Executive Departments 3

[Howl]

We should all be shitting bricks.  The slow-motion coup continues. 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

This nasty piece of work ran for governor of Virginia several years ago. Luckily he was soundly defeated. He is one of the most hateful people out there. Also, he was a huge proponent of former governor Bob O'Donnell's push to require women seeking an abortion to undergo a trans-vaginal ultrasound first. "‘Clearly, he did not take part in our curriculum’: Historians bash Ken Cuccinelli’s revised Statue of Liberty poem"

Spoiler

Annie Polland had an immediate thought after she heard Ken Cuccinelli’s revision of the famous poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty on Tuesday: Her sixth-grade students seemed to understand Emma Lazarus’s “The New Colossus” better than the head of the nation’s legal immigration system did.

“Clearly, he did not take part in our curriculum,” said Polland, the executive director of the American Jewish Historical Society, which is leading a three-year initiative called the Emma Lazarus Project.

She had recently asked the class of sixth-graders to rewrite Lazarus’s poem for a national competition. And while the 11-year-olds welcomed the tired, poor and huddled masses, Cuccinelli, acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, took a different direction as he offered his own twist to an NPR reporter Tuesday.

“Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge,” he said.

Cuccinelli’s off-the-cuff edit befuddled and concerned immigration historians who saw his comments as a distortion of one of the nation’s most symbolic ideals. Cuccinelli made the quip in the wake of USCIS’s announcement this week that it will expand the “public charge” rule, punishing poor immigrants who use government benefits by making it tougher for them to earn green cards. In interviews with NPR and CNN Tuesday, Cuccinelli called the public charge doctrine a “140-year tradition in this country,” a “central part of our heritage as Americans.”

But to Polland, Cuccinelli’s fixation on what he viewed as the burden of poor immigrants represented the exact opposite of the lasting impression of Lazarus’s words. To her, he was attempting to replace the spirit of the Jewish poet’s compassionate vision for America with a policy directive directly contradicting it.

“It really goes against the whole spirit of the poem,” she said, adding: “To just pull out a law and say that it is symbolic of America is a distortion of a much more complicated reality."

Lazarus was asked to write the poem in 1883 as part of a fundraiser put on by newspaper magnate Joseph Pulitzer to raise money for the construction of the base of the Statue of Liberty. Lazarus had come from a well-to-do family, as The Post reported in a 2017 story about her life, but she turned to immigrant advocacy after witnessing the mistreatment of thousands of newly arrived Eastern European Jews in the early 1880s. She discovered them living in squalor in overcrowded living facilities that were overflowing with garbage, with little access to clean water, education or job training.

Her experience formed the backdrop of the famous stanzas Lazarus composed: “Give me your tired, your poor/ Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free/ The refuse of your teeming shore/ Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me/ I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Cuccinelli attempted to clarify his comments on Tuesday night in an interview with CNN, insisting that he was not “rewriting poetry.” He said the poem was “referring back to people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies, where people were considered wretched if they weren’t in the right class.”

That only fueled more backlash.

“Watched the clip again and would like to reiterate that Ken Cuccunnelli is a racist who doesn’t understand the first thing about America,” wrote Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

“Ken Cuccinelli just gave the game away,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.). “Racism is the point of their policy.”

Rather than place the poem in the context of Lazarus’s experience with poor Jewish immigrants, Cuccinelli repeatedly stressed a different backdrop for Lazarus’s poem: that she wrote it one year after the first federal public charge law was passed.

“Very interesting timing,” Cuccinelli had said.

The Immigration Act of 1882 denied entry to any “convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge.” The provision is rooted in colonial-era “poor laws,” in which states like Massachusetts could deny entry to or deport poor or disabled people, as Hidetaka Hirota, author of “Expelling the Poor,” wrote in a Post op-ed this week.

In 1903 — the same year Lazarus’s poem was actually inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, Cuccinelli noted again — Congress expanded the rule to allow deportation of any foreigner who became a public charge within five years of coming to the United States. Public charge deportations were only carried out if the cause of a person’s dependency on welfare originated before their arrival in the United States, such as if they had a serious disability or illness that officials had overlooked — not because they fell on hard times.

“Cuccinelli is right,” Erika Lee, a professor of immigration history at the University of Minnesota, wrote in a Twitter thread on Tuesday. “The law has been on the books for a long time, and we have always targeted the poor. But that does not make it right.”

Both Lee and Hirota were among the immigration history professors to write to the Department of Homeland Security last year warning the agency not to implement the expanded “Inadmissibility on Public Charge Grounds” rule. For more than a century, immigrants could not be penalized in any way for using benefits such as food stamps, social security or Medicaid. The public charge law was not a cornerstone of immigration law in the way Cuccinelli described: It was only invoked in narrow cases, such as long-term institutionalization or prolonged subsistence, the professors noted. In 1916, for example, according to the memo, about 1 million immigrants arrived in the country, but immigration officials excluded only about 1 percent of them on public charge grounds.

The Trump administration’s change would greatly expand the number of immigrants who are penalized, denying green cards to those who use taxpayer-funded benefits or even who are likely to use them in the future.

The immigration history professors warned DHS: “The proposals for these sweeping changes in immigration public charge policy would reverse over 100 years in consistent policy.”

As the backlash reverberated Tuesday, some critics, including CNN’s Erin Burnett, pointed out that if Cuccinelli’s vision of immigration in America had actually existed in 1903, their ancestors may have been labeled burdensome and sent back to their country on a ship.

“If the Trump admin’s new anti-immigrant ‘public charge’ rule and acting [USCIS director] Ken Cuccinelli’s bastardized wording of Emma Lazarus’s poem affixed to the Statue of Liberty had been in effect 115 years ago, I would not be here today,” wrote Stephen Schwartz, co-author of “Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940.”

On Tuesday night, Polland shared some of the poems written by her sixth-graders, saying they showed a stark contrast from Cuccinelli in their visions for American immigration.

“I will accept the poor, the meek, the ruthless and wild/ It is you that I will take in, as my own child,” one wrote.

“A copper goddess towers over the poor and pitied, forgotten and alone,” wrote another sixth-grader. “Her splendor not gone, but her voice silenced.”

 

[fraurosena]

Is it me, or are they amping up the horrible?

 

[GreyhoundFan]

I'm so glad OMB is shielding Treason Barbie and Mother's Little Boy /sarcasm: "U.S. officials shield Ivanka Trump’s and Mike Pence’s projects in review of foreign aid"

Spoiler

The Trump administration has decided to shield the signature projects of White House adviser Ivanka Trump and Vice President Pence as it looks to cancel billions of dollars in foreign aid for other projects around the world, U.S. officials said.

In coming days, the White House is expected to send a proposal to Congress for returning billions of dollars of unspent foreign aid funds to the Treasury in a process known as rescission. Officials say they will safeguard funding for global health programs.

Because U.S. aid agencies often do not designate funds until the end of a fiscal year, the White House could claw back between $2 billion and $4 billion in foreign aid projects approved by Congress for fiscal years 2018 and 2019.

Senior Republicans and Democrats say the review threatens to undermine Congress’s authority to appropriate funds, but U.S. officials insist they are only targeting projects that are unnecessary or of questionable value.

The Office of Management and Budget is reviewing a vast array of programs but has already ruled out canceling funds for Ivanka Trump’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative, Pence’s programs for Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities in the Middle East, and global health programs amid an outbreak of Ebola in Congo.

Aid advocates criticized the move for attempting to protect the pet projects of the president’s inner circle.

“Our international affairs budget should go to the programs that save the most lives and go the furthest to make our planet safer — not just the ones with the Trump name on them,” said Scott Paul, the head of humanitarian policy at Oxfam America.

A senior U.S. official said it was appropriate for the White House to protect the programs it values most.

“Continuing to support Christians and other religious minorities as well as females across the world is something this administration has fought hard for and will continue to do,” said the official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the proposal has not been sent to Congress yet.

Officials pointed to programs they opposed, such as a soccer camp in Guatemala, a space camp in Pakistan and solar panels in the Caribbean. They also said that if the money was so important for these programs, it already would have been spent. The proposal exemptions were first reported by CQ.

Aid advocates say a number of factors explain why the funding hasn’t been obligated in some accounts, such as a government shutdown and a delayed congressional appropriations process.

Several Republicans have said they principally oppose taking unspent money from programs already approved by Congress.

“The administration is coming back to Congress solely focused on one of the smallest parts of the federal budget — not surgically — but looking to cancel significant programs that impact our national security. It just doesn’t make sense for U.S. interests,” said Lester Munson, the former Republican staff director for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Former Republican senator Norm Coleman of Minnesota, who remains involved in foreign policy issues, also said he opposed “going around Congress” and taking away funds appropriated for programs in the “Indo-Pacific, Africa and Eastern Europe.”

Another official said the president’s interest in the rescission package stems from his opposition to aid for the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador. Trump has withheld hundreds of millions of dollars of aid from those countries, saying they must do more to reduce migrant flows into the United States.

Some lawmakers critical of the move said that some of the aid that could be affected is designed to improve conditions in those countries, where high homicide rates have contributed to the exodus of people.

The programs that could be affected also include democracy support for Venezuela, Ukraine and Tibet; security initiatives in Kenya aimed at countering the militant group al-Shabab; and efforts to help countries being overwhelmed with refugees such as Bangladesh and Colombia. Ahead of its expected proposal to cancel funds, the White House has imposed daily limits on spending.

Once the Trump administration submits its proposal to Congress, there are three possible outcomes. Lawmakers could accept the proposal, which would promptly return the unspent money to the Treasury, or reject it, which would unfreeze the funds and allow the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development to spend the money.

The most likely outcome, however, is that Congress ignores the proposal, given the summer recess and a busy congressional agenda in September. In that case, the State Department and USAID may not have enough time to spend the unfrozen money before the fiscal year ends Sept. 30, and the funds would go back to the Treasury.

Last year, the Trump administration dropped a similar rescission proposal after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued against it amid bipartisan complaints in Congress that it undermined the legislative branch’s spending authority. In December, the Government Accountability Office opposed the notion of a rescission so late in the budget year and declared that the White House must provide enough time for “prudent obligation.”

This year, Congress’s opposition to a rescission appears to be just as strong as evidenced by a letter to the White House from top lawmakers this week.

“Slashing crucial diplomacy and development programming would be detrimental to our national security while also undermining Congress’s intended use for these funds,” lawmakers including Sens. James E. Risch (R-Idaho) and Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), the chairman and ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in the letter.

Ivanka Trump’s project aims to help women succeed as entrepreneurs, supporting vocational training in the tech and energy sector, as well as reintegrating victims of gender-based violence into the economy. Pence’s project has, among other things, directed funding to persecuted Christian and Yazidi communities in Iraq as part of a broader effort to rebuild areas liberated from the Islamic State.

 

[Howl]

Just want to be up front about this: I'm back to face-palming, because JFC, the crazy just NEVER STOPS: 

 

 

[Audrey2]

8 hours ago, fraurosena said:

Is it me, or are they amping up the horrible?

 

Holy crap! Will their next step be allowing government contractors to fire or not hire women because of the Billy Graham rule, Biblical submission, or because they should have a husband who provides for them?  This is both beyond disgusting and something that makes me ragey!

So, the same people who scream about "welfare moms" want to discriminate against them in the work force?

[WiseGirl]

11 hours ago, Howl said:

I'm back to face-palming, because JFC, the crazy just NEVER STOPS: 

 

This has so much truth to it that it hurts. Just when you think it can't get crazier, the bar is lowered again.

[Howl]

Quote

ACLU✔   BREAKING: The Department of Labor just proposed a rule that aims to let government contractors fire workers who are LGBTQ, or who are pregnant and unmarried, based on the employers’ religious views.

So, yes, this is amping up the horrible.  Following this logic, the next step is to institute a religious beliefs threshold to get a government contract, so all government contracts go to Christians.  

10 hours ago, Audrey2 said:

Holy crap! Will their next step be allowing government contractors to fire or not hire women because of the Billy Graham rule, Biblical submission, or because they should have a husband who provides for them? 

The strategy is to throw ludicrous stuff against the wall, triggering instant law suits, then hope that it makes its way to SCOTUS, and SCOTUS will rule in favor of white protestant/fundamentalist/Evangelical religious beliefs.   Its worked for birth control coverage and other aspects of "sincerely held" religious beliefs.  The ultimate prize is overturning Roe v. Wade. 

#MoscowMitch is working at a furious pace to confirm religious ultra-conservatives into lifetime Federal judgeships as a way to fulfill this particular wet dream.  Also, they will do ANYTHING to make sure that RBGs slot on SCOTUS is filled by a right-wing, antiabortion advocate. 

Edited August 15, 2019 by Howl

[Howl]

Sue Gordon's farewell tweet: 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"Inspector general finds politically motivated harassment at State Department"

Spoiler

A report by the State Department’s inspector general concludes that leadership of a leading department bureau mistreated and harassed staffers, accused them of political disloyalty to the Trump administration, and retaliated against them.

In response to repeated counseling by more senior State officials that he address staff concerns, the report concluded, Kevin Moley, assistant secretary for international affairs, “did not take significant action.”

The report, released Thursday, is a sweeping condemnation of Moley and more specifically of his former senior adviser, Mari Stull. A former lobbyist and consultant for international food and agriculture interests, Stull left the department in January following press reports that, among other things, she had compiled a list of staffers deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration.

The 30-page report — based on what it said were interviews with dozens of current and former employees, as well as documents — chronicled numerous episodes of Stull berating and belittling employees, and Moley’s repeated failure to deal with complaints reported to him.

Both Stull and Moley, it said, “frequently berated employees, raised their voices, and generally engaged in unprofessional behavior toward staff,” and reportedly moved to retaliate against those who had held their jobs under the previous administration.

Stull, it said, referred to some employees as “Obama holdovers,” “traitors,” or “disloyal,” and accused some of being part of the “Deep State” and the “swamp” — terms that President Trump has used to refer to federal employees. All of those so accused, the report said, were career staffers and not political appointees.

Some staffers said Moley accused them of “undermining the President’s agenda,” the report said.

In a response appended to the report, Moley said he had no recollection of much of the counseling, and said the description of his behavior with employees “does not represent the person I am or have ever been.” He said accounts of the departure of two senior bureau officials was inaccurate, and that he had not witnessed Stull’s reported behavior.

Stull, the report said, declined to speak to investigators.

Recommendations included in the report advised Undersecretary of Political Affairs David Hale, who supervises the international affairs bureau, to develop a “corrective action plan to address the leadership and management deficiencies,” and to consider other action, “including disciplinary action.”

The State Department response, contained in the report and repeated Thursday by a Department spokesman, accepted the recommendations. Noting that Stull was “no longer with the Department,” it said that “with regard to the second employee,” Moley, it would submit a “corrective action plan” within 60 days.

Moley served in a number of government positions in previous administrations, including as permanent U.S. representative to the Geneva-based United Nations office working with international organizations under former president George W. Bush.

The State Department’s international organizations bureau is in charge of U.S. relations with international organizations. Although Moley was nominated for the position under secretary of state Rex Tillerson, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate a week after Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018. Stull was appointed by Moley in April of that year — as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took over the Department — and left last January.

After Politico first published reports of personnel problems in the bureau in July 2018, congressional Democrats raised concerns with Pompeo. The secretary, the report said, referred the matter to the inspector general, which was already investigating what it said were “similar issues involving the Office of the Secretary.”

Inspector General Steve Linick later told Congress that he had decided to separate the matter into two reports — one on the international organizations bureau, and the other on those portions of the Department that reported directly to the secretary’s office. The latter report has not yet been released.

 

[fraurosena]

7 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Inspector general finds politically motivated harassment at State Department"

  Hide contents

A report by the State Department’s inspector general concludes that leadership of a leading department bureau mistreated and harassed staffers, accused them of political disloyalty to the Trump administration, and retaliated against them.

In response to repeated counseling by more senior State officials that he address staff concerns, the report concluded, Kevin Moley, assistant secretary for international affairs, “did not take significant action.”

The report, released Thursday, is a sweeping condemnation of Moley and more specifically of his former senior adviser, Mari Stull. A former lobbyist and consultant for international food and agriculture interests, Stull left the department in January following press reports that, among other things, she had compiled a list of staffers deemed insufficiently loyal to the Trump administration.

The 30-page report — based on what it said were interviews with dozens of current and former employees, as well as documents — chronicled numerous episodes of Stull berating and belittling employees, and Moley’s repeated failure to deal with complaints reported to him.

Both Stull and Moley, it said, “frequently berated employees, raised their voices, and generally engaged in unprofessional behavior toward staff,” and reportedly moved to retaliate against those who had held their jobs under the previous administration.

Stull, it said, referred to some employees as “Obama holdovers,” “traitors,” or “disloyal,” and accused some of being part of the “Deep State” and the “swamp” — terms that President Trump has used to refer to federal employees. All of those so accused, the report said, were career staffers and not political appointees.

Some staffers said Moley accused them of “undermining the President’s agenda,” the report said.

In a response appended to the report, Moley said he had no recollection of much of the counseling, and said the description of his behavior with employees “does not represent the person I am or have ever been.” He said accounts of the departure of two senior bureau officials was inaccurate, and that he had not witnessed Stull’s reported behavior.

Stull, the report said, declined to speak to investigators.

Recommendations included in the report advised Undersecretary of Political Affairs David Hale, who supervises the international affairs bureau, to develop a “corrective action plan to address the leadership and management deficiencies,” and to consider other action, “including disciplinary action.”

The State Department response, contained in the report and repeated Thursday by a Department spokesman, accepted the recommendations. Noting that Stull was “no longer with the Department,” it said that “with regard to the second employee,” Moley, it would submit a “corrective action plan” within 60 days.

Moley served in a number of government positions in previous administrations, including as permanent U.S. representative to the Geneva-based United Nations office working with international organizations under former president George W. Bush.

The State Department’s international organizations bureau is in charge of U.S. relations with international organizations. Although Moley was nominated for the position under secretary of state Rex Tillerson, he was unanimously confirmed by the Senate a week after Trump fired Tillerson in March 2018. Stull was appointed by Moley in April of that year — as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took over the Department — and left last January.

After Politico first published reports of personnel problems in the bureau in July 2018, congressional Democrats raised concerns with Pompeo. The secretary, the report said, referred the matter to the inspector general, which was already investigating what it said were “similar issues involving the Office of the Secretary.”

Inspector General Steve Linick later told Congress that he had decided to separate the matter into two reports — one on the international organizations bureau, and the other on those portions of the Department that reported directly to the secretary’s office. The latter report has not yet been released.

 

Now there is this report, and apparently another is forthcoming, what precisely will be done about these fascist behaviors in this administration?

Nothing much. Who would enforce it? Not this administration, that’s for sure.

[Smash!]

Is it me, or are they amping up the horrible?
 

Now I finally understand why Trump is the conservative peoples wet dream: He actually is not only building an autocracy but a theocracy. I guess this is something some branches of the GOP have planned for years? Well played! *sarcasm off*
But why are Islamic countries and people so evil then? Ah I understand, if a Christan country is a theocracy everything is fine because they worship the right God.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Customs and Border Protection press secretary Katharine Gorka departs after two months on the job"

Spoiler

Katharine Gorka, a controversial political appointee in the Department of Homeland Security, is leaving her position as U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s press secretary two months after accepting the job.

Gorka, who has a track record of criticizing Islam and embracing Muslim-focused conspiracy theories during her career, said Tuesday that her departure from CBP is a personal decision to spend more time with her family.

“I’m at my third-year mark in my service to the [Trump] administration. And I felt like the time has come to spend more time with my family,” said Gorka, who previously served as a senior adviser for the Department of Homeland Security. “I’ve been really honored to serve both the administration and at CBP.”

Gorka’s husband, Sebastian Gorka, served as an adviser to President Trump before his sudden departure in 2017, a week after senior adviser and former Breitbart executive Stephen K. Bannon was ousted from his position as Trump’s chief strategist.

Both Gorkas previously wrote for Bannon’s Breitbart and operated in far-right political circles, focusing much of their activism on what they viewed as the dangers of Islam, before joining the Trump administration.

During her time as CBP press secretary, Gorka rarely appeared in public or on television to speak on behalf of the agency. The liberal activist group Democracy Forward sued DHS earlier this year to find out “what Gorka is doing at DHS.”

Gorka declined to discuss the details of her departure. She said she felt the Trump administration had been supportive of her work.

“I think they’ve appreciated my service, and I think people who serve in politically appointed positions understand the challenges,” she said. “It’s a very demanding job.”

 

[Howl]

32 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

[Gorka] said Tuesday that her departure from CBP is a personal decision to spend more time with her family.

hahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahahahaha  

"Personal decision" and "spend more time with my family" is PR speak for "Her sorry incompetent  ass got the boot"...day-um, to have been a fly on the wall at THAT meeting...

SRSLY, who the heck would want to spend more time with Sebastian Gorka?

Edited August 22, 2019 by Howl

[GreyhoundFan]

6 minutes ago, Howl said:

SRSLY, who the heck would want to spend more time with Sebastian Gorka?

That was my first thought, but she seems to be cut from the same nasty cloth as her husband.

[GreyhoundFan]

This makes me so angry: "Caged raccoons drooled in 100-degree heat. But federal enforcement has faded."

Spoiler

For two days running in the summer of 2017, the temperature inside a metal barn in Iowa hovered above 96 degrees. Nearly 300 raccoons, bred and sold as pets and for research, simmered in stacked cages. Several lay with legs splayed, panting and drooling, a U.S. Department of Agriculture inspector wrote.

On the third day, the thermometer hit 100, and 26 raccoons were “in severe heat distress” and “suffering,” the inspector reported. Then a USDA team of veterinarians and specialists took a rare step: They confiscated 10 of the animals and made plans to come back for the others.

But after an appeal from an industry group to a Trump White House adviser, Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and senior USDA officials intervened, according to five former employees. The inspectors and veterinarians were blocked from taking the remaining raccoons and ordered to return those they had seized.

In the months that followed, the Iowa incident was described by USDA officials at internal meetings as an example of the new philosophy of animal welfare protection under the Trump administration and Perdue. Leaders of the agency’s Animal Care division told inspectors to treat those regulated by the agency — breeders, zoos, circuses, horse shows and research labs — more as partners than as potential offenders.

They have been told to emphasize education, not enforcement.

The change began in the Obama administration but has accelerated under President Trump. In interviews with The Washington Post, more than a dozen recently departed USDA staffers, including eight veterinarians, said the more lenient approach has curtailed inspectors’ ability to document violations and has put animals at risk. Some spoke on the condition that they not be identified because they feared retaliation.

“It feels like your hands are tied behind your back. You can’t do many things you’re supposed to when it comes to protecting animals. You’re seeing inspectors so frustrated they’re walking out the door,” said Denise Sofranko, a veterinarian who spent 20 years as an inspector and elephant specialist and left at the end of 2017.

The USDA did not respond to questions about Perdue’s involvement in the raccoon case or to questions about other cases. The agency said in a statement that it is committed to upholding animal welfare laws and has worked hard to make sure licensed facilities understand the regulations. Animal Care is working more closely with businesses and their veterinarians to correct problems, the statement said.

“Our recent efforts have focused on ensuring that licensed facilities comply with the regulations as quickly as possible,” the agency said. “We do not tolerate disregard for animal welfare laws.”

The changes at the USDA’s Animal Care division have come amid a broad Trump administration push to deregulate industry, including by relaxing rules and enforcement. At the Environmental Protection Agency, fines and other actions against polluters have sharply declined. The Food and Drug Administration is issuing far fewer warnings to medical and pharmaceutical firms. Fines levied by the Department of Transportation against U.S. air carriers, for tarmac delays and other problems, have plunged.

Since Trump took office, the number of animal welfare citations issued by the USDA has declined dramatically. In 2016, the agency issued 4,944 citations; two years later, that number was 1,716, a drop of 65 percent.

The agency last year launched 19 enforcement cases — which can lead to penalties including fines and license revocations — against alleged violators, a decline of 92 percent compared to 2016.

Also under Trump, the agency has heavily redacted information from inspection reports published online, shielding violators from public criticism. Some reports are now accessible only through Freedom of Information Act requests, which can take months or years to be filled. Many violations are no longer documented on inspection reports.

The USDA attributed the nose-dive in citations in part to staff vacancies and said it expects similar numbers in 2019. It portrayed the decrease in citations as a positive sign that its more collaborative approach has reduced violations.

But what agency officials depict as a strategy to more efficiently guide animal businesses and labs to follow the law was described by many Animal Care employees as an abandonment of their mission to protect animals.

“The changes that have been made over the past two years have systematically dismantled and weakened the inspection process,” said William Stokes, a veterinarian who oversaw inspectors in 27 states and two U.S. territories as an assistant director from 2014 to 2018. The result, he added, is “untold numbers of animals that have experienced unnecessary suffering.”

The stark shift in animal welfare enforcement has garnered bipartisan criticism in Congress.

In April, 38 senators (of whom three are Republicans) and 174 representatives (including nine Republicans) co-signed a letter criticizing the USDA for “treating the regulated industries as customers, giving deference to those who can’t comply with the [Animal Welfare Act’s] modest requirements while giving short shrift to the animals and the taxpaying public.” They called for the agency to document all violations and for it to restore animal welfare records it removed from its website in 2017.

“How we treat animals speaks volumes about the values we hold as human beings,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), the top Democrat on an agricultural panel of the Appropriations Committee, said in a statement to The Post. “It’s disturbing that USDA is cutting back on animal welfare enforcement and going easier on perpetrators of animal cruelty.”

'Teachable moments'

Congress passed the Animal Welfare Act in 1966 amid public outcry about dealers who were stealing pet dogs and cats and selling them to research labs. The Horse Protection Act followed four years later, banning a widespread practice of using chemicals and other painful methods to force horses to adopt a high-stepping gait.

Enforcing those laws is the responsibility of the USDA’s Animal Care unit. The program has about 200 employees, about half of whom are inspectors. It regulates more than 10,000 animal businesses and research labs, and it inspects show horses.

In interviews, current and former Animal Care employees said swings in enforcement are common with changes of administrations. But most said the current shift toward collaboration exceeds any they’ve seen.

Signs of a shift began in 2016 during the Obama administration, after the naming of a new deputy administrator for Animal Care — Bernadette Juarez, an attorney who was the first non-veterinarian to lead the division.

The changes include a greater reliance on counting violations as “teachable moments” — instructing the business or lab instead of issuing citations.

According to USDA policy, “teachable moments” cannot be applied to violations that affect animal health or welfare. But records obtained by animal rights groups show several apparent violations — including a pig death, overgrown goat hoofs and dogs kept in too-small enclosures — logged as teachable moments.

“I went out and rode with inspectors and usually saw no one write citations for anything,” said veterinarian Katie Steneroden, who worked as a USDA inspector in Iowa from 2017 to 2018 and said she was horrified by conditions at some dog-breeding operations. “It was like, ‘It’s the first time, so do a teachable moment.’ Well, there’s nothing in the Animal Welfare Act that says first-time offenders should get a teachable moment.’”

The agency said using teachable moments has prompted the businesses and labs to fix their violations more quickly than lengthy enforcement procedures.

Another change, started by the Trump administration, is an incentive program that allows facilities to avoid citations by self-reporting even serious violations, including those that resulted in animal deaths. These violations are no longer documented by the USDA, inspectors said.

Ron DeHaven, who headed Animal Care from 1997 to 2003, said fewer citations for minor violations could help businesses follow the law. But he said a decrease in citations for the most serious violations is “concerning.”

“If there are things that are directly impacting the health and well-being of animals, I don’t care who the administration is,” said DeHaven, who now runs a veterinary consulting business. “Those are the kinds of things that need to be documented.”

Animal advocacy groups say they have increasingly noticed gulfs between what other oversight agencies find and what USDA inspectors cite.

At Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, research labs that experiment on pigs and rabbits reported 13 incidents and “noncompliances” in 2017 and 2018 to the federal Office of Lab Animal Welfare, a part of the National Institutes of Health that regulates federally funded animal research. Some involved surgeries that resulted in the deaths of four animals, including two rabbits that had been improperly anesthetized.

Three USDA inspections over the same period documented just one violation.

In July 2018, the office sent a letter to Baylor, chastising it for “ongoing serious programmatic noncompliance” related to surgeries and placing it on an “enhanced reporting schedule.” Copied on the letter was the USDA’s director of animal welfare operations.

“This is [the Office of Lab Animal Welfare] saying this is serious, and yet the USDA did nothing with it,” said Michael Budkie, executive director of Stop Animal Exploitation Now, an organization that obtained the communications through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The USDA did not respond to a question about its Baylor inspections.

A loss of trust

For decades, the USDA’s horse veterinarians have occupied one of the most contentious corners of animal welfare enforcement. They are charged with identifying Tennessee walking horses that have been “sored” — with caustic chemicals, for example, or jamming hard objects into their hoofs — to make them step higher at shows, a violation of the 1970 law. Judges often give better rankings to horses with higher and more extreme gaits.

Horse inspectors and veterinarians described routinely receiving threats on their lives, and the USDA now hires armed guards to accompany inspectors at shows. Show participants, for their part, say they have been overregulated and intimidated by the agency.

On the eve of the year’s biggest show horse event in August 2016, Juarez, the division head, told inspectors that they could no longer disqualify a sored horse on their own, according to three former inspectors who were present.

A new rule required a second USDA veterinarian to independently perform a second inspection. Unless the second vet identified the same spot on the horse as the first, the horse could not be disqualified and the owner could not be cited.

“The message was, ‘We do not trust your opinions as vets,’” said Tracy A. Turner, a veterinarian who worked on contract for the USDA from 2007 to 2016.

USDA inspectors in 2016 determined 30 percent of inspected horses had been sored; two years later, it found only 2 percent of inspected horses had been.

Juarez transferred to the USDA’s Biotechnology Regulatory Services in July. One of her deputies, a veterinarian, was named acting head of Animal Care. The USDA declined to make Juarez available for an interview.

Four horse inspectors who left in the past two years told The Post that recent changes made it nearly impossible for them to protect sored horses. Of about a dozen veterinarians on the team, more than half have quit, transferred or retired since 2016.

Among those who left the USDA was the interim director of the horse protection program, veterinarian Bart Sutherland. Shortly after he resigned in 2018, Sutherland sent a three-page memo to Agriculture Secretary Perdue, who is also a veterinarian. A copy of the memo was obtained by The Post.

In his letter, Sutherland said he did not object to Perdue’s pro-business approach and noted he himself was a lifetime Republican. But Sutherland said the recent changes “undermine the current Administration and the Secretary, as well as the goals and intent of the Horse Protection Act.”

Reached by phone, Sutherland confirmed he sent the letter to Perdue. In a statement, he said the changes “had the practical effect, in my opinion and from my observations, of effectively nullifying aspects of federal law intended to stop the soring of horses.”

Less pressure

Industry advocates have hailed the changes at the USDA as long overdue.

For years, the Missouri-based Cavalry Group complained to the agency about inspectors’ overreach and subjective interpretation of regulations. A company of animal businesses, it says it exists “to fight the radical animal rights agenda legally and legislatively nationwide.”

Its president, Mindy Patterson, said she began asking members in 2013 to write affidavits about negative experiences with USDA inspectors. Patterson secured a meeting in March 2017 with Sam Clovis, a top Trump campaign aide who became the White House’s USDA liaison, and said she handed him a 422-page binder of complaints.

Patterson said she contacted Clovis again four months later, after getting a call from Ruby Fur Farm, the Iowa site where USDA inspectors were trying to seize the raccoons.

The farm raises ferrets, skunks, foxes and raccoons for the pet industry, according to its website. It has also sold animals to the USDA for research purposes, federal records show.

For years, agency animal welfare inspectors had found violations at the site, such as ill and injured skunks and ferrets; accumulated feces in living spaces; and two ferrets kept in an enclosure with a “dead, decomposing, headless juvenile ferret.”

Patterson said she and her husband, Cavalry Group CEO Mark Patterson, went to the farm during the arguments over the raccoons. The farm’s attending veterinarian and the local sheriff assured USDA inspectors that the raccoons seemed lethargic only “because they’re nocturnal animals,” she said.

In an account sent to Cavalry Group members, Mark Patterson said his group contacted members of Trump’s agriculture advisory committee and Trump’s USDA transition team. Mindy Patterson told The Post that their main contact was Clovis; Clovis said through a lawyer that he disputed some of Cavalry Group’s account but declined to comment in detail.

The group also emailed Juarez, who responded immediately and told the USDA team to “pause” activity at Ruby Fur, Mark Patterson wrote. Four days later, according to Mark Patterson’s account, Perdue ordered a USDA lawyer to fly to Iowa — something several former inspectors said they had never known to happen before. The seizure order was revoked.

“We were assured that positive changes will soon be announced that will ensure going forward that [the USDA] will act as more of a partner with its licensees,” Patterson wrote.

Within days, Juarez told senior managers that confiscations were on hold at the direction of Perdue, according to internal correspondence and Stokes, the former assistant director. The agency later removed a 31-page chapter on confiscation from its inspectors’ guide and now addresses the process briefly in appendixes.

Since late 2017, Mindy Patterson said, business members in her group have reported a “notable release of pressure.”

In its statement to The Post, the USDA declined to say why it reversed the confiscation but suggested that inspectors had not given Ruby Fur sufficient time to correct the problem. Ruby Fur did not respond to requests for comment.

Reports show inspectors first cited the farm for high heat in the raccoon barn in June 2017, a month before confiscating the animals, writing that the farm “must reduce the temperature and humidity inside this building.” Inspectors returned in mid-July, citing the facility and issuing the same instructions in three reports over three days before taking action.

“The inspectors followed all procedures correctly,” said Stokes, who reviewed the reports.

One month after the USDA found the overheated raccoons in the summer of 2017, inspectors returned. According to their report, the overheating had been fixed, but problems persisted: A ferret was being fed on by “numerous engorged ticks.” Algae and flies floated in animals’ drinking water. Feces beneath several enclosures contained an “excessively large number of maggots.”

The USDA did not answer a question about whether Ruby Fur has faced any penalty. In the statement, the agency said its “actions in 2017 were effective in bringing the facility into compliance.”

Since then, the farm has been inspected three times and given two minor citations. One visit was an announced inspection that gave the facility warning ahead of time. It found no violation.

I hate this administration.

[GreyhoundFan]

I agree with St. Rachel:

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"A prosecutor won’t do her job so bigots are getting away with hate crimes in D.C."

Spoiler

You’ve seen those yard signs — “Hate has no home here” — all over liberal D.C., right?

But it looks like hate is actually a pretty stubborn tenant in the nation’s capital, where hate crimes are up (like the rest of the nation) but are not being punished (unlike the rest of the nation.)

And this means that hate’s anything-goes landlord is our own U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, which handles most criminal cases in the District and has yet to convict a single shooter, beater, screamer or bully for hate in 2018’s record year of hatred. How can that be acceptable? And how can we hold U.S. Attorney Jessie K. Liu — appointed by hater in chief Donald Trump — accountable for her miserable record?

The District had its highest number of reported hate crimes last year: 204. That’s a year of gay men being beaten, black girls being threatened, transgender women being hurt, synagogues being harassed, Muslims being taunted and a Trump supporter smacked in a restaurant.

The upward trend tracks with the coarseness and growing divisions we see across the rest of the nation. But the big departure, reported this week by my colleagues Michael E. Miller and Steven Rich, is that they aren’t being held accountable for the hate.

The Post found that 59 cases led to arrests of adults in the more than 200 bias-motivated incidents investigated by police last year. Only three of those were prosecuted as hate crimes, and one of those cases was dropped. Not a single person has been convicted.

The bigots and bullies, in other words, are getting away with it.

It’s no surprise to Ruby Corado, who runs a shelter for LGBTQ folks in Washington. She has lived here for decades and says these past two years are among the worst she’s seen.

“They’re just getting so blunt,” Corado told me earlier this summer, when one of the transgender women she’d helped was gunned down. “It’s just out there. It used to be more isolated.”

That same week, a man came to their shelter with a gun, and two gay men she knew were beaten on busy U Street. All the aggressors were shouting homophobic slurs during the attacks.

“A lot of this is systemic,” she said. “While [the Metropolitan Police Department] has done a better job, when they go to the U.S. Attorney’s office, nothing happens,” she said.

Hate crimes may be difficult to prosecute, sure. You have to prove the crime occurred because of bigotry. But that doesn’t explain what’s going on in Washington.

In other cities where hate crime reports have gone up — Seattle, Brooklyn, Los Angeles — prosecutions have increased, too.

Liu, speaking at a forum at the Justice Department last month on combating anti-Semitism, said that sometimes, the odds of conviction are better when they don’t press a hate-crime charge.

“We take an all-tools approach,” she said. “If we can charge a hate crime, we certainly will. If for some reason we can’t, maybe not all the elements aren’t met, we look for other ways that we can address criminal conduct.”

She gave the example of a man arrested on firearms and controlled-substance charges — presumably alleged white nationalist Jeffrey Clark — who came to the attention of law enforcement because of his statements about sparking a race war.

But that ignores what hate crimes do to the people who experience them. And it doesn’t make vulnerable people feel like anyone’s got their backs.

This was especially the case for those friends of Corado’s attacked in June by at least a dozen people who began taunting them with homophobic slurs outside a U Street bar, then robbed and beat them.

Police arrested three of the alleged attackers — an adult and two younger teens. But the U.S. attorney’s office later dropped the charges against the adult, to the dismay of D.C. Attorney General Karl A. Racine.

“The alleged hate crime and robbery against the gay couple on U Street this past Sunday is deeply troubling and heartbreaking,” Racine wrote in a statement in June, after the attack. “Some members of the community were disheartened to learn that charges against the 19-year-old adult arrested in this case were dismissed.”

His office handles juvenile cases, but he isn’t allowed to say whether they’re prosecuting the two other teens.

D.C. officials held some community meetings after that case and got an earful from folks frustrated about the lack of punishment on hate crimes.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) wrote a letter to Liu after this.

“As you may know, the number of reported hate crimes in the District of Columbia almost doubled between 2016 and 2018. Many of these crimes were targeted at the LGBTQ community, especially transgender individuals. At a recent well-attended community forum, I learned that this community feels it is under siege. I agree,” she wrote. “As you are well aware, it takes only a few prosecutions to create a deterrent effect.”

Liu has declined all our requests for interviews on this. But Norton, in her letter, gave Liu 30 days to answer a list of questions explaining the lack of prosecutions. That was 33 days ago.

The U.S. attorney in the District doesn’t have to explain her actions to the voters of this city. She only has to answer to the Justice Department and to Trump. But Congress, which doesn’t hesitate to meddle in the District’s affairs on gun restrictions, marijuana laws and other policies, could start demanding some answers here.

It’s time for the Democrats who control the House of Representatives to bring Liu in for a hearing, so we can finally begin to serve hate its eviction notice.

 

[fraurosena]

Sweet Rufus. Why?

 

[Audrey2]

23 minutes ago, fraurosena said:

Sweet Rufus. Why?

 

Am I reading this correctly that under these rules John McCain would not have been allowed to run for president because he was born in the Panama Canal Zone?

I wonder what the armed forces are going to make of this? typically a Republican president is very popular with them but we have families on bases all around the world. I know the Air Force has a base in South Korea, there are bases in Germany, and the Marines have a big base in Okinawa Japan. I also wonder how many in the military and diplomatic corps will be less aware of this rule than what they should be and as a result their children will be citizens of no country when they turn 18.

[Howl]

My sense is that this somehow part of a legal strategy long con to end birthright citizenship in the US.  This absolutely fux US soldiers and spouses giving birth abroad. 

My sense is that it will also deny any citizenship possibilities to the children of non-citizen soldiers born overseas. 

[Audrey2]

So out of curiosity, where do you go when you're an adult if you were born without a country? I'm not sure that all the countries that have military bases automatically extend citizenship to those born on the military bases.

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

 

As the article is behind a paywall and I can't read it completely, maybe what I have to say is mitigated in some way by what Mattis writes. But I don't think it's likely. Mattis can just bugger off with his excuses. He willingly and wittingly chose to be part of Trump's administration. He knew what kind of person Trump is. He spoke with him personally before accepting the job. He knew what he was getting into, or at least he could have had an informed idea of what Trump's administration was/would be like. He took the job nonetheless, and stayed in the job, until Trump decided he didn't like him anymore. Mattis can say all he wants, but I don't think he can extricate himself from the shit that stained him when he became part of Trump's entourage.