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Conservatives on Supreme Court Appear Ready to Support Trump Effort to Count Less Immigrants in US Census

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Trump Remade SCOTUS Into a Far Right Conservative Court. It Now Looks Ready to Allow Him to Harm Immigrants – and Democrats – Even More.

Conservatives are making great strides in disenfranchising immigrants and imposing a stranglehold on America’s electoral system with the implicit goal of ensuring Republican majorities despite the actual number of Democrats across the country.

Here’s how it works.

First, convince the U.S. Supreme Court to gut the Voting Rights Act.

Check. Completed in 2013.

Once that was done, Republican-majority states across the country enacted harsh voter ID laws and gerrymandered congressional districts to ensure fewer lower-income residents and fewer people of color – who historically vote in larger numbers for Democrats – were able to vote, or have their votes “count.”

These pie charts perfectly illustrate what’s going on:

And now, the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrants just appears to have won a major – and some say, unconstitutional – battle.

Despite having lied to Congress, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross appears to have been successful in achieving President Trump’s wish to add a citizenship question to the U.S. Census. The Commerce Dept. is in charge of the census.

Opponents of the question, which has never before been added to the constitutionally-mandated census taken every 10 years, rightly say it will scare immigrants from filling out the census, thus undercounting them.

Remember, the Constitution mandates every person – not just every citizen –shall be counted.

Given the Trump administration’s harsh roundups, detentions, and deportations of immigrants, why would anyone want to risk the thinly veiled threat that question poses?

Related: Trump Officials Considered Ways to Share Confidential Census Responses With Law Enforcement – Which Is Illegal

Tuesday the U.S Supreme Court heard arguments about adding the citizenship question to the 2020 census, which is sent to every household in the country.

“Conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices on Tuesday appeared sympathetic toward a bid by President Donald Trump’s administration to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, a plan opponents have called a Republican effort to deter immigrants from taking part in the population count,” Reuters reports.

Attempts to add the question were blocked by lower courts, so the Trump administration, as it repeatedly does, asked the Supreme Court to weigh in.

“Opponents have said inclusion of the question would cause a sizeable undercount by frightening immigrant households and Latinos from filling out the census,” Reuters adds, “fearful that the information would be shared with law enforcement. This would cost Democratic-leaning areas electoral representation in Congress and federal aid, benefiting Republican-leaning parts of the country, they said.”

Opponents are correct.

Experts are weighing in on today’s SCOTUS hearing:

Former U.S. Attorney:

Voting rights expert:

Yesterday he warned:

Supreme Court reporter for The Washington Post:

SCOTUS reporter for The Economist:

 

RELATED STORIES:

TRUMP ADMINISTRATION CLAIMS SHARING CENSUS INFORMATION UP FOR ‘DEBATE’

TRUMP HAS NOW POLITICIZED AND WEAPONIZED THE U.S. CENSUS

TRUMP GOT IDEA FOR CENSUS CITIZENSHIP QUESTION FROM ANTI-IMMIGRANT HATE GROUP ATTORNEY

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Trump Axes Catholic Charities Funding for Migrant Kids Amid Pope Feud: Report

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Amid President Donald Trump’s escalating feud with Pope Leo XIV, the Trump administration has canceled an $11 million contract with Catholic Charities in Miami, Florida, to shelter and care for migrant children who enter the U.S. unaccompanied, a relationship that dates back to the 1960s, the Miami Herald reports.

“The U.S. government has abruptly decided to end more than 60 years of relationship with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of Miami,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski wrote, according to the Miami Herald. “The Archdiocese of Miami’s services for unaccompanied minors have been recognized for their excellence and have served as a model for other agencies throughout the country.”

Catholic Charities was contracted to operate a full-service child welfare program in the Miami-Dade area.

“Our track record in serving this vulnerable population is unmatched. Yet, the Archdiocese of Miami’s Catholic Charities’ services for unaccompanied minors has been stripped of funding and will be forced to shut down within three months,” Archbishop Wenski noted.

The Trump administration is citing a reduction in unaccompanied minors crossing the border, which the archdiocese acknowledges. But that population still exists, and it is unknown how many children will be uprooted and relocated, or where they will go.

The Department of Health and Human Services described the daily population of unaccompanied migrant children in the agency’s care as “significantly lower,” than it had been under the Biden administration.

Health and Human Services’ press secretary Emily G. Hillard suggested that the Office of Refugee Resettlement’s closure of unused facilities “continues efforts to stop illegal entry and the smuggling and trafficking of unaccompanied alien children.”

But Wenski called it “baffling that the U.S. government would shut down a program that it would be hard-pressed to replicate at the level of competence” shown by the church.

Describing being moved as “incredibly psychologically harmful” to the children, Robert Latham, associate director of the University of Miami Law School’s Children and Youth Law Clinic, “said any relocation to a new foster home or shelter likely would be traumatic for children who already have suffered uncertainty and loss.”

“For little kids, moving repeatedly creates bonding issues and destroys the sense of both self and community. They don’t know who they are and where they will be” from day to day, he said.

READ MORE: ‘Could Be Two, Could Be Three’: Trump Signals Readiness for New Supreme Court Picks

Last week, President Donald Trump took issue with the Pope’s call for peace.

“God does not bless any conflict,” Pope Leo wrote on social media. “Anyone who is a disciple of Christ, the Prince of Peace, is never on the side of those who once wielded the sword and today drop bombs. Military action will not create space for freedom or times of #Peace, which comes only from the patient promotion of coexistence and dialogue among peoples.”

The Guardian called it a “rebuke” over the Iran war, and noted that while the Pope did not name names, his post criticized attempts to use religion to glorify the U.S. war in the Middle East.

Trump responded to the Pope’s remarks, saying that he had “nothing to apologize for,” and stated that the Pope was “wrong.”

The pope has continued his opposition to the Iran war.

On Tuesday, he wrote, “God’s heart is torn apart by wars, violence, injustice and lies. But our Father’s heart is not with the wicked, the arrogant, or the proud. God’s heart is with the little ones and the humble, and with them He builds up His Kingdom of love and peace day by day. Wherever there is love and service, God is there.”

Just days ago, Trump told reporters, “We don’t like a pope that’s gonna say that it’s okay to have a nuclear weapon. We don’t want a pope that says, crime is okay in our cities. I don’t like it. I’m not a big fan of Pope Leo. He’s a very liberal person, and he’s a man that doesn’t believe in stopping crime. He’s a man that doesn’t think that we should be toying with a country that wants a nuclear weapon so they can blow up the world.”

Trump also recently described the Pope as “Weak on Nuclear Weapons.”

READ MORE: ‘I Wasn’t That Involved’: Weakened Trump Tries to Rewrite History

 

Image via Reuters 

 

 

 

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‘Could Be Two, Could Be Three’: Trump Signals Readiness for New Supreme Court Picks

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President Donald Trump says he’s ready should any Supreme Court justice decide to retire.

Just one day after Senate Republican Majority Leader John Thune announced he is “prepared” should Justice Samuel Alito, 76, announce he is retiring — despite the jurist having made no public suggestion he plans to — President Trump announced on Wednesday he is also “prepared” to replace Alito, or others.

“It could be two, could be three, could be one. I don’t know — I’m prepared to do it,” Trump told Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo in an interview, according to The Hill.

The president, who placed three conservative justices on the Supreme Court during his first term, told Bartiromo that Justice Alito is “one of the great justices of all time.”

“Justice Alito is an unbelievable justice and a brilliant justice and he gets the country,” Trump continued. “He does what’s right for the country.”

Trump said he has a shortlist of nominees should any justice decide to retire, but he is unsure that would happen this year, The Hill noted.

READ MORE: ‘I Wasn’t That Involved’: Weakened Trump Tries to Rewrite History

But Trump also appeared to signal that perhaps retiring before the midterm elections might be wise.

Being on the nation’s highest court is “probably not easy to give up for people, you know, they reach a certain age,” he told Bartiromo. “Ginsburg could not do it.”

Liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had been urged by the left to retire during President Barack Obama’s term, refused, and passed away while on the bench in 2020, handing Trump the right to nominate her replacement. He placed a conservative on the Court, further strengthening its conservative majority.

Justice Ginsburg, Trump told Bartiromo, “decided that she was going to live forever, and about two minutes after the election, she went out and I got to appoint somebody.”

“So, you know, you make the case that at a certain time you give it up… so that your ideology, your policies, your everything, would be of the kind that we like.”

U.S. News & World Report senior national political correspondent Olivier Knox commented on Trump’s remarks.

“I can’t decide if this is just organic chatter or if it’s a pressure campaign to get Alito to retire,” he wrote. “There’s been a LOT of this in the last couple of days. Thune, Grassley, etc.”

Indeed, the Washington Examiner’s David Sivak noted on Tuesday that Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley told him that “he’ll recommend to Trump that Mike Lee or Ted Cruz replace Samuel Alito, should he retire.”

“I hope he doesn’t retire,” Grassley said, “but if he does retire, I’m going to suggest that either Lee or Cruz be put on the Supreme Court.”

READ MORE: Voters in Military Towns Fear Trump Is ‘Bumbling’ US Into Another Iraq: Report

 

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‘I Wasn’t That Involved’: Weakened Trump Tries to Rewrite History

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Despite repeatedly endorsing Viktor Orbán, praising him as his “twin” in Europe, and dispatching Vice President JD Vance to Budapest to campaign for him, President Donald Trump now claims he had little to do with the far-right Christian nationalist prime minister’s reelection bid — which ended in a massive landslide defeat Sunday, ending 16 years of authoritarian rule.

“I wasn’t that involved in this one,” Trump said of Orbán’s failed reelection effort, telling ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that the Hungarian right-wing populist “was behind substantially,” while praising him as “a good man.”

Noting that Orbán is “a key figure in the global far-right movement and is also allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin,” The Daily Beast reports that Trump had been “insisting he wasn’t actively campaigning for him.”

Trump “had been posting on Truth Social before the election, urging people to vote for Orban, whom he has described as ‘a true friend,'” The Daily Beast reported. During his time in Hungary, Vice President Vance called the Hungarian leader a “wise and smart” man, while describing his authoritarian regime as a “model for the continent.”

READ MORE: Senate Republicans Are Prepared to Replace Alito — Before the Midterms: Report

But Trump’s support for the embattled Orbán has taken its toll. The Daily Beast describes him as “wounded” from his attempts to prop up the Hungarian illiberal nationalist ruler, and points to British think tank Chatham House, which suggested the White House’s “intervention” in Hungary “now looks more like a political own goal.”

Grégoire Roos, director of Chatham House’s Europe and Russia and Eurasia programs, noted that the Hungarian election “was monitored closely in the Oval Office,” and suggests there will be a cost.

“Several European far-right parties have already begun distancing themselves from Trump over his more erratic foreign-policy moves and this result may further accelerate a trend towards greater autonomy from MAGA. The question now is whether Washington adjusts its methods of influence in Europe or simply doubles down.”

For his part, Trump appears to have moved on.

ABC’s Karl reports that Trump told him he “likes” incoming Prime Minister Péter Magyar.

“I think the new man’s going to do a good job — he’s a good man,” Trump said. “I think he’s going to be good.”

READ MORE: Voters in Military Towns Fear Trump Is ‘Bumbling’ US Into Another Iraq: Report

 

Image via Reuters 

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