Donald Trump’s attorney general said Tuesday the Justice Department will limit its use of a tactic employed aggressively under President Obama — suing police departments for violating the civil rights of minorities.
“We need, so far as we can, to help police departments get better, not diminish their effectiveness. And I’m afraid we’ve done some of that,” said Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
“So we’re going to try to pull back on this,” he told a meeting of the nation’s state attorneys general in Washington.
Sessions said such a move would not be “wrong or insensitive to civil rights or human rights.” Instead, he said people in poor and minority communities must feel free from the threat of violent crime, which will require more effective policing with help from the federal government.
While crime rates are half of what they were a few decades ago, recent increases in violent crimes do not appear to be “an aberration, a one-time blip. I’m afraid it represents the beginning of a trend.”
Sessions said he will encourage federal prosecutors to bring charges when crimes are committed using guns. Referring local drug violations that involve the use of a firearm, for example, to federal court can result is often a stiffer sentence than would be imposed by state courts.
“We need to return to the ideas that got us here, the ideas that reduce crime and stay on it. Maybe we got a bit overconfident when we’ve seen the crime rate decline so steadily for so long,” he said.
Under the Obama Administration, the Justice Department opened 25 investigations into police departments and sheriff’s offices and was enforcing 19 agreements at the end of 2016, resolving civil rights lawsuits filed against police departments in Ferguson, Missouri; Baltimore, New Orleans, Cleveland and 15 other cities.
On Monday, Sessions said he is reviewing the Justice Department’s current policy toward enforcing federal law that prohibits possession of marijuana, but has made no decision about whether to get tougher.
His opposition to legalization is well known, and he emphasized it during an informal gathering of reporters . “I don’t think America will be a better place when more people, especially young people, smoke pot.”
States, he said, can pass their own laws on possession as they choose, “but it remains a violation of federal law.”
The current policy, spelled out in a 2013 memo from former deputy attorney general James Cole, said federal prosecutions would focus on distribution to minors, involvement of gangs or organized crime, sales beyond a state border, and growing marijuana plants on federal land.
During a town hall hosted by Fox News Tuesday night, White House adviser Stephen Miller confirmed that President Donal Trump’s new executive order — which will replace the immigration ban on seven majority-Muslim countries — will effectively have the same policy outcome.
As one of the architects of the first executive order, Miller insisted that “nothing was wrong with the first executive order” — although the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to reinstate the ban earlier this month. Miller admitted that a new order was necessary to avoid the judicial rulings from the appellate courts.
Although there will be changes in the language of the upcoming executive order, Miller said the policy outcome will remain the same.
“One of the big differences that you are going to see in the executive order is that it is going to be responsive to the judicial ruling which didn’t exist previously,” Miller said. “And so these are mostly minor, technical differences. Fundamentally, you are still going to have the same, basic policy outcome for the country.”
Critics were quick to point out that Miller had involuntarily provided civil rights organizations the material needed to challenge the order once it’s signed by the president.
Lawyers that challenged the first executive order cited former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani’s remarks on Fox News, when he said that Trump sought advice for a legal way to carry out a “Muslim ban.” Civil rights activists argued that Giuliani’s statement was evidence that the Trump administration wanted to discriminate against people of a certain religion.
Miller still believes the appellate courts’ rulings were wrong.
“The rulings from those courts were flawed, erroneous and false,” he said. “The president’s actions were clearly legal and constitutional and consistent with the longstanding tradition of presidents of the past.”
During the much anticipated presidential debate Sunday evening, Republican nominee Donald Trump was finally asked by a Muslim American how he, as president, would respond to the rise of Islamophobia. It was a unique and powerful opportunity for the businessman to address the shockingly anti-Islam tenor of his campaign, which many hate-group experts say has precipitated an unprecedented spike in Islamophobic violence across the United States.
Instead, Trump responded with an answer that was not only blatantly Islamophobic, but also outright fallacious. In fact, his reply was so filled with anti-Islam sentiment that it’s worth breaking down into individual parts.
The exchange was initiated when Gorbah Hamed, an uncommitted Missouri voter and a Muslim American, asked how Trump would “help people like me deal with the consequences of being labeled as a threat to the country after the election is over.”
“Well, you’re right about Islamophobia—it’s a shame,” he began, seemingly unaware that his own candidacy is often specifically credited by hate-group experts as a driving force behind the recent uptick in anti-Islam sentiment. In fact, at least one such incident involved a report of a woman verbally and physically assaulting a Muslim woman in Washington, D.C. before justifying the attack by citing her support for Donald Trump.
But Trump wasn’t done.
“But…whether we like it or not there is a problem,” he continued. “We have to be sure that Muslims come in and report when they see something going on. When they see hatred going on, they have to report it.”
Trump has made this claim before. In the aftermath of the tragic Orlando massacre earlier this year, Trump said, “For some reason, the Muslim community does not report people like this.”
This accusation, both then and now, is patently false. Muslims in the Untied States do report when they see evidence of extremism, so much so that law enforcement often relies on them for tips. FBI director James Comey even said as much back in June while discussing the Orlando shootings.
[Muslim Americans] do not want people committing violence, either in their community or in the name of their faith, and so some of our most productive relationships are with people who see things and tell us things who happen to be Muslim,” he said. “It’s at the heart of the FBI’s effectiveness to have good relationships with these folks.”
Trump’s inaccurate assertion struck a chord with the Muslim American community, many of whom immediately took to Twitter to mock his statement using the hashtag #MuslimsReportStuff.
Yet Trump had more to say. To drive home his point about Muslims reporting violence, he claimed that “many people” saw weapons in the home of the San Bernardino shooters, implying that Muslims who knew the ISIS-linked terrorists simply did not tell police about their dark plans.
But as Richard Winton, a Pulitzer-prize winning Los Angeles Times journalist who covered the shootings, pointed out, that claim is also completely unsubstantiated.
And just in case you missed his point, Trump closed with an anti-Muslim argument that members of his own party have been using for years now: that president Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton “have to” use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” to ever fully combat terrorism perpetrated by those who claim to be followers of Islam.
“To solve a problem, you have to be able to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name,” he said. “[Hillary Clinton] won’t say the name, and president Obama won’t say the name. But the name is there: it’s radical Islamic terror, and before you solve it, you have to say the name.”
This argument has been dismissed by security experts for some time, many of whom say that such terms only make fighting terrorism harder. Or, as Michael German, a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice and a former undercover FBI agent, said when asked about the term during a congressional hearing in June, that kind of language “puts us on a path to perpetual war.”
“[Such language] only serves to stoke public fear, xenophobia and anti-Muslim bigotry,” he said.
Ultimately, Trump didn’t have to spout explicitly anti-Muslim bigotry to be Islamophobic. Rather, his responses were in and of themselves Islamophobic because they were based on falsehoods that perpetuate a very specific, and unabashed inaccurate, narrative: that Muslims are generally dangerous, and those that aren’t are failing to help their fellow Americans.
Hamed herself was deeply unimpressed with Trump’s response.
“[Trump’s response] wasn’t an answer, actually, it was kind of like an accusation,” she told The Huffington Post.
Trump’s remarks were, in effect, a very honest “answer” to her question: if elected president, Trump, assuming he continues to voice the kinds of arguments he repeated last night, will “deal” with the rise of Islamophobia the same way he has throughout his campaign—by making it worse.
Republican nominee Donald Trump, facing backlash over his controversial remarks about the family of slain Army Capt. Humayun Kahn, continued to aggressively push back against critics.
During an interview on CNN’s “New Day,” where Khizr Khan and Ghazala Khan, the parents of Humayun Kkhan, shared memories of their son and discussed Trump’s ignorance of the Constitution, Trump himself was apparently watching because he sent out this tweet:
Mr. Khan, who does not know me, viciously attacked me from the stage of the DNC and is now all over T.V. doing the same – Nice!
This came to the attention of CNN host Dan Berman who asked for a response. Khizr Khan extended to Donald Trump and his Republican supporters a plea for unity and empathy. He stressed the need to work with Muslim communities to combat radicalization, while again slamming Trump for his divisive rhetoric.
“Communities coming together is the solution. We are as concerned as Donald Trump is about the safety of this country. We are a testament to the goodness of this country,” he said. “We need a leader that will unite us, not disrespect, not by derogatory remarks. I feel bad about the discourse that this campaign, this election campaign has taken.”
“That’s all I wish to convey to him. That a good leader has one trait — earlier I said — empathy.”
Trump then tweeted his perceived lack of respect for the family of a fallen U.S. soldier served as a distraction from issues that were more pertinent to the presidential campaign.
“This story is not about Mr. Khan, who is all over the place doing interviews, but rather RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and the U.S. Get smart!” Trump tweeted in reference to the appearance.
This story is not about Mr. Khan, who is all over the place doing interviews, but rather RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM and the U.S. Get smart!
Moreover, the families of 11 fallen service members have demanded an apology for “repugnant” and “personally offensive” remarks made by Trump, in a letter published by VoteVets Action Fund, the progressive advocacy wing of the political action committee for VoteVets.org.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Speaker of the House Paul Ryan praised the sacrifices made by the Khan family, in statements made over the weekend. Without naming Trump, they implied that his criticism of the Khan family and his proposal to temporarily bar Muslims from entering the U.S. ran contrary to American values.
“All Americans should value the patriotic service of the patriots who volunteer to selflessly defend us in the armed services. And as I have long made clear, I agree with the Khans and families across the country that a travel ban on all members of a religion is simply contrary to American values,” McConnell wrote.
In a similar statement, Ryan said, “America’s greatness is built on the principles of liberty and preserved by the men and women who wear the uniform to defend it. As I have said on numerous occasions, a religious test for entering our country is not reflective of these fundamental values. I reject it.”
John McCain joined the chorus of Republicans condemning Donald Trump’s attacks saying in statement, “Arizona is watching. It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party. While our party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”
Ghazala Khan told CNN, “I’m so happy to be saying that I’m a Muslim woman. I’m very glad to be in this country.”
“Someone has to pay a price for this freedom that we have,” she added about her son’s service.
Also, in an opinion article published in The Washington Post, Ms. Khan rebuked Mr. Trump for suggesting earlier in the weekend that she had not been permitted to speak at the Democratic convention. Ms. Khan said she did not speak because she did not believe she could remain composed while talking about her son.
The Khan family’s criticisms are not about terrorism, but Trump’s lack of understanding of the fundamentals of the United States Constitution and his personal attack on Ms. Khan, asserting she was not “allowed” to speak at their DNC speech.
By ignoring Khan family’s statements and instead painting his response as a broader issue of “radical Islamic terrorism,” Donald Trump is attempting to either cowardly deflect a very valid criticism or he is dishonestly trying to link the Khans to terrorists.
In back-to-back interviews with Fox News hosts Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump condemned Muslims and immigrants for a horrific truck attack in the French resort town of Nice, France that occurred late Thursday.
No terror group or organization has yet claimed responsibility after 77 people were killed and about 100 injured when a truck plowed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day fireworks. When Van Susteren asked Trump to contrast what Obama would say about the attack with what he would say, Trump immediately cited “radical Islamic terrorism” as a potential cause, then said “I don’t think the people come out of Sweden, okay? It’s probably, possibly but if it is indeed, radical Islamic terrorism, it’s about time that [Obama] would say so, okay?”
“I mean, it just happened now,” Trump admitted, before speculating that the attack could have been carried out by a Muslim as in “Orlando, like in San Bernardino, like in Paris, like in the World Trade Center, like many other places, if it’s radical Islamic terrorism.”
Even if the attacks are ultimately linked to Muslim or immigrants, Trump was speaking as a presidential nominee just minutes after the attack, when none of this information was known.
During his interview with O’Reilly, Trump appeared to backtrack a bit on his earlier comments, telling the host that we should “wait a little while, and let’s see what happens. Who knows? Maybe you will be surprised and maybe we will all be surprised” in the truck attack.
But in the same breath, Trump bashed the refugee process into the United States, claiming that the country will admit at least 10,000 unscreened Syrian refugees by the end of the fiscal year.
“They may be ISIS,” Trump said, alluding to the terror group Islamic State. “This could be the great Trojan horse of all time. I mean, this could be the ultimate Trojan horse.”
Syrian refugees actually undergo one of the most stringent processes to come to the United States, which can take anywhere between 18 and 24 months. The process requires at least 21 steps in which biographic information, biometrics, and documentation are shown and put under scrutiny.
Trump has long claimed that Muslims and immigrants could bring criminal activities to the United States. In fact, he launched his campaign by deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. Soon after Paris was under siege from a terror attack, Trump called for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the United States, later adding that Muslims should be put into a database so that they can be tracked. He has also condemned resettling Syrian refugees in the country, using a similar argument that they lack documentation.
On the basis of this speculation, Trump said he agreed that this was now a “world war scenario” and, as president, he would seek a formal declaration of world war from Congress.
“I would. I would,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If you look at it, this is war, coming from all different parts. And frankly, it’s war and we’re dealing with people without uniforms. You know, in the old days, you would have uniforms. You knew who you were fighting.”
Trump then pivoted to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s U.S. immigration policies that would potentially allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.
“These people — we are allowing people into our country, who we have no idea where they are, where they are from, who they are, they have no paperwork, they have no documentation in many cases and Hillary Clinton wants to allow 550 percent more in than even Obama,” he added.
Prior to the interviews, Trump tweeted that he would postpone the announcement of his vice presidential candidate, originally set for Friday.
In light of the horrible attack in Nice, France, I have postponed tomorrow's news conference concerning my Vice Presidential announcement.
7/14 at 5:44 PM ET, Fox News reported a large truck had been driven through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing dozens.
7/14 at 7:20 PM ET, Donald Trump phoned into live coverage of the attack on Fox News.
7/16 at 4:00 AM ET, two days later, ISIS released a statement claiming the attack as an outright act of ISIS, but noting that the attacker was responding to calls to act.
7/16 at 8:00 AM ET, French investigators found a possible, but yet unconfirmed connection to Jabhat al Nusra, an al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.
While this has the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and may possibly be the case, there are potentially thousands of other possibilities to consider before actual facts from a formal investigation are even established. Have we learned nothing from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of weapons of mass destruction? At the time, Republican President George W. Bush ignored timelines from UN weapons inspectors to perform their jobs, fabricated evidence, and rushed to judgement which left us with an inter-generational quagmire.
We should expect our leaders to have cool heads and sound judgement in the face of adversity, which was not on display here from Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
During a rally on Friday, he provoked anger when he asked a Turkish reporter whether he was friend or foe, days after suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 43 people at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.
A voice in the crowd in Denver called out: “Turkey.”
Mr Trump responded directly, asking: “Are you from Turkey, sir? Good… congratulations.”
He then turned to the audience, saying: “I think he’s friend. Are you friend or foe?”
He then went on to talk about the country’s response to ISIL.
“Turkey, by the way, should be fighting ISIL,” he said. “I hope to see Turkey go out and fight ISIL.”
The crowd cheered his words but they provoked anger among commentators, who pointed out that Turkey was a US ally, has provided bases for war planes attacking ISIL positions, and its own jets have run missions against the jihadist group.
However Turkey is also known to be playing a “double game” by refusing to stop ISIL fighters from crossing their southern border to attack their common enemy, the Kurds.
Donald Trump continues to propagate his dangerous “us versus them” mentality.
This is not the first time Trump has asked someone their allegiance at a campaign event. During rallies, when the presumptive GOP nominee hears sounds of a disruption, sometimes Trump will yell out the question to gauge whether the noise is coming from protesters or cheering fans.
If the noise is coming from a “foe” of Donald Trump, he usually follows with “Get them the hell out!”
Donald Trump said Sunday that in the wake of the mass shooting in Orlando, it’s time for the United States to start looking at racial profiling as a preventative tactic.
The presumptive GOP nominee said in a phone interview with CBS’ Face the Nation:
Well I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country. Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads.
“It’s not the worst thing to do,” he added.
Trump’s comments come one week after 49 people were shot and killed in a gay nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. Following the massacre, Trump renewed his calls for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., saying it would have prevented the attack despite the fact that shooter Omar Mateen was born in the U.S.
On Sunday, the GOP politician also said attacks like Orlando would stop if those in the Muslim community would “report” suspicious things.
“When you look at, when you look at people within the Muslim community and where people are living and they don’t report, and a good example of that would be San Bernardino,” he said. “I mean, they had bombs all over their apartment floor and people saw it and nobody reported them, and 14 people were killed, many injured.”
Mateen, Trump added, had definite “red flags” before the attack. “You look at his past, I mean? I’ve never seen a past quite like that,” he said of Mateen. “You look at his record in school, you look at a lot of other things. There were a lot of red flags, this was not a very good young man.”
“We understand there are problems with that because some people are on the terror watch list that shouldn’t be on,” he said. “So I’m working with the NRA, we’re discussing it and again the NRA has the best interests of our country, it just has the absolute best interests of our country.”
Asked about GOP leaders’ criticism of him in recent days, especially over his renewed focus on the Muslim ban, Trump said those Republicans should stop “talking so much” and just “do their job.” The issue is compounded, he added, when the media focuses more on his detractors in the GOP than his supporters.
“I think that honestly they should go about their business and they should do a wonderful job and work on budgets and get the budgets down and get the military the kind of money they need and lots of other things, and they shouldn’t be talking so much,” he said. “They should go out and do their job, let me do my job.”
However according to Trump’s suggestion, we should be racially profiling white Christian males because you are more than 7 times as likely to be killed by a right-wing extremist than by Muslim terrorists.
A Muslim woman wearing a hijab was escorted out of Donald Trump’s campaign event on Friday by police after she stood up in silent protest during Trump’s speech.
Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant sitting in the stands directly behind Trump, stood up Friday during Trump’s speech when the Republican front-runner suggested that Syrian refugees fleeing war in Syria were affiliated with ISIS.
Despite her silence, Trump supporters around her began chanting Trump’s name — as instructed by Trump campaign staff before the event in case of protests — and pointed at Hamid and Marty Rosenbluth, the man alongside her who stood up as well.
As they were escorted out, Trump supporters roared — booing the pair and shouting at them to “get out.” One person shouted, “You have a bomb, you have a bomb,” according to Hamid.
“The ugliness really came out fast and that’s really scary,” Hamid told CNN in a phone interview after she was ejected.
That was one of the most bravest things I have ever seen. You cannot disagree that, even though it was a silent and peaceful protest, as a Muslim woman in that environment comes with a large amount of risk.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has defended his controversial comments proposing a ban on all Muslims from entering the US as there are places in London where police officers “are scared for their lives” because of radicalisation.
The billionaire tycoon has been criticised from both sides of the presidential election campaign as well 10 Downing Street for his comments calling for a “total and complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the US, including tourists and US citizens returning to their own country, in the wake of the Paris terror attacks and San Bernardino shootings in California.
Trump repeated the comments at a rally in South Carolina to a rousing applause, adding: “We have no choice.” Despite being condemned by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, David Cameron and rival Republican candidates Jeb Bush and Ben Carson, the 69-year-old refused to back down from his proposal if he was elected president.
Speaking to MSNBC, Trump said that people attacking his comments were “afraid of the other side, not my side”. “Look at what happened in Paris and the horrible carnage,” he said. “If you look at Paris [it’s] no longer the same city it was They have sections in Paris which are radicalised where they police refuse to go there because they’re petrified. We have places in London and other places that are so radicalised the police are afraid for their own lives. We have to be very smart and very vigilant.”
This is, by far, one of the most bigoted statements Trump, or any other politician, has made in my lifetime. The lies used to push a nationalistic agenda places him in history among the likes of France’s National Front.
And about those no-go zones Fox News reported on:
Hell, even Fox News apologized for their lie about the no-go zones in Paris.
On December 7th, 2015, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a statement calling for the ban on an entire religion from entering the United States of America.
Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. According to Pew Research, among others, there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population. Most recently, a poll from the Center for Security Policy released data showing “25% of those polled agreed that violence against Americans here in the United States is justified as a part of the global jihad” and 51% of those polled, “agreed that Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to Shariah.” Shariah authorizes such atrocities as murder against non-believers who won’t convert, beheadings and more unthinkable acts that pose great harm to Americans, especially women.
Mr. Trump stated, “Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension. Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life. If I win the election for President, we are going to Make America Great Again.” – Donald J. Trump
Reality
This is, by far, one of the most bigoted statements Trump, or any other politician, has made in my lifetime. The lies used to push a nationalistic agenda places him in history among the likes of France’s National Front.
Does a President have this authority?
Trump has asserted that U.S. immigration law would grant him the authority to institute
the ban. Although he has not cited any particular provision, it appears he is invoking 8 US Code § 1182(f) the authority vested in the president to suspend entry of “any class of aliens.”
But Congress cannot grant, and a president cannot exercise, authority that would violate the Constitution. In light of the constitutional flaws in Trump’s proposed ban, § 1182(f ) either must be read narrowly not to authorize such unconstitutional conduct, or it should be struck down as unconstitutional insofar as it authorizes such a ban.
Is Trump’s proposal constitutional?
A ban on Muslim U.S. citizens from entering the United States would be a blatant violation of due process and equal protection under the Fifth Amendment and the basic principle that the government may not banish its citizens or deny them entry to the United States.
In addition, any religion-based bar on the readmission of lawful permanent residents — who have a lawful right to readmission (particularly after a brief trip abroad) unless and until the government can prove they should lose that right — should fail under the Due Process Clause.
What about Trump’s evidence he used for justification of a ban?
While the study Trump cited does exist, it’s not at all clear that it supports his argument that “there is great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population.” There are several important problems with the survey that call into question whether the results are representative of the entire U.S. Muslim population. It was an online, opt-in survey, which tend to produce less reliable samples because respondents choose to participate. In traditional polling methods, everyone in a population has a chance of being selected for the survey, meaning the results generally reflect the country’s demographics.
