MORNING MESSAGE
Sarah Schulz
Midland, Michigan, where my husband and I are raising our two young children, is a small town surrounded by rural communities. Many of us living here have seen, generation-by-generation, that we’re falling behind. Our anxiety is real, but we wholeheartedly reject attempts by those in power to blame immigrant families who have their own struggles, or to suggest that a made up “national emergency” is any kind of solution. We know better. One of my friends and her husband both work full time and each have separate health insurance through their jobs — but their three children aren’t insured. Their income is too high for the kids to qualify for the MIChild insurance the state offers children of working families. But their income isn’t high enough to allow them buy coverage independently. Her family is falling through the cracks. Like so many Michigan small town and rural families, they’re working hard, doing all the right things, and just barely getting by. Forty percent of our households in Michigan struggle to afford the basic necessities, like housing, food, and health care. Up here, we’re the first to see through the fallacy of walls as we look across our lakes and rivers to Canada. There’s no talk on this border of a permanent concrete wall to stand as a forever monument to xenophobia and the ego of our current leaders. We know at heart there’s only one reason — sheer racism — that we’re asked to believe the need for a wall on our Southern border is an emergency. Powerful people stoke this racism and fear to keep the poor at each other’s throats. That kind of thinking isn’t our way and shouldn’t be welcome in our communities, our state, or our nation.
House Dems Press Resolution To End ‘National Emergency’
House Democrats push ahead with bid to terminate Trump’s emergency declaration. NBC: “House Democrats planned to push ahead Friday with a measure that seeks to terminate President Donald Trump’s emergency declaration that he issued last week in order to circumvent Congress and build his wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, chairman of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, was set to file a joint resolution in the House that would repeal the president’s declaration. The measure was to be filed during the chamber’s pro forma session, since lawmakers are on recess and don’t return to Washington until Monday. As of Wednesday, more than 90 House Democrats had signed onto the legislation as official co-sponsors. In a letter circulated to lawmakers of both parties, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., urged all members to back it, saying the president’s move “undermines the separation of powers and Congress’s power of the purse.’ ‘The House will move swiftly to pass this bill,’ Pelosi said in the letter, specifying that it would be reported out of committee within 15 calendar days and would be considered on the House floor three days after that. ‘The President’s decision to go outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process violates the Constitution and must be terminated.’”
Science Denier To Lead Trump Climate Panel
Science denier who once compared CO2 to Jews in Nazi Germany will head Trump’s climate panel. Salon: “White House panel charged with determining whether climate change poses a national security threat will be headed by a climate science denier who has said he believes carbon dioxide is actually beneficial for the environment. The proposed Presidential Committee on Climate Security would be headed by National Security Council senior director William Happer, the Washington Post reported. The panel, which would be established by executive order, will reportedly be charged with trying to refute intelligence agencies’ repeated findings that climate change poses a national security threat. Happer is a physics professor and a former Energy Department staffer under George H.W. Bush but has no training as a climate scientist. He has sat on the boards of several groups that advocate climate change skepticism, and has insisted that carbon dioxide is beneficial and not a pollutant. ‘We’re doing our best to try and counter this myth that CO2 is a dangerous pollutant,’ he said at a 2016 energy and policy summit funded by the conservative Heritage Foundation. ‘It’s not a pollutant at all. . . . We should be telling the scientific truth, that more CO2 is actually a benefit to the earth.’ In a 2014 interview with CNBC, Happer said the ‘demonization of carbon dioxide is just like the demonization of the poor Jews under Hitler,’ adding that ‘carbon dioxide is actually a benefit to the world, and so were the Jews.’ Happer is also an opponent of the Paris climate accord. In an interview with E&E News last year, Happer praised President Trump’s decision to pull out of the accord. ‘There is no problem from CO2,’ he said. ‘The world has lots and lots of problems, but increasing CO2 is not one of the problems.’”
Migrant Youth Forced Into Adult Shelters
Migrant youth go from a children’s shelter to adult detention on their 18th birthday. NPR: “When migrant children cross the border without their parents, they’re sent to federal shelters until caseworkers can find them a good home. But everything changes when they turn 18. That’s when, in many cases, they’re handcuffed and locked up in an adult detention facility. The practice is sparking lawsuits and outrage from immigrant advocates. In 2008, Congress enacted a law that instructs ICE to place unaccompanied immigrant children “in the least restrictive setting available” or find them alternatives to detention. Typically, that means finding a sponsor or a group home for them. Then, in 2013, Congress amended the rule to extend the protections to immigrants who turn 18 in U.S. custody. ‘What ICE is doing is not in accordance with congressional intent,’ said Lehner. ICE maintains that it is following the law. The agency says it treats every child who ages out of the system on a case-by-case basis, looking for ‘the least restrictive setting available, after taking into account the alien’s danger to self, danger to the community, or flight risk.’ Once they’re placed in ICE lockups, the teenagers can still get help finding a sponsor from deportation officers. But that process can drag out. Meanwhile, some 18-year-olds are deported, while others give up and accept voluntary departure.”
U.S. May Force Liberian Immigrants Out
End of immigration program gives Liberians in U.S. a choice: Leave their American children or become undocumented. WaPo: “Magdalene Menyongar’s day starts with a 5:30 a.m. conference call with women from her church. They pray together as Menyongar makes breakfast and drives to work, reflecting on everything they are thankful for. But lately, the prayers have turned to matters of politics and immigration. They pray with increasing urgency for Congress or President Trump to act before Menyongar, 48, faces deportation to her native Liberia, where she fled civil war nearly 25 years ago. In less than six weeks, the order that has allowed her and more than 800 other immigrants from the former American colony in West Africa to live in the United States for decades will end, the result of Trump’s decision last year to terminate a program that every other president since George H.W. Bush supported. Come March 31, Menyongar will face a choice: Return to Liberia and leave behind her 17-year-old daughter, an American citizen, or stay in the United States, losing her work authorization and becoming an undocumented immigrant. Menyongar is among thousands of Liberian immigrants who were given temporary permission to stay in the United States in 1999, when President Bill Clinton implemented “deferred enforced departure.” DED was routinely extended by previous administrations but is set to end under Trump’s effort to terminate programs for immigrants without permanent status, which also has endangered Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and temporary protected status for immigrants from 10 other countries. Temporary protected status, or TPS, was established by Congress in 1990 for citizens of countries suffering from war, environmental disaster, health epidemics or other unsafe conditions. They are given temporary permission to work in the United States and travel abroad without fear of deportation.”
‘Trump Country’ Isn’t As Conservative As You Think
Why ‘Trump country’ isn’t as Republican as you think. The Guardian: “hen my grandfather was a child, his stepfather would bring him along as he sold moonshine to poor working men in south-west Virginia coal country. The men adored my grandfather, who was not yet even school age, for his talent for mocking Democrats. He told me this story on a few occasions to explain, I think, the inevitability of his later affiliation with the Republican party. He was a Republican in much the same way that I am a Democrat – voting with little enthusiasm every few years and sometimes not at all.When I consider that story now, I find myself thinking less about my grandfather and more about the men who laughed at his jokes. What were their politics? Not all were the predecessors of today’s Republicans, as we might imagine them to be. In Appalachia, so-called “mountain Republicans” comprised an old vanguard of anti-secessionists, who opposed slavery and the Confederacy. They saw themselves as heirs to the enlightened legacy of Abraham Lincoln, the first Republican president. My grandfather belonged (or at least aspired to belong) to that tradition. His audience might have consisted of Democrats, who enjoyed hearing their abuses repeated in the mouth of a child. But it is more likely that they would describe themselves as without politics, just laughing at the powerful and self-important. For a long time, it did not occur to me there were other possibilities.”
Progressive Breakfast is a daily morning email highlighting news stories of interest to activists. Progressive Breakfast and OurFuture.org are projects of People’s Action.
Please consider a donation of any size to support our work: DONATE NOW
|
