Mr. McConnell and his staff were especially annoyed by Mr. Mulvaney’s performance on Sunday on the political talk shows, saying he seemed giddy and enthusiastic about the possibility of another shutdown, according to three people familiar with the situation.
After Mr. Mulvaney on Sunday refused to rule out a shutdown, an incensed Mr. Shelby referred to Mr. Mulvaney as “dangerous” in the negotiations during a check-in session with lawmakers, according to a member of the conference committee. He was infuriated all over again on Thursday, believing Mr. Mulvaney was behind Mr. Trump’s change of heart.
Mr. Shelby, asked about his views on Mr. Mulvaney, declined to comment.
The majority leader, sentimental as a scythe and not one for small talk, decided it was up to him. He began speaking with Mr. Trump three or four times a day, and urged others to do the same, according to several people close to the negotiations.
“I want you all to start calling the president directly,” Mr. McConnell told a group of senior Republicans last week after a conference lunch, according to two people in attendance. “He’s easy to get on the phone.”
Mr. McConnell viewed his role as equal parts cajoler and instructor. He patiently (and fruitlessly) argued against the emergency declaration, which he sees as usurping congressional authority to splinter Senate Republicans. He also used the check-ins to collect intelligence about Mr. Trump’s mind-set.
To sell the president on the deal, he argued that it was a “big down payment” on the wall and offered to support moves by the president to transfer some funding from other agencies to border barrier projects if he ditched the emergency declaration. But the core of his case, people close to Mr. McConnell said, was the argument that the deal reached by negotiators was actually a “victory” over Ms. Pelosi, thanks to his success in fighting attempts to reduce the number of detention beds.
Mr. Trump never really bought it.
But Mr. McConnell is nothing if not adaptable. During his final call with Mr. Trump, he looped in the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, who expressed misgivings about the emergency declaration, telling an annoyed Mr. Trump that it would prompt several serious lawsuits.
Mr. McConnell, quickly shifting from opposing the declaration to managing its rollout, snapped back, “Who cares? This is America — everybody sues everybody else,” according to a person the leader spoke to late Thursday.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (left) and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo talk as they attend the conference on Peace and Security in the Middle East in Warsaw on Feb 14. | Janek Skarzynski/AFP/Getty Images
Even as U.S. officials pressured European allies this week to break with Tehran, there was little indication the Islamist regime is worried about survival.
WARSAW — The Trump administration is warning Iran’s Islamist rulers that, after 40 years, their time in power is almost up. But the Iranian government is betting Trump will be gone first.
Even as top Trump officials traveling in Europe this week threatened to hit Iran with more economic sanctions and pressured allies to break with Tehran, there was little indication that the country’s theocratic regime fears it is in mortal peril.
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In fact, on the same day the Trump administration hosted a conference in Poland unofficially intended to rally global opposition against Tehran, Iran’s president was meeting his Russian and Turkish counterparts, in part to discuss new international financial mechanisms to evade U.S. sanctions.
Meanwhile, in Poland, Trump’s closest aides and a top ally, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, unfurled unexpected comments that likely left Iran with even more leverage and incentive to run out the clock on the Republican president.
First, Netanyahu set off alarm bells with a tweet suggesting a coming “war” with Iran, undermining the administration’s effort to portray its Poland event as a peace conference. Then, Vice President Mike Pence went off script to demand that the Europeans quit the Iran nuclear deal, a call sure to be dismissed. It also did not go unnoticed that Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, called for regime change in Iran at a separate gathering in Warsaw.
The developments come as a flock of Democrats have launched White House bids, a probe into Trump’s 2016 campaign continues to encircle the president and Republicans wonder if Trump will face a primary challenge or even not run again.
“Both sides are waiting and hoping for regime change in one another’s countries, but the clock in Washington is running faster than the clock in Tehran,” said Ali Vaez, an Iran analyst with the International Crisis Group.
For now, Trump’s top advisers are certainly not willing to countenance the possibility that their boss may be a one-term president. Instead, the administration is doubling down on what it calls a “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.
But the conference in Warsaw — which faced numerous stumbles, including boycotts by allies and crucial players in the Middle East — cast serious doubt that the pressure campaign would succeed anytime soon.
For much of this week, the administration sought to capitalize on the 40th anniversary of the revolution that brought Islamists to power in Tehran. Trump himself sent out tweets in both Farsi and English slamming the regime.
“40 years of corruption. 40 years of repression. 40 years of terror. The regime in Iran has produced only #40YearsofFailure,” he tweeted on Monday. “The long-suffering Iranian people deserve a much brighter future.”
Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif replied with his own tweet, claiming the U.S. has shown “#40YearsofFailure to accept that Iranians will never return to submission.”
National security adviser John Bolton released a video message attacking Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. “You are responsible for terrorizing your own people and terrorizing the world as a whole,” Bolton said. “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”
But despite its heated rhetoric, the Trump administration still insists it is not seeking to oust the Iranian regime. Instead, it said, the regime must change its behavior.
Such assertions have proven tough to swallow for U.S. allies, especially Britain, France and Germany. The three countries have worked to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in the months since Trump abandoned it. And on Thursday, Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, flatly rejected the idea of Europeans ditching the deal.
“For us it is a matter of priority to keep implementing it at full,” Mogherini said.
The Europeans have set up an economic mechanism called INSTEX that is designed to allow companies to do business with Iran without violating the U.S. sanctions Trump reimposed on the country after walking away from the nuclear deal. Under the deal, the Obama administration had rolled back economic sanctions in exchange for strict curbs on Iran’s nuclear program.
Pence on Thursday slammed the financial work-around, calling it “an ill-advised step that will only strengthen Iran, weaken the E.U. and create still more distance between Europe and the United States.”
Supporters of the nuclear deal say its survival hinges on biding time — and especially on Tehran’s willingness to stick with the agreement, officially called the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.
One ex-official who helped draft the deal said the Iranian government appears to be calibrating its approach by trying to gauge Trump’s political prospects.
“Iran is driving this in the sense that I think Iran believes that if it looks like Trump is not going to be reelected maybe they should stay where they are, and then resurrect some form of the JCPOA,” the ex-official said. “If it looks like Trump is going to get reelected, then it’s a different ballgame. So I think they are trying to assess what their best posture is.”
As evidence of Iran’s struggle to find the right balance, the ex-official pointed to threats last month by Iran nuclear chief Ali Akbar Salehi that Iran could enrich uranium up to 20 percent within four days — well above the 3.67 percent enrichment cap set in the JCPOA.
The ex-official said such proclamations were a way for the Iranian government to answer hardliners, including those in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, who are insisting their country should just abandon the deal in response to Trump’s withdrawal.
Such threats, the ex-official said, are “a way for them to say to the IRGC, ‘We’re being tough. We’re … not going to get pushed around. We hold all the cards,’ while at the same time, not actually taking action that would abrogate the deal.”
“Right now, the world is mad at the Trump administration, not mad at Iran,” the ex-official added. “If they start doing things that undercut the deal, then Iran becomes the bad guy quite quickly.”
The Trump administration, too, has been trying to strike its own balance.
It is warning the world that Iran — through its sponsorship of terrorism, its human rights violations, its ballistic missile program and its military activity in neighboring countries — is a menace that must be confronted.
But it’s also trying to do so while insisting that Trump made the right move by walking away from what he deemed a terrible nuclear agreement. The latter is an argument that many U.S. allies don’t support.
“For us, the implementation of the nuclear deal with Iran is a matter of European security … and we see it is working,” said Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, who skipped the Warsaw conference. “On other issues, we can work very closely together with the United States.”
Tensions between the U.S. and other countries were on full display throughout the Warsaw conference this week.
The gathering was originally designed to focus on Iran, but after it became clear many U.S. allies might not attend, the Trump administration sought to broaden the agenda to look at security and stability in the Middle East. Even then, many top European officials declined to participate.
Poland, which has been trying to curry favor with Trump for a variety of reasons, was a conference co-host. But the country officially still supports the Iran nuclear deal. Polish diplomats repeatedly had to explain that stance, making for several awkward, tongue-tied moments.
Netanyahu, perhaps America’s most staunch supporter in its anti-Iran campaign, raised eyebrows before leaving for Warsaw when declared “Iran” would be the focus of the event, contradicting U.S. claims. Once at the event, Netanyahu again startled with a tweet saying he looked forward to sitting with Arab leaders to “advance the common interest of war with Iran.” The tweet was later changed to say “combating” Iran, but Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, still lashed out at “Netanyahu’s illusions.”
Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin was hosting a rival gathering with Iran President Hassan Rouhani and Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, further adding to the sense that U.S. influence in the Middle East is eroding.
At the Russian-hosted event in Sochi, Erdoğan, reportedly said that not only is Turkey willing to join the European’s INSTEX financial vehicle, but it may also create a bilateral mechanism to facilitate trade with Iran.
Rouhani, for his part, tried to turn the tables by criticizing Washington. “While we are taking new steps for boosting stability in the region and fighting terrorism in Syria,” he said in a statement, “some who are sponsoring terrorists are hatching plots against the region in Warsaw.”
The main message out of Sochi, however, seemed to be that these three countries — far more than the Americans — would determine the future of the Middle East.
Back in Warsaw, Trump administration supporters stressed some of the strides made in holding the conference. For one thing, Israel’s leader was in the same space as a number of prominent Arab officials, all of whom have grown weary of Iran’s military assertiveness and other meddling throughout the Middle East.
The conference also gave Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner a venue to discuss his efforts to craft a new peace deal for the Israelis and Palestinians. Kushner told officials that the plan will likely be unveiled after Israeli elections in April.
Toward the end of the conference, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo noted that more than 60 countries sent representatives to the event.
“No country, no country spoke out and denied any of the basic facts that we all had laid out about Iran — the threat it poses, the nature of the regime. It was unanimous,” he insisted.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that not only would President Trump declare a national emergency to build a border wall, but that he would support it, is going to come back to haunt conservatives.
As I noted last month, the possibility of an emergency declaration became a lot more likely when Trump caved on border wall funding to end the government shutdown, thus making him feel he had to find another way to show his base that he was willing to use all the tools at his disposal to try and deliver on his campaign promise.
The idea of Trump taking such an action was then, and remains now, a terrible idea with dangerous consequences for limited government conservatives. McConnell’s blessing makes matters even worse.
Those who seek to limit the size and scope of government should want it to be more difficult for the executive to arbitrarily use power. That Trump is taking this action means that a Republican president will have been on board with using emergency powers to undertake a massive infrastructure project without the consent of Congress. What’s more, the Republican leader in the Senate, along with no doubt plenty of other Republicans, will have signed on this action, along with, no doubt, plenty of conservative Trump cheerleaders.
For the past week, we’ve been debating infeasibility of the Green New Deal. But many of its provisions suddenly become a lot more politically possible if a president is allowed to seize emergency powers in such a way. If Trump succeeds, it would not be difficult for a Democrat to declare an emergency based on the National Climate Assessment, and then go about using the military for massive infrastructure projects in clean energy.
The only hope for limited government conservatives is that any emergency declaration gets quickly enjoined, and eventually nixed, in federal court. At least then, the silver lining would be that a legal precedent would be set that the president cannot attempt such an end around Congress.
Either way, however, Trump’s action and the likely overwhelming support by Congressional Republicans will shred their ability to resist any sort of attempt by a future Democratic president seeking to broadly employ executive power.
And all for what? Even in the event of an eventual victory in court, any legal process is going to take at least a year to be resolved, without much time to do actual construction before the 2020 election, which Trump could lose. So basically there’s a non-zero chance that Trump will have gotten Republicans to go along with him setting a precedent for the next Democratic president, only to not even have a border wall to show for it.
This is a dangerous, rash, reckless, and myopic decision that should be passionately opposed by all principled conservatives.
An attack last week against former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke in his Connecticut prison cell reflects “the mentality out there … that people won’t rest until he is either given a life sentence or killed in prison,” his lead trial attorney said Thursday.
Daniel Herbert joined Van Dyke’s wife, Tiffany, in demanding to know why Van Dyke was transferred to an out-of-state federal prison and why he was placed in the general inmate population, where he was beaten in the face within days of his arrival.
“They put my husband in a setting to be harmed because of the fact that he was a white man who harmed a black gentleman in the line of duty,” Tiffany Van Dyke said at a news conference. “He is a police officer who was convicted for doing his job, and at the basic minimum they were supposed to keep him safe.”
Attorneys stressed the danger Van Dyke faces in custody — just days after prosecutors filed a legal petition before the state Supreme Court that, if successful, could significantly lengthen his sentence.
At turns defiant and emotional, Tiffany Van Dyke said she has lived in constant fear that her husband would be harmed while behind bars.
“I want my husband home, I want him to be safe,” she said. “I don’t need people to go into his cell and attack him. The next time this could happen they could kill him. I cannot bury my husband.”
The transfer and the attack left his supporters with more questions than answers.
His attorneys were told Feb. 5 that Van Dyke had been moved to Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut, a low- to minimum-security facility. Two days later, shortly after he had been processed, several people attacked him in his cell, his attorneys said.
The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email Thursday that “an assault resulting in minor injuries” occurred Feb. 7 but declined to answer further questions, including whether Van Dyke was in the general population. The Illinois Department of Corrections confirmed that Van Dyke no longer is in its custody but would not say why.
The beating came to light this week after Van Dyke told his appellate attorneys. But much of the information Van Dyke’s trial attorneys cited Thursday came from an unnamed informant who works in the Connecticut prison, they said.
The prison employee sought out Van Dyke’s attorneys to give them details authorities had not, according to Tammy Wendt, another lawyer who defended Van Dyke at trial last year. Wendt expressed frustration that no one in a position of authority had informed them of the attack or answered basic questions about his safety.
“This man came forward to advise us of this attack on Jason when nobody else would,” she said.
Van Dyke was “led like a lamb to the slaughter,” Wendt said. Within hours of arriving at his new unit, a group of inmates “blindsided” him in his cell. Van Dyke suffered injuries to his head and face and was given medical attention at the prison, Wendt said.
Van Dyke then was moved from the general population to a segregated unit, his attorneys said.
The attackers had been hired by another group of inmates to beat the former officer, Wendt told reporters after the news conference, citing the lawyers’ informant.
Wendt said the attackers made it clear Van Dyke was being targeted because of the McDonald case.
Herbert appeared to suggest that Attorney General Kwame Raoul should intervene. On Monday, Raoul announced his intention to challenge Van Dyke’s sentence before the state Supreme Court.
“For those that have been elected … if their job is to promote justice, they need to look into the mirror and determine whether they have the fortitude and the integrity to do these jobs,” he said.
Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon, who was appointed special prosecutor to handle the murder case, issued a statement calling for authorities to ensure Van Dyke’s security.
“Mr. Van Dyke should be in a safe environment where he can serve his time and return to his family and community when he completes his sentence,” the statement read. “I expect those in charge of his custody to take the necessary precautions to fulfill that responsibility.”
McMahon had joined Raoul in filing a petition challenging the legal basis for the sentence handed down by Cook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan. The judge determined that the aggravated battery convictions should “merge” into the second-degree murder conviction for sentencing purposes, which the prosecutors argue was improper.
If they are successful, Van Dyke would be resentenced on the aggravated batteries instead — raising the possibility of much more prison time without the day-for-day credit he can earn for a second-degree murder sentence.
Van Dyke’s attorneys said they were not aware of any security threats or other incidents that would have prompted a transfer to a federal prison so far away. Illinois prison officials had declined to say where he was being held, citing concerns for his safety should his location be revealed.
After his conviction but before sentencing, Van Dyke was held in isolation at a Quad Cities-area jail. The move was part of an arrangement Cook County has with other jails to move prisoners who are either high-profile, dangerous or working as cooperating witnesses in other cases.
Van Dyke was charged with murder the same day as the court-ordered release of graphic police dashboard camera footage that showed him shooting McDonald 16 times as the teen walked away from police while holding a knife in his hand.
The video’s release, more than a year after the October 2014 shooting, led to months of protests and continuing political upheaval. It prompted a federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department that concluded officers routinely violated the civil rights of minorities.
Van Dyke isn’t the first high-profile ex-police officer from Illinois to be attacked shortly after being moved into federal custody.
A month after his transfer to a federal prison in Indiana for security reasons, Drew Peterson was attacked in March 2017 by a fellow inmate armed with a food tray in the dining area, according to authorities.
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — An armed suspect who held a UPS driver hostage Thursday after stealing his truck and leading police on a chase through San Jose was shot dead just yards from a KPIX crew.
The suspect, who was identified by police sources as Mark Morasky, was shot once by law enforcement in a parking lot as he ran from the UPS truck holding a firearm.
The standoff began as a car chase at Chynoweth and Pear Avenues just before 5:30 p.m. A Santa Clara County Sheriff’s spokesperson did not say why they were trying to pull over the suspect and his female passenger in the first place.
Investigators said the two suspects fired shots at deputies — hitting a patrol car — then ran out of the black SUV they in and carjacked a UPS truck, taking the driver hostage and speeding off through the streets of San Jose.
Deputies deployed spike strips at Highway 87 and Taylor but the truck continued to move for miles until it came to a stop at the busy intersection on Trimble and First. The area is surrounded by businesses and restaurants which were all put on lockdown as the standoff unfolded. VTA service was also affected.
“We were just told to hunker down until the time came,” said Marilyn Jansen, who works in the area, but was holed up inside a Starbucks across from where the UPS was parked.
Sakid Ahmed, who was working across the street from the incident, said officers told workers to stay indoors.
“They said there was a hostage situation, stay in the building, be safe,” he said.
For nearly 90 minutes, the suspect could be seen inside the UPS truck making hand signals, looking out the window and talking on the phone. He also could be seen holding a rifle and at times pointing it toward his head.
At one point the suspect drove the truck a couple feet forward but he was surrounded by a barricade of law enforcement who had their guns drawn.
The female suspect surrendered and was taken into custody and, soon afterward, the UPS driver was released. He appeared in good condition.
Morasky refused to surrender. KPIX has learned he was arrested in 2012 for an alleged carjacking and two armed robberies.
Moments before a KPIX live shot, Morasky jumped out of the truck with his rifle as law enforcement zeroed in on him with their vehicles. Morasky ran into an adjacent parking lot where he was shot dead.
“And then you could see him run out with he was carrying something ran across the street and then we heard a pop,” said witness Jacinto Laney.
“Shocking and very unfortunate,” Ahmed said.
Mike Glish, who works across the street from the incident, was among many who were not allowed to get to their cars when the standoff turned fatal.
“It’s terrible when somebody would do something like that,” he said.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has decided to embrace his inner Harry Reid and greenlight President Trump’s emergency declaration.
As John Yoo noted earlier this month, the courts may find that Trump is within his rights to mobilize the military to build the wall when his gambit is inevitably challenged for its legality. Even Youngstown v. Sawyer, which reversed former President Harry Truman’s seizure of private steel mills to supply the military during the Korean War, wouldn’t necessarily imply that Trump would be out-of-bounds building the wall on land not privately owned.
Congress has failed to define the legal bounds of what is or isn’t an emergency, but surely, the term was never meant to deal with this.
Hundreds of thousands of immigrants are apprehended at our nation’s southern border every year, meaning that the number of immigrants illegally entering the country could be greater by an order of magnitude. A sovereign nation, even one which embraces the free flow of labor, must defend its borders for security’s sake, and Democrats calling a physical barrier “immoral” either don’t understand the few hundred miles along our border that would see fewer illegal crossings with a wall, or they simply don’t care.
But we know that this is not a national emergency for the same reason we knew it wasn’t a national emergency a month ago, when Trump first touted this idea: We’re all still here.
The threat of illegal immigration mirrors that of climate change. Both must be dealt with at some point, and both loom large as possible catastrophes. But neither issue is immediate. We teach children that 911 is only for instant dangers. We have to teach the president that emergency powers are the same.
What sort of precedent are we willing to accept here? Do we want “President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez” to declare a state of emergency to slaughter all the farting cows and ground the entire airline industry in 2028? Just like then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid nuking the filibuster has since backfired against Democrats who can no longer block Trump’s judicial nominees, this emergency declaration could bite Republicans in the near future.
Furthermore, the declaration of a state of emergency will essentially punt the border security issue to the courts. This will help Democrats shirk accountability over their unwillingness to protect Americans and do their jobs. Just as the Democratic Party seemed on the edge of crumbling under the weight of their own extremism and economic illiteracy, Trump had to come along and steal back the spotlight.
It’s past time for Congress to step up to the plate and pass an update to the National Emergency Act. The law needs a clear definition of the conditions under which the president can declare a national emergency. If members of Congress don’t step up with this, they ought not issue a single gripe, tweet, or moan decrying Trump’s power grab, because it might well be legal even if it’s not in line with the historical consensus.
After a bipartisan vote on border security legislation, senators appeared split over President Donald Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency, allowing him to build more of his border wall. (Feb. 14) AP
WASHINGTON – There’s always a tweet.
In 2014, President Donald Trump railed against then President Barack Obama over his use of executive power on immigration. Fast forward five years and Trump is expected to do the same thing.
“Repubs must not allow Pres Obama to subvert the Constitution of the US for his own benefit & because he is unable to negotiate w/ Congress,” Trump said in a tweet on Nov. 20, 2014.
Trump is now planning to use his executive powers in declaring a national emergency to obtain additional funds for a wall along the southern U.S. border. The White House announced Thursday he would make the declaration after signing a bipartisan funding bill that will provide $1.375 billion for a 55-mile border barrier – much less than the $5.7 billion that Trump has demanded. The funding bill would prevent the government from shutting down as it did in December, spurring the longest-ever shutdown on record.
The move will allow Trump to sidestep Democratic opposition to get more wall funding, but it could draw legal challenges from lawmakers and others who viewed the move as a power grab and something that violates the Constitution.
His tweet attacking Obama for using executive authority on immigration specifically targeted an executive order that shielded up to 5 million immigrants from deportation and bolstered protections for “DREAMers,” people who were brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
Although the positions were reversed, Obama was also frustrated by a lack of congressional action for what he viewed as a broken immigration system.
Obama’s order followed an impasse with the Republicans in Congress, who during elections that month took control of both the Senate and House. The White House at the time said allow Obama’s orders were steps to “fix our broken immigration system.”
Trump was far from alone in attacking Obama in 2014.
Republicans blasted the former president for acting unilaterally, and the Supreme Court ultimately struck down the plan in 2016.
Even Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, denounced Obama’s decision.
Speaking on a Republican Governors Association panel in 2014, Pence attacked the idea of using presidential powers to act unilaterally in the face of congressional opposition.
The then governor of Indiana said that “barnstorming around the country defending” such measures was “not leadership.” Leadership, he argued, came with negotiating and finding “common ground.”
Pence said Obama’s order was a “profound mistake” and said he didn’t believe that the president should be able to “overturn American immigration law with the stroke of a pen.”
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President Donald Trump, center, with Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, center left, speaks during his visit to US Border Patrol McAllen Station in McAllen, Texas, on Jan. 10, 2019. Trump travels to the US-Mexico border as part of his all-out offensive to build a wall. At the event, the props in the center of the room, include an AR-15 rifle, colt handguns, a plastic bag full of cash, and black-taped bricks of heroin and meth, examples of things Border Patrol agents have seized. Jim Watson, AFP/Getty Images
An attack last week against former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke in his Connecticut prison cell reflects “the mentality out there … that people won’t rest until he is either given a life sentence or killed in prison,” his lead trial attorney said Thursday.
Daniel Herbert joined Van Dyke’s wife, Tiffany, in demanding to know why Van Dyke was transferred to an out-of-state federal prison and why he was placed in the general inmate population, where he was beaten in the face within days of his arrival.
“They put my husband in a setting to be harmed because of the fact that he was a white man who harmed a black gentleman in the line of duty,” Tiffany Van Dyke said at a news conference. “He is a police officer who was convicted for doing his job, and at the basic minimum they were supposed to keep him safe.”
Attorneys stressed the danger Van Dyke faces in custody — just days after prosecutors filed a legal petition before the state Supreme Court that, if successful, could significantly lengthen his sentence.
At turns defiant and emotional, Tiffany Van Dyke said she has lived in constant fear that her husband would be harmed while behind bars.
“I want my husband home, I want him to be safe,” she said. “I don’t need people to go into his cell and attack him. The next time this could happen they could kill him. I cannot bury my husband.”
The transfer and the attack left his supporters with more questions than answers.
His attorneys were told Feb. 5 that Van Dyke had been moved to Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut, a low- to minimum-security facility. Two days later, shortly after he had been processed, several people attacked him in his cell, his attorneys said.
The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email Thursday that “an assault resulting in minor injuries” occurred Feb. 7 but declined to answer further questions, including whether Van Dyke was in the general population. The Illinois Department of Corrections confirmed that Van Dyke no longer is in its custody but would not say why.
The beating came to light this week after Van Dyke told his appellate attorneys. But much of the information Van Dyke’s trial attorneys cited Thursday came from an unnamed informant who works in the Connecticut prison, they said.
The prison employee sought out Van Dyke’s attorneys to give them details authorities had not, according to Tammy Wendt, another lawyer who defended Van Dyke at trial last year. Wendt expressed frustration that no one in a position of authority had informed them of the attack or answered basic questions about his safety.
“This man came forward to advise us of this attack on Jason when nobody else would,” she said.
Van Dyke was “led like a lamb to the slaughter,” Wendt said. Within hours of arriving at his new unit, a group of inmates “blindsided” him in his cell. Van Dyke suffered injuries to his head and face and was given medical attention at the prison, Wendt said.
Van Dyke then was moved from the general population to a segregated unit, his attorneys said.
The attackers had been hired by another group of inmates to beat the former officer, Wendt told reporters after the news conference, citing the lawyers’ informant.
Wendt said the attackers made it clear Van Dyke was being targeted because of the McDonald case.
Herbert appeared to suggest that Attorney General Kwame Raoul should intervene. On Monday, Raoul announced his intention to challenge Van Dyke’s sentence before the state Supreme Court.
“For those that have been elected … if their job is to promote justice, they need to look into the mirror and determine whether they have the fortitude and the integrity to do these jobs,” he said.
Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon, who was appointed special prosecutor to handle the murder case, issued a statement calling for authorities to ensure Van Dyke’s security.
“Mr. Van Dyke should be in a safe environment where he can serve his time and return to his family and community when he completes his sentence,” the statement read. “I expect those in charge of his custody to take the necessary precautions to fulfill that responsibility.”
McMahon had joined Raoul in filing a petition challenging the legal basis for the sentence handed down by Cook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan. The judge determined that the aggravated battery convictions should “merge” into the second-degree murder conviction for sentencing purposes, which the prosecutors argue was improper.
If they are successful, Van Dyke would be resentenced on the aggravated batteries instead — raising the possibility of much more prison time without the day-for-day credit he can earn for a second-degree murder sentence.
Van Dyke’s attorneys said they were not aware of any security threats or other incidents that would have prompted a transfer to a federal prison so far away. Illinois prison officials had declined to say where he was being held, citing concerns for his safety should his location be revealed.
After his conviction but before sentencing, Van Dyke was held in isolation at a Quad Cities-area jail. The move was part of an arrangement Cook County has with other jails to move prisoners who are either high-profile, dangerous or working as cooperating witnesses in other cases.
Van Dyke was charged with murder the same day as the court-ordered release of graphic police dashboard camera footage that showed him shooting McDonald 16 times as the teen walked away from police while holding a knife in his hand.
The video’s release, more than a year after the October 2014 shooting, led to months of protests and continuing political upheaval. It prompted a federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department that concluded officers routinely violated the civil rights of minorities.
Van Dyke isn’t the first high-profile ex-police officer from Illinois to be attacked shortly after being moved into federal custody.
A month after his transfer to a federal prison in Indiana for security reasons, Drew Peterson was attacked in March 2017 by a fellow inmate armed with a food tray in the dining area, according to authorities.
A bloc of Democratic freshman congresswomen will break with their party and vote against the negotiated border security spending package being pushed through Congress.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., issued a blistering joint statement Thursday afternoon ahead of a late vote on the measure. The bill, which keeps nine departments and dozens of agencies open until the end of fiscal 2019, needs to be passed ahead of a Friday deadline to avoid a second partial government shutdown.
“This Administration continues to threaten the dignity and humanity of our immigrant population. The Department of Homeland Security has separated thousands of children from their parents, denied asylum to those fleeing danger, and used taxpayers dollars as a slush fund to incite terror in immigrant communities,” the lawmakers said in the statement.
“By any reasonable measure, Donald Trump’s weaponization of ICE and CBP has been a failure. The Department of Homeland Security does not deserve an increase in funding, and that is why we intend to vote no on this funding package,” they wrote, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection.
The quartet, who praised the contribution of immigrants to the country, condemned the bill’s $500 million increase in spending on ICE and the $950 million injection into CBP, respectively. They also criticized the $1.37 billion provision for a physical barrier along 55 miles of the U.S.-Mexico border and the boost in powers and resources for ICE to detain illegal immigrants.
“The funding bill on the floor today does not address any of our concerns and instead, gives more money to these abusive agencies,” they said. “We want to be abundantly clear: this is not a rebuke of federal workers or those who depend on the services they provide, but a rejection of the hateful policies, priorities, and rhetoric of the Trump Administration.”
The group’s dislike for the package is unlikely to derail it from being approved by both the House and Senate. President Trump on Thursday gave assurances to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., that he would sign the bill into law, but McConnell also said the president would also issue a national emergency declaration at the same time in order to divert funding away from the Department of Defense to erect impediments along the entire southern border, given the allocation failed to meet his $5.7 billion demand.
SAN JOSE (CBS SF) — A massive police presence surrounded a UPS truck following a pursuit and standoff in San Jose on Thursday evening, closing down the road and backing up traffic.
Multiple lines of San Jose Sheriff and SJPD patrol vehicles blocked the truck on the road at North First St. and West Trimble Rd, near VTA light rail tracks. Commuters were trapped as they were trying to get onto I-880 and Highway 101; VTA lines were also affected.
Avoid the area of first Street and Trimble. Suspect vehicle is stopped but the scene is not secure. Please stay away for your safety.
CHP confirmed that the vehicle was involved in a shooting. The incident started near Highway 87 at Chynoweyh Ave and Pearl Ave in South San Jose.
CHP said the suspect carjacked the UPS truck and had hostages in the vehicle, including the truck’s driver.
A driver and a passenger were seen sitting at the front of the truck. A female passenger got out of the truck and approached police with hands up around 5:40 p.m. and was taken into custody. It wasn’t known yet whether the person in custody was a hostage or was involved in the shooting.
San Jose UPS truck pursuit passenger surrenders to police (CBS)
Police seemed to be negotiating with individuals still in the truck, indicating that the person was armed and could harm the hostages.
A side shot on the ground showing the driver of the UPS truck.
At 6:20 p.m., one hostage was reported safe by the Santa Clara County Sheriff. They said the suspect was still in the vehicle and has shot at deputies during the pursuit.
Update: Hostage is safe and has been rescued. Suspect is still in the vehicle and has shot at deputies during the pursuit. Suspect is armed and dangerous. Please avoid area. pic.twitter.com/IafnucsOAP
At around 6:45 p.m., the driver of the truck got out and walked backward toward police with his hands up. At 7:00 p.m., the suspect attempted to flee the vehicle, but quickly went down. Officers quickly converged on the vehicle and the suspect, who they handcuffed on the ground.
Gunshots were fired, but it is currently unknown whether the suspect shot himself or if police shot him. He was pronounced dead at around 7:20 p.m.
Aerial shot of the suspect down on the ground. He was pronounced dead at the scene.
KPIX 5 reporter Maria Medina said that the suspect was seen making a phone call minutes before he fled.
The front passenger wheel of the truck appeared to have blown out.
“UPS is grateful that our driver was released, and we’re thankful to local police who responded to the situation. The safety of our people is our top priority. We are assisting local authorities as we can,” said a UPS spokesperson.
Commuters traveling eastbound and westbound were most heavily affected by the road closure.
The incident caused a VTA Light Rail service disruption between Karina and Tasman stations. Alternate bus service is being provided in San Jose for both the Alum Rock/Santa Teresa and the Mountain View/Winchester light rail lines.
This is a breaking news development. Stay with CBS SF as we update with the latest information.
The border crisis is not a “national emergency,” and even Sarah Sanders knows it.
The press secretary released a statement on Twitter about the border funding bill by uploading a picture from Apple’s Notes app. “The Daily Show” wasn’t sure the form reflected the supposed gravity of the situation: “Nothing says ‘National Emergency’ like the app you use to remind yourself to get bananas,” it tweeted.
Why is Sanders using the app we all use for our grocery lists to announce that President Trump will declare a national emergency? Evidently, the press secretary was not prepared to release a statement on a move Trump had only hinted at.
The president said Tuesday he was not happy with Congress’ bipartisan bill on border security but that he might sign it anyway while looking for other ways to fund his wall. Apparently, he didn’t communicate to Sanders what this other way would be.
“The Daily Show” also tweeted that the announcement “is a pretty elaborate way to get out of Valentine’s Day dinner with Melania.” But really, it’s more of a break-up letter to many members of the president’s own party.
An attack last week against former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke in his Connecticut prison cell reflects “the mentality out there … that people won’t rest until he is either given a life sentence or killed in prison,” his lead trial attorney said Thursday.
Daniel Herbert joined Van Dyke’s wife, Tiffany, in demanding to know why Van Dyke was transferred to an out-of-state federal prison and why he was placed in the general inmate population, where he was beaten in the face within days of his arrival.
“They put my husband in a setting to be harmed because of the fact that he was a white man who harmed a black gentleman in the line of duty,” Tiffany Van Dyke said at a news conference. “He is a police officer who was convicted for doing his job, and at the basic minimum they were supposed to keep him safe.”
Attorneys stressed the danger Van Dyke faces in custody — just days after prosecutors filed a legal petition before the state Supreme Court that, if successful, could significantly lengthen his sentence.
At turns defiant and emotional, Tiffany Van Dyke said she has lived in constant fear that her husband would be harmed while behind bars.
“I want my husband home, I want him to be safe,” she said. “I don’t need people to go into his cell and attack him. The next time this could happen they could kill him. I cannot bury my husband.”
The transfer and the attack left his supporters with more questions than answers.
His attorneys were told Feb. 5 that Van Dyke had been moved to Danbury Federal Correctional Institution in Connecticut, a low- to minimum-security facility. Two days later, shortly after he had been processed, several people attacked him in his cell, his attorneys said.
The federal Bureau of Prisons confirmed in an email Thursday that “an assault resulting in minor injuries” occurred Feb. 7 but declined to answer further questions, including whether Van Dyke was in the general population. The Illinois Department of Corrections confirmed that Van Dyke no longer is in its custody but would not say why.
The beating came to light this week after Van Dyke told his appellate attorneys. But much of the information Van Dyke’s trial attorneys cited Thursday came from an unnamed informant who works in the Connecticut prison, they said.
The prison employee sought out Van Dyke’s attorneys to give them details authorities had not, according to Tammy Wendt, another lawyer who defended Van Dyke at trial last year. Wendt expressed frustration that no one in a position of authority had informed them of the attack or answered basic questions about his safety.
“This man came forward to advise us of this attack on Jason when nobody else would,” she said.
Van Dyke was “led like a lamb to the slaughter,” Wendt said. Within hours of arriving at his new unit, a group of inmates “blindsided” him in his cell. Van Dyke suffered injuries to his head and face and was given medical attention at the prison, Wendt said.
Van Dyke then was moved from the general population to a segregated unit, his attorneys said.
The attackers had been hired by another group of inmates to beat the former officer, Wendt told reporters after the news conference, citing the lawyers’ informant.
Wendt said the attackers made it clear Van Dyke was being targeted because of the McDonald case.
Herbert appeared to suggest that Attorney General Kwame Raoul should intervene. On Monday, Raoul announced his intention to challenge Van Dyke’s sentence before the state Supreme Court.
“For those that have been elected … if their job is to promote justice, they need to look into the mirror and determine whether they have the fortitude and the integrity to do these jobs,” he said.
Kane County State’s Attorney Joseph McMahon, who was appointed special prosecutor to handle the murder case, issued a statement calling for authorities to ensure Van Dyke’s security.
“Mr. Van Dyke should be in a safe environment where he can serve his time and return to his family and community when he completes his sentence,” the statement read. “I expect those in charge of his custody to take the necessary precautions to fulfill that responsibility.”
McMahon had joined Raoul in filing a petition challenging the legal basis for the sentence handed down by Cook County Circuit Judge Vincent Gaughan. The judge determined that the aggravated battery convictions should “merge” into the second-degree murder conviction for sentencing purposes, which the prosecutors argue was improper.
If they are successful, Van Dyke would be resentenced on the aggravated batteries instead — raising the possibility of much more prison time without the day-for-day credit he can earn for a second-degree murder sentence.
Van Dyke’s attorneys said they were not aware of any security threats or other incidents that would have prompted a transfer to a federal prison so far away. Illinois prison officials had declined to say where he was being held, citing concerns for his safety should his location be revealed.
After his conviction but before sentencing, Van Dyke was held in isolation at a Quad Cities-area jail. The move was part of an arrangement Cook County has with other jails to move prisoners who are either high-profile, dangerous or working as cooperating witnesses in other cases.
Van Dyke was charged with murder the same day as the court-ordered release of graphic police dashboard camera footage that showed him shooting McDonald 16 times as the teen walked away from police while holding a knife in his hand.
The video’s release, more than a year after the October 2014 shooting, led to months of protests and continuing political upheaval. It prompted a federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department that concluded officers routinely violated the civil rights of minorities.
Van Dyke isn’t the first high-profile ex-police officer from Illinois to be attacked shortly after being moved into federal custody.
A month after his transfer to a federal prison in Indiana for security reasons, Drew Peterson was attacked in March 2017 by a fellow inmate armed with a food tray in the dining area, according to authorities.
Interim Venezuelan President Juan Guaido has now set a Feb. 23 date for when his followers will attempt to force U.S. aid convoys through the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Venezuela’s pretender-president Nicolas Maduro has blocked those border crossings with his military. But while it was originally expected that the opposition might attempt an aid crossing on Tuesday, Guaido instead announced that Feb. 23 would be the crunch date. This invites the question: Why the delay from Tuesday to Feb. 23?
I think it’s because the U.S. and Guaido know that they have not yet been able to persuade a sufficient critical mass of Venezuelan military officers to flip towards Guaido. They assessed that, had Guaido attempted to force through the aid on Tuesday, Maduro’s forces would have violently subdued them. The key here, then, is what changes between now and Feb. 23. In the context of pre-existing Trump administration interests in sending a small military force to Colombia (remember John Bolton’s accidental 5,000 troops to Colombia note a couple of weeks back?), I suspect the Trump administration has now indicated to Guaido that it will deploy a limited military force to the border before Feb. 23.
That action would certainly be proportionate and justified in defense of U.S. diplomat and USAID officials at the border. Of course, it would also provide eyeball-to-eyeball pressure on the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s Cuban intelligence service base. It would challenge them to choose between either allowing the aid convoys through, or firing on Venezuelan civilians and perhaps even U.S. diplomats and facing the consequences.
Remember, the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy is focused far more on breaking the military’s link to Maduro than on influencing Maduro per se. Of course, any new U.S. military deployment to Colombia would require that nation’s assent. And that speaks to a second “why now” issue: Duque’s evolving position.
Certainly, Duque is under increasing U.S. pressure to more aggressively confront Maduro’s regime. Although Duque’s administration is heavily critical of Maduro, it is cautious about being enveloped in a spiral towards war. Still, with Duque in Washington to seek new U.S. aid support for Colombian domestic security initiatives, and U.S. forces already present on Colombian soil for counter-drug operations, it is far from unfeasible that a new, limited U.S. border deployment might be authorized. Colombia might even welcome that deployment to deter the increasingly unpredictable Maduro.
As I say, I expect a near-term Trump announcement on a limited U.S. military deployment to Colombia.
Santa Clara County Sheriff deputies and San Jose police are in a standoff with a driver in a UPS truck at North First Street and West Trimble Road in San Jose after a slow speed chase.
Update: one female suspect in custody. We have a hostage situation with a UPS truck driver. More details to come.
Interim Venezuelan President Juan Guaido has now set a Feb. 23 date for when his followers will attempt to force U.S. aid convoys through the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Venezuela’s pretender-president Nicolas Maduro has blocked those border crossings with his military. But while it was originally expected that the opposition might attempt an aid crossing on Tuesday, Guaido instead announced that Feb. 23 would be the crunch date. This invites the question: Why the delay from Tuesday to Feb. 23?
I think it’s because the U.S. and Guaido know that they have not yet been able to persuade a sufficient critical mass of Venezuelan military officers to flip towards Guaido. They assessed that, had Guaido attempted to force through the aid on Tuesday, Maduro’s forces would have violently subdued them. The key here, then, is what changes between now and Feb. 23. In the context of pre-existing Trump administration interests in sending a small military force to Colombia (remember John Bolton’s accidental 5,000 troops to Colombia note a couple of weeks back?), I suspect the Trump administration has now indicated to Guaido that it will deploy a limited military force to the border before Feb. 23.
That action would certainly be proportionate and justified in defense of U.S. diplomat and USAID officials at the border. Of course, it would also provide eyeball-to-eyeball pressure on the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s Cuban intelligence service base. It would challenge them to choose between either allowing the aid convoys through, or firing on Venezuelan civilians and perhaps even U.S. diplomats and facing the consequences.
Remember, the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy is focused far more on breaking the military’s link to Maduro than on influencing Maduro per se. Of course, any new U.S. military deployment to Colombia would require that nation’s assent. And that speaks to a second “why now” issue: Duque’s evolving position.
Certainly, Duque is under increasing U.S. pressure to more aggressively confront Maduro’s regime. Although Duque’s administration is heavily critical of Maduro, it is cautious about being enveloped in a spiral towards war. Still, with Duque in Washington to seek new U.S. aid support for Colombian domestic security initiatives, and U.S. forces already present on Colombian soil for counter-drug operations, it is far from unfeasible that a new, limited U.S. border deployment might be authorized. Colombia might even welcome that deployment to deter the increasingly unpredictable Maduro.
As I say, I expect a near-term Trump announcement on a limited U.S. military deployment to Colombia.
CHICAGO (CBS) — A day after learning former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was beaten in a federal prison in Connecticut, his wife demanded to know why he was transferred out of Illinois in the first place, and called on authorities to do a better job of protecting his safety as he serves a nearly 7-year sentence in the murder of Laquan McDonald.
“I cannot and will not stand by somebody hurting my husband,” Tiffany Van Dyke said Thursday morning, flanked by her husband’s attorneys. “We are done being hurt. I’m standing up for my husband right now because he can’t. He cannot stand up for himself and fight anymore.”
“At the end of the day, I want my husband home. I need him to be safe,” she added. “The next time this could happen, they could kill him. I cannot bury my husband.”
Tiffany Van Dyke said she got a call Wednesday that her husband had been attacked at Danbury federal prison in Connecticut. Until then, she said she didn’t even know where her husband was serving his sentence, much less that he’d been transferred out of the Illinois prison system.
“I’m demanding reasons. I’m demanding answers as to why they took my husband from a state facility and put him in a federal facility,” she said. “If they assume and they claim that it’s for his safety, his safety has not been met. They have endangered him greatly.”
Former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke and his attorney Daniel Herbert listen during Van Dyke’s sentencing hearing at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, Friday, Jan. 18, 2019, in Chicago, for the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune via AP, Pool)
In a statement Thursday morning, Illinois Department of Corrections spokeswoman Lindsey Hess said Jason Van Dyke was transferred out of state custody “under the terms of the Federal Intergovernmental Agreement.
“For safety and security purposes, the Department does not discuss details of those transferred under this agreement. No further information is available at this time,” she added.
The Federal Bureau of Prisons confirms that Van Dyke was beaten, saying “minor injuries occurred.” Van Dyke’s legal team said the former officer informed them of the attack on Tuesday, a week after he was transferred to Danbury Federal Correctional Institution, a low- to minimum-security facility. Van Dyke’s attorneys said they were not informed about the transfer until after it happened.
Tiffany Van Dyke said she and her children have not spoken to her husband since he was sentenced on Jan. 18, and she hasn’t been able to find out how he’s doing after the attack.
“I do not know if he is safe at this moment. I do not know the extent of his injuries,” she said.
Attorney Tammy Wendt said Jason Van Dyke informed her of the attack Tuesday, during a conference call with his appellate attorneys.
She said she repeatedly has tried to call federal authorities to get answers about what happened but has been met with dead ends. She said Illinois prison officials also would not give her an explanation for the transfer.
However, Wendt said a prison employee reached out to her to tell her about the attack.
“He said he needed to let us know that Jason’s safety was at risk,” Wendt said.
While she did not know the extent of Van Dyke’s injuries, she said he suffered facial and head injuries in the attack.
Wendt said the confidential informant told her Van Dyke was placed in the general population at Danbury immediately after his transfer from Illinois, “as if he was led like a lamb to the slaughter.”
“Even though they call this a minimum security prison, these are violent people on the last leg of their sentence. That’s why they’re calling it minimum security,” she said. “To put a police officer who has spent his entire career locking up bad guys in with these bad guys, it doesn’t take a genius to know that that’s obviously going to get him in trouble, and it’s just unconscionable that this happened to him.”
Wendt and lead defense attorney Daniel Herbert said they are doing everything they can to reach out to state and federal authorities to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.
“I think it’s time that we have to look at this and say enough is enough,” Herbert said.
“We just hope that our leaders will come to their senses and recognize that Jason Van Dyke has all the rights of anyone that’s in prison,” he added. “He’s a tough man, and he’ll go in there and serve his sentence, and keep his mouth shut, but he needs to be protected.”
Tiffany Van Dyke said, before her husband was transferred to Danbury, he was in isolation while in prison in Illinois, on lockdown 23 hours a day.
“Any other normal prisoner in any other institution is allowed a telephone call, is allowed to see their loved ones, visit, is allowed to speak to family and friends, social workers, therapists, guidance from preachers, priests. Any of the above they’re allowed. My husband’s not being afforded those rights,” she said.
She also said it was “mind-boggling” to her that her husband would be transferred to a prison on the East Coast, saying it would be a major financial hardship for her and her daughters to visit him in Connecticut.
While Van Dyke was sentenced to 81 months — or nearly 7 years — in prison, he likely will serve about three, given credit for good behavior.
They argue it was improper for Judge Vincent Gaughan to sentence Van Dyke only for his conviction for second-degree murder and not for the 16 counts of aggravated battery, which they noted carry a longer minimum sentence.
Tiffany Van Dyke said the petition for a new sentencing for her husband “absolutely frustrates and sickens” her.
“Now the attorney general and the special prosecutor want to go for more time because they’re unhappy, because they think the judge didn’t do his job. I know for a fact the judge did his job. He did what he’s supposed to do. He followed the rule of law, and it sickens me the fact that they want to put more time on my husband,” she said.
Immigration advocates are suing the Department of Homeland Security and Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen — and other individuals and U.S. agencies — over the Trump administration’s newly implemented “Migrant Protection Protocols” initiative, which forces some asylum seekers to wait in Mexico while they await immigration court dates. Many refer to the initiative as the “Remain in Mexico” policy.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and American Civil Liberties Union officially challenged the policy Thursday in a lawsuit dubbed Innovation Law Lab et al. v. Nielsen et al. The suit claims “Migrant Protection Protocols” violates the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and various international human rights laws.
The suit represents 11 asylum seekers and six organizations impacted by the policy. The 11 asylum seekers — 10 men and one woman — are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala and from different families, said a person close to the suit.
“Migrant Protection Protocols” is possibly the biggest change to immigration policy implemented by the Trump administration. When it was announced in December, it immediately drew criticism from immigration advocates who called it “due process disaster.”
Prior to the December announcement, asylum seekers had been allowed to live in the United States while wearing an ankle monitor as they waited for immigration court dates.
Under the new plan, some asylum seekers who cross the border at in San Ysidro, a legal checkpoint in San Diego immediately north of the U.S.-Mexico border, are processed by immigration officials and then returned to Tijuana, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official. They receive an 800-number to check the status of their case, as well as a return date for when their asylum claim will be processed.
According to a fact sheet released last month by DHS, the program applies to “aliens arriving in the U.S. on land from Mexico (including those apprehended along the border) who are not clearly admissible and who are placed in removal proceedings.”
The policy has rolled out in Tijuana and San Diego with the intention that it ultimately be adopted at check points across the southern border.
The policy is meant to address concerns that asylum seekers fail to show up for court hearings, according to Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen.
“Aliens trying to game the system to get into our country illegally will no longer be able to disappear into the United States, where many skip their court dates,” Nielsen wrote in a press release in December when the policy was announced.
Nielsen said in congressional testimony in December when she announced “Migrant Protection Protocols” that asylum seekers “more than not” fail to show up to their court dates. And President Trump said in January that only two percent of asylum seekers make their court dates. However, Justice Department shows that 89 percent of asylum seekers were present for their court hearings in fiscal year 2017.
About 93,000 migrants claimed asylum in the United States in fiscal year 2018. Under the new policy, many of those immigrants would be sent to Mexico. But some officials there have said the country isn’t equipped to handle them.
Tonatiuh Guillén, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, a federal agency, said at a December press conference that Mexico has neither the operational or legal capacity to receive the asylum seekers the United States was planning to send into its territory. “We can’t receive them,” he said, according to a translation by CBS News.
However, the spokesperson for the Mexico Committee on Foreign Relations said at a press conference last month that while his government didn’t agree with the United States’ new protocol, it would comply.
The ACLU and SPLC filed their suit in the Northern District of California.
Interim Venezuelan President Juan Guaido has now set a Feb. 23 date for when his followers will attempt to force U.S. aid convoys through the Colombian-Venezuelan border. Venezuela’s pretender-president Nicolas Maduro has blocked those border crossings with his military. But while it was originally expected that the opposition might attempt an aid crossing on Tuesday, Guaido instead announced that Feb. 23 would be the crunch date. This invites the question: Why the delay from Tuesday to Feb. 23?
I think it’s because the U.S. and Guaido know that they have not yet been able to persuade a sufficient critical mass of Venezuelan military officers to flip towards Guaido. They assessed that, had Guaido attempted to force through the aid on Tuesday, Maduro’s forces would have violently subdued them. The key here, then, is what changes between now and Feb. 23. In the context of pre-existing Trump administration interests in sending a small military force to Colombia (remember John Bolton’s accidental 5,000 troops to Colombia note a couple of weeks back?), I suspect the Trump administration has now indicated to Guaido that it will deploy a limited military force to the border before Feb. 23.
That action would certainly be proportionate and justified in defense of U.S. diplomat and USAID officials at the border. Of course, it would also provide eyeball-to-eyeball pressure on the Venezuelan military and Maduro’s Cuban intelligence service base. It would challenge them to choose between either allowing the aid convoys through, or firing on Venezuelan civilians and perhaps even U.S. diplomats and facing the consequences.
Remember, the Trump administration’s Venezuela strategy is focused far more on breaking the military’s link to Maduro than on influencing Maduro per se. Of course, any new U.S. military deployment to Colombia would require that nation’s assent. And that speaks to a second “why now” issue: Duque’s evolving position.
Certainly, Duque is under increasing U.S. pressure to more aggressively confront Maduro’s regime. Although Duque’s administration is heavily critical of Maduro, it is cautious about being enveloped in a spiral towards war. Still, with Duque in Washington to seek new U.S. aid support for Colombian domestic security initiatives, and U.S. forces already present on Colombian soil for counter-drug operations, it is far from unfeasible that a new, limited U.S. border deployment might be authorized. Colombia might even welcome that deployment to deter the increasingly unpredictable Maduro.
As I say, I expect a near-term Trump announcement on a limited U.S. military deployment to Colombia.
On Thursday, the Tennessee Valley Authority voted to shut down the Paradise Fossil Plant in Drakesboro, Ky.
Dylan Lovan/AP
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Dylan Lovan/AP
On Thursday, the Tennessee Valley Authority voted to shut down the Paradise Fossil Plant in Drakesboro, Ky.
Dylan Lovan/AP
Despite pressure from President Trump, the Tennessee Valley Authority board of directors voted Thursday to close a large coal-fired power plant.
Trump’s involvement had drawn criticism because the Paradise Fossil Plant in western Kentucky buys coal from a company headed by a large donor to the president’s campaign, Murray Energy Corp. Chairman, President and CEO Robert Murray.
TVA board member and Trump appointee Kenny Allen was the only member to vote no on closing the Paradise plant.
“I am still concerned about the overall economic impact of retiring Paradise Unit 3 on the community,” said Allen.
Communities near the plant had lobbied to keep it open. Murray Energy employee Danny Byars told member station WKYU that he worries about long-term job security.
“We went from four crews to three crews [at the mine] already,” Byars said. “If they shut down, then we have to find someone else to buy our coal.”
TVA board member and Obama appointee Virginia Lodge sided with the majority and said, “I don’t want anybody to think we have not heard and understood the heartfelt pleas from these communities. If we could make our decisions based on our sympathetic feeling it would be easy. Unfortunately we’ve all taken an oath to do what we think is best for the entire Valley.”
In an environmental assessment published earlier this month, TVA staff proposed retiring the coal-fired plant. The report says, “As a large coal unit with medium operating costs and a high forced outage rate, as well as the need for significant repairs, PAF Unit 3 does not fit current and likely future portfolio needs.”
The staff estimates that closing the Paradise plant and another in eastern Tennessee called the Bull Run Fossil Plant would save the agency $320 million. The vote on Thursday to close Bull Run was unanimous.
This continues a trend at the TVA of shuttering coal plants in favor of other sources for generating electricity, including natural gas and renewable energy. The move has helped attract companies like Google to the areathat build large data centers and want to power them with cleaner sources of energy.
Despite that, President Trump said on Twitter on Monday evening, “Coal is an important part of our electricity generation mix and @TVAnews should give serious consideration to all factors before voting to close viable power plants, like Paradise #3 in Kentucky!”
The president did not issue a public comment after the vote, but environmental groups were quick to celebrate.
“Once again, Trump’s cynical efforts to bail out millionaire coal executives have been overcome by the reality that coal plants can no longer compete with cleaner, cheaper energy sources,” says Mary Anne Hitt, senior director of Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign.
Murray Energy Corp. did not respond to a request for comment. In an emailed statement before the vote, the company reached the opposite conclusion of TVA staff: “In the interest of the TVA ratepayers, the remaining coal-fired unit at the Paradise Plant must remain in operation. The power will be more reliable and lower cost.”
Despite concerns about coal’s significant contributions to climate change, Trump has made his support for the coal business a key point during his election campaign and presidency.
Last year, Trump ordered Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take steps to help struggling coal and nuclear power plants, which have trouble competing against cheaper natural gas and renewable energy. No such plan has been carried out so far. Meanwhile, coal plants have continued to close during Trump’s time in office, and coal consumption in the U.S. has hit its lowest point in nearly four decades.
He didn’t read intelligence reports and mixed up classified material with what he had seen in newspaper clips. He seemed confused about the structure and purpose of organizations and became overwhelmed when meetings covered multiple subjects. He blamed immigrants for nearly every societal problem and uttered racist sentiments with shocking callousness.
This isn’t how President Trump is depicted in a new book by former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe. Instead, it’s McCabe’s account of what it was like to work for then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
The FBI was better off when “you all only hired Irishmen,” Sessions said in one diatribe about the bureau’s workforce. “They were drunks but they could be trusted. Not like all those new people with nose rings and tattoos — who knows what they’re doing?”
It’s a startling portrait that suggests that the Trump administration’s reputation for baseness and dysfunction has, if anything, been understated and too narrowly attributed to the president.
The description of Sessions is one of the most striking revelations in “The Threat,” a McCabe memoir that adds to a rapidly expanding collection of score-settling insider accounts of Trump-era Washington. McCabe’s is an important voice because of his position at the top of the bureau during a critical series of events, including the firing of FBI chief James Comey, the appointment of special counsel Robert S. Mueller, and the ensuing scorched-earth effort by Trump and his Republican allies to discredit the Russia probe and destroy public confidence in the nation’s top law enforcement agency. The work is insightful and occasionally provocative. The subtitle, “How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump,” all but equates the danger posed by al-Qaeda and the Islamic State to that of the current president.
(St. Martin’s)
But overall, the book isn’t the comprehensive account McCabe was presumably capable of delivering. He seems reluctant to reveal details about his role in conflicts at key moments, rarely adding meaningful new illumination to areas of the Trump-Russia-FBI timeline established by Mueller, news organizations and previous authors.
McCabe is a keen observer of detail, particularly when it comes to the president’s pettiness. He describes how Trump arranges Oval Office encounters so that his advisers are forced to sit before him in “little schoolboy chairs” across the Resolute Desk. Prior presidents met with aides on couches in the center of the room, but Trump is always angling to make others feel smaller.
McCabe was known as a taciturn figure in the bureau, in contrast to the more garrulous Comey. His book reflects that penchant for brevity, with just 264 pages of text. Even so, he documents the president’s attempts to impair the Russia probe and incessant attacks on the institution, describing the stakes in sweeping, convincing language.
“Between the world of chaos and the world of order stands the rule of law,” McCabe writes. “Yet now the rule of law is under attack, including from the president himself.”
Inevitably, the book includes disturbing new detail about Trump’s subservience to Russian President Vladimir Putin. During an Oval Office briefing in July 2017, Trump refused to believe U.S. intelligence reports that North Korea had test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile — a test that Kim Jong Un had called a Fourth of July “gift” to “the arrogant Americans.”
Trump dismissed the missile launch as a “hoax,” McCabe writes. “He thought that North Korea did not have the capability to launch such missiles. He said he knew this because Vladimir Putin had told him so.”
McCabe, of course, has some baggage that hurt the reputation he’d built over 22 years at the bureau and raised questions about his credibility. He was accused by the FBI inspector general of making false statements about contacts with the media.
McCabe also has ample motivation to lash out at the president. He had been a target of Trump insults and taunts for nearly two years by the time he was fired, mainly because McCabe’s wife, a pediatrician, had run for state office in Virginia with the financial backing of longtime Clinton ally and former governor Terry McAuliffe.
Trump seized on the connection to insinuate that McCabe had stifled the bureau’s probe of Hillary Clinton’s emails — a claim debunked by internal FBI investigations. Trump seems never to have let go of the issue, even as he dangled the FBI director job to McCabe, sneering in one conversation that it “must have been really tough” when McCabe’s wife lost her race. “To lose,” Trump said, driving the dagger further. “To be a loser.”
When McCabe was finally forced out, it was in the most petty fashion possible. He was fired just 26 hours before his own self-declared retirement date. Trump was gleeful. “Andrew McCabe FIRED,” he tweeted. “A great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI.”
But for all of the understandable alarm and indignation that McCabe registers, he seems, like other Trump dissidents, never to have found reason or opportunity to stand up to the president. There are paragraphs in “The Threat” that recount in detail McCabe’s inner outrage — but no indication that those thoughts escaped his lips in the presence of Trump.
What is it that makes otherwise proud public servants, Comey included, willing to subject themselves to Trump-inflicted indignities?
Deference to the office? A determination to cling to power? A view of oneself as an indispensable institutional savior?
At one point, McCabe puts his odds of getting the FBI director’s position at “one-in-ten-million,” but he goes through a job interview with Trump that feels like a charade from the outset.
One of the most frustrating aspects of “The Threat” is that it steers around scenes where McCabe might have provided more detail or insight. He is known to have had a series of tense interactions with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein in the aftermath of Comey’s firing, each suspicious of his counterpart and convinced that the other should recuse himself from the Russia probe.
McCabe was also witness to secret conversations in which Rosenstein raised the possibility that officials should wear a wire in meetings with the president. You won’t learn about any of that in “The Threat.”
McCabe skims over the conduct of two of his FBI subordinates, Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, whose text exchanges during an illicit affair included disparaging remarks about Trump and, when they were later revealed, fueled doubts about the organization’s impartiality.
When first confronted with the details of the Page-Strzok texts, McCabe was asked by the inspector general whether he knew that Page — his closest legal adviser — had had interactions with the press. McCabe said he didn’t, though in fact he had authorized those contacts. In the book, he downplays that false testimony as a momentary mental lapse during a confusing conversation — which sounds a lot like the excuses offered by countless defendants who find themselves being prosecuted by the FBI for lying.
McCabe’s disdain for Trump is rivaled only by his contempt for Sessions. He questions the former attorney general’s mental faculties, saying that he had “trouble focusing, particularly when topics of conversation strayed from a small number of issues.”
Logs on the electronic tablets used to deliver the President’s Daily Brief to Sessions came back with no indication he had ever punched in the passcode. The attorney general’s views on race and religion are described as reprehensible.
Sessions “believed that Islam — inherently — advocated extremism” and ceaselessly sought to draw connections between crime and immigration. “Where’s he from?” was his first question about a suspect. The next: “Where are his parents from?”
McCabe notes that he would like to “say much more” about his firing and questions of his candor toward other bureau officials, but that he is restrained from doing so because he is pursuing a lawsuit.
There is one area, however, in which he is considerably more forthcoming than Comey. He acknowledges that the bureau made major miscalculations in its handling of the Clinton probe in 2016 and its decision to discuss it publicly.
“As a matter of policy, the FBI does everything possible not to influence elections,” he writes. “In 2016, it seems we did.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s announcement that not only would President Trump declare a national emergency to build a border wall, and that he would support it, is going to come back to haunt conservatives.
As I noted last month, the possibility of an emergency declaration became a lot more likely when Trump caved on border wall funding to end the government shutdown, thus making him feel he had to find another way to show his base that he was willing to use all the tools at his disposal to try and deliver on his campaign promise.
The idea of Trump taking such an action was then, and remains now, a terrible idea with dangerous consequences for limited government conservatives. McConnell’s blessing makes matters even worse.
Those who seek to limit the size and scope of government should want it to be more difficult for the executive to arbitrarily use power. That Trump is taking this action means that a Republican president will have been on board with using emergency powers to undertake a massive infrastructure project without the consent of Congress. What’s more, the Republican leader in the Senate, along with no doubt plenty of other Republicans, will have signed on this action, along with, no doubt, plenty of conservative Trump cheerleaders.
For the past week, we’ve been debating infeasibility of the Green New Deal. But many of its provisions suddenly become a lot more politically possible if a president is allowed to seize emergency powers in such a way. If Trump succeeds, it would not be difficult for a Democrat to declare an emergency based on the National Climate Assessment, and then go about using the military for massive infrastructure projects in clean energy.
The only hope for limited government conservatives is that any emergency declaration gets quickly enjoined, and eventually nixed, in federal court. At least then, the silver lining would be that a legal precedent would be set that the president cannot attempt such an end around Congress.
Either way, however, Trump’s action and the likely overwhelming support by Congressional Republicans will shred their ability to resist any sort of attempt by a future Democratic president seeking to broadly employ executive power.
And all for what? Even in the event of an eventual victory in court, any legal process is going to take at least a year to be resolved, without much time to do actual construction before the 2020 election, which Trump could lose. So basically there’s a non-zero chance that Trump will have gotten Republicans to go along with him setting a precedent for the next Democratic president, only to not even have a border wall to show for it.
This is a dangerous, rash, reckless, and myopic decision that should be passionately opposed by all principled conservatives.
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