Tag: Donald Trump

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Bonfire!

Official portrait of President Donald J. Trump, Friday, October 6, 2017. (Official White House photo by Shealah Craighead)

It’s been a matter of weeks since President Donald Trump single-handedly deprived the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) board of its quorum, and the giant semi-public utility may come to figure in crucial decisions regarding Elon Musk’s controversial Colossus xAI project in Memphis.

When Trump issued walking papers to two members of an already truncated TVA board, he effectively deprived the board of its ability to vote on policy shifts and other matters of consequence. 

The utility’s rules require the presence of five active and voting members to constitute a quorum. At full strength, the board would number nine directors, but attrition of various kinds over the years had previously reduced the board’s membership to five.

That membership now stands at only four after Trump, in successive acts, fired both Michelle Moore, a well-known “clean power” advocate, and Board Chairman Joe Ritch. The president gave no reasons for either firing, but coincidentally or not, his actions came in the immediate wake of public prodding from Tennessee’s two Republican senators for changes in the Authority’s leadership.

In an op-ed that appeared in the industry periodical Power magazine on March 24th, senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty had expressed doubt that the TVA leadership, as then constituted, was up to the need, as they saw it, of jump-starting a new era of reinvigorated nuclear power.  

“With the right courageous leadership, TVA could lead the way in our nation’s nuclear energy revival, empower us to dominate the 21st century’s global technology competition, and cement President Trump’s legacy as ‘America’s Nuclear President,’” the senators wrote. 

Within days of the op-ed’s publication, the TVA board, then still at quorum strength, if only barely, named the utility’s chief operating officer, Don Moul, to serve as the CEO of TVA. (For what it’s worth, the two senators had wanted a new CEO from outside the Authority’s ranks.) Almost immediately after Moul’s appointment, Trump would fire the two board members, thereby stalling any immediate initiatives on TVA’s part beyond matters of basic maintenance. That would include oversight activity vis-à-vis the energy situation of Memphis.

Ultimately Trump will have the prerogative of restocking the board to quorum strength, with his nominations in theory drawn from all reaches of the Authority’s operating area, which comprises all of Tennessee, portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky, and small areas of Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia. Members, subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate, serve five-year terms. 

Created under FDR, TVA is no longer taxpayer-funded but is still federally owned. One way or another, politics plays a major role in its operation, and critics of Musk are increasingly conscious that the contours of the Trump ally’s giant xAI program are rapidly expanding, with its demands on available energy from MLGW mounting well beyond what the original estimates were when Musk acquired the vacant Electrolux property to house the supercomputer last year.

Memphis Mayor Paul Young is now finding himself under fire for his apparent acquiescence with the Musk project. In a blistering letter to Young, Shelby County Health Department Director Michelle Taylor criticized the mayor for not imposing stricter air-quality controls on the Colossus project, which is requiring the use of even more gas turbines — potentially as many as 35.

Amid an upsurge in various forums and ad hoc opposition groups, one leader of a burgeoning citizen revolt is Representative Justin Pearson, immersing himself in anti-xAI activities in the manner of his successful 2021 opposition to a gas pipeline. 

More and more obviously, the xAI matter is rising to a potentially dominant status politically, almost on a scale with the city’s No. 1 bugaboo, crime. And uneasiness about the Trump-Musk alliance could be a major part of that concern. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

When It Rains

Just some wacky weather, nothing more. (Photo: Bethany Butler Myers)

Perhaps the nadir of last week for me came Saturday morning, as I was standing in a sudden downpour with my two leashed dogs, imploring them to, well, pee.

“C’mon, Olive! Pee and you get a treat! C’mon, girls, pee! Don’t you want a treat?” 

Their ears always perk when they hear the sacred T-word, but they never seem to make the connection as to how relieving themselves might make the magic happen, and so on we trudged along the flooded Midtown sidewalks until at last the deeds were done and we could return home to shake ourselves dry.

Seriously, can we all agree that last week was insane? Twelve inches of rain in four days? They called it a “generational event.” Maybe, but does anybody remember the great flood of 2011? Seems less than a generation ago.

My rain-crazed friends and I spent the afternoon sending each other flood videos gleaned from social media or local TV websites. Overton Park is under water! Union Avenue is closed! Poplar is shut down! Stay away from East Parkway! Giant tree fell on Cooper! There’s a guy kayaking by Ecco!

There were several images of sad people standing beside their cars in waist-deep water, victims of the kind of foolish optimism that leads someone into thinking their Corolla is a Humvee. We got 5.5 inches in a single day, a record for April. 

By Sunday, we were down to an occasional drizzle, but there’s more moisture to come, folks. That giant anaconda of a storm squatted over the center of the country for several days, and all of that water is headed our way, spilling down the countless rivers, streams, creeks, and ditches that feed into the Ohio, Illinois, Tennessee, and Missouri rivers, and ultimately, the Mississippi. A rise of two feet a day on the lower Mississippi (that’s us), is considered a big deal. The river rose 5.6 feet(!) at Memphis on Monday and is predicted to rise more than 20 feet before it crests at 37 feet on April 14th — three feet above flood stage. The 2011 flood crested at 48 feet, but still, the redesigned Tom Lee Park may be tested. 

But all of this wacky weather was really just background noise as the country was being “looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by nations near and far” and cruelly denied a “turn to prosper.” Or at least that’s what was happening in the spacious cranium of Donald Trump, as he proclaimed last Wednesday “Liberation Day” and imposed tariffs on, well, every country in the world except Russia. He was like Oprah Winfrey on a bender: “You get a tariff, and you get a tariff, and you get a tariff! And everyone gets a global market collapse.” Good times!

Noted leftist hippie rag, The Economist, described the proceedings thusly: “It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century — and committed the most profound, harmful, and unnecessary economic error in the modern era.”

Out of curiosity, I went around my house checking manufacturing labels. Here’s a partial list of things I own that were made in another country: toaster oven, blender, coffee maker, knife sharpener, microwave, vacuum cleaner, nine lamps, two televisions, stereo and turntable, hair dryer, washer and dryer. If I’d gone out to the garage, I could have kept going, starting with my Subaru and working through all my tools and battery-powered lawn care devices. I do own two American guitars and a Kershaw pocket knife. 

All that stuff is soon going to cost, at minimum, 20 percent more, thanks to Tariff-Boy’s McKinley wet dream. Hope you like the idea of $1,500 iPhones. Not to mention, everyone’s 401(k) is in the toilet and the IRS’ and Social Security’s computer programs are being rewritten by Elon Musk’s unrestrained junior code-hackers. What, me worry?

There was at least some good news. Trump sent out this announcement on Saturday: “The President won his second round matchup of the Senior Club Championship today in Jupiter, FL, and advances to the Championship Round tomorrow.” Priorities! I bet you can’t guess who won. 

Categories
At Large Opinion

Huddled Masses

Photo: Dhvstockphoto | Dreamstime.com

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

These are the final lines of Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus.” They are inscribed on a plaque at the base of the Statue of Liberty. How quaint those words seem now that it’s apparent that those leading this country no longer want anything to do with the poor or homeless or those huddled masses yearning to breathe free. There’s no lamp and no golden door, unless it’s the ones controlled by the for-profit ICE detention centers run by CoreCivic, GEO Group, LaSalle Corrections, and Management & Training Corporation.

That there are big profits being made from immigrant deportation is a feature, not a bug. In 2023, during Joe Biden’s presidency, 90 percent of the 30,000 people then held in ICE detention were housed in private facilities contracted by the agency. In 2022, Biden pledged there would be “no private prisons” used for detention, but he never delivered on that promise, and the number of immigrants in ICE detention centers has almost doubled since then.

Biden did at least keep detained immigrants in the U.S. until their cases could be handled in court. Donald Trump ramped it up to the next level last week by flying 238 Venezuelan immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador without giving them judicial due process. Trump justified the illegal move by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which enables the government to rapidly deport people from countries at war with the United States. Last time I checked, we weren’t at war with Venezuela. 

The deportees are now subject to a “justice system” that relies mostly on the whims of banana republic authoritarian President Nayib Bukele, who calls himself the world’s “coolest dictator.” El Salvador (read Bukele) received $6 million from the U.S. for taking the Venezuelans off our hands. It’s blood money. The prisoners had no opportunity to prove their innocence or challenge their sentences — because they haven’t been sentenced, just imprisoned for however long Bukele decides to keep them. It’s a business deal disguised as justice.

The administration claimed that the men were members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, but no proof was offered in a court of law. Some of these men presumably were gang leaders with criminal records; others may have been low-level members; others, we are now discovering, may not have had any association with the gang or any criminal record at all. They all got the same punishment.

It’s utterly inhumane and flies in the face of any American legal processes. At the very least, the men could have been deported to their country of origin. Using a Salvadoran prison as an American Gulag is a new low, even for Trump. 

And all of this was carried out against the specific orders of federal Judge James Boasberg. It’s perhaps instructive to learn that when Bukele was told about the administration’s lawyers ignoring the judge’s order, he posted, “Oopsie, too late” on X. It was promptly reposted by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President-Select Elon Musk because … well, of course they did.

That exchange makes it increasingly clear that the last line of defense against Trump’s march to authoritarianism will be the judiciary. And the final bulwark of the judiciary is the Supreme Court, which has six right-leaning Republican appointees among its nine members. Trump has already hand-picked a subservient attorney general, Pam Bondi, to lead the Justice Department. If Trump just starts ignoring judicial orders from lower courts, as he has begun to do, will the GOP-linked members of SCOTUS stand up for the rule of law — or cede our democracy to the oligarchs who have taken over their party and our country? Their track record isn’t great.

And even if they do stand up to Trump, what happens if the president just ignores the Supreme Court? Who’s going to stop him? According to the Constitution, the only means available for judges to enforce their court orders are fines and/or arrests carried out by U.S. marshals. So, who controls U.S. federal marshals? Attorney General Pam Bondi. Oopsie. 

Categories
Politics Politics Beat Blog Politics Feature

Political Dominoes

(left) Marsha Blackburn; (right) Bill Hagerty (Photos: United States Senate, Public domain | Wikimedia Commons)

To remind the faithful readers of this space: In our year-end issue, we offered forecasts about the shape of things to come in the political arena.

One circumstance noted for the record was the fact that both of Tennessee’s incumbent U.S. senators — Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty — would strongly consider running for governor in 2026.

That is what our pipeline said, and that is what we reported, even though it seemed passing strange, even to us. Why? Because the customary rites of passage flow in the opposite direction — with the gubernatorial office more often serving as a springboard for Senate, than vice versa.

That is definitely the pattern in our neighboring state of Arkansas, where such eminent recent members of the Senate as Dale Bumpers and David Pryor (both now deceased) served what amounted to apprenticeships as governor before going on to become senators.

To be sure, ambitions may figure differently in the Land of Opportunity than in the Volunteer State, but Lamar Alexander ran first for governor and then for senator. And one recalls the unhappy, arguably tragic fate of Democrat Frank Clement, who served several terms as the state’s governor before meeting his Waterloo in two successive failed runs for the Senate.

(Interestingly, Clement’s second and final failed try, in 1966, resulted in the election to the Senate of Republican Howard Baker — the forerunner of what, in the course of time, would become the wall-to-wall ubiquity of GOP state officials.)

In any case, both of Tennessee’s current Republican senators have floated unmistakable trial balloons regarding gubernatorial races in 2026, and both seem dead serious. It may be far-fetched to imagine a competitive race between the two, but, my, wouldn’t that be an attention-grabber!

More likely, forces in the Republican Establishment — most notably Donald Trump — would probably dictate the choice of one over the other. (Either could make a plausible claim of loyalty to the president and to the MAGA agenda.)

And, given the high probability of success for the ultimate GOP nominee, one can imagine a domino-like chain reaction of opportunities opening up for other upwardly mobile Tennessee Republicans.

If Hagerty makes a governor’s race, he could either run for both governor and re-election as senator simultaneously, or go ahead and shed his Senate seat (his term would expire in 2026, anyhow) while campaigning for governor. In that latter eventuality, a race for his departed seat would occur in 2026, with a high probability that 8th District Congressman David Kustoff would be a candidate.

Kustoff’s seat, in turn, might then well be targeted by, say, the preternaturally ambitious state Senator Brent Taylor, in which case his seat would open as well, with possible aspirants for it including former city councilmen Kemp Conrad and Frank Colvett, and maybe even state Rep. Mark White. (A White race would create yet another vacancy and another domino.)

If Blackburn runs and wins, she would keep her Senate seat until being sworn in, in which case either she or a lame-duck Bill Lee would appoint a temporary Senate successor, with a special election for a permanent senator to be held in 2028.

The same sort of sequence as mentioned above for a Hagerty win might then occur, involving the same or a similar cast of characters, though everything would happen at a later remove in time.

Got all that straight, gentle reader? Probably not, though it could be worse. There are other permutations and possible complications we’re sparing you from.

The bottom line is that some shock and awe seems certain for the state’s political calendar in 2026, along with a potentially dizzy round of dominoes.

And who knows? Maybe some as yet unknown Democrat comes out of nowhere to spoil the party at some point along the succession line. 

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Mayor Young: TACOnganas Employees Taken By Federal Agents

Hooded, masked men show no identification as they take workers from TaconGanas Monday. (Credit: TaconGanas via Facebook

The men who detained workers at TACOnganas yesterday were, indeed, federal agents, according to Memphis Mayor Paul Young. 

We’ll follow details of this story. For now, this is as much as we know: 

At around 5:30 p.m. Monday, TACOnganas posted this to Facebook along with a video showing the encounter: 

“Earlier today, individuals entered one of our trucks and took away several of our employees. We do not know what prompted this. We were not told beforehand, and we have not been told since. We understand it may be difficult to watch, but we’re sharing a video of it.

“We have heard from the employees. They’ve been told they’re being detained by (U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – ICE). We don’t know if the men you see in the video work for ICE or for someone else. You’ll see they have no uniforms, do not show any badge or ID, and did not leave any identifying information or paperwork. If not for our security cameras, we would not even know this happened.

“We’ve contacted legal aid organizations to help the employees, and we’re gathering any information we have to share with their families. Our company complies with federal and local immigration laws, and we know everyone is dealing with situations like this. We know our community is scared. As the country navigates a new normal, we’re here to support the community and to support our workforce and people, too.”

As the video spread quickly across social media in Memphis, Young posted this statement to X at around 9:30 p.m. Monday: 

“We understand the shockwaves that are reverberating through our community right now following the release of the TACOnganas video. 

“Although these matters don’t fall under our jurisdiction, we reached out to federal authorities out of concern. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) confirmed that this action was carried out by federal agents. 

We have been instructed to send all media inquiries to HSI.”

BIG MF lugga on X said, “free them good fellas.”

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Memphis and Tennessee Companies Could Get Caught In Tariff Fight

FedEx aircraft at Memphis International Airport. Photo by Jon W. Sparks

The Memphis area exported about $1.4 billion worth of goods to its top three international markets — Mexico, China, and Canada — in 2023, according to the latest data, but effects of tariffs aren’t yet known.

The report from the U.S.-China Business Council (UCBC) also found that Tennessee’s 9th Congressional District, which covers most of Memphis and parts of Tipton County, exported about $537 million worth of services to its top six international trading partners. Those include Canada at the top and China at sixth.  

Credit: U.S.-China Business Council

It’s unknown how those markets would change under promised tariffs by President Donald Trump. The president agreed to pause tariffs on Mexico Monday to allow the countries to work out a deal. Trump also agreed to lower the tariff price on Canada to 10 percent from a threatened 25 percent. 

Stocks for FedEx Corp., one of the area’s largest private employers, fell by more than 6 percent on the New York Stock Exchange by Monday afternoon. Shares fell $16.29 to $248. 58 just before the closing bell. 

However, the freight sector had already slowed before the the 2024 election. FedEx dropped the U.S. Mail as a customer last year, a move that cut 60 flights to Memphis International Airport.   

Tennessee-China-reportDownload

The UCBC report shows that the 9th District’s top exports to China alone were medical equipment and supplies ($313 million), basic chemicals ($76 million), and engines and turbines ($9.9 million). Changes to the China market alone could put downward pressure on Memphis companies like Medtronic, Drexel Chemical Co., and a host of mechanical companies.  

The district also exported $38.9 million worth of services to China, also. The top three include education ($21 million), freight and port services ($10 million), and royalties from industrial processes ($7.9 million). 

Market data was broken down to the district level in reports on trade between Tennessee and Mexico and Canada.

Tennessee-Mexico-reportDownload

Total trade with Mexico in 2023 was $20.1 billion, according to the Embassy of Mexico in the U.S. The figure includes $6.1 billion in exports and $14 billion in imports. The state’s biggest import categories include motor vehicles, motor vehicle parts, HVAC equipment, electrical equipment and components, and communications equipment. In all, Tennessee’s trade with Mexico is greater than the total U.S. trade with Argentina, the embassy report says.  

Tennessee-Canada-reportDownload

The latest report from the Canadian Consulate General in Atlanta says that trade with Canada supported 160,400 employees in Tennessee last year in addition to the 11,700 employees at Canadian-owned businesses across the state. 

Tennessee exports $10.0 billion in goods and services to Canada. The state imports $6.8 billion in goods each year, the report said. Those include chemical, metals, and equipment — base goods that, with tariffs added to their costs — could drive up prices on a number of products for Tennessee consumers. 

Also, Canadian-based company Richardson International Ltd. announced last year it will invest $220 million in its Wesson Oil production facility in Memphis. That is part of a multiphase project that will replace the oil production plant with a new refinery to fulfill customer requirements and meet growing global demand for vegetable oil. The company said when it is completed, the new refinery will drive substantial reductions in water, energy, and wastewater volumes. 

In West Tennessee, auto parts maker Magna International plans to invest more than $790 million to build the first two supplier facilities at Ford’s BlueOval City supplier park in Stanton. 

Magna’s two Stanton facilities include a new frame and battery enclosures facility and a seating facility. The company also plans to build a stamping and assembly facility in Lawrenceburg, Tennessee. 

The Ontario-based supplier will supply Ford’s BlueOval City with battery enclosures, truck frames and seats for the automaker’s second-generation electric truck. 

Magna will employ approximately 750 employees at its battery enclosures facility and 300 employees at its new seating plant. The company plans to employ about 250 employees at its plant in Lawrenceberg. Production at all three plants is scheduled to begin in 2025.

Categories
At Large Opinion

Keepers of the Flame

Photo: Evgeniya Leonova | Dreamstime.com

The presidential inauguration in the Capitol rotunda on Monday marked the return to power of the most controversial and scandal-plagued president in American history. It felt a little like when the second plane hit the tower on 9/11 — the moment when we knew it wasn’t an accident.

Monday was also Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and here in Memphis — the city where Dr. King was assassinated in 1968 — the celebration of his life takes on a special significance. The NBA’s annual MLK Day celebration featured the Memphis Grizzlies hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the National Civil Rights Museum held a day of events called “Community Over Chaos,” which seemed a most fitting theme.

But before it fades into history, buried by the noisy deluge of Trump drama, I want to take note of former President Biden’s farewell address of last week. As might be expected, he cited the achievements of his administration — the record job-creation numbers, the long-desired ceasefire in the Middle East, the strengthening of NATO, and the ongoing resistance to the Russian invasion of Ukraine — but his real purpose in his speech seemed to be to deliver a warning, to address, as he said, “some things that give me great concern.”

Citing President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s farewell address to the nation, in which he warned the country about the dangers posed by the “military industrial complex,” Biden decried the rise of a new threat, one he called the “tech industrial complex.”

“Americans are being buried under an avalanche of misinformation and disinformation enabling the abuse of power,” Biden warned. “The free press is crumbling. Errors are disappearing. Social media is giving up on fact-checking. The truth is smothered by lies told for power and for profit.” No errors detected.

The tech industrial complex was on full display in the Rotunda on Monday, including Sundar Pichai (Google), Tim Cook (Apple), Jeff Bezos (Amazon, The Washington Post), Mark Zuckerberg (Meta, Facebook, Instagram, Threads), and Elon Musk (X, Tesla, Starlink, xAI).

Never have so few had so much unbridled power to influence public opinion and so much money to invest in doing so. And it doesn’t help that they’re supplicating themselves (and giving millions of dollars) to the new president to curry his favor. It’s called obeying in advance, and it’s worrisome stuff. Journalism is in danger of being put out of business by “content providers” that have no ethical qualms about ignoring the truth in favor of whatever makes a profit — or makes the president happy.

CNN, ABC, and even MSNBC have also made at least token moves to ameliorate relations with the new administration. CNN buried Trump critic Jim Acosta in a late-night slot. ABC settled a libel lawsuit with Trump that it easily would have won in court. Facebook eliminated fact-checkers. Companies are getting rid of diversity hiring programs. Macho (“masculine energy”) is all the rage among the tech bros. Women’s healthcare rights continue to be eroded in red states.

Biden called it “a dangerous concentration of power in the hands of a very few ultra-wealthy people,” and cited the consequences “if their abuse of power is left unchecked.” What Biden was describing is an oligarchy. Merriam-Webster (remember dictionaries?) defines it as “a government in which a small group exercises control, especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.”

Can there be any doubt that an oligarchy of extreme wealth, power, and influence is moving into power in the United States, one that threatens our democracy and our basic rights and freedoms?

Democracy depends upon the will of the people, and if the people are misinformed, disinformed, or uninformed, they can be manipulated. As we well know, public opinion — and elections — can turn on well-funded, broadly circulated lies and propaganda.

Our social media platforms are already permeated by disinformation, mostly via bots that skillfully imitate real people and overwhelm legitimate content by their sheer numbers. Artificial intelligence is now upping that deception to previously unknown heights. Biden called AI “the most consequential technology of our time, perhaps of all time.”

The former president concluded by saying to his fellow Americans, “It’s your turn to stand guard. May you all be the keepers of the flame.” That doesn’t feel like malarkey, folks. 

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Nonprofit Immigration Organization Prepares For Increased Vigilance Under Trump Administration

Photo by K E on Unsplash

A local nonprofit is working to increase awareness of the services they offer for immigrants as promises made by Governor Bill Lee may soon come to fruition – with harmful consequences.

Earlier this week the governor called for a special session of the Tennessee General Assembly on January 27 to discuss a number of topics such as illegal immigration. Officials said this is to prepare for the implementation of policies introduced by the incoming Trump administration.

“The American people elected President Trump with a mandate to enforce immigration laws and protect our communities, and Tennessee must have the resources ready to support the Administration on Day One,” a statement from Lee’s office said.

Prior to this announcement, Lee said he would  work with state law enforcement agencies to conduct deportations. He also signed a statement along with 25 other Republican governors announcing their commitment to the Trump administration’s effort to deport what they referred to as “illegal immigrants who pose a threat to our communities and national security” and “dangerous criminals, gang members, and terrorists.”

“We understand the direct threat these criminal illegal immigrants pose to public safety and our national security, and we will do everything in our power to assist in removing them from our communities,” the statement added.

Casey Bryant, the executive director and founder for Advocates for Immigrant Rights is making sure that the community is aware of the resources available to them in light of these threats. 

“The real danger in that is creating a police state where someone who looks suspicious in some way to someone could be wrapped up in a system that doesn’t grant basic due process rights to people,” Bryant said. “It doesn’t just make this world more dangerous and insecure for people who are non-citizens, but it makes it more dangerous and insecure for people who look like non-citizens — whatever that means.”

When policies like these, which rely on visual identification, Bryant added they end up “degrading the rights of the whole.”

Bryant started Advocates for Immigrant Rights in October 2018, after realizing the gap in resources for immigrants given the landscape that the previous Trump administration created. The organization has evolved from a two-people operation to one with 17 staff members, including five staff attorneys – three of which are located in Memphis. Bryant and her team represent people in immigration courts and immigration offices across Tennessee, Arkansas, and Mississippi.

Advocates for Immigrant Rights also provides wraparound services such as social services.

Bryant said that this increased vigilance could also lead to resources having an increased workload such as the facilities needed to process and hold noncitizens if they’ve been detained. These include the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facilities along with places in between arriving there.

She added that immigration courts that already have an “immense” backlog of cases could be affected.

“Adding more cases to that means that they won’t get processed for like 10 years,” Bryant said. “It puts people in a state of limbo for a long time, and it’s just impracticable. In the meantime it creates fear and suspicion in communities and non-citizens aren’t going to be able to engage confidently in society.”

In hopes of helping immigrants engage in society confidently, Bryant and her team make sure to stay visible in these communities as well.

“Our relationship isn’t just moored in a service provision,” Bryant said. “Even if our interactions are only transactional, each interaction has the same mentality that we’re not above them. We’re not sitting in an ivory tower. We’re just people wearing jeans and a t-shirt interacting with people who may not know what we know, but obviously they know other stuff, so we try to build rapport and confidence.”

Bryant stressed that there are way more people who need their services, than those who can provide. As a result Bryant encourages people to donate to their organization as they are a nonprofit.

“Another thing individual people can do is acknowledge the shared humanity and dignity of our neighbors who may not have the same kind of privilege to have been born in our country and take it for granted,” Bryant said. “Non-citizens have to know more than we do before they get to be a citizen.”

It’s extremely important to refute ill-informed rhetoric that can be spewed by media outlets and “mouths at family dinner tables.”

“We have a community here that has to deal with different issues and being more understanding of what those issues are will help us unite as a people,” Bryant said.

Categories
At Large Opinion

L.A. Hot Takes

Entire neighborhoods have been reduced to ashes. (Photo: MMPhoto21 | stock.adobe.com )

And the lights of L.A. County
They look like diamonds in the sky … 
— Lyle Lovett

As I write this, devastating wind-fed fires have killed at least 25 people and swept through 40,000 acres in the greater Los Angeles area. If you’re looking for a size comparison, that’s equal to a fourth of the acreage of the city of Memphis burned to the ground — an area equal to Downtown, Uptown, and everything inside the beltway. Thousands of people have lost their homes. Hundreds of schools, churches, businesses, studios, and iconic architectural structures are gone. Entire neighborhoods are reduced to ashes.

Los Angeles County officials characterized the fires as a “perfect storm” event in which hurricane-force gusts of up to 100 miles per hour prevented them from deploying aircraft that could have dropped water and fire retardant on the drought-ravaged neighborhoods when the fires first broke out. The combination of the winds, unseasonably dry conditions, and multiple fires breaking out one after another led to the widespread destruction.

But as L.A. firefighters battled the flames, disinformation was spreading like, well, wildfire: One theory pushed by right-wing media was that the blazes were raging because fire-fighting personnel were led by a lesbian fire chief and the department utilized DEI hiring criteria. X account Libs of TikTok, known for spreading anti-LBGTQ rhetoric posted: “DEI will get people k*lled. DEI MUST DIE.” Donald Trump Jr. said that donations the Los Angeles Fire Department sent to Ukraine in 2022 were somehow related to its response to the current fires.

Not to be outdone, the president-elect himself posted a deluge of misinformation on Truth Social, including this: “Governor Gavin Newscum [sic] refused to sign the water restoration declaration put before him that would have allowed millions of gallons of water, from excess rain and snowmelt from the North, to flow daily into many parts of California, including the areas that are currently burning in a virtually apocalyptic way.” 

And what’s a good tragedy without a trash take from Alex Jones, who posted that President Biden had grounded firefighters and that the fires were being spread as part of a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare”? First Buddy Elon Musk responded to Jones’ tweet in a now-deleted post with one word: “True.” 

None of it was true. The level of diversity in L.A. Fire Department personnel is typical of most urban fire departments in the U.S. The Southern California reservoirs were full, above historic levels. Water intended for the city was not diverted to save a fish called the smelt. Some hydrants went dry because they were intended for use against urban fires — houses, buildings in a self-contained area for a limited time — not wild-blown wildfires spreading over many acres for many days. 

Janisse Quiñones, chief engineer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said, “We are fighting a wildfire with urban water systems, and that is an unprecedented kind of event.” Quiñones added that experts have seen wildland fires move into urban areas only in the last 10 to 15 years and that they’re still figuring out how to address it.

“The way that firefighting has traditionally been, there are wildland firefighters and agencies, and then there are urban firefighters and agencies,” she said. “Are we having wildland firefighters fighting fires in urban areas or the reverse? Sometimes the approaches are really different.”

All this brings to mind an interview with Denzel Washington I saw last week. When asked about today’s media, he said: “If you don’t read the newspapers, you’re uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you’re misinformed.” 

He went on: “What is the long-term effect of too much information? One thing is the need to be first. … We live in a society where it’s just, get it out there, be first! It doesn’t matter if it’s true, who it hurts, who it destroys, just be first. So what a responsibility [the media] have — to tell the truth!” 

To which, I would add: What a responsibility you and I have — to seek out the truth, and to learn not to blindly swallow the first piece of information offered, no matter who offers it, no matter how it tickles your confirmation biases. A hot take is seldom the best take. 

Categories
News News Blog News Feature

Analysis: MPD Consent Decree May Not Matter in Trump’s Next Term

Credit: Donald J. Trump via X

Next steps after the federal government’s report on excessive force within the Memphis Police Department (MPD) are not known, of course. But at least one big sign points to “not much,” as far as the next White House occupant is concerned. 

President-elect Donald Trump’s campaign ran on “law and order” as a central theme. His campaign said ”there is no higher priority than quickly restoring law and order and public safety in America.” He even just tweeted those words in all capital letters four years ago: 

However, the American Civil Liberties Group (ACLU) has said that “law and order” in a second Trump administration is a “shorthand message promising repression of the Black community.”

Trump Promises to Militarize Police, Reincarcerate Thousands, and Expand Death Penalty

”Specifically, Trump’s law enforcement policies call for further protections for abusive police, including condoning the use of force against protesters, which he once described as a ’beautiful thing to watch’,” reads an ACLU analysis of Trump policies in July. “This rhetoric risks encouraging state actors to take a similarly brutal approach.”

If the ACLU is correct on the premise, this means Trump’s “brutal approach” to law enforcement could, maybe, trickle down to state and local leaders, emboldened by the President to allow tough justice to be doled out across the country without major repercussions to law enforcement officials — i.e. police officers.

To get there, Trump promised to ”strengthen qualified immunity and other protections for police officers.” Qualified immunity allows government actors (i.e. cops) to perform their jobs without the risk of civil liability. This means, basically, that if a cop breaks some laws while they are making an arrest, they can’t be sued for it in court. So, Trump would give cops extra protection against the citizens they serve even if they hurt those citizens during the course of their work. 

Germane to the DOJ’s report on the MPD, Trump promised on his campaign site to: 

1. Sign a record investment in hiring, retention, and training for police officers. The bill will increase vital liability protections for America’s law enforcement officers.

2. President Trump will require local law enforcement agencies receiving DOJ grants to return to proven policing measures such as stop-and-frisk, strictly enforcing existing gun laws, cracking down on the open use of illegal drugs, and cooperating with ICE to arrest and deport criminal aliens.

”…to qualify for this new funding and all other Justice Department grants, I will insist that local jurisdictions return to proven common sense policing measures, such as stop and frisk — very simple — you stop them and you frisk them….,” Trump said in a campaign video. 

City leaders and President Joe Biden’s DOJ are now tussling on whether or not the two will approve a consent decree for MPD. An agreement like this would bring in federal monitors to watch over the police department on a day-to-day basis to ensure it adhered to new policies for improvement. The city’s attorney has said the city will not approve a consent decree. 

First, the city argued, the investigation didn’t take long enough. These can last up to three years. The DOJ wrapped up the MPD review in 17 months. Memphis officials said, also, they need a legal avenue to question the DOJ’s investigation methods. 

Leaders here, though, won’t likely have to worry with threats of a lawsuit to enact the consent decree. Only one such decree was enacted in Trump’s first term. So far, 17 have been issued under Biden. Trump also cancelled a consent decree enacted during Barrack Obama’s Adminstration against the city of Baltimore.   

City leaders also argued that such a consent decree would cost too much. Memphis taxpayers would be on the hook to pay for all the federal monitors and programs to adhere to the agreement. Leaders said this could cost millions of dollars. 

That cost would come, too, as city taxpayers face paying out a $550 million civil penalty to the family of Tyre Nichols. The beating death of Nichols at the hands of MPD officers drew the eye of the DOJ investigation in the first place.      

As of Thursday afternoon, Trump did not make any statement about the DOJ on his Truth Social platform.