Stephen Miller: Vampire of the West Wing

[GreyhoundFan]

We need this scum out of power: "Stephen Miller’s hardline policies on refugee families make a comeback at HHS"

Spoiler

After the Trump administration abruptly installed a new hardline leader last month, the health department’s refugee office is pushing to implement immigration policies favored by White House senior adviser Stephen Miller, according to four health department officials and internal documents reviewed by POLITICO.

The office — which takes custody of thousands of migrant children — is now seeking to delay placing migrant children in shelters operated by the health department, which would instead leave those children in the custody of the border patrol for an extended length of time, according to an internal email sent last week and reviewed by POLITICO.

Refugee office leaders are reviewing the policy of allowing undocumented immigrant adults to take custody of refugee children — a longstanding practice that dates back to the George W. Bush administration but has been opposed by Miller and other anti-immigration hardliners, who think it rewards adults who are in the country illegally, officials said.

The office also is pushing to resume fingerprinting all of the adults in households where refugee children are released. HHS had rejected that policy in December 2018 for being ineffective and slowing down operations, and two officials said it could make some sponsors less likely to step forward to take custody of the children. But the policy has been championed by Miller and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, who historically have used the fingerprints to expedite deportations.

The moves are being overseen by a team of loyalists to President Donald Trump, including two former campaign staffers who were installed in their new roles after the White House last month abruptly reassigned the office’s director.

While the moves have gotten little attention during the Covid-19 outbreak, “it’s only a matter of time before the situation blows up again like it did in 2018,” said one current official familiar with the matter. “It’s a team of people with very little management experience and an agenda that isn't going to end well given the current laws.”

“The White House wants ORR [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] to be an immigration enforcement office,” said a second official. “That’s not its role.”

The moves also come amid other immigration crackdowns during the Covid-19 outbreak, such as the Border Patrol being ordered to immediately turn away migrants.

The White House did not respond to requests for comment. HHS said that there are no policy changes to announce at the refugee office.

“As political appointees, we are honored to serve at the pleasure of the president, and when we are asked to serve, we step up and we serve,” said Heidi Stirrup, the former deputy White House liaison for HHS who became the office’s acting director a month ago.

The HHS refugee office was at the center of the 2018 family-separation crisis, sparking multiple lawsuits that continue today, as well as congressional investigations and watchdog probes. A federal judge ordered the Trump administration to reunite thousands of separated migrant families, and Trump reportedly reversed the policy only after First Lady Melania Trump and Ivanka Trump, his daughter, prevailed on him to change it.

By late 2018, HHS Secretary Alex Azar reassigned the officials who oversaw the troubled office and brought in new leaders for his department’s children and families division, including several officials with a background in human services and management expertise. Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), who chairs the House subcommittee that controls funding for the health department, also probed the office last year and sought to set guardrails in appropriations bills.

But the refugee office’s leadership was shuffled again last month, when Jonathan Hayes — who had overseen the office for the previous 15 months — was reassigned to the health department’s emergency-preparedness division with just two days notice.

Health department leadership had been pleased with the work of Hayes, a longtime GOP congressional staffer who had overseen a turnaround in the office’s operations after the divisive events of the family-separation crisis. For instance, fewer than 3,000 refugee children were in the office’s custody last month, down from nearly 15,000 in December 2018, as the refugee office more quickly found sponsors for the children and was able to release them from custody. An HHS memo publicly characterized Hayes’ abrupt reassignment as an elevation, saying that he had been "promoted" to a new role on the department's emergency-preparedness team.

But Hayes — despite having called to strengthen the U.S. border and overhaul the immigration system in his congressional testimony — was viewed as too soft on refugees by some White House officials who had pushed for family separation. For instance, Hayes had told colleagues of the importance of keeping migrant families together, said two officials with close knowledge of the office’s workings.

Hayes also discontinued the policy of fingerprinting all adults in the households where refugee children were released, barring any red flags. The tactic had been instituted by his predecessor, Scott Lloyd, at the behest of the White House. Hayes and other health officials argued that the policy slowed processing of the children and was ineffective as an immigration enforcement tool. About 50,000 adults were fingerprinted by the office across 2018, but ICE took action on fewer than 200, said two officials.

Hayes did not respond to a request for comment.

Hayes was reassigned at the direction of the White House’s personnel office, among the first in a broader swath of staffing changes across the federal government in a purge of officials deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump’s agenda, said three individuals with knowledge of personnel planning.

Now the refugee office is being led in an acting capacity by Stirrup, a longtime Hill staffer and former president of Faithful Catholic Citizens, who first joined HHS as part of Trump’s “beachhead team” in January 2017. Kim Womack, a former financial analyst whose resume lists a five-year gap before she volunteered for the Trump campaign in 2016, is serving as chief of staff. Mark Vafiades, a fellow Trump campaign veteran who was a computer IT professional, reserve deputy sheriff and professional actor in Los Angeles, also was detailed to advise the office.

Womack and Vafiades, who first joined HHS in 2017, did not respond to requests for comment.

The refugee office also added Bennett Miller, an attorney from the Homeland Security department, as a senior policy adviser, BuzzFeed first reported. The White House has considered whether to bring in an ICE veteran as the refugee office’s permanent leader, said two officials.

Prior to the Trump administration, the refugee office was viewed as apolitical and staffed by leaders with experience in refugee-resettlement and family services. The office now appears to be shifting toward a mission of more immigration enforcement, the two officials said.

“There’s been a separation historically between the enforcement and human services side, ” said Bob Carey, who led the refugee office under the Obama administration. “But the history on this is not particularly good in the last few years, under this administration.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He is evil incarnate: "Stephen Miller has long-term vision for Trump’s ‘temporary’ immigration order, according to private call with supporters"

Spoiler

Trump senior policy adviser Stephen Miller told White House supporters in a private call this week that the president’s new executive order curbing immigration will usher in the kind of broader long-term changes to American society he has advocated for years, even though the 60-day measures were publicly characterized as a “pause” during the coronavirus pandemic.

Miller, the chief architect of the president’s immigration agenda and one of his longest-serving and most trusted advisers, spoke to a group of Trump surrogates Thursday in an off-the-record call about the new executive order, which had been signed the night before. Although the White House had seen the move as something that would resonate with Trump’s political base, the administration instead was facing criticism from immigration hard-liners who were disappointed that the order does not apply to temporary foreign workers despite Trump pitching it as helping to protect jobs for Americans.

Miller told the group that subsequent measures were under consideration that would restrict guest worker programs, but the “the most important thing is to turn off the faucet of new immigrant labor,” he said, according to a recording obtained by The Washington Post. Miller indicated that the strategy is part of a long-term vision and not seen only as a stopgap.

“As a numerical proposition, when you suspend the entry of a new immigrant from abroad, you’re also reducing immigration further because the chains of follow-on migration that are disrupted,” said Miller, one of the executive order’s main authors. “So the benefit to American workers compounds with time.”

Miller declined to comment Friday. A White House spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Trump administration has been trying for years to scrap the family-based U.S. immigration model, which Miller and other restrictionists call “chain migration.” Instead, the White House favors a more restrictive system based on job skills and U.S. labor market demands.

Although Trump described his order this week as a temporary “pause,” he also said it is an open-ended move that will remain in place until he decides the U.S. labor market has sufficiently improved once the coronavirus crisis subsides. He said he will reevaluate it after 60 days and might extend the immigration restrictions to help Americans find jobs when states reopen their economies.

From March 15 to April 18, 26.5 million Americans filed for unemployment, sending joblessness to levels not recorded since the Great Depression. The economic impact could be lengthy, as it remains unclear how long the pandemic will keep businesses closed and people in their homes.

The title of Trump’s order — “Proclamation Suspending Entry of Immigrants Who Present Risk to the U.S. Labor Market During the Economic Recovery Following the Covid-19 Outbreak” — makes explicit that the underlying rationale for the president’s restrictions are economic, not epidemiological.

Miller has been the leading proponent of the argument that immigrants compete for jobs with U.S. workers and depress their wages. The argument is anathema to many economists and pro-business Republicans who argue that immigration fuels long-term U.S. growth and keeps U.S. industries competitive.

The debate remains a significant fault line in the Republican Party, with many GOP members unwilling to support the more hard-line positions Miller backs. Trump’s efforts to overhaul the immigration system have floundered in Congress.

Ken Cuccinelli, the deputy Homeland Security secretary who joined Miller on the call, said Trump had been considering an immigration freeze long before his 10:06 p.m. tweet Monday night announcing his plans to “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”

“This is something the president has been looking at himself since the economic effects of the covid virus began,” said Cuccinelli, who spoke less than Miller during the 23-minute call. “We’ve had numerous conversations with him. And so what you saw yesterday was a continuation of his own thinking.”

Department of Homeland Security officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Miller was involved in crafting and selling the executive order, officials said, working quietly without many others in the administration knowing. Senior White House officials said the memo had not been vetted by lawyers or top officials before the president tweeted that he would be signing it.

Trump acknowledged sending out the tweet before the order was written, and the version he signed Wednesday was far less sweeping than the one he had teased on social media. It does not apply to immigrants already living and working in the United States who are seeking permanent residency, nor does it apply to the spouses and children of U.S. citizens, among other exemptions.

But the measure, which took effect Thursday, does block the other immigrant visa categories Trump calls “chain migration,” namely the ability for U.S. citizens to sponsor their parents, adult children and siblings. Last year, the State Department issued about 460,000 immigrant visas, and more than half were in the categories the order halts.

Numerous advocates for immigrants said the order was far less restrictive than they had feared and said it has more of a political effect than a practical one. Because the order has no bearing on farmworkers, medical professionals and other “nonimmigrant” visa categories, restrictionist groups panned the move.

Dan Stein, president of the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a leading restrictionist group that has supported the president’s agenda, sent a letter to Trump Thursday blasting the order for excluding temporary work visas.

“Under what craven notion of American equity would the United States continue a subordinated labor importation program at a time when American workers are in such distress?” Stein wrote. “The optics are devastating — we are becoming a two-class society, with a servant caste relegated to guest worker status continuing apace while Americans search desperately for employment.”

On the call, Miller sounded stung by the criticism from the right and urged surrogates and supporters to speak up for the president.

“All around the country, Americans of every political stripe will rally behind an initiative to make sure that they, their children, their parents, their husbands, wives, sons, uncles, nephews, cousins can be the first to get a job when it opens up, to get her old job back when they rehire or to keep their job if they already have one,” he said.

“Those individuals have a right and an expectation to get their jobs back and not to be replaced by foreign workers. That’s the action the president took, it is historic. It is vital, it is necessary, it is patriotic and it deserves the full-throated support of everybody on this call.”

International travel to the United States had already plunged since the coronavirus outbreak. Cuccinelli told listeners on the call that the number of passengers arriving from Europe has dropped to about 500 daily, down from 60,000 before the crisis.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

OMG, they're spawning:

 

[smittykins]

*Decides to invoke “If you can’t say anything nice...”*

[fraurosena]

On 5/26/2020 at 8:48 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

OMG, they're spawning:

 

I hope their offspring is loved and cherished by their parents and family. I hope they grow up happy and healthy. And I fervently hope they develop objective and expansive critical thinking skills, and the hutzpah to stand up to their parents ugly beliefs. 

[GreyhoundFan]

They are a match made in hell, aren't they?

 

[fraurosena]

17 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

They are a match made in hell, aren't they?

 

Uhm... did she just admit to being a sociopath? 

[Cartmann99]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

MSNBC just had the breaking news that the vampire has Covid.

[thoughtful]

17 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

MSNBC just had the breaking news that the vampire has Covid.

OK, Fate, now you are just testing my ability to get the thought "Gee, I wouldn't wish this illness on anyone" to go through my head, let alone come out of my mouth.

But . . . if. I. Really. Try . . .  I can still think it, and mean it.

(whew - I'm exhausted)

But it's not easy.

[Howl]

Jeeze, his wife had it earlier in the summer, and she's pregnant, but I don't know if she had it when she was pregnant. 

But, I must say, it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.  He's young (33-ish), though, and may skate through it in a week, like my relative that age. 

 

[onekidanddone]

42 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

MSNBC just had the breaking news that the vampire has Covid.

Meh. It is what it is   

[onekidanddone]

On 7/7/2020 at 1:26 PM, GreyhoundFan said:

They are a match made in hell, aren't they?

 

Run baby run!!!!!! We will put you in witness protection and find you a loving home with wonderful loving  parents, a puppy and a kitten 

[GreyhoundFan]

I feel bad for this child, having to grow up with such deplorable parents.

[47of74]

Reich wingers eating their own. 

Quote

On one hand, it’s legitimately terrifying that an outgoing president is trying to overturn an election. On the other, Donald Trump is doing such a bad job at it that it’s been amusing, as well as scary. From his Keystone Kops legal team bumbling through one creatively failed presserand hearing after another to a guy whose father and wife he insulted promising to come to his rescue, it’s been a lot. But surely few people imagined that it would come to this: Lou Dobbs almost made Stephen Miller cry.

Dobbs, of course, is one of the president’s most stubborn cheerleaders. Miller, of course, is one of Trump’s most hated minions. They both adore 45. They both hate immigrants. But on Monday night — hours after a report emerged that Trump bungled an attempt to vaccine more Americans early and often — Dobbs turned on Miller. And people on social media found it glorious.

Miller came ready to parrot some familiar and dodgy (and in many cases already debunked) claims of voter fraud. But Dobbs wasn’t having it. He thought the president’s Senior Advisor was just another Republican letting him down, allowing him to get humiliated in one failed court case after another, ready to go down as a disgraced one-timer.

Dobbs may have intended to energize Miller into taking a bolder stand, even though, at this point, the administration has done almost everything it could to overturn the election, without success. Instead Miller retreated into himself, looking as though he was about to cry.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

He truly is a cockroach -- he'll probably survive a nuclear blast. "Stephen Miller set to brief House conservatives"

Quote

Donald Trump and his allies are putting President Joe Biden’s sweeping immigration overhaul in their crosshairs.

The main salvo will be delivered this weekend when Trump is set to address the Conservative Political Action Conference and devote part of his speech to the topic. But days before then, the architect of Trump’s immigration policy, Stephen Miller, will discuss the issue with conservative House members as they organize their opposition to Biden’s planned changes to Trump-era immigration regulations and his recently unveiled blueprint for comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Miller, whose opposition to nearly all forms of immigration earned him the admiration of Trump and the enmity of many others, will be joined at the Wednesday meeting by Tom Homan and Mark Morgan, two former top immigration officials, according to a person involved with the planning and first reported by The Hill. All three men played integral roles in enacting many of Trump’s most controversial immigration policies, including the separation of migrant children from their parents upon arriving in the U.S. without authorization.

The gathering was organized by the 147-member Republican Study Committee, a group of traditionalist conservative lawmakers that also has met recently with other Trump administration officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Fox News host Tucker Carlson. The group met with former Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday.

Immigration policy is quickly emerging as a prime motivator for conservatives in the Biden era. The promise of more lenient and humane policies has led to confusion and fears of a massive influx of migrants at the border. The opening of a migrant facility for minors has sparked rebukes from the left and accusations of hypocrisy from the right. And Republicans, including Miller, have criticized the ambitious, 357-page immigration plan introduced on the president’s behalf last Thursday by Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) and Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), in apocalyptic terms.

“It is the most radical immigration bill ever written, drafted, or submitted in the history of this country,” Miller said during an appearance on Fox News. “It is breathtaking.”

The Biden bill, which would provide a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented immigrants, incorporates many provisions supported by Republicans in the past as well as by business groups today. But it leaves out border security investments that have typically attracted GOP support, suggesting to many in Congress that it was a messaging measure designed to fail.

The dream of a catch-all immigration solution has eluded presidents dating back to George H.W. Bush. Barack Obama tried and failed spectacularly when moderate Senate Republicans withdrew their support; even Trump sought repeatedly to jump start negotiations on Capitol Hill during his term in office — including a doomed effort led by senior adviser Jared Kushner — though he ultimately became reliant on executive orders and obscure regulatory changes to enact a restrictive immigration agenda.

The Biden White House has said its plan is a jumping-off point for future negotiations and a chance to press the “reset button” on an issue lawmakers have failed to make significant bipartisan progress on in decades.

"The reason we have not gotten immigration reform over the finish line is not because of a lack of will," Menendez said at a news conference when the bill was introduced last week. "It is because time and time again, we have compromised too much and capitulated too quickly to fringe voices who have refused to accept the humanity and contributions of immigrants to our country and dismiss everything... as ‘amnesty.’”

Biden’s push to dismantle Trump’s immigration policies comes at a time when the Republican Party is searching for issues, beyond cultural flashpoints, to unify the base and animate GOP voters. Beyond Trump’s remarks, panels at CPAC this weekend in Orlando, Fla., include “The Looming Humanitarian Crisis at the Border” and “Sell Outs: The Devaluing of the American Citizenship.”

For Trump, hardline immigration rhetoric is a form of political comfort food — a theme he’s returned to time and again, from his famous campaign announcement speech at Trump Tower, when he labeled Mexican asylum-seekers “criminals” and “rapists,” to his calls for a complete ban on Muslim immigrants until “our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on.” Some of his earliest actions as president took aim at restricting immigration to the United States. Others, like the ending of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, were ultimately undone by legal challenges.

Though he lost the presidency, Trump’s approach to immigration has remained the dominant strand within the broader GOP. Several conservative groups have cited the Covid-19 pandemic as a reason to keep immigration front and center, accusing the Biden administration of allowing Central American migrants to arrive in the country even as they push or contemplate foreign and domestic travel restrictions to stop the spread of the virus.

“One of the most outrageous things was when the Biden administration floated a Florida travel ban and new domestic testing requirements, while at the same time allowing in migrants from Central America without testing,” said R.J. Hauman, government relations director at the restrictionist group Federation for American Immigration Reform. “Talk about a terrible idea and an even tougher sell.”

And yet, polling shows the majority of the country supportive of immigration reform. Overall, 65 percent of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently living in the United States, according to a February poll by Quinnipiac. And even more — 83 percent — support allowing undocumented immigrants who were brought to the U.S. as children to remain in the country and apply for citizenship.

“There is absolutely no public opinion in the world that says Stephen Miller and Donald Trump’s immigration plans are a net positive for the Republican Party,” said Todd Schulte, the president of FWD.us, an immigration advocacy group. “The human consequences of those policies have been terrible and the political consequences for the republican party have been flat out terrible.”

 

[GreyhoundFan]

A good read. "Stephen Miller’s shadow war against the Biden agenda, explained"

Quote

When the administration reopened a warehouse-like facility for migrant children in Texas this week, it caused a huge controversy on all sides. It inspired claims, mostly from the right, that President Biden is reverting to former president Donald Trump’s policies, proving Trump right all along.

But those claims are wrong. As such, this controversy reveals something else as well: the shadow war that former Trump adviser Stephen Miller is running against the new administration.

Miller is publicly encouraging enforcement agents to defy Biden’s new policies. He is calling on officials to collect internal information for future lawsuits against them.

And Miller is running a propaganda war to manufacture the impression that Biden’s agenda is already a catastrophe. The Post reports that Miller is encouraging GOP lawmakers to step up attacks along these lines.

Central to this will be the public battle over migrant children. When the new Texas facility opened, conservatives (Miller included) scoffed that Biden is being forced to resume Trump policies, because efforts to reverse them have collided with reality, vindicating Trump.

All this is nonsense. On migrant children, Biden has not restarted Trump’s policies. What Biden is doing has nothing in common with “kids in cages." And none of this proves Trump was right in any way. Here’s a quick corrective.

Why did Biden reopen a migrant facility in Texas?

It’s important to note that the Texas facility is run not by Border Patrol, but by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Federal laws and legal settlements require Border Patrol to take in children and hold them for no more than 72 hours, then transfer them to ORR, which then tries to place them with relatives or guardians.

Thus, the reopening of the Texas facility does not constitute holding children at the border. It constitutes using a warehouse-like facility to deal with overflow at ORR, the waystation before kids hopefully get moved to a better life.

This isn’t “kids in cages” redux. That scandal arose when Trump separated families to hold parents (rather than releasing them), creating a new class of unaccompanied children that didn’t exist before.

In this case, the overflow at ORR is being caused in part by the rise in migrant children arriving at the border alone, not after being separated from parents.

Why are more children migrating?

There is a rise in young migrants arriving at the border, and the Trumpists cite this, too, as vindication. It isn’t.

The Trumpists claim this is due to Biden signaling changes to Trump policies — which is supposedly proving a draw to migrants who now think they can get in — again proving Trump right.

Some of the increase is due to Biden allowing migrants to have due process, but after being trapped in Mexico due to Trump’s policies. That’s a good thing, since those victims of Trump’s policies … deserve due process and humane treatment.

Trumpists will claim this supposed Biden permissiveness is drawing more migrants relative to last year to make the trek. But Wendy Young, the president of Kids in Need of Defense, told me it’s far more complex than this.

Migration was suppressed last year during the pandemic, and arrivals are now rising due to many factors in Central America, Young said.

“There continues to be a tremendous amount of violence, corruption and deprivation," Young told me. “Children leave because they’re forced out of their home countries.”

Young added that children are often targeted by gangs trying to force them to join under threat, so “families will very often send children” to try to connect with relatives or friends in the United States, “literally to save their lives.”

Thus, much of the spike is caused by “push” factors, just as previous spikes were. Biden is trying to address those factors with new policies sending aid to the region.

Trumpists simply scoff at these push factors as irrelevant, and instead use cruelty and deterrence to keep migrants away. The fundamental difference here is whether or not to allow in more migrants who actually have legitimate grounds to apply for asylum. We should allow more in. It’s better policy, and it’s more humane.

Can’t we just release children when they arrive?

This is the rub of the issue, and it’s almost never discussed: For now, there is no alternative to holding migrant children, because releasing them would put them in more danger. The question then becomes how to do this.

We want ORR to take in the migrant children very soon after their arrival, because ORR is run by the Department of Health and Human Services rather than an enforcement agency.

“We can’t just release them,” Young told me, because they’re “incredibly vulnerable” in a “strange country.” Instead, Young said, “you have to provide them with appropriate care.”

Indeed, Young noted, holding and processing children is necessary for their own long-term good, because it enables us to determine whether they’re eligible for asylum or other protections, and to place them on the correct legal path to get there.

And so, while the Texas facility understandably has terrible connotations, it actually represents an unfortunate but better approach than the alternatives — either leaving them in enforcement detention or releasing them with nowhere to go.

But the Texas facility is still bad, right?

Yes. It is very problematic, but this part of the debate has gotten badly confused. The problem is not the existence of the facility per se: Again, ORR must hold migrant children before placing them, and that’s better than releasing them alone. This is an emergency measure to deal with overflow.

Rather, the real issue is the conditions under which children are held, and for how long. And this points to the way we can genuinely hold the Biden administration accountable.

What’s the real way to hold Biden to account?

In the short term, we need to scrutinize whether the administration makes good on its promise to make the conditions under which ORR holds children, including at such warehouse facilities, genuinely more humane. Also crucial is whether the administration undertakes reforms to speed up the process of moving kids from ORR to guardians.

“We will be watching this closely to ensure that these children receive the services they need and are moved quickly to a place of stability,” Young told me.

Comparing all this to “kids in cages” confuses the debate in a way that obscures what the Biden administration is genuinely trying to accomplish — and thus makes it harder to actually hold the administration accountable on it.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Whine, whine, whine:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Yeah, repugnant is a good description.

 

[47of74]

Yeah him again. 

Quote

A legal group started by former Trump aide Stephen Miller filed a class action lawsuit on Monday on behalf of Texas’s agricultural commissioner and others arguing that the Biden administration’s funds reserved for “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” discriminate against white people. 

The complaint from America First Legal specifically takes issue with a proposal enacted by Congress as part of President Biden’s American Rescue Plan. The suit argues that through the program, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is “actively and invidiously discriminating against American citizens solely based upon their race.” 

“The United States Department of Agriculture administers numerous statutes that provide government aid to ‘socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,’” the group said the complaint. 

“The Department of Agriculture interprets this phrase to include African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans, Alaskan natives, Asian-Americans, and Pacific Islanders,” the lawsuit noted. “But white farmers and ranchers are not included within the definition of ‘socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,’ making them ineligible for aid under these federal programs.”

 

[Cartmann99]

2 hours ago, 47of74 said:

A legal group started by former Trump aide Stephen Miller filed a class action lawsuit on Monday on behalf of Texas’s agricultural commissioner and others arguing that the Biden administration’s funds reserved for “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” discriminate against white people. 

@Howl, our good buddy Sid Miller's in the news again.

For the non-Texans, the short version is that he's been caught misappropriating his own campaign funds as well as taxpayer money, authored the bill in the Texas Legislature that required women to have a transvaginal ultrasound before having an abortion, compared refugees to rattlesnakes, called Hillary Clinton the c-word on Twitter, and is a rabid Trump supporter that believes in every half-baked conspiracy that shows up on social media.

[Cartmann99]

Well, I'm definitely going to hell...

Edited April 29, 2021 by Cartmann99
found a better tweet

[GreyhoundFan]

That's an odd accusation. I think many of us have cars and doors.

 

[fraurosena]

2 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

That's an odd accusation. I think many of us have cars and doors.

 

There's a Dutch saying: those you fraternize with, contaminate you. 

Methinks Miller has spent too much time in Trump's company.

[Cartmann99]

FFS...