Tag: Stephen Miller

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

OK, Racist

Back in April, the Commercial Appeal‘s Daniel Connelly broke a story about Criminal Court Judge Jim Lammey’s reposting of numerous racist articles on his Facebook page. The repost that got the most attention was a column called “Stop With the Golems Already” by noted Holocaust denier David Cole. Cole called Muslim immigrants “foreign mud,” went on to denounce Jews for encouraging such immigration, and said they should “get the f—- over the Holocaust.”

Other anti-immigrant and racist articles that Lammey reposted were from alt-right websites, including Breitbart.com. He also posted a mugshot of a Hispanic man that claimed, incorrectly, that immigrants were responsible for more crimes than American citizens.

How did we learn all this? It seems Lammey accidentally made his Facebook page public. Oops. OK, Boomer.

Compounding the problem is the fact that Lammey is regularly called upon to render judgment on Hispanics and other immigrants in his courtroom.

The Tennessee Board of Judicial Conduct looked into the situation and issued a ruling this week that stated: “After a complete and thorough investigation, and under the limited and specific facts of this case, the Board acknowledges that there is no proof that you made any statements that were anti-Semitic, racist, or anti-immigration. … However, during the investigation it appears that some of your Facebook posts were partisan in nature, which is a clear violation of the Code of Judicial Conduct.”

In legal terms, this is called a slap on the wrist with a wet piece of linguini. And it’s appalling, frankly.

But Lammey’s actions pale in comparison to what was discovered about presidential advisor Stephen Miller this week. A cache of 900 emails between Miller and a former Breitbart staffer (who had a change of heart about her racist views) was released to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Simply put, the emails revealed Miller to be an unabashed white supremacist. In the emails, which were sent in 2015 and 2016 when Miller worked as an aide for former Alabama Senator Jeffrey Beauregard Sessions, he persistently urged Breitbart to publish anti-immigrant and white supremacist propaganda, pushing specific authors, articles, and racist screeds from alt-right websites.

Miller often referenced a Calvin Coolidge-era policy that lowered immigration numbers by using discriminatory eugenics-based quotas aimed at Italians, Poles, and other Eastern Europeans, who at the time were considered nonwhite and inferior.

Miller also sharply criticized the removal of Confederate monuments and flags after alt-right killer Dylann Roof murdered nine people in a South Carolina church. What a great guy.

In 2016, Sessions came to the White House as Trump’s attorney general, and for two years led the implementation of the administration’s immigration “reform” policies, which famously included a Muslim ban, a horrific (and ongoing) family separation policy at the Southern border, the mythical border wall with Mexico, restrictions on “sanctuary cities,” and other measures designed to reduce immigration from “brown” countries.

After Trump fired Sessions, his aide de Mein Kampf, Miller, took over and continued the administration’s assault on immigration — legal and otherwise — including such measures as deporting undocumented veterans of our armed services, doubling the cost to complete the process for obtaining citizenship, and petitioning the Supreme Court to reject the DACA program for undocumented immigrants who were brought into the U.S. as children.

When the news broke about Miller’s emails, 75 congress members and more than 50 civil rights groups called for his resignation. The White House responded by saying the attacks on Miller were “anti-semitic,” which, while unsurprising, takes a particular kind of gall.

Miller is unfit to hold public office. Every day he stays in the White House is a stain on this presidency. But in a world where most Americans are suffering from “scandal fatigue” and an ongoing impeachment process that’s dominating the news cycle day after day, Trump’s in-house nazi may get a pass.

Miller’s racist emails are the kind of thing that would, and should, get you fired from pretty much any job you can think of — except maybe a Criminal Court judgeship in Memphis.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Spring “Blessings” from Our Lawmakers

CREDIT: REUTERS | Leah Millis

Spring has come, if you can call it that, what with the more-than-occasional nippy morning, the on-again, off-again temperatures that have been confusing dogwoods’ attempts to blossom, and the sporadic rainy torrents that somehow still feel more wintry than not.
Even so, let us count our current seasonal blessings. The document that presumably contains the truth about some alarming allegations against our president (the so-called Mueller Report) remains a distant, inaccessible mystery under the misleading cover of a four-page attorney general’s gloss. Meanwhile, that president is free to resume his assaults on human dignity, including, reportedly, a new plan by his dead-eyed special assistant Stephen Miller to resume separating children from their immigrant parents along our southern border. (Emma Lazarus and her do-goody inscription on the Statue of Liberty to “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free” be damned).

REUTERS | Leah Millis

Stephen Miller

And, as if to spread the blessings of Trumpism to those of us who are native-born, the president continues to vow to kill off entirely the Affordable Care Act, which he has so far only managed to cripple or inconvenience, here and there. Never mind the consequences for those rascals among us who have been blessed hitherto by the ACA’s coverage of pre-existing conditions. They can make do, as before — with thoughts and prayers.
There are developments on our state government front, too. Among the bills that have been hurtling toward passage in these last few weeks of the 2019 General Assembly are measures to impose a new state charter-school commission (read: bureaucracy) with the ability to override the wishes of local school boards on charter-school applications; state grants for parents to use in private Tennessee schools, called “education savings account” rather than the justly tarnished term “vouchers,” so as to confuse diehard defenders of public school education; a variety of anti-abortion measures, all anticipating that Trump judicial appointees will at some point achieve the specific gravity needed to ward off judgments of unconstitutionality; more end-run attempts to keep transgenders out of gender-specific restrooms; a bill permitting teachers with carry permits to take their guns to school; and one would-be constitutional amendment attributing all these and other splendors of man’s domain and God’s universe to, well, God.

The legislator who gave us this last one is an East Tennessee guy named James, though he calls himself Micah, after the prophet, something he would have us believe was a suggestion emanating from his personal pipeline to the almighty.

Maybe we expect too much and are ungrateful to the point of ignoring our real blessings like the ongoing presence of spring football and that avatar of the sport known as Johnny Manziel. Wait. It’s over with already? Oh, well, at least it’s stopped raining. Sort of.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

No More Deals with Trump on Immigration

CREDIT: White House

As President Trump’s legal troubles intensify, his public opposition to immigration, immigrants, and refugees has hardened. The “base” — long animated by Trump’s verbal war against the immigrant community — is hanging tough with their president (a.k.a., The Unindicted Co-Conspirator). Immigrant activists and those who hope to see a broad, comprehensive overhaul of our immigration system should cease trying to negotiate with this reckless, criminal organization called the Trump administration and focus entirely on pushing political change.

White House

Stephen Miller

Since Trump first declared as presidential candidate, his supporters have claimed that they are not opposed to legal immigration, but only undocumented immigration, or in Trump parlance “illegals.”  But the administration’s attack on U.S. refugee policy, immediately following his inauguration, completely undermines this argument. Trump and his young, arrogant, neocon political advisor Stephen Miller have quietly targeted legal immigrants — suspecting, perhaps, that Americans might not notice, or care. In 2016, under the Obama administration, 1.2 million immigrants gained lawful permanent residency. The numbers for 2018 suggest that the Trump administration is on track for a 20 percent decrease in green cards granted.

The Trump administration is also proposing to limit the pathways by which people earn residency and citizenship. Under Miller’s design, if an immigrant has accepted any public benefit — such as Obamacare subsidies or social security disability benefits for a disabled child — he or she may find their chances for citizenship significantly diminished. By redefining and broadening the term “public charge,” Miller’s cruel calculus can be enacted without congressional approval.

 The pressure that the Trump administration has put on the immigrant community through enhanced enforcement and rule changes means immigrant advocates are negotiating from a position of weakness and uncertainty. Such negotiations have led to concessions on funding for Trump’s wall, elimination of the lottery visa, and even consideration of an end to family-based immigration — derisively referred to as “chain migration” by hard liners — a bedrock principle of our immigration system for decades. 

These negotiations/concessions must end immediately. If not, we will allow the dangerous dynamic duo of Trump and Miller to remake American immigration policy for generations to come. In negotiating with an administration that does not value immigration — legal or otherwise — we risk undoing more than a half century of policy that has infused our nation with a dynamic pluralism. The very idea of America and the promise the word holds for the world community is on life support, thanks to these dangerous demagogues ensconced at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Lyndon Johnson passed the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, one of his most lasting achievements as president. This law quadrupled the number of immigrants living in the United States from 9.6 million to 45 million. Prior to 1965, more than 75 percent of all immigrants came from Europe. Since the passage of the INA, more than half of all immigrants have their origins in Latin America and 25 percent in Asia. This law directly affected the diversification of the American population: In 1965, 84 percent of the U.S. population was of European descent; now it is approximately 62 percent. 
The co-conspirator in chief and his MAGA movement have grown as a response to these demographic shifts. But demographic shifts are not something Trump can control without a major change in immigration law. Why then should those of us who value diversity and the vision of America as a nation of immigrants negotiate from a position of perceived weakness when time is on our side and no deal under these circumstances strengthens our position?

Fear of demographic changes, fear of science, fear of truth — these are a few of the hallmarks of this angry, antediluvian administration in Washington. It’s time to tune out the noise and hatred billowing out of D.C. and prepare for the future. That future holds the promise of enlightened leadership, coupled with a resituating of the national narrative that has always focused on America as a place of hope and opportunity for the world.

Bryce Ashby is a Memphis-based attorney; Michael J. LaRosa is an associate professor of history at Rhodes College.