Trump 39: The Return of the Wall

[AmazonGrace]

Alec Baldwin is the Real Collusion and Colin Jost is hotter than me! Very very unfair! 

 

[formergothardite]

I just saw some of my GOP relatives are reposting this on FB. Yes, the Trumpsters have bought into the national emergency scam. 

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Dear uninformed,

I am going to provide you facts, not opinion as it pertains to President Trump's decision to act on his right to call a National Emergency. As it does not seem you will gain this knowledge through the MSM, I hope what little I provide here will guide your way to clearer understanding.

In the history of our Presidency we have had over thirty National Emergencies which reminds us that this route is not something unique. Some of these emergencies are still invoked today. The Nation Emergencies Act of 1976 was invoked by Jimmy Carter.

We have statutes that give the President the right to stop drug trafficking. Congress and the Constitution place the authority, to do what our President is doing, firmly as part of the Executive powers. The 2006 Secure Fence Act commands the Executive Branch to, “take all actions necessary and appropriate to achieve and maintain operational control over the entire international land and maritime borders of the United States, specifically including physical barriers.” The Immigration and Nationality Act grants the President the authority to, “suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants, non-immigrants or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions HE MAY DEEM APPROPRIATE.” The funding bill that he signed today further clarifies Congress’ delegation to the President, of authority to take steps to secure our southern border, by giving him moneys to build his wall.

It is a National Emergency to stop human rights abuses which include human trafficking, illegal drugs importation, and unchecked illegal immigration at our own border, which has in part created Angel Mom’s; those who lost their loved ones to illegal immigrants who murdered them. If the heart leads an American in decision making, there is uncertainty of a heart or compassion, when these crimes go unchecked year after year after year.

As far as the use of the eight billion dollars from other agencies, the Congressional Research service, which is non-partisan, has given the okay for the President to use those funds. This group provides legal analysis and policy to Congress. So, this group believes the moving of this money is legal. This information was provided by the Washington Examiner. The money tapped into it is, as I understand it, Pentagon Construction money.

The President gave Congress every opportunity to provide for our protection and they did not do it. Those who elected him, did so under the promise that Trump would be the one to secure our borders.

Although, I personally cannot discount prescription drugs as part of this statistic, it is reported that 70,000 American’s were killed by drugs last year. The drug overdose death rate in 2017 was 9.6 percent higher than the rate in 2016, the New York Times reported. Fentanyl is driving the increase in deaths, the article notes. Since 2013, the number of drug overdose deaths linked to fentanyl and similar drugs has increased from 3,000 to more than 28,000. Last year, deaths involving fentanyl rose more than 45 percent. Heroin-related deaths increased by more than five times between 2010 and 2017. This is in itself a reason to protect our borders in a way that will largely decrease these numbers. This concern has been an emergency since the days of Reagan.

Unlike what you hear in the media, the President is not against immigration. His new border security measures will decrease illegal activity and direct those who want to come to our country, to follow the legal path designed for that desire to happen. There is twenty-three billion set for border security, but that is not for wall building. Drones, dogs, sensors will add an added security measure. Lights will also be a added security measure.

10 U.S. Code 284 - Support for counter drug activities and activities to counter transnational organized crime tells us in paragraph 7, “Construction of roads and fences and installation of lighting to block drug smuggling corridors across international boundaries of the United States.” Paragraph 10 refers to aerial and ground reconnaissance. I provide a link below for your review.

There are now two issues for the courts. 1) The authority. 2) The source of funds. The authority has been given as seen above, back in 1976 so, any court that rules against this, rules against its own law. The source of funds will be the major issue, for a Constitutional Court. What is certain is that every dollar he wants to spend has already be allocated by Congress including the money seized by drug asset forfeitures.

If the Democrats want to stop him, they would have to pass a law that says he cannot do it, and of course that law would have to be Constitutional and pass a certain veto. With everything I have shared above, there is nothing that suggests Tyranny or Dictator type framework, which is how the Main Stream Media is now portraying this move. We have every right to control and protect our border because we are a Sovereign Nation.

Doug W. Koehler 2/15/2019

 

[AmazonGrace]

It was actually true what Trump said about Shinzo Abe but he left out the embarrassing part 

 

[Howl]

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Meridith McGraw✔@meridithmcgraw

Just in: Acting Sec of Defense Shanahan just told reporters he hasn’t determined if there is a military necessity for a border wall or how much money Defense will even spend. Shanahan said he hasn’t yet spoken to President Trump.

Thanks for this update, @AmazonGrace. 

The Sunday front page and entire first section of my local paper, the Austin American Statesman, is devoted to the Wall and especially how it's affecting or going to affect people in the Rio Grande Valley. 

Geographically, the Rio Grade Valley is the area immediately north of the Rio Grande at the southern tip of Texas, that spans four counties: Hidalgo, Cameron, Willacy, and Starr.  It's fertile land, heavily agricultural since at least the 1700s.  For example, one family that stands to be affected has had the property in their family since 1770.

The Rio Grand winds a very sinuous path in this area and flood control levees have been built several miles in from the Rio Grande.  If you're interested, go to googleearth and search for Rio Grande Valley and you can see how squiggly the river is in this area. 

I'm trying to understand how this works, but apparently the Wall would be built on top of the flood control levees, which, as noted, can be several miles north of the Rio Grande.  Those with property and homes south of the levee (and the proposed Wall) would be stranded or with little or no reasonable access to homes and fields.

Although most have not had negative experiences with those crossing the border illegally, they truly fear being trapped between the river and the Wall with many desperate illegal immigrants and no protection from Border Patrol.  Many also face losing their property to imminent domain or having their property bisected by the Wall. 

It's a truly horrible situation. 

Results from a "Rio Grande Valley" google search returned  some geographical information but also a ton of very recent articles (the last few days) about the Wall and its impact in this area. 

Be aware that money for an 8-mile section of wall in Hidalgo County has already been approved in an omnibus spending bill. This is the section that includes the National Butterfly Center, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park (a World Birding Center) and the historic 150-year-old La Lomita Chapel. 

It's almost like they wanted to nuke the most beloved and important places first and get them out of the way. 

However, it's likely, but unclear if these three places got an 11th-hour reprieve in the new budget. 

 Gasbag Grandpa Ranty's bad pr about crime, drugs and Bad People has already had an adverse affect.   As noted, Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park is a World Birding Center.  Birding in this area is an incredible tourist draw and pumps a LOT of money into the area. 

One nearby motel owner said that his bookings are already down 30% with many calls from anxious people who, thanks to Trump, now think it's a violent, crime prone area.  It's not.

If built, the Wall would cut off and strand a 70-acre restored area of the Bentsen-Rio Grande Valley State Park that now (safely) hosts very large camping groups like the Girl Scouts.  

This December, The Monitor (a Rio Grande Valley paper) has a good description of the construction involved and a picture of an already constructed section of the Wall.  Construction details and how much existing law was waived to get the new section built here: 

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The agency will also remove vegetation along a 150-foot enforcement zone around the wall in order to install lighting, video surveillance, other detection technology and a patrol road.

In order to expedite border wall construction in the Rio Grande Valley, the Department of Homeland Security waived 28 federal laws that are designed to protect the environment. Earlier this month the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge by environmental groups to the waiving of these laws.

Full text with picture here: Contractors to begin surveying new levee wall site Monday.

What isn't clear from this article is whether the 150-ft-wide cleared strip would be on each side of the wall, for a total of a 300-ft-wide cleared strip, or just 150-ft total. 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Howl]

5 hours ago, formergothardite said:

I just saw some of my GOP relatives are reposting this on FB. Yes, the Trumpsters have bought into the national emergency scam.

Out of all the blather in that shitstorm of verbal agitprop, I found this to be the key phrase to understanding that this was written by a Trump-humping fundamentalist projecting Christian values on Trump with the subtext that it's a God thing: "If the heart leads an American in decision making."

Ironic, right?  I've NEVER seen Trump make a decision from the heart.  He's made a lot of dick- and ego-based decisions, and then there's his claim that he acts on his "gut", which could be true; it's right there hanging over his pants, so very handy. 

However, some of the points about statutory authority and Executive branch precedents raised were also raised in a Lawfare blog post yesterday (Saturday).   What Is and Isn’t a Big Deal in Trump’s Executive Actions Related to the Border

The Lawfare author points out that Turmp's actions have many existing Executive branch precedents and statutory authority,  but I'm not quite as sanguine about things as the Lawfare author is (pffffft, there are so many many precedents; it's NOT a constitutional crisis!).  However, the author addresses the excessive power that has historically accrued to the Executive branch (that could cause problems now) in the second part of his long post.   Context matters.  Here's how he wraps it up:

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His [Trump's] inability to withhold his private motivations, combined with his willingness to push the presidential envelope in controversial ways, combined with his unsteady grasp of his office and worrisome judgment in wielding his massive powers, has shined the brightest of lights on how much power Congress has given away, and how much extraordinary power and discretion presidents have amassed. After Trump, and due to him, there will be a serious reckoning with this constitutional arrangement like no time since the 1970s, and possibly ever in American history. Whether the Congress and the nation can do anything about it is another matter. I have my doubts.

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

19 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

If you are spending $200,000 a year to be a member of some fancy club, shouldn't it look better than that old hotel down by the airport that keeps getting dinged by the health department?

Well, Mar-a-Loco has been dinged by the health department multiple times, so that $200K is looking worse and worse. Three of the most egregious violations were:

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• Fish prepared to be served raw or undercooked had “not undergone proper parasite destruction.” The inspectors ordered that the fish either be fully cooked or discarded.
• Raw meats in two of the club’s coolers were over, some significantly, the regulated 41 degrees Fahrenheit. Ham was measured at 57 degrees, beef and duck were both at 50, and poultry warmed to 49. One walk-in cooler was mistakenly set to defrost, according to the report.
• Inspectors told kitchen staff to empty broken coolers and not use again until they’re fixed.

 

[AnywhereButHere]

Poor baby got his feelings hurt. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/lawandcrime.com/opinion/trump-wants-snl-looked-into-if-he-does-take-action-nbc-would-be-the-ones-laughing/amp/

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In our 2019 Presidents Day edition of The Boy Who Cried Libel, our president continues to appear confused about the difference between sketch comedy programs and news broadcasts, and apparently believes there is some law enforcement agency with jurisdiction over his own hurt feelings. This week, SNL‘s cold open featured Alec Baldwin reprising his portrayal of Trump, this time mocking the president’s controversial declaration of a state of national emergency.

POTUS didn’t get the joke, and followed up with a tweet calling the sketch comedy show “the real collusion,” and demanding “retribution” and some sort of undefined investigation

The context and wording of Trump’s tweet does seem to suggest some official action taken against SNL; although he isn’t clear on what kind of intervention could curtail the show’s ability to “get away with these total Republican hit jobs,” we’re guessing he was referring to criminal or civil law enforcement

What would be really scary is if he lets declaring a national emergency go to his head and decide to sic the FBI and/or the secret service after SNL. Sadly, I can see it happening...

[AmazonGrace]

Why is he still president 

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

on behalf of dogs everywhere, I'm genuinely glad he doesn't want one.

[Ali]

Did you know dogs have a strong sense of smell?

[AmazonGrace]

How long until Rosenstein gets the boot

[Howl]

22 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

How long until Rosenstein gets the boot

Amazing that he's lasted this long, but his tenure has always been just one incident dinging Trump's ego away from being fired. 

I've recorded the McCabe interview; will watch it today.

That said,  I remain gobsmacked over polls that show a high or relatively high percentage of Republicans who still approve of Trump.  

I think their approval of Trump is that he saved them from the terrifying specter of Hillary and libs, because what could be worse than that?  Well, scary Brown Families, but Trump's taking care of that with the Wall, so win-win! 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[fraurosena]

Huh. It's nice that they're saying it privately, I suppose. But it doesn't change a thing if they don't say anything publicly. And more to the point, actually do something about it. I won't be holding my breath though.

 

[GreyhoundFan]

 

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, AmazonGrace said:

How long until Rosenstein gets the boot

Err and who hired Sessions?

[Howl]

It's come to this: 

 

 

[AmazonGrace]

This is so messed up.

[fraurosena]

He'll be buried in so many lawsuits he'll hardly be able to come up to breathe. Funny thing is, a lot of them aren't suing him for building the wall. They're suing because of the fake national emergency declaration. I don't think he (or Miller) anticipated that argument, do you?

 

[Howl]

First-hand account of clearing right-of-way for the Wall in the La Parida Banco unit of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.

LA PARIDA: WHERE THE WILD THINGS WERE

and this

Beloved Wildlife Sanctuaries in Limbo as Trump Declares Border Emergency  Congress voted to block planned barriers at biodiversity hotspots, including the National Butterfly Center. Will the president wall them off anyway?

and this

Natural areas threatened by border wall form ‘string of pearls’ in Valley

[GreyhoundFan]

"President Trump is dragging Republicans down with him"

Spoiler

There’s a lot of scrambling going on right now in Washington. The White House is scrambling to justify President Trump’s decision to declare a national emergency in order to obtain money for a border wall that Congress refused to grant him. Congressional Republicans are scrambling to figure out how they perform the latest iteration of an uncomfortable two-step they’ve executed many times before, claiming that they’re deeply “concerned” about what Trump is doing, while not actually doing anything to stop him.

Meanwhile, Trump's aides have decided that this is the issue that will guarantee the president's reelection:

President Trump and his political team plan to make his years-long quest for a border wall one of the driving themes of his reelection effort — attempting to turn his failure to build such a project into a combative sales pitch that pits him against the political establishment on immigration.

In other words, Trump will try to repeat the extraordinary success he achieved last fall, when he did everything in his power to make the midterm election about supposedly terrifying caravans of asylum seekers and the need for walls to keep them away. The result, you may recall, was an enormous victory for Democrats.

Once again Trump is testing his Republican allies, forcing them to defend actions they don't agree with and wonder whether he'll drag them down with him. Are they going to shake their heads, say "I have concerns," and then help Trump smash through another set of norms in service of a political project they don't even support, just as they have so many times before? Or are they going to actually stand up to him?

We don't know the answer yet, but by now the idea of a significant number of Republicans opposing Trump is almost impossible to imagine.

But before we run through that scenario, let’s remind ourselves that most Republicans in Congress were never that enthusiastic about the idea of a border wall in the first place. They may have supported fencing in certain high-traffic areas (which pretty much everyone supports), but for all the years they negotiated over comprehensive immigration reform, only crackpots like Steve King suggested turning America into East Berlin circa 1972. It wasn’t until Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign that they learned a wall was a potent symbol for many of their own constituents.

Yet they still didn’t think enough of it to actually insist on its construction. For Trump’s first two years in office, Republicans controlled both houses of Congress and could have pushed through funding for a border wall. But it wasn’t important enough to insist on.

Then came the government shutdown — yet another political disaster for the GOP — and Trump’s emergency declaration, which he promptly undercut by admitting that there really isn’t any emergency. “I want to do it faster,” he said. “I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn’t need to do this. But I’d rather do it much faster.” If he “didn’t need to do this,” then by definition it isn’t an emergency, which he underscored by promptly heading off for yet another golfing weekend.

And now comes the test. Speaker Nancy Pelosi will bring to the House floor a resolution to reverse the emergency declaration, which will presumably pass. And what will happen in the Senate? Multiple Republicans there have gone on record about the declaration, saying “I would have my doubts” (Sen. Ron Johnson) or “I’m not enthusiastic about it” (Sen. Pat Toomey) or “I have some concerns” (Sen. Roy Blunt), or even “I wish he wouldn’t have done it” (Sen. Chuck Grassley). They think that presidential power has expanded too far, and they worry about setting a precedent that the next Democratic president will use in ways they abhor. But are they actually going to vote with Democrats against Trump?

A few might, but it’s almost impossible to imagine 20 of them voting with all the Democrats to get to the two-thirds majority necessary to override the veto the president has promised. So while the Supreme Court will have the last word, there’s a chance that this controversy will produce the first veto of Trump’s presidency. And that’s fine with him.

Which is the other thing weighing on Republicans' minds. Trump may be quite happy to have that bill pass and then veto it, so he can say he's bravely standing up to the "establishment." He'll be running a scorched-earth, maximally divisive campaign in 2020, counting on fear and hatred to once again carry him to victory. If he thinks it's to his benefit to turn on his own party to do it, and attack Republicans in Congress as a bunch of lily-livered wimps whose loathing of immigrants is insufficiently pure, that's what he'll do.

And as we reach November 2020, we could see a repeat of 2018, with Trump insisting that political victory will be his if only he tells a few more lurid stories of immigrant crime and holds a few more rallies so that his rabid supporters can chant “Build that wall!” (or “Finish that wall!” or “Paint that wall!” or whatever he decides the latest slogan should be), despite all evidence pointing toward defeat. Should that happen, Republicans whose own necks are on the line will wonder whether they might have done anything to prevent being taken down with him. But by then it will be too late. In fact, it probably already is.

 

[Cartmann99]

 

[Howl]

Marketplace on NPR this evening highlighted the Texas Rio Grande Valley and potential devastating effects to the booming ecotourism industry from the Wall cutting through the Butterfly Preserve, the state park, the national wildlife areas  and other small preserves.

These areas also preserve the remaining 4% of the Chihuahuan Thorn Forest and various riparian species found nowhere else. 

This is a power point from 2011: Economic impact of nature tourism in the Lower Rio Grande River Valley

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Estimated annual expenditures by intentionals [people visiting specifically for nature tourism] for 2011 were $307 Million

Economic contribution from Rio Grande Valley nature tourism led to a total economic output of $463 million and 6,613 full- and part-time jobs annually.

This total contribution includes a $266 million contribution to gross regional product and a $163 million contribution to labor income across the region.

Local taxes generated from direct nature tourist expenditures for 2011 was $2.5 Million for sales tax and $7.5 Million for hotel tax