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Trump Got Idea for Census Citizenship Question From Anti-Immigrant Hate Group Attorney

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President Donald Trump like to credit himself with coming up with lots of ideas. He claims he came up with the term “fake news,” and the centuries-old phrase “priming the pump.” In truth, this American president has relatively few original ideas, and that would be OK if his advisors were good people. They’re not.

Much has been written about the moral calibre of Trump’s Cabinet members and senior staff, but for reasons unknown the background of one of Trump’s trusted advisors never seems to get the attention it deserves.

It could be because he’s a sitting Secretary of State and running to be that state’s next Republican governor.

By now, you probably have heard his name: Kris Kobach. He’s the Secretary of State for the State of Kansas.

He’s also “of counsel,” meaning, an attorney of record for the lobbying arm of a group that appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s page of anti-immigrant hate groups.

Kobach served as the vice-chair of Trump’s highly controversial voter fraud commission. It was a thinly-veiled attempt to establish a federal database of voters which could then be forced off the rolls based on Kobach’s flawed software that purportedly identifies people who have voted more than once in the same election. In reality, it merely finds people with the same or even similar names and concludes they have committed voter fraud. It has a 99% failure rate.

Secretary Kobach is an attorney of record for the Immigration Reform Law Institute, the legal and lobbying arm of the Federation for American Immigration Reform. The Southern Poverty Law Center says “FAIR leaders have ties to white supremacist groups and eugenicists and have made many racist statements. Its advertisements have been rejected because of racist content. FAIR’s founder, John Tanton, has expressed his wish that America remain a majority-white population: a goal to be achieved, presumably, by limiting the number of nonwhites who enter the country. One of the group’s main goals is upending the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, which ended a decades-long, racist quota system that limited immigration mostly to northern Europeans. FAIR President Dan Stein has called the Act a ‘mistake.'”

On Tuesday The Kansas City Star reported Kobach bragged that the highly-controversial question Trump is adding to the U.S. Census was his idea.

Adding the question is guaranteed to reduce the number of people – especially immigrants – who will respond to the Census, mostly out of fear. The Census is not merely a count of the number of people who live in any given area, it is also used to determine federal funding for those areas, and even affects congressional districts. In theory, a state – say, California – could lose one or more congressional districts if enough people don’t respond.

“I won’t go into exact detail, but I raised the issue with the president shortly after he was inaugurated,” Kobach said. “I wanted to make sure the president was well aware.”

Well aware of what? Kobach didn’t say.
Image by Andrew Rosenthal via Flickr and a CC license
 

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Trump Says He’s ‘Very Seriously’ Looking at Changing Constitutionally-Mandated Right to US Citizenship

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August 21, 2019

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President Donald Trump says he is looking “very seriously” at altering a constitutional right to citizenship at birth. The president made his remarks during a press gaggle during which he also called himself “the chosen one” as he looked up at the sky. Those remarks came just hours after he tweeted praise calling him “the second coming of God” and “the King of Israel.”

“We’re looking at birthright citizenship very seriously,” Trump told reporters. Birthright citizenship is mandated by the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Also known as Jus soli, it dates back to English common law.

Basically the law says that any person on U.S. soil at the time of their birth is a U.S. citizen, regardless of their parent’s nationalities.

“We’re looking at that very seriously, birthright citizenship, where you have a baby on our land. You walk over the border, have a baby — congratulations, the baby is now a U.S. citizen,” Trump said, calling it “absurd.”

He told reporters if he were to end it he would do so via executive order.

It’s likely that would be unconstitutional and would absolutely be fought in court.

“All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside,” the Constitution reads.

Watch the president discuss birthright citizenship:

In addition to likely being unconstitutional, Trump’s attempt to end birthright citizenship would be opposed by many.

Here’s a University of Texas Law professor:

Here’s a conservative, National Review writer David French:

 

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Trump Defends Anti-Semitic Trope by Posting Claim From Birther Saying Jews ‘Love’ Trump Like ‘The King of Israel’

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August 21, 2019

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Wayne Allyn Root Once Bragged About the Size of the President’s Penis

President Trump once again is playing defense after launching an anti-Semitic trope on Tuesday accusing the vast majority of Jews in America of “great disloyalty.” The president did what he always does in these situations: finds anyone who will still support him and post their praise to Twitter.

Trump’s choice this time to “prove” he’s not anti-Semitic, despite delivering a grotesque anti-Semitic trope, is Wayne Allyn Root, who supposedly compared Trump to the “King of Israel,” and the “second coming of God.”

Root is a far right wing conspiracy theorist who once bragged about the size of President Trump’s penis. Root, as The Daily Beast reported last September, claimed Special Counsel Robert Mueller was investigating Trump’s ties to Russia because he has “penis envy.”

“Mueller’s is smaller than Trump’s,” Root said, according to Right Wing Watch.

Root is also a birther, and claimed that the white supremacist who killed Heather Heyer at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville was probably an actor paid by George Soros. Soros, a Jewish philanthropist, is the target of much of the far right’s conspiracy theories.

But back to Trump’s Wednesday morning tweets.

Here’s what he claims Root said:

“President Trump is the greatest President for Jews and for Israel in the history of the world, not just America, he is the best President for Israel in the history of the world…and the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he is the second coming of God…But American Jews don’t know him or like him. They don’t even know what they’re doing or saying anymore. It makes no sense! But that’s OK, if he keeps doing what he’s doing, he’s good for all Jews, Blacks, Gays, everyone. And importantly, he’s good for everyone in America who wants a job.”

Root, by the way, in June of 2016 declared his support for Trump by announcing, “I am a Jew turned evangelical Christian. I am also a passionate supporter of Donald Trump.”

Here’s how Trump’s tweets are being received:

 

 

 

 

 

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In Insane Tweet Trump Baselessly Accuses Democratic Lawmaker of ‘Violence’

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August 20, 2019

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President Donald Trump, in a strangely giddy and unhinged tweet on Tuesday baselessly accused Democratic U.S. Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of “violence.”

“Sorry, I don’t buy Rep. Tlaib’s tears. I have watched her violence, craziness and, most importantly, WORDS, for far too long,” Trump tweeted. “Now tears? She hates Israel and all Jewish people. She is an anti-Semite. She and her 3 friends are the new face of the Democrat Party. Live with it!”

It’s unclear what the president was referring to when he accused the Michigan Congresswoman of violence, but his other remarks appear to be directed at a press conference she held Monday.

Rep. Tlaib and Rep. Ilhan Omar “appeared at the news conference with Jewish leaders from their districts and called on all members of Congress to visit Israel and the West Bank,” Haaretz reports, noting the President’s Tuesday tweet. “Tlaib said that ‘all Americans should be distrubed’ [sic] by the decision not to let them enter.”

Trump publicly advocated for Israel to block Rep. Tlaib and other Democratic lawmakers from entering the country. Israel complied, although later said Tlaib could visit her elderly grandmother if she obeyed certain restrictions. She rejected the offer.

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