third passenger who tried to help was also stabbed, but is expected to survive, said Portland police spokesman Sgt. Pete Simpson.
Officers arrested the suspect as he ran from the Hollywood transit station into the neighborhood near Providence Portland Medical Center in Northeast Portland, Simpson said. Police are still working to identify him and the three men stabbed.
The suspect was ranting about many things, using “hate speech or biased language,” and at one point focused on the young women, Simpson said.
The suspect then turned on the passengers who tried to help, Simpson said.
“In the midst of his ranting and raving, some people approached him and appeared to try to intervene with his behavior and some of the people that he was yelling at,” Simpson said. “They were attacked viciously.”
One good Samaritan died at the scene and another at the hospital, he said. The third victim was undergoing evaluation, but didn’t suffer life-threatening wounds, he said.
June 2017: Robert E. Lee Plaque removed in Charlottesville:
In Charlottesville, a plaque is removed from in front of the Robert E. Lee statue.
June 2017: Trump says 15,000 recent immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS”:
Late to his own meeting and waving a sheet of numbers, President Trump stormed into the Oval Office one day in June, plainly enraged.
Five months before, Mr. Trump had dispatched federal officers to the nation’s airports to stop travelers from several Muslim countries from entering the United States in a dramatic demonstration of how he would deliver on his campaign promise to fortify the nation’s borders.
But so many foreigners had flooded into the country since January, he vented to his national security team, that it was making a mockery of his pledge. Friends were calling to say he looked like a fool, Mr. Trump said.
According to six officials who attended or were briefed about the meeting, Mr. Trump then began reading aloud from the document, which his domestic policy adviser, Stephen Miller, had given him just before the meeting. The document listed how many immigrants had received visas to enter the United States in 2017.
More than 2,500 were from Afghanistan, a terrorist haven, the president complained.
Haiti had sent 15,000 people. They “all have AIDS,” he grumbled, according to one person who attended the meeting and another person who was briefed about it by a different person who was there.
Forty thousand had come from Nigeria, Mr. Trump added. Once they had seen the United States, they would never “go back to their huts” in Africa, recalled the two officials, who asked for anonymity to discuss a sensitive conversation in the Oval Office.
As the meeting continued, John F. Kelly, then the secretary of homeland security, and Rex W. Tillerson, the secretary of state, tried to interject, explaining that many were short-term travelers making one-time visits. But as the president continued, Mr. Kelly and Mr. Miller turned their ire on Mr. Tillerson, blaming him for the influx of foreigners and prompting the secretary of state to throw up his arms in frustration. If he was so bad at his job, maybe he should stop issuing visas altogether, Mr. Tillerson fired back.
Tempers flared and Mr. Kelly asked that the room be cleared of staff members. But even after the door to the Oval Office was closed, aides could still hear the president berating his most senior advisers.
Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, denied on Saturday morning that Mr. Trump had made derogatory statements about immigrants during the meeting.
4 June 2017: MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts asks if Trump ‘trying to provoke a domestic terrorist attack’?:
MSNBC anchor Thomas Roberts twice asked if President Trump “is trying to provoke a domestic terrorist attack” during a Sunday afternoon segment.
“Let’s not be PC about this,” Roberts said before first asking Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed (D), “Is the president trying to provoke a domestic terrorist attack with this Twitter rant because — only to prove himself right?”
Reed didn’t address the question directly but stated, “not being politically correct doesn’t mean being misinformed or leaking intelligence that harms one of our most important allies.” He later added, “The way to handle a matter of this kind is not through the form of tweet, it’s form of leader to leader direct conversations often handled in a confidential manner.”
Roberts, who primarily anchors on weekends, tried again with former Vermont governor and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, who also avoided answering directly.
“I asked this of Mayor Reed, but it seems like the president is trying to provoke something that he can politicize more for his own gain in America. Do you feel that way?” Roberts asked.
“Well, I think he’s totally incompetent,” said Dean before pivoting to criticism Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris climate accord.
“I’m tired of this crap,” Dean later said. “Let him do what he wants. He’s not the president of what the American dream stands for. He’s not the president of the greatest nation on the face of the Earth.
“He can be his own president and get whatever he wants out of that. We’ll speak for America. He can speak for whoever he wants.”
Trump renewed his call after the attacks for courts to approve his executive order banning travel from six Muslim-majority countries.
“We need to be smart, vigilant and tough. We need the courts to give us back our rights,” the president tweeted. “We need the Travel Ban as an extra level of safety!”
July 2017: Robert E. Lee Park is renamed:
Robert E. Lee Park is renamed Emancipation Park, the city’s then-mayor announced.
21 July 2017: Former Obama spy chiefs upbraid Trump for his remarks about his intelligence agencies:
Two former senior Obama administration intelligence officials on Friday expressed anger at President Trump’s statements disparaging the intelligence community and disbe ief at his embrace of Russia.
In remarkably strong terms and in their first extensive remarks on the topic since leaving office on Jan. 20, former CIA director John Brennan and former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. let loose on Trump, who before taking office had compared his intelligence community to Nazi Germany.
“That was a terrible, insulting affront” to the rank and file — “completely inappropriate, over-the-top,” Clapper said at the Aspen Security Forum. He said he could not let that pass and had called Trump to register his displeasure.
2 August 2017: U.S. Attorney Subpoenas Kushner Cos. Over Investment-For-Visa Program:
Kushner Cos., the New York property development business owned by the family of White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, has been subpoenaed by New York federal prosecutors regarding its use of an investment-for-immigration program, according to people familiar with the matter.
The subpoena concerns at least one Jersey City, N.J., development financed in part by a federal visa program known as EB-5: twin, 66-floor commercial-and-residential towers called One Journal Square, said a person familiar with the subpoena.
A spokesman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which issued the subpoena, declined to comment. The Kushner Cos. general counsel, Emily Wolf, said in a statement that “Kushner Companies utilized the program, fully complied with its rules and regulations and did nothing improper. We are cooperating with legal requests for information.”
9 August 2017: Sebastian Gorka gives a Classified “tirade” about radical Islam:
Sebastian Gorka gives an explosive two-and-a-half-hour speech to the U.S. Army’s special operations school, which an officer who was present characterized as a “tirade” about the war in Afghanistan, Sharia law, radical Islamic terrorism, and the Trump administration’s aggressive policies to counter and “defeat it all.”
It was “classic Gorka,” said another U.S. Army special operations officer.
BuzzFeed News learned about the speech, which was classified, through documents obtained in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.
Gorka delivered the Aug. 9 lecture, titled “Transnational Terrorism/Insurgent Ideology,” via secure video teleconference from the White House to students at the U.S. Army’s elite Special Operations Center of Excellence, in Fort Bragg.
11 August 2017: Governor Terry McAuliffe warns Virginians over the “Unite The Right” protests:
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe releases a statement about planned security for the “Unite the Right” white nationalist rally, which was planned in part to protest the removal of the statue. He said that participants had the right to exercise their freedom of speech, but that he found their views “abhorrent.” He urged demonstrators of every view point to make alternative plans.
11 August 2017: Judge rules that the event can proceed:
After the city of Charlottesville had lobbied for a change in venue due to the size of the event, a judge ruled that the event could remain in Emancipation Park as planned.
Hundreds of white nationalists, some wielding torches, gathered at the University of Virginia ahead of Saturday’s larger rally. Their chants included phrases such as “white lives matter,” “you will not replace us,” and the Nazi-associated phrase “blood and soil.” The mayor of Charlottesville called it a “cowardly parade of hatred, bigotry, racism, and intolerance.”
12 August 2017: The Unite The Right rally and counter protests begin:
Demonstrators begin gathering at least three and a half hours before the event is scheduled to start.
12 August 2017: Violence breaks out in Charlottesville:
Violence breaks out between protesters and counter-protesters. Virginia Police say there are two people who have injuries that are “serious but not life-threatening.”
12 August 2017 (8:35am): The “Unite The Right” Rally is delcared an unlawful assembly:
The event is declared an unlawful assembly by law enforcement.
12 August 2017 (8:52am): A state of emergency is declared:
After the violence pours out into the streets of Charlottesville, Gov. McAuliffe declares a state of emergency.
12 August 2017 (10:19am): President Trump “calls for unity”:
Trump Tweets:
We ALL must be united & condemn all that hate stands for. There is no place for this kind of violence in America. Lets come together as one!
12 August 2017 (10:40am): Heather Heyer is killed:
A car plows into a crowd of people. One counter-protester, 32-year-old Heather Heyer, is killed. At least 19 other people were sent to the hospital.
12 August 2017 (12:30pm) President Trump’s first “on many sides” comment:
President Trump addressed the nation, condemning the violence “on many sides” and saying “We must love each other, respect each other and cherish our history and our future together.”
The president’s remarks were met with criticism from both sides, with many calling for Trump to call out and condemn the white nationalists groups by name.
12 August 2017 (2:00pm) Helicopter crash near Charlottesville:
Two policemen were killed when their helicopter crashed as they were responding to the day’s events. They were identified as Lt. H. Jay Cullen and Trooper-Pilot Berke M.M. Bates.
13 August 2017: The White House tries to walk back the President’s “on many sides” comment:
A White House spokesperson released a statement saying that the president condemns white nationalists groups.
“The president said very strongly in his statement yesterday that he condemns all forms of violence, bigotry and hatred,” the statement reads, “and of course that includes white supremacists, KKK, neo-Nazi and all extremist groups. He called for national unity and bringing all Americans together.”
Solidarity events took place around the country on Sunday, and more are planned for Monday. Democratic group Indivisible told Vox that nearly 700 such events have already been planned.
14 August 2017: The President again makes things worse with his second “on many sides” comment:
The president again addressed the violence, restating parts of his original statement without using the words “on many, many sides.” This time he listed neo-Nazis and the KKK by name in his condemnation.
16 August 2017: Trump Lawyer forwards Email echoing Secessionist rhetoric:
President Trump’s personal lawyer on Wednesday forwarded an email to conservative journalists, government officials and friends that echoed secessionist Civil War propaganda and declared that the group Black Lives Matter “has been totally infiltrated by terrorist groups.”
The email forwarded by John Dowd, who is leading the president’s legal team, painted the Confederate general Robert E. Lee in glowing terms and equated the South’s rebellion to that of the American Revolution against England. Its subject line — “The Information that Validates President Trump on Charlottesville” — was a reference to comments Mr. Trump made earlier this week in the aftermath of protests in the Virginia college town.
“You cannot be against General Lee and be for General Washington,” the email reads, “there literally is no difference between the two men.”
16 August 2017 (7:10): White House aides wrestle with Trump’s race comments:
White House aides are wrestling with how to respond to President Donald Trump’s defiant news conference on Tuesday in which he doubled down on his statement that “both sides” are to blame for the Charlottesville violence and offered what some perceived to be overtures to white supremacists.
No aides had yet threatened to resign as of Wednesday morning, according to White House officials and advisers, but a number of White House staffers had private conversations on Tuesday night about how terribly the day went.
White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who was standing near Trump on Tuesday for what was supposed to be a statement about infrastructure, was particularly displeased, according to people familiar with the matter, as the president launched into a rant about the culpability of the “alt-left” while calling some of the protesters at the white nationalist rally “very fine people.”
But there has been no word from Cohn about any plans to step down.
17 August 2017 (11:39): Gary Cohn will stay on as Trump’s top economic aide: White House official:
Top White House economic adviser Gary Cohn, who has been leading the Trump administration’s effort to overhaul the U.S. tax code, will remain in his position as director of the National Economic Council, a White House official said.
Cohn, who was said to be particularly upset over President Donald Trump’s remarks on the violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, has no plans to resign, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
26 August 2017: Trump Cybersecurity Advisors resign, citing his ‘insufficient attention’ to threats”:
A quarter of the members of the National Infrastructure Advisory Council, whose purview includes national cybersecurity, have resigned. In a group resignation letter, they cited both specific shortfalls in the administration’s approach to cybersecurity, and broader concerns that Trump and his administration have undermined the “moral infrastructure” of the U.S.
The resignations came Monday and were acknowledged by the White House on Tuesday. Nextgov has recently published the resignation letter that the departing councilors submitted. According to Roll Call, seven members resigned from the 27-member Council.
Several of those resigning were Obama-era appointees, including former U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil and former Office of Science and Technology Policy Chief of Staff Cristin Dorgelo. Not surprisingly, then, the issues outlined in the resignation letter were broad, faulting both Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accords and his inflammatory statements after the Charlottesville attacks, some of which came during what was intended to be an infrastructure-focused event.
6 September 2017: Russians Flock to Trump Properties to Give Birth to U.S. Citizens:
Anatoliy Kuzmin held out his daughter’s blue U.S. passport over a red Russian one and snapped a photo from a Florida beach.
“Woohoo! Got dual citizenship for my daughter!” he wrote on Instagram.
American citizenship for the newborn girl was the goal of Kuzmin and his Instagram-celebrity wife, who sought the help of birth-tourism services in Florida for the arrival of their first child. They are among the estimated hundreds of Russian parents who flock to the U.S. annually for warm weather, excellent medical care, and, more importantly, birthright American citizenship.
And many, like Kuzmin and his wife, stay at President Donald Trump’s properties in Florida.
While Trump rails against U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants, his Florida properties have become a playground for birth tourists from Russia’s upper crust. The Daily Beast has discovered several companies are advertising rentals in Trump properties to expectant Russian parents. While the Trump Organization does not directly profit from subleases of privately owned condos, it does benefit from Russian patronage of the nearby Trump International Beach Resort. (The Trump Organization did not return requests comment.)
Many of the companies that cater to Russian birth tourists advertise their services openly and warn no one will get in trouble as long as they don’t lie on immigration paperwork.
11 September 2017: Russia revealed to have used Facebook to organize Anti-Immigrant rallies on U.S. Soil:
Russian operatives hiding behind false identities used Facebook’s event-management tool to remotely organize and promote political protests in the U.S., including an August 2016 anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim rally in Idaho, The Daily Beast has learned.
A Facebook spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast that the social-media giant “shut down several promoted events as part of the takedown we described last week.” The company declined to elaborate, except to confirm that the events were promoted with paid ads. (This is the first time the social-media giant has publicly acknowledged the existence of such events.)
The Facebook events — one of which echoed Islamophobic conspiracy theories pushed by pro-Trump media outlets — are the first indication that the Kremlin’s attempts to shape America’s political discourse moved beyond fake news and led unwitting Americans into specific real-life action.
“This is the next step,” Clint Watts, a former FBI agent and expert on Russia’s influence campaign, told The Daily Beast. “The objective of influence is to create behavior change. The simplest behavior is to have someone disseminate propaganda that Russia created and seeded. The second part of behavior influence is when you can get people to physically do something.”
Last week Facebook acknowledged for the first time that Russia used false identities and about 3,000 ads to spread politically divisive posts to Americans before and after the election. The content, according to an expert on Facebook’s advertising system, was likely seen by between 23 and 70 million people, based on the $100,000 ad buy alone.
Much of the Russian Facebook propaganda campaign has since been deleted. But bits and pieces remain visible in search-engine caches, including a 2016 notice on Facebook Events — the site’s event-management and invitation tool — announcing an Aug. 27 rally in a rural Idaho town known to welcome refugees.
“Due to the town of Twin Falls, Idaho, becoming a center of refugee resettlement, which led to the huge upsurge of violence towards American citizens, it is crucial to draw society’s attention to this problem,” the event notice began. The three-hour protest was titled “Citizens before refugees,” and would be held at the City Council Chambers beginning at 11 a.m. The notice provided the street address and ended with a fiery exhortation.
14 September 2017 (13:00): Facebook enabled Advertisers to reach ‘Jew Haters’:
Want to market Nazi memorabilia, or recruit marchers for a far-right rally? Facebook’s self-service ad-buying platform had the right audience for you.
Until this week, when we asked Facebook about it, the world’s largest social network enabled advertisers to direct their pitches to the news feeds of almost 2,300 people who expressed interest in the topics of “Jew hater,” “How to burn jews,” or, “History of ‘why jews ruin the world.’”
To test if these ad categories were real, we paid $30 to target those groups with three “promoted posts” — in which a ProPublica article or post was displayed in their news feeds. Facebook approved all three ads within 15 minutes.
27 September 2017: Russians reveals to have impersonated real American Muslims to stir chaos on Facebook and Instagram:
The Facebook group United Muslims of America was neither united, Muslim, nor American.
Instead, sources familiar with the group tell The Daily Beast, it was an imposter account on the world’s largest social network that’s been traced back to the Russian government.
Using the account as a front to reach American Muslims and their allies, the Russians pushed memes that claimed Hillary Clinton admitted the U.S. “created, funded and armed” al-Qaeda and the so-called Islamic State; claimed that John McCain was ISIS’ true founder; whitewashed blood-drenched dictator Moammar Gadhafi and praised him for not having a “Rothschild-owned central bank”; and falsely alleged Osama bin Laden was a “CIA agent.”
7 October 2017: FBI terrorism unit says ‘black identity extremists’ pose a violent threat:
The US government has declared “black identity extremists” a violent threat, according to a leaked report from the FBI’s counter-terrorism division.
The assessment, obtained by Foreign Policy, has raised fears about federal authorities racially profiling activists and aggressively prosecuting civil rights protesters.
The report, dated August 2017 and compiled by the Domestic Terrorism Analysis Unit, said: “The FBI assesses it is very likely Black Identity Extremist (BIE) perceptions of police brutality against African Americans spurred an increase in premeditated, retaliatory lethal violence against law enforcement and will very likely serve as justification for such violence.” Incidents of “alleged police abuse” have “continued to feed the resurgence in ideologically motivated, violent criminal activity within the BIE movement”.
The FBI’s dedicated surveillance of black activists follows a long history of the US government aggressively monitoring protest movements and working to disrupt civil rights groups, but the scrutiny of African Americans by a domestic terrorism unit was particularly alarming to some free speech campaigners.
“When we talk about enemies of the state and terrorists, with that comes an automatic stripping of those people’s rights to speak and protest,” said Mohammad Tajsar, staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union. “It marginalizes what are legitimate voices within the political debate that are calling for racial and economic justice.”
The document has emerged at a time of growing concerns about Donald Trump’s links to the far right and white nationalists, and increasing anxieties about his administration’s efforts to further criminalize communities of color and shield police from scrutiny. Anti-Trump protesters and Black Lives Matter activists have continued to face harsh prosecutions and close federal monitoring.
The FBI did not immediately respond to the Guardian’s request for comment on Friday, but defended its tracking of “black identity extremists” in a statement to Foreign Policy, claiming the “FBI cannot initiate an investigation based solely on an individual’s race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, or the exercise of First Amendment rights”.
8 October 2017 (18:00): Russia recruited YouTubers to bash ‘Racist B*tch’ Hillary Clinton over Rap beats:
According to the YouTube page for “Williams and Kalvin,” the Clintons are “serial killers who are going to rape the whole nation.” Donald Trump can’t be racist because he’s a “businessman.” Hillary Clinton’s campaign was “fund[ed] by the Muslim.”
These are a sample of the videos put together by two black video bloggers calling themselves Williams and Kalvin Johnson, whose social media pages investigators say are part of the broad Russian campaign to influence American politics. Across Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube, they purported to offer “a word of truth” to African-American audiences.
“We, the black people, we stand in one unity. We stand in one to say that Hillary Clinton is not our candidate,” one of the men says in a November video that warned Clinton “is going to stand for the Muslim. We don’t stand for her.”
22 October 2017: Trump Supporter threatens to kill Rep. Maxine Waters:
A 44-year-old California man threatened to kill Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., for her frequent criticism of Trump and her promise to “take out” the president. Anthony Scott Lloyd left a voicemail at the congresswoman’s Washington office, declaring: “If you continue to make threats towards the president, you’re going to wind up dead, Maxine. Cause we’ll kill you.”
After pleading guilty to one count of threatening a U.S. official, Lloyd asked the judge for leniency, saying he suffered from addiction-inducing mental illness and became “far too immersed in listening to polarizing political commentators and engaging in heated political debates online.” His lawyer put it this way to the judge: “Mr. Lloyd was a voracious consumer of political news online, on television and on radio … [that are] commonly viewed as ‘right wing,’ unconditionally supportive of President Trump, and fiercely critical of anyone who opposed President Trump’s policies.” The judge sentenced Lloyd to six months of house arrest and three years of probation.
25 October 2017 (05:18): Former Milo Yiannopoulos Intern kills his Father for calling him a Nazi:
Lane Davis’ parents, Catherine and Charles Davis were used to their son’s outbursts. They had become so frequent that Charles had started recording the tirades on his phone. But that afternoon, they were tired of Lane’s screaming, wanted him to leave, and told him as much. Instead, Lane chased his parents around their home, spitting in his father’s face while screaming that he wasn’t threatening to kill them, but “pedophiles who were taking over the country.”
Catherine Davis called 911.
With the Police on their way, Lane stabs his Father to death.
10 November 2017 (06:45): Democrats want DHS nominee to return to Senate panel for more questioning:
Five Democratic senators say they want to hold an additional confirmation hearing for Kirstjen Nielsen, the Trump administration’s nominee to lead the Department of Homeland Security, citing a Washington Post report Thursday detailing efforts by the White House to pressure the agency’s acting director on a major immigration decision.
Nielsen testified Wednesday before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and made no stumbles, calmly fielding questions on a range of security topics. But five members of the confirmation panel — all Democrats — sent a letter to committee leaders later Thursday calling for her to return for further questioning under oath.
After the Washington Post described White House attempts to pressure the acting homeland security secretary, Elaine Duke, to expel tens of thousands of Honduran immigrants, as well as Duke’s plans to resign.
“These developments raise important new questions not only about the political interference of the White House in a key national security matter, but also about the qualifications and appropriateness of Ms. Nielsen’s nomination to be the next Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security,” the senators wrote in their letter, which was addressed to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), and its ranking Democrat, Sen. Claire McCaskill (Mo).
“The nominee must now answer questions about her ability to maintain independence from her current immediate superior, the White House,” they wrote.
24 November 2017: While eyes are on Russia, Sessions dramatically reshapes the Justice Department:
For more than five hours, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sat in a hearing room on Capitol Hill this month, fending off inquiries on Washington’s two favorite topics: President Trump and Russia.
But legislators spent little time asking Sessions about the dramatic and controversial changes in policy he has made since taking over the top law enforcement job in the United States nine months ago.
From his crackdown on illegal immigration to his reversal of Obama administration policies on criminal justice and policing, Sessions is methodically reshaping the Justice Department to reflect his nationalist ideology and hard-line views — moves drawing comparatively less public scrutiny than the ongoing investigations into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with the Kremlin.
Sessions has implemented a new charging and sentencing policy that calls for prosecutors to pursue the most serious charges possible, even if that might mean minority defendants face stiff, mandatory minimum penalties. He has defended the president’s travel ban and tried to strip funding from cities with policies he considers too friendly toward undocumented immigrants.
28 November 2017: Trump retweets a string of anti-Muslim videos published by a leader of the British far-right:
President Donald Trump retweeted on Wednesday morning a string of tweets posted from the account of an anti-Muslim, British far-right politician.
Trump reposted three videos from the account of Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of Britain First.
The group is notorious in the UK for its racially-charged and frequently inaccurate statements about Muslims.
Fransen herself has been arrested several times this year in connection with her political activities.
In November she was convicted of religiously aggravated harassment for shouting at a Muslim, hijab-wearing woman during a deliberately provocative “Christian patrol” of the town of Luton.
As of 1.30 p.m. on Wednesday, “Britain First” had become the second-highest trending topic on Twitter.
Fransen is awaiting trial for inciting religious hatred in the town of Ramsgate, according to KentLive. She also awaits trial in Northern Ireland over an inflammatory speech made there earlier this month, according to the BBC.
4 December 2017: Supreme Court allows full enforcement of Trump travel ban while legal challenges continue:
The Supreme Court on Monday granted President Trump’s request to fully enforce his revised order banning travel to the United States by residents of six mostly Muslim countries while legal challenges to it proceed in lower courts.
It was a victory for the White House, which has seen the courts trim back various iterations of the travel ban, and it bodes well for the administration if the Supreme Court is called upon to finally decide the merits of the president’s actions.
Two lower courts had imposed restrictions on Trump’s new order, exempting travelers from the six countries who had “bona fide” connections with relatives — such as grandparents, aunts or uncles — or institutions in the United States. Those exemptions to the president’s order, issued in the fall, were along the lines of those imposed by the Supreme Court last summer on a previous version of the travel ban.
But in an unsigned opinion Monday that did not disclose the court’s reasoning, the justices lifted the injunctions, which had been issued by federal judges in Hawaii and Maryland.
Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor noted that they would not have lifted the restrictions. The new ban also bars travelers from North Korea and Venezuela, but they were not affected by the injunctions.
The justices said they expected the federal judges reviewing challenges to the order — based on what challengers say are Trump’s animus toward Muslims and lack of authority under immigration laws — to handle the cases with “appropriate dispatch.”
The court’s move is “a substantial victory for the safety and security of the American people,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions said in a written statement. “We are pleased to have defended this order and heartened that a clear majority Supreme Court has allowed the President’s lawful proclamation protecting our country’s national security to go into full effect. The Constitution gives the President the responsibility and power to protect this country from all threats foreign and domestic, and this order remains vital to accomplishing those goals.”
The justices acted just after the American Civil Liberties Union, which is leading one of the lawsuits, sent a letter to the court Monday morning pointing out that Trump last week tweeted links to anti-Muslim videos.
Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, reacted to the court’s order with disappointment.
“President Trump’s anti-Muslim prejudice is no secret — he has repeatedly confirmed it, including just last week on Twitter,” Jadwat said. “It’s unfortunate that the full ban can move forward for now, but this order does not address the merits of our claims. We continue to stand for freedom, equality, and for those who are unfairly being separated from their loved ones.”
7 December 2017: Sheriff Joe Arpaio Not Interested in Trent Franks’ Seat — but ‘Seriously, Seriously, Seriously’ Considering the U.S. Senate:
Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has no interest in running for Rep. Trent Franks’ (R-AZ) soon-to-be vacated seat, he said on Thursday. Instead, the controversial lawman, who was recently pardoned by President Donald Trump, has his sights on a higher office.
“I am seriously, seriously, seriously considering running for the U.S. Senate,” Arpaio told The Daily Beast, “not the congressman’s seat.”
Whatever he decides, Arpaio’s next political step will have profound implications in the Grand Canyon State. He is a darling of anti-immigration hardliners, but reviled by Democrats and even some mainstream Republicans for his reputation of breaking the law to enforce it.
On Thursday, a spot opened him to run for the House of Representatives. Franks, who represents Arizona’s 8th congressional district, announced his intent to resign from his seat following reports that he had approached two female staffers about the possibility of serving as gestational surrogates for him and his wife. The House Ethics Committee has opened an investigation into whether Franks “engaged in conduct that constitutes sexual harassment and/or retaliation for opposing sexual harassment.”
Reached by The Daily Beast while grocery shopping, Arpaio said he had not yet heard of Franks’ impending resignation.
“He is a great man, and a great friend, and it’s a great loss for Arizona and our country,” said Arpaio, after being informed of the news. But Arpaio, a former six-term county sheriff, dismissed the possibility of running to replace Franks, noting that he did not reside in the Arizona 8th congressional district.
When The Daily Beast pointed out that the U.S. Constitution specifies that members of the House of Representatives merely be residents of their state, not their specific district, Arpaio said that it was not Franks’ seat, but retiring Sen. Jeff Flake’s, that has caught his eye.
18 December 2017: Charlottesville police chief resigns in wake of report on white-supremacist rally:
Charlottesville Police Chief Alfred Thomas resigned abruptly Monday, just 17 days after the release of a report that was highly critical of the police department’s handling of a white-supremacist rally in August that turned deadly in the Virginia city.
The 207-page report prepared by Timothy Heaphy, a former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Virginia, concluded that the department was ill-prepared, lacked proper training and had a flawed plan for managing the Unite the Right rally that drew hundreds of neo-Nazis and white nationalists to Charlottesville on Aug. 12 and resulted in violent clashes with counterprotesters. The lack of adequate preparation led to “disastrous results,” Heaphy wrote.
Thomas, an Air Force veteran who previously was chief of police in Lexington, Va., had led the Charlottesville agency since May 2016. He was the city’s first black police chief.
22 December 2017: Appeals Court Rules that Trump’s third attempt at a Travel Ban still violates Federal Law:
President Trump’s third attempt at implementing his travel ban — issued via a September proclamation — again violates federal law, a panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled on Friday.
The court ruled in a lengthy decision that “the Proclamation’s indefinite entry suspensions constitute nationality discrimination in the issuance of immigrant visas,” a ruling the panel concluded shows the challengers had shown a likelihood that they would succeed in their lawsuit.
The court, which heard arguments earlier this month, narrowed the district court’s prior injunction — which barred enforcement of the travel ban against six majority Muslim nations — to people from those six nations with “a credible bona fide relationship with the United States.”
The court, however, will keep Friday’s order on hold pending the outcome of any Supreme Court review sought by the Justice Department.
2 January 2018: Russia probe grand jury looks like ‘a Black Lives Matter rally,’ says witness:
The federal grand jury handing down indictments for special counsel Robert Mueller doesn’t appear to include any supporters of President Donald Trump, according to one witness who recently testified before the panel.
“The grand jury room looks like a Bernie Sanders rally,” my source said. “Maybe they found these jurors in central casting, or at a Black Lives Matter rally in Berkeley [Calif.]”
Of the 20 jurors, 11 are African-Americans and two were wearing “peace T-shirts,” the witness said. “There was only one white male in the room, and he was a prosecutor.” Mueller was not present.
The Washington, DC, grand jury, which meets only on Fridays, handed down its first indictments in October, charging Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, and his partner Rick Gates with money laundering and failing to register as foreign agents. The two are pleading not guilty.
Mueller’s team is expected to bring more charges against Manafort relating to his work on behalf of the Ukrainian government in the years before Trump became a candidate.
Sol Wachtler, the former chief judge in New York, once called for abolishing grand juries because they are so easily manipulated that they would “indict a ham sandwich.”
My source said, “That room isn’t a room where POTUS gets a fair shake.”
3 January 2018: ICE Director Calls For Arrest Of ‘Sanctuary’ City And State Officials:
The acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Tuesday advocated for the arrest of local and state government officials who don’t cooperate with federal immigration agents.
“This is a victimization of the American community,” Thomas Homan told Fox News’ Neil Cavuto. “This isn’t the America I grew up in. We’ve got to take these sanctuary cities on. We’ve got to take them to court, and we’ve got to start charging some of these politicians with crimes.”
While there’s no strict legal definition a “sanctuary” city or state, Homan, who President Donald Trump has nominated to serve as ICE’s formal director, was responding to California’s SB54, which went into effect on Jan. 1.
The law, like many on the local level nationwide, limits police officers’ ability to detain suspected undocumented immigrants on federal agents’ behalf. The bill’s author, Senate Leader Kevin de Leon, said it would put “a large kink in Trump’s perverse and inhuman deportation machine.”
10 January 2018: Body of missing UPenn student Blaze Bernstein found in California park:
The body of a University of Pennsylvania student who went missing while home in Southern California on winter break has been found and his death is being investigated as a homicide, authorities said on Wednesday.
Authorities had been searching for 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein for days when his body was found Tuesday afternoon in brush surrounding a neighborhood park in the Foothill Ranch area of the city of Lake Forest, the Orange County sheriff’s department said in a statement.
Bernstein, who was home visiting his family, was last seen around 11 p.m. on Jan. 2 while entering Borrego Park. Witnesses said Bernstein met up with a friend and the two drove there, and he got out of the vehicle and went into the park, authorities said.
11 January 2018: White House Dismisses Bipartisan DACA Deal From Senate Group:
A bipartisan group of senators has struck an initial deal that would shield “DREAMers” from deportation in exchange for more money for border security and changes to some immigration programs — but senior White House officials and congressional GOP hardliners made it clear it’s a nonstarter almost as soon as it materialized.
Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), part of a bipartisan working group, told reporters Thursday that the group he was involved with, along with two other Republican senators and three Democrats, had reached a bipartisan agreement to give immigrants brought here illegally as children permanent legal status in exchange for some new restrictions on so-called “chain migration” and the visa lottery program.
“We are at a deal,” Flake told reporters. “It’s the only game in town.”
But White House Director of Legislative Affairs Marc Short immediately dismissed the nascent deal as he exited a meeting with senators Thursday afternoon, saying the White House still opposed backing a DREAM Act to give immigrants brought here as minors legal status rather than just renewing the legal standing of the 700,000 or so people currently in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and wanted to see more restrictions on other immigration programs in exchange.
“There’s still a ways to go,” he said. “We’re pleased the bipartisan members are talking… but I still think there’s a ways to go,” Short said.
11 January 2018: Trump attacks protections for immigrants from ‘shithole’ countries:
President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they discussed granting entry to immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.
Trump then suggested that the United States should instead bring more people from countries like Norway, whose prime minister he met with Wednesday. The president, according to a White House official, also suggested he would be open to more immigrants from Asian countries because he felt they help the United States economically.
In addition, the president singled out Haiti, telling lawmakers that immigrants from that country must be left out of any deal, these people said.
“Why do we need more Haitians?” Trump said, according to people familiar with the meeting. “Take them out.”
12 January 2018: President Trump cancels London trip, blames Obama for embassy deal:
President Donald Trump has canceled a trip to London to open the new U.S. Embassy, blaming the Obama administration for selling the old building in the city for “peanuts.”
He criticised the move from “perhaps the best located and finest embassy,” even though the relocation was initiated under George W. Bush’s administration in 2008 and followed security concerns in the aftermath of terror attacks such as the 1998 embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya.
His decision was greeted with relief by London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan who said Trump had “finally got the message” that he was not welcome in the capital.
The looming trip, along with another state visit for which no date has yet been set, has created a security headache for authorities amid the threat of mass protests.
19 January 2018: ICE has detained or deported prominent immigration activists:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has detained or deported several prominent immigrant activists across the country, prompting accusations from advocates that the Trump administration is improperly targeting political opponents.
Detention Watch Network, a nonprofit that tracks immigration enforcement, said this week that several activists have been targeted recently, including Maru Mora Villalpando in Washington state, Eliseo Jurado in Colorado, and New York immigrant leaders Jean Montrevil and Ravi Ragbir.
“They’re trying to intimidate people,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), the ranking Democrat of the House Judiciary Committee. “These are well-known activists who’ve been here for decades, and they’re saying to them: Don’t raise your head.”
A top ICE official denied that the agency is targeting immigrants for deportation because of their activism. The agency says its priorities are immigrants who pose a threat to national and border security and public safety. Most, but not all, of the targeted immigrants have criminal records.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not target unlawfully present aliens for arrest based on advocacy positions they hold or in retaliation for critical comments they make,” said Matthew Albence, ICE’S executive associate director for Enforcement and Removal Operations, which detains and deports immigrants. “Any suggestion to the contrary is irresponsible, speculative and inaccurate.”
The accusations come as a congressional clash on immigration policy, and after months of rising tensions between immigrant-rights activists and the Trump administration. In California, New York and Washington, governing Democrats have discouraged businesses from cooperating with ICE — part of a clash over “sanctuary status” that has been tied up in courts.
21 January 2018: Team Trump Bypassed DHS Analysts to Produce Bogus Terror Report:
The document didn’t mince words. It claimed three-quarters of “international terrorism” convicts were immigrants, an assertion meant to bolster Donald Trump’s cherished Muslim-focused ban on entering the country. And the report put the claim in the mouths of an agency assembled to keep Americans safe after 9/11: the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
Working off the 549 federal international-terrorism convictions tallied by the Justice Department, the document stated: “An analysis conducted by DHS determined that approximately 73 percent (402 of these 549 individuals) were foreign-born.”
But the Department of Homeland Security did not perform that analysis. DHS’ analysts did not contribute to the highly controversial report, The Daily Beast has learned.
According to a government source familiar with the episode, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ office took charge of the report’s assemblage of statistics — which some terrorism analysts consider highly misleading — and sent it to DHS Secretary Kirstjen M. Nielsen for her imprimatur after it was all but finalized.
“The Trump administration is trying to turn counterterrorism into an immigration issue,” said Charles Kurzman of the University of North Carolina, where he tracks Muslim-American involvement in terrorism.
“Within DHS, the perception is that the Trump administration used the Department to conflate immigrants with terrorists in support of the president’s immigration crackdown.”
26 January 2018: California Murder Suspect Said to Have Trained With Extremist Hate Group:
The California man accused of killing a 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania student earlier this month is an avowed neo-Nazi and a member of one of the most notorious extremist groups in the country, according to three people with knowledge of the man’s recent activities.
The man, Samuel Woodward, has been charged in Orange County, California, with murdering Blaze Bernstein, who went missing in early January while visiting his family over winter break. Prosecutors allege that Woodward stabbed Bernstein more than 20 times before burying his body in an Orange County park where it was eventually discovered. The two men had attended high school together.
Woodward, 20, is set to be arraigned on Feb. 2 and has not yet entered a plea. Orange County prosecutors say they are examining the possibility that the killing was a hate crime — Bernstein was Jewish and openly gay — and some recent news reports have suggested that the alleged killer might hold far-right or even white supremacist political beliefs.
Now, three people with detailed knowledge of Woodward’s recent past have been able to shed more light on the young man’s extremist activities. They said Woodward was a member of the Atomwaffen Division, an armed Fascist group with the ultimate aim of overthrowing the U.S. government through the use of terrorism and guerrilla warfare.
28 January 2018: Israel and Poland try to tamp down tensions after Poland’s ‘death camp’ law sparks Israeli outrage:
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki spoke by phone Sunday and agreed to open a dialogue to avoid further diplomatic fallout following Poland’s initial approval of a law making it a criminal offense to mention Polish complicity in crimes committed during the Holocaust.
The crisis between the two countries appeared to be deepening Sunday as Poland’s deputy chief of mission, Piotr Kozlowski, was summoned to the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Jerusalem to explain why his country would promote such legislation.
Polish lawmakers voted Friday for a bill that would fine or jail people who blamed Poland or Poles for Nazi atrocities committed on its soil during World War II, including the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Jews at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The law still needs final approval from the Polish Senate and the country’s president.
It comes as the country has become more nationalistic. Tens of thousands of people chanted and marched through Warsaw last year in an annual gathering of Europe’s far-right movements, and the majority party has sought to protect Poland’s image.
Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Kozlowski the vote’s timing was “particularly surprising and miserable,” pointing out that Friday was the eve of International Holocaust Remembrance Day. It was also the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in southern Poland.
Conveying a message from the Israeli government, the ministry said the “legislation will not help further the exposure of historical truth and may harm the freedom of research, as well as prevent discussion of the historical message and the legacy of World War II.”
6 February 2018: Polish President Signs Bill Giving Jail Time For Implicating Poland In The Holocaust:
Polish president President Andrzej Duda signed a bill on Tuesday that authorizes jail time for people convicted of suggesting the country was complicit in the Holocaust.
Poland is the location of several former concentration campus, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, where 1 million people — almost all of them Jews — were systematically killed in World War II. The over 3 million Jews who lived in Poland and were murdered by the Nazis account for about half of all Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The bill imposes criminal proceedings for allegedly defaming Poland by assigning complicity to the country for Holocaust crimes committed on Polish soil. Referring to the killing sites Nazi Germany operated in occupied Poland with phrases such as “Polish death camps” is punishable by three years in prison. The bill will go to a constitutional court for review before it takes effect as law.
In a televised address, Duda said the legislation would preserve Poland’s international reputation and said that artistic and historical research work will not be affected by the law. The bill has been internationally criticized since its public conception last month.
“One cannot change history, and the Holocaust cannot be denied,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement last week.
11 February 2018: Trump takes ‘shackles’ off ICE, which is slapping them on immigrants who thought they were safe:
A week after he won the election, President Trump promised that his administration would round up millions of immigrant gang members and drug dealers. And after he took office, arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers surged 40 percent.
Officials at the agency commonly known as ICE praise Trump for putting teeth back into immigration enforcement, and they say their agency continues to prioritize national security threats and violent criminals, much as the Obama administration did.
But as ICE officers get wider latitude to determine whom they detain, the biggest jump in arrests has been of immigrants with no criminal convictions. The agency made 37,734 “noncriminal” arrests in the government’s 2017 fiscal year, more than twice the number in the previous year. The category includes suspects facing possible charges as well as those without criminal records.
Critics say ICE is increasingly grabbing at the lowest-hanging fruit of deportation-eligible immigrants to meet the president’s unrealistic goals, replacing a targeted system with a scattershot approach aimed at boosting the agency’s enforcement statistics.
ICE has not carried out mass roundups or major workplace raids under Trump, but nearly every week brings a contentious new arrest.
15 February 2018: DACA dies in the Senate:
The hardline immigration legislation the White House backed in order to protect so-called “Dreamers” failed to overcome a filibuster Thursday. It was the fourth immigration-related legislation to go down Thursday afternoon, as the Senate considered measures to codify the DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) program.
The White House-supported bill, sponsored by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA), imposed steep cuts on legal immigration, while giving immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as minors a pathway to citizenship. President Trump endorsed the bill, while his administration lobbied aggressively against the bipartisan DACA bills also considered Thursday.
A vote on advancing the legislation failed 39–60, well short of the 60 votes it needed to move forward. It garnered significantly less support than the two other DACA bills the Senate voted on Thursday.
28 February 2018: Political appointee at Interior resigns after birther, anti-Muslim comments:
A political appointee at the Department of Interior resigned Wednesday after CNN’s KFile flagged inflammatory comments she made on Facebook and Twitter.
Christine Bauserman, a former Republican activist in Arizona who also worked for President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, served as a special assistant to Secretary Ryan Zinke, providing him operational support that included coordinating policy briefings. Bauserman initially joined the administration as a member of the so-called “beachhead teams,” which consisted of advisers tasked with shaping Trump’s new administration.
A KFile review found that Bauserman repeatedly shared conspiracy theories, made anti-Muslim comments and shared anti-LGBT sentiments on social media.
“The positions expressed by Ms. Bauserman are inappropriate and unacceptable, and they are not consistent with those of the Secretary or the Trump Administration. The Department has accepted Ms. Bauserman’s letter of resignation,” Heather Swift, a spokeswoman for Department of the Interior, told CNN in a statement.
Bauserman did not return a request for comment. She has now restricted access to her Facebook and Twitter accounts.
6 March 2018: Deadly Connection: Neo-Nazi Group Linked To 3 Accused Killers:
At first glance, five killings in three states since last May appeared to be unrelated, isolated cases.
But a common thread is emerging. Three young men have been charged, and all appear to have links to the same white supremacist group: the Atomwaffen Division.
Atomwaffen is German for “atomic weapons,” and the group is extreme. It celebrates Adolf Hitler and Charles Manson, its online images are filled with swastikas, and it promotes violence.
6 March 2018: Trump Administration Sues California Over Immigration Laws:
The Trump administration escalated what had been a war of words over California’s immigration agenda, filing a lawsuit late Tuesday that amounted to a pre-emptive strike against the liberal state’s so-called sanctuary laws.
The Justice Department sued California; Gov. Jerry Brown; and the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, over three state laws passed in recent months, saying they make it impossible for federal immigration officials to do their jobs and deport criminals who were born outside of the United States. The Justice Department called the laws unconstitutional and asked a judge to block them.
The lawsuit was the department’s boldest attack yet against California, one of the strongest opponents of the Trump administration’s efforts to curb immigration. It also served as a warning to Democratic lawmakers and elected officials nationwide who have enacted sanctuary policies that provide protections for undocumented immigrants.
“The Department of Justice and the Trump administration are going to fight these unjust, unfair and unconstitutional policies that have been imposed on you,” Attorney General Jeff Sessions planned to say on Wednesday at a law enforcement event in Sacramento, according to prepared remarks. “I believe that we are going to win.”
The battle pits President Trump and Mr. Sessions, immigration hard-liners, against Mr. Brown and Mr. Becerra, who have emerged as outspoken adversaries who have helped energize opposition to Mr. Trump and vowed to preserve the progressive values that they believe California embodies.
9 March 2018: Steve Bannon Is Done Wrecking the American Establishment. Now He Wants to Destroy Europe’s:
Stephen K. Bannon leaned back in an armchair opposite a copy of a painting by an Italian old master and explained his modest efforts to build a vast network of European populists to demolish the Continent’s political establishment.
“All I’m trying to be,” he said, “is the infrastructure, globally, for the global populist movement.”
Just that.
Only months ago, Mr. Bannon was forced out of the White House and Breitbart News, the alt-right news empire he helped make into a political force, for the sharp criticisms of President Trump’s children attributed to him in a book. “He’s lost his mind,” Mr. Trump said at the time.
But now Mr. Bannon, the architect of Mr. Trump’s populist campaign message and the president’s former chief strategist, has returned with an international mission.
On Saturday, he is set to headline the annual conference of France’s far-right National Front in the northern city of Lille, where he will be introduced by its leader, Marine Le Pen. People with knowledge of Mr. Bannon’s itinerary suggested that he might meet later in the weekend with the Hungarian prime minister, Viktor Orban, but Mr. Bannon declined to say whether or not he would, only saying that he admired Mr. Orban as a “hero” and “the most significant guy on the scene right now.”
13 March 2018: ICE spokesman resigns, citing fabrications by agency chief, Sessions about Calif. immigrant arrests:
The San Francisco spokesman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has resigned over what he described as “false” and “misleading” statements made by top-ranking officials, including Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ICE Acting Director Thomas D. Homan.
The now-former spokesman, James Schwab, told news outlets late Monday that his resignation stemmed from statements by Homan and Sessions that potentially hundreds of “criminal aliens” evaded ICE during a Northern California raid in February because Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf warned the immigrant community in advance.
Schwab said he pushed back on that characterization — but said ICE instructed him to “deflect” questions from the news media.
3 May 2018: Ranks of Notorious Hate Group Include Active-Duty Military:
The 18-year-old, excited by his handiwork at the bloody rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer, quickly went online to boast. He used the handle VasillistheGreek.
“Today cracked 3 skulls open with virtually no damage to myself,” the young man wrote on Aug. 12, 2017.
Vasillios Pistolis had come to the now infamous Unite the Right rally eager for such violence. He belonged to a white supremacist group known as Atomwaffen Division, a secretive neo-Nazi organization whose members say they are preparing for a coming race war in the U.S. In online chats leading up to the rally, Pistolis had been encouraged to be vicious with any counterprotestors, maybe even sodomize someone with a knife. He’d responded by saying he was prepared to kill someone “if shit goes down.”
One of Pistolis’ victims that weekend was Emily Gorcenski, a data scientist and trans woman from Charlottesville who had shown up to confront the rally’s hundreds of white supremacists. In an online post, Pistolis delighted in how he had “drop kicked” that “tranny” during a violent nighttime march on the campus of the University of Virginia. He also wrote about a blood-soaked flag he’d kept as a memento.
“Not my blood,” he took care to note.
At the end of the weekend that shocked much of the country, Pistolis returned to his everyday life: serving in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Of the many white supremacist organizations that have sprung up in the past few years, Atomwaffen is among the more extreme, espousing the overthrow of the U.S. government through acts of political violence and guerrilla warfare.
Journalists with ProPublica and Frontline gained insight into Atomwaffen’s ideology, aims and membership after obtaining seven months of messages from a confidential chat room used by the group’s members. The chat logs, as well as interviews with a former member, reveal Atomwaffen has attracted a mixture of young men — fans of fringe heavy metal music, a private investigator, firearms aficionados — living in more than 20 states.
But a number are current or former members of the U.S. military. ProPublica and Frontline have identified three Atomwaffen members or associates who are currently employed by the Army or Navy. Another three served in the armed forces in the past. Pistolis, who remains an active-duty Marine, left Atomwaffen in a dispute late in 2017 and joined up with another white supremacist group. Reporters made the identifications through dozens of interviews, a range of social media and other online posts, and a review of the 250,000 confidential messages obtained earlier this year.
Joshua Beckett, who trained Atomwaffen members in firearms and hand-to-hand combat last fall, served in the Army from 2011 to 2015, according to service records. Online, Beckett, 26, has said that he worked as a combat engineer while in the army. Combat engineers are the army’s demolitions experts.
In Atomwaffen chats, Beckett, using the handle Johann Donarsson, said he was building assault rifles and would happily construct weapons for his fellow members. “Give me the parts and the receiver and I’ll get it all together for you,” Beckett wrote in August 2017.
Beckett also wrote about suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of combat in Afghanistan, and how his time in uniform caused him to radically revise his political beliefs, prompting him to abandon mainstream conservatism in favor of National Socialism.
In online discussions, Beckett encouraged Atomwaffen members to enlist in the military, so as to become proficient in the use of weaponry, and then turn their expertise against the U.S. government, which he believed to be controlled by a secret cabal of Jews.
“The army itself woke me up to race and the war woke me up to the Jews,” Beckett wrote, adding, “The US military gives great training…you learn how to fight, and survive.”
Another Atomwaffen member used the chats to talk about the combat he saw during the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan.
“I was in the infantry in the army in Afghanistan and did a lot of…shit,” the member wrote. He said the Army wanted him to become a chemical weapons specialist, but he chose to join the infantry. He spent his time, he wrote, blasting “lead into sand niggers.”
ProPublica and Frontline specifically identified Pistolis and Beckett through interviews with a former Atomwaffen member who knew them, the group’s internal records, and the men’s digital footprints. In his online activities, Pistolis left many clues to his identity, including pictures of himself he uploaded to private white supremacist chat rooms and photos of himself on his public Facebook page. Beckett’s internet handles and Facebook content also helped us to confirm him as the man who had spent five years in the Army before joining Atomwaffen.
Reporters contacted Beckett via phone and Facebook messages, but did not get a response. Beckett’s Facebook page features an image of Donald Trump driving a white convertible emblazoned with the number 1488, a white supremacist code, and a call for whites to jump in the car.
In a series of phone and email exchanges, Pistolis claimed he did not attend the Charlottesville rally and did not assault Gorcenski or anyone else. His online messages about Gorcenski, he said, were nothing more than jokes. He admitted to harboring “alt right” or white supremacist beliefs, though he claimed he had “infiltrated” Atomwaffen on behalf of another extremist group and was never actually a member.
Pistolis, who indicated to reporters that he is stationed in North Carolina, pulled down his personal Twitter account shortly after being contacted by ProPublica and Frontline. He also took down his account on Gab, a discussion channel favored by white supremacists, many of whom have been banned from Twitter and other social media platforms. His postings indicate that after leaving Atomwaffen last November — other members accused him of risking unwanted attention for the group by showing up with Atomwaffen flag at a rally in Tennessee — he became an active participant in online forums involving the Traditionalist Workers Party, another neo-Nazi group.
Joshua Beckett, who trained Atomwaffen members in firearms and hand-to-hand combat last fall, served in the Army from 2011 to 2015, according to service records. Online, Beckett, 26, has said that he worked as a combat engineer while in the army. Combat engineers are the army’s demolitions experts.
In Atomwaffen chats, Beckett, using the handle Johann Donarsson, said he was building assault rifles and would happily construct weapons for his fellow members. “Give me the parts and the receiver and I’ll get it all together for you,” Beckett wrote in August 2017.
Beckett also wrote about suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of combat in Afghanistan, and how his time in uniform caused him to radically revise his political beliefs, prompting him to abandon mainstream conservatism in favor of National Socialism.
In online discussions, Beckett encouraged Atomwaffen members to enlist in the military, so as to become proficient in the use of weaponry, and then turn their expertise against the U.S. government, which he believed to be controlled by a secret cabal of Jews.
“The army itself woke me up to race and the war woke me up to the Jews,” Beckett wrote, adding, “The US military gives great training…you learn how to fight, and survive.”
Another Atomwaffen member used the chats to talk about the combat he saw during the U.S. troop surge in Afghanistan.
“I was in the infantry in the army in Afghanistan and did a lot of…shit,” the member wrote. He said the Army wanted him to become a chemical weapons specialist, but he chose to join the infantry. He spent his time, he wrote, blasting “lead into sand niggers.”
ProPublica and Frontline specifically identified Pistolis and Beckett through interviews with a former Atomwaffen member who knew them, the group’s internal records, and the men’s digital footprints. In his online activities, Pistolis left many clues to his identity, including pictures of himself he uploaded to private white supremacist chat rooms and photos of himself on his public Facebook page. Beckett’s internet handles and Facebook content also helped us to confirm him as the man who had spent five years in the Army before joining Atomwaffen.
Reporters contacted Beckett via phone and Facebook messages, but did not get a response. Beckett’s Facebook page features an image of Donald Trump driving a white convertible emblazoned with the number 1488, a white supremacist code, and a call for whites to jump in the car.
In a series of phone and email exchanges, Pistolis claimed he did not attend the Charlottesville rally and did not assault Gorcenski or anyone else. His online messages about Gorcenski, he said, were nothing more than jokes. He admitted to harboring “alt right” or white supremacist beliefs, though he claimed he had “infiltrated” Atomwaffen on behalf of another extremist group and was never actually a member.
Pistolis, who indicated to reporters that he is stationed in North Carolina, pulled down his personal Twitter account shortly after being contacted by ProPublica and Frontline. He also took down his account on Gab, a discussion channel favored by white supremacists, many of whom have been banned from Twitter and other social media platforms. His postings indicate that after leaving Atomwaffen last November — other members accused him of risking unwanted attention for the group by showing up with Atomwaffen flag at a rally in Tennessee — he became an active participant in online forums involving the Traditionalist Workers Party, another neo-Nazi group.
5 May 2018: Quebec Mosque Shooter Was Consumed by Refugees, Trump and Far Right:
When Alexandre Bissonnette learned of Justin Trudeau’s now-famous tweet welcoming refugees to Canada, the waif-like 28-year-old political science student told police that he snapped.
Just hours after watching a television report suggesting Canada would accept immigrants spurned by President Trump, Mr. Bissonnette packed his Glock handgun and rifle, picked up a bottle of Smirnoff Ice, and trudged the snow-covered streets of Quebec to a nearby Islamic Cultural Center.
As 53 men were finishing evening prayers, he unloaded 48 rounds. Six people were killed — several of them by shots to the head — and 19 were injured, one paralyzed for life.
These details surfaced during a three-week sentencing hearing that ended late last month. Mr. Bissonnette faces up to 150 years in prison after pleading guilty to six counts of first-degree murder and is expected to be sentenced in the coming months.
31 May 2018: Trump Pardons Arpaio:
Trump ignores the Justice Department process for evaluating presidential pardon applications and grants a pardon to former Maricopa County (Arizona) Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Arpaio had been convicted of criminal contempt of court relating to his brutally racist tactics aimed at undocumented immigrants.
1 June 2018: New internet accounts are Russian ops designed to sway U.S. voters, experts say:
A new Russian influence operation has surfaced that mirrors some of the activity of an internet firm that the FBI says was deeply involved in efforts to sway the 2016 U.S. elections, a cybersecurity firm says.
A website called usareally.com appeared on the internet May 17 and called on Americans to rally in front of the White House June 14 to celebrate President Donald Trump’s birthday, which is also Flag Day.
FireEye, a Milpitas, Calif., cybersecurity company, said Thursday that USA Really is a Russian-operated website that carries content designed to foment racial division, harden feelings over immigration, gun control and police brutality, and undermine social cohesion.
The website’s operators once worked out of the same office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency had its headquarters, said Lee Foster, manager of information operations analysis for FireEye iSIGHT Intelligence.
13 June 2018: Trump has a plan to end DACA. It started in Texas and could go to the Supreme Court:
The Trump administration is urging a federal court in Texas to declare DACA illegal, setting up a potential conflict that could allow the government to shut the program down within a matter of weeks.
While this latest development has received little attention, it could suspend or stop a federal initiative that has allowed 700,000 young people, known as Dreamers, to avoid deportation.
Ali Noorani, executive director of the National Immigration Forum, said the move could “eliminate work authorization and protection from deportation for nearly a million people who are contributing to our economy.”
15 June 2018: Trump: ‘I certainly wouldn’t sign’ House GOP immigration compromise:
President Trump said Friday that he would oppose a compromise immigration bill cobbled together by House Republicans — dealing a significant blow to GOP leaders who signaled they may abandon plans to vote on the legislation.
House Republican leaders had teed up action next week on two immigration measures: a hard-line draft written by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and legislation billed as a compromise between the moderate and conservative factions of the GOP conference.
“I’m looking at both of them,” Trump said during a wide-ranging interview on “Fox and Friends” Friday morning. “I certainly wouldn’t sign the more moderate one.”
Trump’s surprise remarks Friday had immediate repercussions on Capitol Hill, creating widespread confusion. One member of the leadership indicated the party may not vote next week.
“House Republicans are not going to take on immigration without the support and endorsement of President Trump,” said Rep. Patrick T. McHenry (R-N.C.), who said the leadership would delay gauging support for the bill while seeking an explanation from the White House.
Trump’s opposition is significant, particularly since House Republican leaders said they had been working closely with administration officials on the compromise to ensure it was something the president would sign. House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) told his members earlier this week that he had briefed Trump on the legislative strategy, and that the president was on board.
19 June 2018: US officials likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant kids:
The Trump administration has likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant children, thousands more than lawmakers were alerted to last month, according to a McClatchy review of federal data.
Federal officials acknowledged last month that nearly 1,500 unaccompanied minors arrived on the southern border alone without their parents and were placed with sponsors who did not keep in touch with federal officials, but those numbers were only a snapshot of a three- month period during the last fiscal year.
“There is a lot more,” said a field specialist who worked in the Office of Refugee Resettlement until earlier this year and was tasked with reaching out to sponsors and children to check on their well-being. “You can bet that the numbers are higher. It doesn’t really give you a real picture.”
The new estimate comes as backlash widens over President Donald Trump’s’ decision to separate parents and children. Advocates argue the growing numbers of unaccounted children should be expected as families and sponsors become more fearful of federal officials that is now using information from government social workers to run immigration checks and, in some cases, target sponsors, including parents and family members, for removal.
20 June 2018: Ian Bremmer: Trump tossed candy to Merkel at G-7, said ‘don’t say I never give you anything’:
President Trump reportedly tossed Starburst candies to German Chancellor Angela Merkel during his tense meeting with Group of Seven (G-7) leaders weeks ago, Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer said Wednesday.
While appearing on CBS News, Bremmer painted a grim picture of Trump and Merkel’s relationship amid heightened conflict between the president and other G-7 members over his steep steel and aluminum tariffs and suggestion that Russia be reinstated into the group.
Bremmer went on to describe a bizarre incident toward the end of the summit, when Merkel and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau joined some of other the allies “to press Trump directly to sign the [group] communique that talked about the commitment to a rules-based international order.”
“Trump was sitting there with his arms crossed, clearly not liking the fact that they were ganging up on him,” Bremmer said to the news outlet. “He eventually agreed and said OK, he’ll sign it. And at that point, he stood up, put his hand in his pocket, his suit jacket pocket, and he took two Starburst candies out, threw them on the table and said to Merkel, ‘Here, Angela. Don’t say I never give you anything.’ ”
“The relationship is about as dysfunctional as we’ve seen between America and its major allies since the trans-Atlantic relationship really started after World War II,” Bremmer continued.
Shortly after the summit, Trump refused to endorse the joint communique signed by the other G-7 members, rebuking Trudeau and threatening to impose further tariffs on the country. The president also earned a rebuttal from Merkel on Tuesday after he criticized her country’s immigration system, falsely claiming crime was in her country is on the rise.
21 June 2018: Company that runs immigration detention centers is top donor for three Texas congressmen:
One of the country’s largest operators of private immigration detention facilities has made significant contributions to several Texas members of Congress.
The GEO Group’s PAC and executives have given $32,900 to Houston Republican Rep. John Culberson’s campaign this election cycle, according to Federal Election Commission documents and OpenSecrets.org. GEO is Culberson’s largest donor.
In Texas, GEO operates detention centers for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Karnes City, Laredo, Pearsall and Conroe.
Culberson is facing a tough re-election race against Democrat Lizzie Fletcher. The race has been rated a ‘toss up’ by nonpartisan analyst Cook Political Report.
Culberson received the most funding from GEO out of Texas members of Congress, but GEO is also the top donor this cycle for U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who received $32,400, and Round Rock Republican Rep. John Carter, who received $31,600.
Both Culberson and Cuellar serve on the House Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee, which funds private immigration detention centers. Culberson is also the chairman of and Carter serves on the House Appropriations subcommittee on commerce, justice and science, which oversees funding for private prisons.
Cuellar’s campaign manager Colin Strother said that GEO is one of the largest employers in Cuellar’s district, and that Cuellar has not allowed campaign contributions to influence his decisions.
“If you live in a district in the state of Washington, you get boating money. If you live in a district in Nebraska, you get agriculture money. We have a district with lots of jail facilities that employ lots of people,” Strother said.
Culberson’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment.
GEO has also donated to other Texas lawmakers, including Republican Sen. John Cornyn, who received $10,000; House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Austin, who received $2,500; Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-McAllen, who received $2,500; Rep. Kenny Marchant, R-Coppell, who received $1,000; and Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Heath, who received $1,000. Republican Sen. Ted Cruz received $150.
GEO has come under scrutiny by immigrant rights organizations for alleged mismanagement and abuse in detention facilities. GEO faced class-action lawsuits in which detainees alleged that they were forced to work. In a GEO facility in California, three detainees died in custody. The American Civil Liberties Union accused GEO of denying detainees food, water and bathroom access.
“We strongly dispute these allegations. On a daily basis, our dedicated employees deliver high quality services, including around-the-clock medical care, that comply with performance-based standards set by the Federal government and adhere to guidelines set by leading third-party accreditation agencies,” GEO said in a statement.
Another one of the largest groups that runs private immigration detention centers in the United States is CoreCivic. The company runs facilities in Houston, Laredo, Dilley and Taylor.
CoreCivic PACs have given less money to candidates than GEO, but still contributed to three Texans, according to OpenSecrets.org: Culberson with $11,000, McCaul with $3,500 and Cuellar with $1,500.
26 June 2018: Immigration Attorney Says ICE Broke Her Foot, Locked Her Up:
An immigration attorney said an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer broke her foot and locked her in a room early Tuesday morning in Kansas City, Missouri.
Andrea Martinez told The Daily Beast she was dropping off a 3-year-old immigrant at an ICE facility to be reunited with his mother before they are to be deported to Honduras. Martinez said she was accompanying the boy, his pregnant mother, and his mother’s boyfriend — all of whom are undocumented — into an ICE field office, but Martinez was denied access. That’s when Martinez said she was “knocked to the ground and bloodied” by an ICE officer. (ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
A few dozen activists accompanied Martinez and her law partner, Megan Galicia, to protest the deportations. Initially, Martinez said she thought the boy would be reunited with his mother in the parking lot of the ICE office. Instead, ICE officials decided to reunite them inside the building, away from protesters and cameras, according to Martinez.
Martinez said that is when she and Galicia tried to follow their 3-year-old client into the room in the building where he would be reunited with his mother. An ICE officer blocked them from going inside, she said.
“He slammed the door on us,” Martinez said. “The ICE officer pushed us out and didn’t let us follow our three-year-old client into the lobby, and then pushed me to the ground. I was wearing high heels, so that’s when my foot was fractured and my leg got all bloody. And then my pants ripped. But then he called me back in and detained me for another forty minutes or an hour.”
Martinez said in a statement the ICE officer called the Federal Protective Service and “continually looked at my phone to make sure I wasn’t recording him.”
26 June 2018: Federal judge orders Trump administration to reunite migrant families:
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the federal government to reunite migrant parents with children taken from them under the Trump administration’s family separation policy.
U.S. District Court Judge Dana Sabraw, based in San Diego, issued a preliminary injunction on Tuesday night requiring that nearly all children younger than 5 be returned to their parents within 14 days and that older children be returned within 30 days.
Blasting the Trump administration for what he called “a chaotic circumstance of the Government’s own making,” Sabraw said it was a “startling reality” that no adequate planning had been done before officials embarked on a policy to separate children from parents kept in immigration custody or referred for criminal prosecution. The practice has led to more than 2,300 children being separated from their parents or other family members.
“The government readily keeps track of personal property of detainees in criminal and immigration proceedings,” Sabraw wrote in his 24-page order. “Money, important documents, and automobiles, to name a few, are routinely catalogued, stored, tracked and produced upon a detainee’s release, at all levels — state and federal, citizen and alien. Yet, the government has no system in place to keep track of, provide effective communication with, and promptly produce alien children. The unfortunate reality is that under the present system migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property. Certainly, that cannot satisfy the requirements of due process.”
The injunction was issued over the objections of the Trump administration, which had asked Sabraw to hold off issuing any such mandate while agencies worked to implement the executive order President Donald Trump issued last week purporting to rescind the family separation policy.
The preliminary injunction also blocks deporting parents who have been separated from their children “unless the Class Member affirmatively, knowingly, and voluntarily declines to be reunited with the child prior to the Class Member’s deportation, or there is a determination that the parent is unfit or presents a danger to the child.” The judge also prohibited future family separations, with limited exceptions.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment Tuesday night on the judge’s order.
29 June 2018: Trump’s controversial pick for top UN migration job voted down in Geneva:
The UN migration agency on Friday voted down Ken Isaacs, the Trump administration’s candidate to lead the International Organization for Migration, a US official told CNN, leaving it without an American at the helm since 1951.
Isaacs once wrote on Twitter that Austria and Switzerland should consider building a wall in the Alps to keep refugees out.
“#immigration #wall #Austria #Switzerland consider#buildingawall in #Alps to control their borders from refugees,” Isaacs tweeted.
The tweet is one of more than 140 previously unreported tweets from before Isaacs was nominated reviewed by CNN’s KFile.
The migration agency coordinates assistance to migrants worldwide.
5 July 2018: Richard Spencer stopped by authorities while traveling in Europe: report:
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer was reportedly stopped by authorities in Europe this week while attempting to travel to address young white nationalists.
Spencer seemingly confirmed the incident Thursday on Twitter, sharing a Swedish-language tweet from another “alt-right” supporter saying that Spencer had been banned in Europe because of his views.
It appeared that Spencer addressed attendees remotely.
5 July 2018: U.S. Army quietly discharging immigrant recruits:
Some immigrant U.S. Army reservists and recruits who enlisted in the military with a promised path to citizenship are being abruptly discharged, the Associated Press has learned.
The AP was unable to quantify how many men and women who enlisted through the special recruitment program have been booted from the Army, but immigration attorneys say they know of more than 40 who have been discharged or whose status has become questionable, jeopardizing their futures.
“It was my dream to serve in the military,” said reservist Lucas Calixto, a Brazilian immigrant who filed a lawsuit against the Army last week. “Since this country has been so good to me, I thought it was the least I could do to give back to my adopted country and serve in the United States military.”
Some of the service members say they were not told why they were being discharged. Others who pressed for answers said the Army informed them they’d been labeled as security risks because they have relatives abroad or because the Defense Department had not completed background checks on them.
Spokespeople for the Pentagon and the Army said that, due to the pending litigation, they were unable to explain the discharges or respond to questions about whether there have been policy changes in any of the military branches.
9 July 2018: Self-described Nazis and white supremacists are running as Republicans across the country. The GOP is terrified:1
In at least five state and national races across the country, the Republican Party is dealing with an uncomfortable problem. Their party’s candidates are either a card-carrying Nazi, a Holocaust denier, a proud white supremacist, or all of the above.
In North Carolina, for example, GOP officials are stuck with Russell Walker, a white supremacist running for the state House of Representatives. According to his personal website (littered with the n-word), he believes that “the jews are NOT semitic they are satanic as they all descend from Satan.”
Republicans in the state have regrets. “This is a very Democratic district, one that we failed to keep our eye on,” Dallas Woodhouse, executive chair of the North Carolina GOP, told me in an email. “However, we can’t stop him from running.”
In Illinois, meanwhile, the Republican Party shrugged off Arthur Jones, a candidate for the state’s 3rd Congressional district who boasted of his membership in the American Nazi Party. But Jones won the GOP primary, and now party officials, including ones who called Jones “morally reprehensible” and “a complete nutcase,” are scrambling to launch a write-in campaign. Jones’s campaign website features a section called “Holocaust?” in which he argues that the “idea that six million Jews, were killed by the National Socialist government of Germany, in World War II, is the biggest, blackest lie in history.”
In Virginia, the chair of the state GOP resigned earlier this month, reportedly because of alt-right leaning, pro-Confederate candidate Corey Stewart’s win in the Republican primary. But even Stewart had to disavow Wisconsin’s Paul Nehlen, who is running to replace Speaker Paul Ryan. Nehlen’s too racist for Twitter and even for Gab, the preferred social media platform of the alt-right. Meanwhile, a California Republican running for Congress has been making appearances on neo-Nazi podcasts and argues on his campaign website that “diversity” is a Jewish plot. (The California GOP has disavowed him.)
Racial animus helped fuel the rise of Donald Trump. Since the end of the civil rights movement and under Republican strategist Lee Atwater’s “Southern strategy” that used racism as an unstated cudgel against Democrats, the Republican Party itself has played a welcoming host to racial tensions and fears. Simultaneously, it has depicted itself, as conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby put it in 2012, as “the party of color-blind equality and “a party that doesn’t think with its skin.”
But in a year when the left is energized in opposition to Trump, particularly by his policies toward minority groups and immigrants, and as the GOP tries to hang on to their majorities in Congress and state houses around the country, state party officials say they do not need racist fringe candidates running for office. None of these candidates is expected to win in the general election this fall, but they are going to give liberals on the hunt for examples of simmering neo-Nazi and neo-Confederate rhetoric at least five places to point.
13 July 2018: Trump: Immigration is ‘changing the culture’ of Europe:
President Donald Trump said Friday that European leaders “better watch themselves” because immigration is “changing the culture” of their societies.
“I think it has been very bad, for Europe. … I think what has happened is very tough. It’s a very tough situation — you see the same terror attacks that I do,” Trump said at a news conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May outside of London.
“I just think it is changing the culture, I think it is a very negative thing for Europe,” Trump said.
“I know it is politically not necessarily correct to say that, but I will say it and I will say it loud,” Trump added.
The President warned that immigration was hurting Germany and other parts of Europe “very much,” apparently referring to a wave of refugees who have entered Europe from shattered Syria and other unstable societies in the Middle East and North Africa.
“I think they better watch themselves because you are changing culture, you are changing a lot of things, you are changing security.”
13 July 2018: Trump’s ambassador lobbied Britain on behalf of jailed right-wing activist Tommy Robinson:
Sam Brownback, the U.S. Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, complained to the British ambassador in Washington D.C. about the treatment of an English right-wing activist who is in jail for disrupting a trial, according to three sources familiar with the discussion.
Brownback raised the case of the activist known as Tommy Robinson in a June meeting with Sir Kim Darroch, Britain’s Ambassador to the United States, according to a British official and two sources close to the organizers of a pro-Robinson demonstration planned for London on Saturday.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, though he also uses other aliases, is a founder of the English Defense League, which has organized violent demonstrations against Islamic immigrants in the UK in the past decade. More recently, Robinson has branded himself a journalist and campaigner against Islamic extremism, a move that won him contacts with American anti-Muslim activists.
Robinson was arrested in late May outside a courthouse in Leeds, England, while making video recordings about a trial related to child molestation and jailed for 13 months for violating English law limiting publicity during criminal trials.
Brownback raised the jailing of Robinson during a meeting with Darroch that covered a range of “religious freedom issues”, the British official confirmed earlier this week.
Brownback told Darroch that if Britain did not treat Robinson more sympathetically, the Trump administration might be compelled to criticize Britain’s handling of the case, according to the two sources in contact with organizers of the planned pro-Robinson demonstration.
The sources said Robinson’s supporters, who have also been in touch with the Trump administration about the issue, were concerned that he could be attacked by other prisoners.
Reuters was unable to determine why the top U.S. official responsible for defending religious freedom would try to intervene with the British government on behalf of an activist who has expressed anti-Islamic views.
19 July 2018: Kirstjen Nielsen Blames Both Sides For Deadly Charlottesville Violence, Claims Russia Didn’t Try To Help Trump:
Department of Homeland Security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen said Thursday that Russian interference did not play a role in President Donald Trump’s 2016 election win.
“I haven’t seen any evidence that the attempts to interfere in our election on infrastructure was to favor one political party,” she told a crowd of mostly Republicans at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado. “I think what we’ve seen on the foreign influence side is they were attempting to intervene and cause chaos on both sides.”
The comment came just three days after Russian president Vladimir Putin confirmed that he wanted Trump to win the 2016 presidential election over his Democratic opponent, Hillary Clinton. During a joint press conference with Trump in Helsinki, a reporter asked if Putin supported Trump during the election, “yes I did,” responded Putin. “Yes I did, because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.”
In May of 2018, the Senate Intelligence Committee backed previous reports issued by the National Intelligence Council and Special Counsel Robert Muller, reaffirming that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump. “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton,” they wrote.
President Trump has sent mixed messages about his official stance on Russian election intervention. In Helsinki on Monday, Trump suggested to reporters that he believed Putin’s denial of interference. The following day he claimed he simply misspoke, but on Wednesday appeared to tell reporters that he did not believe Russia was still targeting the U.S. White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders then denied Trump was responding to a question when he said “no.” Later that day he told CBS News that he did, in fact, blame Putin for election meddling “because he’s in charge of the country.”
After her talk in Aspen, Nielsen also walked back her comments, telling CNN’s Jim Sciutto that she supported the Intelligence Community’s report, “full stop.”
But that wasn’t Nielsen’s only comment during the talk that raised eyebrows.
Nielsen discussed President Trump’s controversial comments that there were “fine people on both sides” of the white supremacist riots in Charlottesville, Virginia, last summer. Nielsen appeared to back the president’s support of white nationalists, “it’s not that one side was right and one side was wrong,” she explained.
Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, responded to Nielsen’s comments on Twitter. “Actually, Secretary Nielsen, one side was wrong: the white supremacists & neo-Nazis chanting ‘Jews will not replace us,’ he wrote. “This moral equivalence is disgraceful coming from anyone, let alone the head of the Department of Homeland Security.”
Nielsen also received an unintentional laugh from her audience when she told them that President Trump “loves diverse opinions,” and “craves different points of views.”
25 July 2018: ICE to deport wife of Marine, Iraq veteran Aug. 3:
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents notified Alejandra Juarez Tuesday that she will be deported back to Mexico nine days from now, despite ongoing efforts to allow her to stay.
Juarez is married to former Marine Sgt. Cuauhtemoc “Temo” Juarez, an infantryman who served in the Marines from 1995 to 1999, first with 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment. He took part in Operation Silver Wake, the evacuation of non-combatants from Albania in 1997. He served in Africa in the Democratic Republic of Congo and then deployed with 3rd Battalion, 8th Marines throughout South America. After his contract was complete, he joined the 2nd Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment of the Army National Guard in Orlando.
Juarez crossed illegally into the U.S. in 1998 and married Temo Juarez in 2000. The eldest of their two daughters was 12 months old when he deployed to Iraq.
The family’s separation comes in part as a result of stricter enforcement of immigration laws by the Trump administration. Under previous administrations, ICE deferred separation and allowed Alejandra Juarez to remain in the U.S.
“Alejandra deserves to stay in the country she has called home for over 20 years, the country her husband patriotically served as a Marine and Florida National Guardsman. The only country her two American-born daughters have known,” said Rep. Darren Soto, D-Fla.
26 July 2018: DHS & HHS Under Investigation for Destroying Immigrant Family Records:
Following a complaint from Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) is investigating whether the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) violated the law by deleting records of immigrant families split at the border.
CREW’s July 6 complaint followed a report in the New York Times that “[r]ecords linking children to their parents have disappeared, and in some cases have been destroyed, according to two officials of the Department of Homeland Security, leaving the authorities struggling to identify connections between family members.” In hundreds of cases, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents allegedly deleted the initial records in which parents and children were listed together as a family.
“If this report is true, that would be a blatant violation of the Federal Records Act, and one with devastating human costs,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said. “We are glad NARA is taking this seriously, and look forward to seeing the results of their investigation.
NARA has given CBP, which is part of DHS, 30 days to respond to the allegations.
27 July 2018: Trump plans to rescind work permits for spouses of immigrants on H-1B visas:
Joseph’s fortunes took a change in 2015, when Barack Obama’s administration implemented a rule that granted work permits to certain immigrants on H4 visas. Known as H4EAD, the policy enabled the spouses of H-1B workers who were already awaiting green cards to apply for employment authorization.
But now Donald Trump’s administration is expected to formally rescind the Obama-era rule — potentially upending the lives of tens of thousands of immigrants who took advantage of the H4EAD work permits.
The proposed rules change, which was anticipated last month, but has not yet been announced, is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to reshape America’s immigration system.
Advocates laboring to save the Obama-era policy say doing away with the rule could once again confine immigrant spouses, mostly women, at home and strip their families of a necessary second income.
Beneficiaries of the Obama-era guidance, such as Joseph, said the employment status brought financial security to their households and provided a sense of purpose.
Joseph is one of thousands of advocates who have joined an online campaign, “SaveH4EAD”, to raise awareness around the issue in the hopes that the Trump administration might reverse course. Many are high-skilled workers who sacrificed their careers when their spouses were offered the chance to pursue a career in the US.
“It will shatter my career completely,” said Joseph, who was able to secure a job under the program as a credit analyst at a bank in Washington state, of the prospect of the H4EAD rule being revoked. “Why would we end our career just because we moved to another country?”
1 August 2018: Trump Supporters threaten the Boston Globe:
After the Boston Globe called on news outlets around the country to resist what it called “Trump’s assault on journalism,” the Boston Globe received more than a dozen threatening phone calls. “You are the enemy of the people,” the alleged caller, 68-year-old Robert Chain of Encino, California, told a Boston Globe employee on Aug. 22. “As long as you keep attacking the President, the duly elected President of the United States … I will continue to threat[en], harass, and annoy the Boston Globe.”
A week later, authorities arrested Chain on threat-related charges. After a hearing in his case, he told reporters, “America was saved when Donald J. Trump was elected president.” Chain has pleaded guilty to seven threat-related charges, and he is awaiting sentencing.
9 August 2018: ICE Withheld Deported Parents’ Phone Numbers From Lawyers, ACLU Says:
The American Civil Liberties Union told HuffPost that the government finally handed over phone numbers this week for the more than 400 migrant parents who were separated from their children and then deported under the Trump administration’s zero tolerance policy on immigration.
But the organization believes that Immigration and Customs Enforcement deliberately withheld these phone numbers for more than a month, despite the fact that this contact information could have helped reunite many families.
Lee Gelernt, the lead lawyer in the ACLU’s ongoing lawsuit against ICE, said he thinks the government had access to these phone numbers before the final court-ordered family reunification deadline on June 26 but kept the information to themselves. He said immigration attorneys have told him that this contact information is in children’s case files and that deported parents and their kids have been communicating with one another throughout June and July.
“The numbers have been [in the children’s files] for a while, and we should have had them for a while,” Gelernt said. “Every day that we didn’t get them is another day we didn’t track parents down [and] weeks and months, potentially, where kids are potentially by themselves.”
An ICE representative told HuffPost that the agency was “unable to comment on pending litigation.”
15 August 2018: Senate investigation: Government fails to keep tabs on unaccompanied migrant kids after they leave its care:
A bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday concluded the Department of Health and Human Service fails to adequately account for the well being of unaccompanied migrant children once they leave government custody.
The lawmakers who conducted the investigation, Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.), are urging the government to take responsibility for ensuring the safety and health of the minors even after they are turned over to an adult sponsor.
Portman and Carper, the chairman of and ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on investigations, are holding a hearing about the issue Thursday.
“These federal agencies must do more to care for unaccompanied minors and ensure they aren’t trafficked or abused,” Portman said. “This report details some small progress but also a glaring need for these agencies to take more responsibility for ensuring these children are safe and appear at their immigration court proceedings.”
HHS, the Department of Homeland Security and the Justice Department released a lengthy response Wednesday night that called the subcommittee’s report “misleading” and that it “demonstrates a fundamental misunderstandings of law and policy.”
21 August 2018: Trump adviser Larry Kudlow hosted publisher of white nationalists at his home:
The publisher of a website that serves as a platform for white nationalism was a guest last weekend at the home of President Trump’s top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow.
Peter Brimelow attended the gathering, a birthday bash for Kudlow, one day after a White House speechwriter was dismissed in the wake of revelations that he had spoken alongside Brimelow on a 2016 panel.
Brimelow, 70, was once a well-connected figure in mainstream conservative circles, writing for Dow Jones and National Review. But over the past two decades, he has become a zealous promoter of white-identity politics on Vdare.com, the anti-immigration website that he founded in 1999.
While Brimelow has long personally rejected the label of “white nationalist,” he acknowledged to the Harvard Crimson in 2016 that his website does “certainly publish a few writers I would regard as ‘white nationalist’ in that they stand up for whites just as Zionists, black nationalists do for Jews, blacks, etc.”
Kudlow said Tuesday that Brimelow was a guest at his birthday party at his Connecticut home and is someone he has known “forever,” going back to their work in financial journalism. Kudlow expressed regret when he was described details of Brimelow’s promotion of white nationalists on Vdare.com.
24 August 2018: 2 Men Sentenced To Prison For Beating Black Man During Charlottesville Rally:
The two men convicted of maliciously wounding a black man after last year’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., have been sentenced to prison time. Jacob Scott Goodwin has been sentenced to serve eight years in prison for his role in the beating, while Alex Michael Ramos has been sentenced to six.
Goodwin, 23, and Ramos, 34, had been convicted in separate jury trials earlier this year of playing a significant role in the savage assault of DeAndre Harris. In images of the incident, which circulated widely on social media afterward, several men can be seen kicking Harris and hitting him with poles as he lay crumpled on the ground.
Goodwin, who was sentenced to 10 years total, though two of those years were suspended, had been seen on the day of the rally day wearing white supremacist symbols, including some associated with neo-Nazi organizations.
In court, he initially said he was acting in self-defense after seeing Harris take a swing at another man, the leader of a North Carolina white nationalist group. That North Carolina man had indeed pressed charges against Harris — but Harris was acquitted of those charges just months before Goodwin’s conviction.
Both Goodwin, who is from Arkansas, and Ramos, who is from Georgia, apologized during their sentencing hearings, according to local TV station NBC 29.
Two other men were charged with malicious wounding for their role in the attack on Harris. Daniel Borden pleaded guilty in May and awaits sentencing, while Tyler Davis is expected to face trial later this year.
28 August 2018: Law firm alleges neglectful medical care after child dies weeks after ICE custody:
A mother and her lawyers allege that ICE and those running an immigration facility in Texas provided substandard medical care for her toddler, who died six weeks after they were released.
Yazmin Juarez, 20, and her 18-month-old daughter, Mariee, were detained at a facility in Dilley, Texas, “with unsafe conditions, neglectful medical care, and inadequate supervision,” according to her law firm in a statement.
Shortly after they arrived at the South Texas Family Residential Center in March, Mariee contracted a respiratory infection that her lawyers at the firm of Arnold & Porter allege “went woefully under-treated for nearly a month.”
Officials in Texas say they are investigating the case, and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officials did not respond to specific allegations made by Juarez and her lawyers.
30 August 2018: Bank of America freezing accounts of customers suspected of not being US citizens:
Saeed Moshfegh woke up earlier this month to discover the strangest thing: though he had plenty of money in his Bank of America account, he couldn’t access it.
An Iranian getting his Ph.D in physics at the University of Miami, Moshfegh used the account for everyday transactions. All he had to do to maintain the account was show proof of legal residency every six months.
“I think it’s onerous, but I’d been doing it,” said Moshfegh, who has lived in the U.S. for the past seven years. He recently married an American.
That Thursday, Moshfegh went to his local branch near South Miami. He was told that the documentation he had provided could not be accepted. Bank officials insisted he produce a different form, according to Moshfegh. The bank was wrong, he maintains, because the form he had supplied was the correct one based on his current status as a student nearing graduation.
“This bank doesn’t know how the immigration system works, so they didn’t accept my document,” said Moshfegh, 36.
Locked out of his account, Moshfegh couldn’t pay his rent, which was due that week. Credit card payments were suddenly rejected.
His case isn’t unique. In recent months, Bank of America has been accused of freezing or threatening to freeze customers’ accounts after asking about their legal status in the U.S.. In July, the Washington Post reported that multiple customers had been locked out of their accounts after Bank of America questioned whether the account holders were U.S. citizens or dual citizens.
30 August 2018: Democratic lawmakers call for hearings into denial of passports to Americans:
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.
“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-Tex.).
But Republican leadership in the House and Senate is unlikely to bow to Democratic demands on any proposed legislation on the issue.
5 September 2018: Trump admin rejected report showing refugees did not pose major security threat:
The Trump administration has consistently sought to exaggerate the potential security threat posed by refugees and dismissed an intelligence assessment last year that showed refugees did not present a significant threat to the U.S., three former senior officials told NBC News.
Hard-liners in the administration then issued their own report this year that several former officials and rights groups say misstates the evidence and inflates the threat posed by people born outside the U.S.
At a meeting in September 2017 with senior officials discussing refugee admissions, a representative from the National Counterterrorism Center came ready to present a report that analyzed the possible risks presented by refugees entering the country.
But before he could discuss the report, Associate Attorney General Rachel Brand dismissed the report, saying her boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, would not be guided by its findings.
“We read that. The attorney general doesn’t agree with the conclusions of that report,” she said, according to two officials familiar with the meeting, including one who was in the room at the time.
Brand’s blunt veto of the intelligence assessment shocked career civil servants at the interagency meeting, which seemed to expose a bid to supplant facts and expertise with an ideological agenda. Her response also amounted to a rejection of her own department’s view, as the FBI, part of the Justice Department, had contributed to the assessment.
6 September 2018: Trump administration moves to detain migrant families longer:
The Trump administration on Thursday moved to abandon a longstanding court settlement that limits how long immigrant children can be kept locked up, proposing new regulations that would allow the government to detain families until their immigration cases are decided.
Homeland Security officials said that ending the so-called Flores agreement of 1997 will speed up the handling of asylum requests while also deterring people from illegally crossing the Mexican border.
The move angered immigrant rights advocates and is all but certain to trigger a court battle.
“It is sickening to see the United States government looking for ways to jail more children for longer,” said Omar Jadwat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “And it’s yet another example of the Trump administration’s hostility toward immigrants resulting in a policy incompatible with the most basic human values.”
7 September 2018: North Carolina elections board fights ICE subpoena for voting records:
The North Carolina state elections board on Friday unanimously voted to ask the state’s attorney general to quash a subpoena from the US attorney and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for eight years of voting records.
The board unanimously voted not only to fight the subpoena on the state level, but also on behalf of 44 counties who were similarly subpoenaed.
The decision was made during a public meeting, although the board met in closed executive session for roughly 40 minutes before returning to the public session and voting on their motion.
Board Vice Chairman Joshua Malcolm announced the decisions of the board for the vote, calling the subpoena “overly broad, unreasonable, vague, and clearly impacts significant interests of our voters.” Malcolm noted that the board for decades has “routinely” referred anything that might be illegal with voting to the US attorney’s office for investigation, and the board “stands ready” to continue to assist law enforcement.
But he said the board will “not stand idly by and consent to any agency attempting to obtain records and documents that violate the principles of overreach by the federal government, as in this circumstance.”
12 September 2018: Trump administration diverted nearly $10 million from FEMA to ICE detention program, according to DHS document:
The Trump administration appears to have diverted nearly $10 million in funding for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the agency at the forefront of the president’s zero-tolerance immigration policy that led to the separation of hundreds of children, some as young as 18 months old, from their parents.
The reallocation of public money is documented in a “Transfer and Reprogramming” notification prepared this fiscal year by the Department of Homeland Security, the parent department of ICE, as the agency is known. It was made public by Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon in an appearance Tuesday on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” as Hurricane Florence barreled toward the Carolinas.
Merkley’s office provided the 39-page budget document independently to The Washington Post. It shows that DHS requested that about $9.8 million going toward FEMA efforts such as “Preparedness and Protection” and “Response and Recovery” be funneled instead into ICE coffers, specifically underwriting “Detention Beds” and the agency’s “Transportation and Removal Program.” The U.S. Secret Service was also a beneficiary of the reallocation.
12 September 2018: It’s not just FEMA: ICE quietly got an extra $200 million:
As a potentially catastrophic hurricane bears down on the East Coast of the US, the shifting of $10 million from FEMA’s operating budget to fund immigration detention and deportations is drawing condemnation from Democrats.
But that’s a drop in the bucket.
The Trump administration this summer quietly redirected $200 million from all over the Department of Homeland Security to Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, despite repeated congressional warnings of ICE’s “lack of fiscal discipline” and “unsustainable” spending.
The Department of Homeland Security asked for the money, according to a document made public this week by Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley. Of the $200 million, the document says $93 million will go to immigrant detention, a 3% budget increase that will fund capacity for an additional 2,300 detainees; and $107 million for “transportation and removal,” or deportations, a 29% budget increase.
The move comes as the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive immigration agenda, ramping up arrests of undocumented immigrants and deportations.
12 September 2018: Feds holding 12,800 migrant children in detention centers, report says:
The number of migrant children being detained by the government has reached its highest level ever, according to a report by The New York Times. Data obtained by the Times showed that 12,800 children were detained in federal custody this month, compared to 2,400 children detained in May 2017. Federal shelters housing migrant children have remained filled at around 90 percent capacity since May of this year.
The increase is not due to an influx of more migrant children, but rather because fewer children are being released into the custody of sponsors. Unaccompanied children have traditionally been placed with sponsors such as parents or extended family members upon entering the U.S.
However, a new rule implemented by the Trump administration in June requires sponsors to be fingerprinted in order to pick up children, and that information is shared with immigration officials. Many would-be sponsors are undocumented themselves, and therefore are reluctant to be fingerprinted and risk deportation.
Detention facilities such as the one in Tornillo, Texas, are exempt from child welfare inspections that are required at similar facilities. On Tuesday, the Trump administration announced that it would triple the size of the “Tent City” in Tornillo so that it could house around 3,800 children.
The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released a statement regarding the Times report saying that the number of “unaccompanied alien children apprehended are a symptom of the larger problem, namely a broken immigration system,” and that HHS has a rigorous system for vetting sponsors out of concern for children’s safety.
“Because children who enter the country illegally are at high risk for exploitation by traffickers and smugglers, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) at HHS’ Administration for Children and Families maintains high standards for vetting children’s sponsors for the safety and well-being of the child,” the statement read. “Demographic and other factors affecting how long children remain in care fluctuate over time, but ORR consistently acts to ensure sponsors are screened appropriately for the protection of children.”
23 September 2018: Steve Bannon: Italian experiment ‘will change global politics’:
Italy is the “center of the political universe,” according to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Speaking to POLITICO during a tour of European capitals, the former aide to Donald Trump called Italy’s League-5Star coalition government an “experiment that, if it works, will change global politics.”
Bannon is in Europe to help ramp up a Brussels-based foundation, named the Movement, which aims to coordinate and advise right-wing populist parties campaigning in next spring’s European Parliament election. Thus far, many of the Continent’s far-right politicians have reacted cautiously to Bannon’s advances.
The former Trump aide said that the Italian government is an experiment in uniting left and right. “A populist party with nationalist tendencies like the 5Stars, and a nationalist party with populist tendencies like the League … it’s imperative that this works because this shows a model for industrial democracies from the U.S. to Asia.”
The Movement — which Bannon describes as a “loose association” of people, not a political party — was established in January of last year by Mischaël Modrikamen, a Brussels lawyer and leader of a small right-wing party. Bannon began promoting it in July.
The League’s Matteo Salvini, Italy’s interior minister, has already joined, and during his trip to Rome Bannon also reached out to 5Stars leader Luigi Di Maio. According to two individuals with knowledge of the talks — one a person who has worked with Bannon and another a 5Star MP — Bannon and Di Maio met on Saturday and had a “constructive dialogue.” The 5Stars are yet to decide whether they will endorse the project or not though.
On the face of it, the far-right base of the Movement (Bannon is also in talks with Germany’s far-right AfD, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally in France and Viktor Orbán’s Christian nationalist Fidesz party in Hungary) is far removed from the 5Stars’ left-wing populism. Some of the party’s MPs are worried it would alienate their voting base.
2 October 2018: Feds Make Several Arrests In Connection With Charlottesville Unite The Right Weekend:
Federal authorities in Virginia have arrested several individuals in connection with the violence in Charlottesville in August 2017, a U.S. official said Tuesday.
Multiple individuals were in custody as of Tuesday morning, an official told HuffPost. The federal charges against the individuals were still under seal, but they relate to the Aug. 11 march on the campus of the University of Virginia as well as the Aug. 12 Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville.
U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen and FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Thomas Chadwick will announce the charges at a press conference in Charlottesville at 2 p.m.
The charges were not directly related to the death of Heather Heyer, who died when a car driven by white supremacist James Alex Fields Jr. slammed into a crowd of protesters demonstrating against racism. Federal authorities announced charges against Fields back in June.
4 October 2018: Trump Supporter threatens Democratic Officer Holders:
The Polk County Sheriff’s Office in Florida arrested 53-year-old James Patrick of Winter Haven, Florida, for allegedly threatening “to kill Democratic office holders, members of their families and members of both local and federal law enforcement agencies,” according to a police report. In messages posted online, Patrick detailed a “plan” for his attacks, which he said he would launch if then-nominee Brett Kavanaugh was not confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, the police report said. Seeking Patrick’s release from jail after his arrest, Patrick’s attorney, Terri Stewart, told a judge that her client’s “rantings” were akin to comments from “a certain high-ranking official” — Trump. The president had “threatened the North Korean people — to blow them all up. It was on Twitter,” Stewart said, according to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Patrick has been charged with making a written threat to kill or injure, and he has pleaded not guilty. His trial is pending.
19 October 2018: Rep. Steve King Goes Full White Nationalist In Interview With Austrian Site:
Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) visited Austria in August and gave an extensive interview to a far-right publication there in which he spelled out, in clearer and more shocking terms than he ever has before, his white nationalist worldview.
The eight-term congressman, up for re-election next month, talked to Caroline Sommerfeld of the Austrian far-right propaganda site Unzensuriert (which means “uncensored” in English). Sommerfeld is a prominent intellectual in Europe’s neo-fascist identitarian movement, which has deep connections to America’s so-called alt-right.
The interview, published in September, came to HuffPost’s attention this week. In his conversation with Sommerfeld, King discussed his belief in the superiority of European culture over others. He talked fearfully of falling fertility rates in the West and spoke at length about his belief that Europe and America are threatened by Muslim and Latino immigration.
“If we don’t defend Western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice,” King said.
The interview is remarkable, capturing a sitting U.S. congressman completely fluent in modern white nationalist talking points just weeks before an election he is favored to win.
“This interview reveals a whole new level of reality underneath this guy’s politics,” said Roger Griffin, an expert on fascism and modern history at Oxford Brookes University.
King never would have opened up that way with mainstream reporters, since they wouldn’t understand what he was talking about, Griffin said. He added, “But with her, who is obviously steeped in this stuff, he just opens up because he knows he’s going to be understood.”
The congressman’s office did not respond to a request for comment. Unzensuriert also did not respond to questions about details of the interview.
Late October 2018: Cesar Sayoc Bombing attempts:
Over the course of a week, Florida man Cesar Sayoc allegedly mailed at least 15 potential bombs to prominent critics of Trump and members of the media. Sayoc had been living in a van plastered with pro-Trump stickers, and he had posted several pro-Trump messages on social media. Federal prosecutors have accused him of “domestic terrorism,” and Sayoc has since pleaded guilty to 65 counts, including use of a weapon of mass destruction. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison. “We believe the president’s rhetoric contributed to Mr. Sayoc’s behavior,” Sayoc’s attorney told the judge at sentencing.
26 October 2018: Suspicious package in Sacramento addressed to Sen. Kamala Harris, sources say:
The man suspected of mailing more than a dozen bombs nationwide to CNN, prominent Democratic politicians and others allegedly sent one to U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-California, that was discovered in Sacramento on Friday, authorities say.
The FBI and Sacramento County Sheriff’s officials spent much of Friday searching a south Sacramento post office after a postal worker spotted a suspicious package and reported it to authorities at about 7:44 a.m., officials said.
“We have now rendered the device safe,” sheriff’s spokesman Sgt. Shaun Hampton told reporters about five hours after the discovery.
No one was injured, and authorities said they still were deciding whether their investigation of the package would be completed at the FBI’s Sacramento office or at the FBI lab in Quantico, Virginia.
26 October 2018: Hecklers’ cries spur organizers to shut down Burbank congressional debate:
Organizers cut short on Wednesday night a heated debate between candidates vying for seats in the 28th and 30th Congressional districts after numerous interruptions from the audience.
The League of Women Voters of Glendale/Burbank had planned to ask each candidate at least 12 questions during the forum, which was held in the Burbank City Council chambers. The candidates were 28th District incumbent Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) and his Republican opponent, Johnny Nalbandian, and 30th District incumbent Brad Sherman (D-Sherman Oaks) and his GOP opponent, Mark Reed, who has run against Sherman three times previously.
However, the audience of about 100 people, some of whom were wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, yelled angrily whenever Schiff or Sherman spoke, claiming that the Democratic candidates were “liars,” “skunks” and “racists.”
Mary Dickson, president of the local League of Women Voters chapter, Rita Zwern, the debate’s moderator, and other members of the organization tried to plead with audience members to refrain from interrupting, but their efforts didn’t work.
It got to the point where two Burbank police officers had to watch over the meeting, and a member of the audience had to be escorted out after refusing to settle down.
Dickson and Zwern said they eventually decided the disruptions would no longer be tolerated and the forum had to be cut short.
“It’s been one of the most loudest and disrupted forums we’ve ever had,” Dickson said. “People weren’t listening to all of the candidates. They had their own agenda, I’m afraid.”
Zwern, who has been moderating debates for the League of Women Voters for 15 years, said that it was the worst debate she has had to oversee.
27 October 2018: 11 Killed in Pittsburgh Synagogue Massacre; Suspect Charged With 29 Counts:
Armed with an AR-15-style assault rifle and at least three handguns, a man shouting anti-Semitic slurs opened fire inside a Pittsburgh synagogue Saturday morning, killing at least 11 congregants and wounding four police officers and two others, the authorities said.
In a rampage described as among the deadliest against the Jewish community in the United States, the assailant stormed into the Tree of Life Congregation, where worshipers had gathered in separate rooms to celebrate their faith, and shot indiscriminately into the crowd, shattering what had otherwise been a peaceful morning.
The assailant, identified by law enforcement officials as Robert D. Bowers, fired for several minutes and was leaving the synagogue when officers, dressed in tactical gear and armed with rifles, met him at the door. According to the police, Mr. Bowers exchanged gunfire with officers before retreating back inside and barricading himself inside a third-floor room. He eventually surrendered.
Mr. Bowers, 46, was injured by gunfire, although the authorities said it was unclear whether those wounds were self-inflicted or whether the police had shot him. He was taken to Allegheny General Hospital.
Federal officials charged Mr. Bowers with 29 criminal counts. They included obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs — a hate crime — and using a firearm to commit murder. He also faces state charges, including 11 counts of criminal homicide, six counts of aggravated assault and 13 counts of ethnic intimidation.
The authorities said that he had no previous criminal history.
6 November 2018: U.S. Border Patrol is conducting ‘crowd control’ drills on Election Day in a Latino area of Beto O’Rourke’s El Paso:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Monday evening that U.S. Border Patrol agents “will be conducting a crowd control exercise” in El Paso on Tuesday, Election Day. El Paso is Democratic Senate candidate Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s home and political base — he held his final rally there Monday night — and the “mobile field force demonstration” will start at 10 a.m. between El Paso’s primarily Latino Chihuahuita neighborhood and that neighborhood’s designated polling location, about half a mile away, Texas Monthly reports.
CPB spokesman Roger Maier declined to comment on the exercises but pointed to an earlier statement about preparations for the Central American migrant caravan hundreds of miles south of the U.S. border, walking north. “No walls, no CBP exercises (are) going to keep us from honoring our laws, our commitments,” O’Rourke said when informed of the Border Patrol drill Monday night. “Why this is happening now, why the president is stirring these issues up at this moment with 24 hours before we decide this election, I’ll leave that to you to conclude.”
Other Texas Democrats were similarly confounded by the Border Patrol exercises, as was the ACLU. “The location, next to a totally Hispanic neighborhood, is suspicious,” said ACLU Texas head Terri Burke. “The timing of this — Election Day — is suspicious. This administration, and by extension the (Gov. Greg) Abbott administration, have done quite enough to intimidate voters without staging military rehearsals on the day our nation exercises our most important democratic obligation: voting.”
9 November 2018: Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker revealed to have said Jews, Muslims and Atheists should not be Federal Judges:
New acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker said in 2014 that judges without a New Testament “biblical view of justice,” should not serve on the federal bench and suggested that he would block the appointment of non-Christian judges if given the chance.
While Whitaker singled out atheists in particular as being unfit to serve, his comments also extended to Jewish and Muslim Americans.
In 2014, Whitaker was running for the Republican Senate nomination in Iowa and participated in a forum hosted by the religious-right group The Family Leader. The forum’s leader, Bob Vander Plaats, outlined the themes of the event in his opening remarks. “We believe God has three institutions: It would be the church, the family, and government,” he said. The Republican nominees were then asked a series of questions about their religious values, including their views on federal judgeships.
“If you get to the United States Senate and you have the majority, you can block President Obama’s judges,” said moderator Erick Erickson, a conservative blogger. “But most Americans would say you need to have a real reason to block those judges other than just they’re liberal. How do you set the criteria that you will use to block those judges?”
Whittaker’s two competitors, Sam Clovis and Joni Ernst, said that they would use faith-based criteria and make sure they acknowledged “natural law.”
12 November 2018: Trump is said to be preparing to remove Kirstjen Nielsen as Homeland Security secretary, aides say:
President Trump has decided to remove Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, and her departure from the administration is likely to occur in the coming weeks, if not sooner, according to five current and former White House officials.
Trump canceled a planned trip with Nielsen this week to visit U.S. troops at the border in South Texas and told aides over the weekend he wants her out as soon as possible, these officials said. The president has grumbled for months about what he views as Nielsen’s lackluster performance on immigration enforcement and is believed to be looking for a replacement who will implement his policy ideas with more alacrity.
The announcement could come as soon as this week, three of these officials said.
19 November 2018: White House attacks ‘activist judges’ after federal court blocks Trump’s asylum ban:
The White House on Tuesday blasted a federal judge for temporarily blocking the Trump administration from refusing asylum to migrants who cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.
In a sharply worded statement late Tuesday afternoon, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders excoriated the ruling as “yet another example of activist judges imposing their open borders policy preferences.” She vowed that the administration “will take all necessary action” to fight the decision.
“This decision will open the floodgates, inviting countless illegal aliens to pour into our country on the American taxpayer’s dime,” Sanders claimed.
23 November 2018: Anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson appointed as UKIP adviser:
The rightwing UK Independence Party has appointed the anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson as an adviser, in a move that signals a further shift to the right.
Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, will advise UKIP leader Gerard Batten on rape gangs and prison reform, the party announced.
Under current UKIP rules, Robinson is ineligible for membership because of a party rule prohibiting anyone who has been a member of the EDL from joining. A decision over his application to join the party has been postponed until after March 29 — the day the UK leaves the European Union.
The decision was criticized by former UKIP leader Nigel Farage. “It goes against all the things I did as leader to say we will talk about immigration, we will talk about the extreme forms of Islam. But, we will do it as a non-racist, non-sectarian party,” he told the BBC. “This blows a hole in all of that.”
Robinson, 35, has become a figurehead for the far right in Britain, attracting thousands of followers both online and at protests.
In May, Robinson was was jailed for 13 months for contempt of court for live-streaming videos to Facebook from outside the trial of a grooming gang.
His conviction was later quashed over procedural matters with the case being referred to the attorney general.
29 November 2018: More than 80,000 people call for Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes to be denied visa to tout ‘extremist’ views in Australia:
A petition with 81,000 signatures calling on the Immigration Minister to ban the American founder of far-right “men’s organisation” the Proud Boys from Australia has been delivered to Parliament House in Canberra.
Gavin McInnes and UK activist Tommy Robinson are due to bring their The Deplorables speaking tour to Australia in February.
The Proud Boys were founded by Mr McInnes in 2016, and describe themselves as “a pro-Western fraternal organisation for men who refuse to apologise for creating the modern world; aka Western Chauvinists”.
US law enforcement agency, the FBI has designated the group an “extremist group with ties to white nationalism”, in a document obtained by a public transparency organisation.
The Proud Boys list their values as including being against political correctness, racial guilt and racism, while promoting free speech and gun rights. But they have been widely criticised as promoting violence against people who do not share their views.
29 November 2018: Far-right activist Laura Loomer handcuffs herself to Twitter’s New York headquarters:
Far-right activist Laura Loomer handcuffed herself to Twitter’s New York City headquarters on Thursday afternoon to protest the company’s banning her from the social media platform.
Loomer attached herself to the front door, blocking the entrance to the building in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. But police told NBC News that Twitter has said it won’t press charges and Loomer can stay chained to the door as long as she wants.
Twitter closed the conservative firebrand’s account a week ago after she posted a tweet criticizing Minnesota Rep.-elect Ilhan Omar, a Democrat, and her Muslim faith, calling Omar “anti Jewish” and pro-Sharia law.
Her public protest Thursday was livestreamed on Periscope, showing Loomer wearing on her chest a yellow Star of David such as many European Jews were forced to wear during the Holocaust, and a sweatshirt that read on the back, “#STOPTHEBIAS.”
At one point, she yelled through the doors at Twitter employees that they worked for an “evil” company.
29 November 2018: Faith Groups Call For Whitaker’s Resignation Over Apparent Preference For Christian Judges:
President Donald Trump’s decision to tap Matthew Whitaker as acting attorney general has gotten pushback from Democratic senators, state attorneys general and legal experts. Now Whitaker has another group of challengers to contend with: a coalition of faith leaders and secular activists.
Muslim, Christian, Jewish, Unitarian Universalist and secular groups joined together on Thursday to call for Whitaker to step down from his post. Their displeasure stems from comments he made four years ago that appear to suggest he would only support federal judicial nominees who are Christian.
The leaders condemned the suggestion that a nominee should be subjected to a “litmus test of faith” to enter public service.
“By this standard, no atheist, Jew, Sikh, Muslim or member of any faith group other than Whitaker’s own is qualified to rule in American courts. That statement sounds absurd ― and it is,” the groups said in a joint letter organized by Muslim Advocates, a legal advocacy organization.
30 November 2018: CBP: 69 migrants arrested after crossing US border amid weekend clash:
Sixty-nine migrants who attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border illegally over the weekend were arrested in California, U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan told The Associated Press.
The arrests came as the migrants attempted to cross into the U.S. near San Diego from Tijuana.
30 November 2018: Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes denied visa to tour Australia with ‘The Deplorables’:
Right-wing provocateur and founder of the Proud Boys group Gavin McInnes has had his visa application blocked by the Home Affairs Department, failing the character test to enter Australia.
Critics of Mr McInnes were urging the department and Immigration Minister David Coleman to ban him from travelling to Australia for a speaking tour next year, concerned about his extreme views and promotion of violence.
The ABC understands Mr McInnes was notified a few weeks ago that the department was likely to block his visa application because he was judged to be of bad character, and the formal window for him to appeal closed on Friday.
Mr McInnes cut ties with the Proud Boys group earlier this month. The group, which Mr McInnes has previously labelled a “gang”, describes itself as a men’s organisation, committed to upholding “Western chauvinist values”.
The FBI designated them as an extremist organisation.
3 December 2018: Milo Yiannopoulos ‘more than $2m in debt’, Australian promoters’ documents show:
The far right activist Milo Yiannopoulos was more than $2m in debt during 2018, according to a collection of documents assembled by his former Australian tour promoters and seen by Guardian Australia. Creditors listed in the documents include employees of his company, a wedding venue and his former sponsors, the billionaire Mercer family.
The documents indicate that as of April 2018, Yiannopoulos owed $1.6m to his own company, $400,000 to the Mercers, $153,215 to his former lawyers, $76,574 to former collaborator and Breitbart writer Allum Bokhari, and $20,000 to the luxury jewellery brand Cartier.
As of 2 October, Yiannopoulos owed sums of several thousand dollars to far right writers including Ian Miles Cheong, anti-Islamic ideologue Pamela Geller and science fiction writer Theodore Beale, aka Vox Day, the documents indicate, amongst others.
They were published on the website of an Australian far right figure and United Patriots Front member, Neil Erikson, infamous for subjecting the former senator Sam Dastyari to a torrent of racial abuse in a Sydney pub.
The cache details the deterioration in the relationship between Yiannopoulos and his former promoters, Gold Coast-based Australian Events Management, run by brothers Ben and Dan Spiller.
The documents show Yiannopoulos demanding money from the promoters for his living expenses, medical bills for himself and his husband, and payment for his employees, on top of sums that the promoters claim they had already transferred to him.
At one point, as he attempts to negotiate the transfer of more funds from the Spillers, Yiannopoulos remarks in a message that “I am less financially secure, more panicked and stressed, and more miserable than when we started”, and then says he returned his wedding ring to Cartier to wipe out the debt he had with them.
3 December 2018: Homeland Security chief Nielsen has saved her job — for now:
Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who was recently on the brink of losing her job, is now expected to survive the Cabinet shake-up President Donald Trump has spent weeks teasing — and she may have the caravan to thank.
On the verge of firing by a president who has said she isn’t a strong enough defender of the U.S.-Mexico border, Nielsen has adopted — and made sure to publicize — a tough stance in response to the caravan of Central American migrants headed toward the U.S. that Trump turned into a major midterm campaign issue. She has visited the southern border three times since October and recently hailed Trump as a forceful “leader.”
The firm posture seems to have impressed her most important audience: the president.
Five sources inside and close to the administration describe a clear shift in the president’s feelings toward his DHS chief, about whom he has repeatedly complained over the past year. Her fate is of particular interest because, administration officials say, White House chief of staff John Kelly, a longtime Nielsen mentor and defender, could quickly follow her out the door in frustration.
Even some of her critics concede that Nielsen seems to have bought herself time with some savvy presentation.
“She’s playing the part of an immigration hawk as opposed to actually being one,” said Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, who’s been critical of Nielsen in the past.
4 December 2018: Unnamed Senator threatened by Trump Supporter:
Michael Brogan, 51, of Brooklyn, New York, left a voicemail at an unidentified U.S. Senator’s office in Washington insisting, “I’m going to put a bullet in ya. … You and your constant lambasting of President Trump. Oh, reproductive rights, reproductive rights.” He later told an FBI agent that before leaving the voicemail he became “very angry” by “an internet video of the Senator, including the Senator’s criticism of the President of the United States as well as the Senator’s views on reproductive rights.” “The threats were made to discourage the Senator from criticizing the President,” the Justice Department said in a later press release. Brogan has since pleaded guilty to one count of threatening a U.S. official, and he is awaiting sentencing.
5 December 2018: Don’t condemn white nationalists, Veterans Affairs’ diversity chief was told after Charlottesville, emails show:
A top White House appointee at the Department of Veterans Affairs sought to silence the agency’s chief diversity officer, who — in the aftermath of last year’s racially charged violence in Charlottesville — pushed for a forceful condemnation that was at odds with President Trump’s response, newly disclosed emails show.
The tense exchange between Georgia Coffey, a nationally recognized expert in workplace diversity and race relations, and John Ullyot, who remains VA’s chief communications official, occurred during a low point in Trump’s presidency: when he blamed “many sides” for the deadly clash in Charlottesville without singling out the white nationalists and neo-Nazis who rallied there.
5 December 2018: Milo Yiannopoulos lasted a single day on Patreon before getting banned:
Former Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos attempted to fund a “magnificent 2019 comeback” on the crowdfunding platform Patreon, only to be banned after one day. Yiannopoulos’ Patreon campaign, whose banner image is seen above, garnered around 250 patrons pledging an unknown amount of money before being kicked off the service.
“Milo Yiannopoulos was removed from Patreon as we don’t allow association with or supporting hate groups on Patreon,” the company said in a tweet. Leaked emails have linked Yiannopoulos to white supremacists, and a 2016 video showed him singing karaoke in a bar while audience members, including white nationalist Richard Spencer, gave Nazi salutes.
1 https://www.theverge.com/2018/12/5/18127994/milo-yiannopoulos-patreon-comeback-ban-hate-speech
14 December 2018: Trump administration rejects responsibility for death of 7-year-old girl in Border Patrol custody:
White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said Friday that the Trump administration isn’t responsible for the death of a 7-year-old girl in Border Patrol custody.
“Does the administration take responsibility for a parent taking a child on a trek through Mexico to get to this country?“ Gidley said outside the White House, according to a pool report. “No.”
U.S. Customs and Border Protection acknowledged Thursday night that a girl from Guatemala died of exhaustion, dehydration and shock less than 48 hours after authorities at the border took the girl into custody along with her father and a large group of migrants who crossed into New Mexico illegally.
Gidley called the death a “horrific, tragic situation” but asserted it could have been prevented with stricter immigration laws.
“It’s a needless death, and it’s 100 percent preventable,” he said. “If we could just come together and pass some common sense laws to disincentivize people from coming up from the border and encourage them to do it the right way, the legal way, then those types of deaths, those types of assaults, those types of rapes, the child smuggling, the human trafficking that would all come to an end. And we hope Democrats join the president.”
24 December 2018: UN special rapporteur demands inquiry into death of Guatemalan girl held in US:
The United Nations monitor who acts as global watchdog on the treatment of migrants is calling for an in-depth independent investigation into what happened to Jakelin Caal Maquin, a seven-year-old Guatemalan girl who died in the custody of the US government.
Felipe González Morales, the UN’s special rapporteur on the human rights of migrants, has sent a formal complaint to US secretary of state Mike Pompeo, via officials in Geneva, in which he sounds the international alarm about the death. Jakelin died on 8 December, less than 48 hours after she was detained by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) at a remote border crossing in New Mexico.
González is demanding a full independent inquiry into the tragedy, to be led by judges and lawyers and in which the girl’s family is legally represented and given access to language translation. As a measure to prevent more deaths, he also calls for an immediate end to detention of migrant children in the US and urges the Trump administration to address “failings within the immigration system to prevent similar situations”.
In an interview with the Guardian, González said numerous international human rights bodies had repeatedly warned that children should not be kept in detention based on their migrant status.
“Detention of children has such a severe impact on them that we have repeatedly warned of the risks,” he said.
The UN monitor stressed that the Trump administration was bound by international laws it could not shirk.
“When a person, especially a child, is in the custody of a state, that state has to ensure their rights. States have an obligation to care for migrants who arrive at the border, they cannot treat them as animals in inhuman conditions. I’m not saying this happened in this case, but the US has a duty in this regard.”
The intervention of the main international watchdog on the human rights of migrants adds to pressure for the Trump administration to go beyond the routine inquiry that is being carried out by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General. Lawyers for the girl’s family as well as several members of Congress have decried such an internal investigation as a grossly inadequate form of self-policing.
“Something as serious as the death of this girl should not be left to administrative authorities,” González told the Guardian. “I want to make sure that judges and public attorneys carry out the investigation fully in an independent manner without any pressure from the immigration authorities. An internal CBP inquiry would not be satisfactory.”
25 December 2018: US says 2nd Guatemalan child has died in immigration custody:
An 8-year-old boy from Guatemala died in government custody early Tuesday, U.S. immigration authorities, marking the second death of an immigrant child in detention this month.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a news release that the boy died shortly after midnight Tuesday.
The boy showed “signs of potential illness” Monday and was taken with his father to a hospital in Alamogordo, New Mexico, the agency said. There, he was diagnosed with a cold and a fever, was given prescriptions for amoxicillin and Ibuprofen and released Monday afternoon.
29 December 2018: New Jersey AG has obtained evidence of possible crimes at Trump’s golf club — and Mueller, FBI are involved in probe:
New Jersey prosecutors have collected evidence that supervisors at President Trump’s Garden State golf club may have committed federal immigration crimes — and the FBI as well as special counsel Robert Mueller have played part in the inquiry, the Daily News has learned.
Anibal Romero, a Newark attorney who represents several undocumented immigrants who used to work at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, said Friday he recently met with investigators from the state attorney general’s office and handed over fraudulent green cards and Social Security numbers that management at the club allegedly procured and gave his clients, Victorina Morales and Sandra Diaz.
Before he met with the state prosecutors, Romero said he reached out to Mueller’s office because, while he wanted to contact federal authorities, he was concerned about looping in the Justice Department, which was headed by Jeff Sessions at the time.
“I wasn’t sure, one, if they’d take me seriously and, two, if this could backfire on my clients,” Romero told The News, referencing the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration agenda.
Mueller’s office, which is separately investigating Trump’s campaign for possible collusion with Russians during the 2016 election, made contact and informed Romero the matter was not within their jurisdiction.
A few weeks later, an FBI agent in New Jersey called Romero.
“He said to me that he had received a referral from Robert Mueller’s office and that he already knew the specifics and that he wanted to meet with me in person,” Romero said.
Romero then met with two agents at a federal office in Branchburg, N.J., and outlined the same evidence he had already given the AG prosecutors. The agents said they would “coordinate” with the AG’s office, according to Romero.
Romero said he’s stayed in touch with the FBI and the attorney general’s office but declined to confirm whether either of the agencies have formally opened investigations.
“I’m confident that federal and state authorities will conduct a complete and thorough investigation,” Romero said.
An FBI spokesman declined to comment and so did Mueller’s office.
Sharon Lauchaire, a spokeswoman for New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal, said her office has a policy “to neither confirm nor deny investigations.”
A White House spokeswoman did not respond to emailed questions.
