Thanks to a whirlwind of executive orders, policy adjustments, and subtle bureaucratic changes, US immigration policy is looking more and more like the xenophobic 1920s. Back then, the US barred Asians, as well as Italians, Greeks, and people from Eastern Europe. This ti...
Jeff Sessions
Trump’s push to make city cops into stooges for ICE suffers strange, messy courtroom defeat
Cities and states can refuse to answer questions from federal immigration officials, a federal judge ruled Friday in a decision that boosts resistance to Attorney General Jeff Sessions and President Donald Trump’s crusade against immigrants — and illustrates the contortionist flexibility of the law.
The ruling is another setback for the Trump-Sessions war on undocumented migrants that was central to the president’s campaign message. The City of Chicago’s 2012...
Trump’s Justice Department finally did something so lawless that even GOP leaders are recoiling
Last Friday, one day after the Justice Department filed a brief refusing to defend the Affordable Care Act, a senior DOJ attorney with over 20 years of experience at the department resigned in an apparent act of protest. The lawyer, Joel McElvain, was one of three career lawyers who withdrew from the case rather than signing their name to the Trump administration’s arguments — a highly unusual move by career Justice Department officials.
Then, on Tuesday of this week, th...
This 2011 quote from Jeff Sessions just became really awkward
The Trump administration’s Department of Justice will not defend in court the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act’s consumer protections, including the ban on discrimination against people with pre-existing medical conditions, it announced Thursday. While Attorney General Jeff Sessions is far from the first to opt not to defend a law he deems unconstitutional, many prominent Republicans — including Sessions himself — were highly critical of the practice jus...
The hollow, contradictory hype of Trump’s big emergency speech on opioids
Like the rash of executive orders he signed in the early months of his administration, President Donald Trump’s Thursday address declaring a national public health emergency to help fight deaths linked to opioids was long on performance and short on substance.
The failure to invest new funding in the project and the vague promise that more policy specifics will be revealed in the coming weeks are symptomatic of Trump’s high-flash, low-focus approach to policymaking.
...
Jeff Sessions issues directive undercutting LGBT protections
The Sessions directive effectively lifts a burden from religious objectors to prove their beliefs about marriage or other topics are sincerely held
The attorney general, Jeff Sessions, on Friday issued a sweeping directive that undercuts federal protections for LGBT people, telling agencies to do as much as possible to accommodate those who claim their religious freedoms are violated.
Related: Trump substantially weakens Obamacare contraception mandate
Continue reading...
Justice Department issues new ‘religious freedom’ memo that invites anti-LGBTQ discrimination
Attorney General Jeff Sessions issued extensive guidance Friday morning regarding “Protections for Religious Liberty” throughout the federal government. The document scrupulously avoids mentioning the LGBTQ community by name but it is undeniably the latest in a string of actions targeting LGBTQ rights.
Among the 20 “key principles” in Sessions’ memo are several assurances that the government will not penalize religious organizations for their religious ...