EPA Prepares to Gut Obama's Signature Move on Autos

EPA Prepares to Gut Obama's Signature Move on Autos

Chief Scott Pruitt plans to weaken fuel efficiency standards set to go in place

By John Johnson,  Newser Staff

Traffic backs up on US highway 101 in Mill Valley, Calif.   (AP Photo/Eric Risberg)

(NEWSER) – The EPA is preparing to make a big move as early as next week to weaken landmark fuel-efficiency goals put in place by the Obama administration, reports the New York Times. The Obama-era rules would have required cars and SUVs to hit 55mpg by 2025, but Trump and EPA chief Scott Pruitt, both of whom have voiced public doubts about climate change, think the mark is too high and therefore problematic for manufacturers. The revised standards are still being worked out, but the Los Angeles Times notes that the move sets up a huge fight with California, which has a waiver under the 1970 Clean Air Act to set its own standards. Another dozen states, including New York, typically follow California's lead, which the NYT notes raises the possibility of the US essentially having two auto markets, with some states—say, those on the coasts—abiding by tougher emission rules.

Trump has long signaled he wants to move in this direction in regard to the rules, known as the Corporate Average Fuel Economy. "I'm sure you've all heard the big news that we're going to work on the CAFE standards so you can make cars in America again," he said in Detroit last year. The rules were among two signature moves on the climate made by Obama, the other being his Clean Power Plan, and the LAT notes that some experts think the auto plan is the more significant of the two in regard to global warming. It's possible Pruitt aims to revoke California's waiver under the 1970 act, though state officials say they're ready for a fight. "We are not going to go backward," says state Attorney General Xavier Becerra. Though the original rule set a standard of 55mpg, it's likely that would translate to 44mpg on car stickers because of newer testing methods, per the LAT.

http://www.newser.com/story/257236/epa-prepares-to-gut-obamas-signature-move-on-autos.html

Don's TuesdayColumn

             THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson  Red Bluff Daily News   4/03/2018

               Census lies; student protest irony

Before providing a few observations on the week’s events, I’d like to remind readers of the upcoming Republican Red, White and Blue Dinner honoring Tehama County Agriculture on April 14, at the Veterans Memorial Hall, 735 Oak Street. Doors will open at 5:30; a rewarding and inspirational program starts at 6:30. The details from last week’s column were posted at DonPolson.blogspot.com on March 27 and are still viewable. For reservations: 865-2666 (Linda Alston), 200-0091 (Jerry Crow).

You might have missed the phony uproar over the decision, by Trump’s Census Bureau, to include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census form. The response from the usual open-boarders, leftist crowd, including a lawsuit by California’s A.G. Bacerra, was hysterical by any definition. They and their news media cohorts disingenuously protested that such a question—asking how many in the household are born or naturalized citizens, or not—has some potentially dire consequences.

To wit: “DNC Chair Tom Perez said that asking a citizenship question on the census was ‘a craven attack on our democracy and a transparent attempt to intimidate immigrant communities.’ Nancy Pelosi said it violated the Constitution” (ntknetwork.com). As invariably happens, the arguments used by progressives to support their outraged outbursts fall apart upon serious scrutiny. Such a tally of citizens and legal residents in our country has been routine for as long as the Census has been conducted.

The query has taken different forms in different versions of the Census; in the 2000 Census, under Pres. Bill Clinton, the “long-form questionnaire” (filled out by about one out of six households) asked, “Is this person a CITIZEN of the United States?” Three boxes for citizenship by birth, one for citizenship by naturalization, and one for “not a citizen.” So, was Clinton “intimidating immigrants” or “violating the Constitution”? It’s just fallacious leftist silliness.

The fact is that illegal immigrants, included in the census, provide the justification for states with excessive illegal alien populations, like California, New York and Illinois, to have extra seats in Congress as well as more presidential electors—between 10 and 15 nationwide. Then there are budgetary allocations of “benefits” based on “population,” legal or not. Freebies for illegals—yay! It therefore serves the corrupt purposes of Democrats to inflate their political power and money. They’ve been honest when calling illegal immigrants “Americans without papers” or future Democratic voters. They should be ashamed.

A funny thing didn’t happen on a chair lift ride the other day: We were chatting with a local high school teacher (we always thank them for their vocation) and she shared that some of her students had just organized a march by fellow students—and we had nothing to say on the subject. We knew what was reported and the anti-gun purpose of the students’ efforts; the teacher was proud their activism.

For our part, my part really, there was no way to have a brief (a few minutes to reach the top of the ski lift) interaction and not risk putting a downer on her pride, knowing what we know on the gun topic. So, of course, I later thought of “what I should have said” that would have encouraged her educator side to broaden their perspectives and knowledge, to temper zeal and inform minds.

Let’s consider potential questions for her students to ponder and research (with my brief answers). Q: What is the definition of an “assault” rifle? A: There is none beyond that created by the gun control groups to attach to any semi-automatic rifle they think looks militaristic, even if it would have no use on an actual battlefield and has only cosmetic differences with standard hunting rifles.

Q: Are there diverse, sincerely held positions on gun control/gun rights issues among fellow students? A: Yes, polling has shown that those in favor of more gun control laws are about 60 percent of students compared to about 40 percent that find the right to own guns is more important. Q: Is it appropriate for those espousing pro-gun control positions to demonize and denigrate those on the gun rights side? A: No. In a fair and polite debate, respect and inclusion is accorded to all views; foul-mouthed attacks on opposing views, as has happened among the March For Our Lives (MFOL) protesters on their signs and interviews, is out of place and should be criticized.

Follow-up question: Why have the Parkland high school MFOL leaders, young Mr. Hogg, Ms. Gonzales and others, ignored and dismissed fellow students who lost friends and family—like Kyle Kashuv and Patrick Petty—who adhere to the gun rights side? A: It’s obvious that they don’t fit the preferred narrative that all students think alike and back the anti-gun MFOL side. Basic dishonesty.

Q: Doesn’t it undermine the protest to accept essential funding, and organizational, logistical and media support, from anti-gun groups, public employee unions, big city liberal machines and Hollywood—without disclosing that fact? A: Arguably, it does undermine the protest; without it all there wouldn’t be a MFOL movement. Under-18 protesters are a minority of demonstrators.

Q: Why focus on “assault rifles,” legally and responsibly owned by law-abiding citizens, when most murders are committed by hand guns, knives, fists or blunt objects used illegally by criminals. A: There is no real answer besides intended or unintended hypocrisy, revealing duplicitous motives.

Final Q: Why reject proposals for training and arming qualified school employees—principals, teachers, janitors—as has been done in over 150 schools in Texas? A: Because when that happens—with signs that say “Please be aware that the staff may be armed and will use whatever force is necessary to protect our students”—it will, just as in those Texas schools, eliminate school massacres by crazed, criminal gunmen. The “March For Our Lives” supporters want the anti-gun, anti-NRA issue, not school safety solutions.

What Frightens the Left Most? The Constitution

What Frightens the Left Most? The Constitution
By Michael Walsh

As we’ve long since learned, the Left always tells us what they fear most, by reacting to political developments or policy proposals like scalded vipers, hissing and spitting as they writhe around in agonized hysteria. Not for nothing is the word “catastrophic” one of their favorite descriptive adjectives, since it pretty much describes just about anything they don’t agree with and thus keeps them forever on the edge.

To rational people, their collection of tics, neuroses, and phobias may seem at first to lack a certain consistency, other than a tendency to go from zero to obscenities on Twitter in no time flat. They can easily be against gay marriage (Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, et al.) before they were for it; against illegal immigration (Bill Clinton) before they were for it; and for the Russians (the entire Democratic Party) before they were against them.


Do they contradict themselves? Very well, then, they contradict themselves—after all, they contain multitudes. The only song they really know is Whitman’s “Song of Myself.”

Their latest conniption fit has come over two apparently unrelated things. The first, of course, is guns and by extension the right to one’s own personal self-defense in a dangerous and (thanks to the second thing, about which more in a bit) rapidly destabilizing world. The American frontier of the late 18th century was similarly fraught, as the young country began both to deal with the mature, and often hostile nation-states of old Europe, and to push west, across 2,000 and more miles of unknown territory; the success of the American experiment was far from certain. Accordingly, the Framers bequeathed us the Bill of Rights, which although numbered as amendments are as much a part of the Constitution as the main document.

The Left—which is by turns both malevolent and cowardly, and therefore both tantalized by and fearful of firearms—has never made its hostility toward the Second Amendment a secret, but for decades it was able to keep it under wraps during the half-century or more between the effective closing of the borders to immigration in 1921 and the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, known as the Hart-Celler Act but today chiefly remembered as Ted Kennedy’s lasting gift to the American people.


That period saw the rise of urban ethnic gangsters (mostly Irish, Italians, and Jews, immigrants or children of immigrants, and thus “foreign” to largely Protestant America) and of the indigenous Midwestern bank robbers being chased around the prairies by the FBI, both groups long since tamed and romanticized.  When, in 1939, the Supreme Court ruled in United States v. Miller that a certain kind of sawed-off shotgun could be banned, and cited the Second Amendment’s subordinate “militia” clause as its justification, few kicked about it, because by then gangland had been largely cornered and the country was at peace.

The Miller decision was effectively overturned in 2008 by the Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which finally got around to adjudicating and establishing the  individual right aspect of the amendment. Heller, not Miller, was correct, especially in light of the fact that sawed-off shotguns with barrels under 18-20 inches were, in fact, military weapons and thus applicable to militia use. Further, the law under which Miller was decided was the National Firearms Act, which was itself a direct reaction to the then-shocking 1929 St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Al Capone’s Chicago. Today, that body count—six gangsters and an unlucky bystander—seems quaint.

In other words, after having tamed its restive criminal element, “gun control” was a luxury that America could afford.  And this was the world in which retired Justice John Paul Stevens, whose recent call to repeal the Second Amendment was greeted with huzzahs on the Left, grew up in. But that world is gone.


Which brings us to the cause of their second recent nervous breakdown: the Trump Administration’s decision to reinstate a question about citizenship on the 2020 census form. The movement against it is being led by former attorney general Eric Holder, the knave who was held in contempt of Congress over the Obama administration’s “Fast and Furious” gun-running program to Mexico, and is an unrepentant radical.

Ostensibly, Holder’s complaint is that by including the question in the constitutionally mandated census, some folks might be frightened off, the response rate might be lowered, and thus the count—which is used in part for apportionment of a state’s representatives in Congress—would be inaccurate.

“The addition of a citizenship question to the census questionnaire is a direct attack on our representative democracy,” said Holder, announcing a lawsuit. Woulda, coulda, whatever.

On the contrary, this question goes directly to the substance of our representative democracy by acknowledging the difference between citizens and non-citizens, a crucial distinction the Left is trying mightily to erase—and not just because the Democrats stand to benefit from the addition of millions of new dependent and culturally hostile voters.

No, it goes far deeper than that.

To remove citizenship from the equation is to abandon the notion of national borders, and thus the idea of America as a sovereign nation-state. Naturally, the Left is trying to accomplish this under one of its favorite false flags, “compassion,” sprinkled liberally with historical revisionism and social-justice animus. After all, who can be against “immigrants,” sainted ancestors to us all, except a bunch of heartless bigots who came by their birthright through force and violence?

Never mind that most of our immigrant forebears arrived here legally, were required to be sponsored or to quickly find employment, were shown not to be carrying infectious diseases, and judged unlikely to prove either an economic burden or a threat to public safety. The laws directed at gangland in the 1920s and ’30s expressly targeted foreign-born criminals such as Lucky Luciano (born Salvatore Lucania), who was deported to his native Italy, where he died. Also deported was New Orleans mafia boss Carlos Marcello, who had been born in French Tunisia to Sicilian parents, and was exiled to Guatemala in 1961—but re-entered the country illegally a few months later and died in Louisiana in 1993.

In other words, there are immigrants—folks who want to put aside the ways of the old country and become traditional Americans—and then there are “immigrants,” who view the United States as ripe for exploitation, criminal plundering, or Islamic colonization. And far too many of the current “immigrants” directly threat the lives, property, and livelihoods of legitimate American citizens. When MS-13 runs rampant on Long Island, we’re not in Dust Bowl Kansas anymore.

What the Left is really afraid of is that the census might be used to identify individuals or concentrations of illegals and thus alert the authorities to their locations. This is why the rogue state of California has declared itself a “sanctuary” (note the corruption of the Christian term) and is vigorously opposing the exercise of the federal government’s lawful authority within its state lines. Indeed, Xavier Becerra, the Golden State’s attorney general, has already filed suit against the move, even though California has no legal control over either immigration or the census.

So now you see what the Left is, at root, afraid of. Not simply guns or crackdowns on illegal immigration, but of something far more fundamental. They fear, and therefore hate, the Constitution of the United States.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/03/29/what-frightens-the-left-most-the-constitution/

White House reviewing plan to restrict immigrants' use of government programs

White House reviewing plan to restrict immigrants' use of government programs
By Tal Kopan, CNN


Washington (CNN)The White House is reviewing a proposal that could penalize immigrants who use certain government programs, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed Thursday.

The proposed rule change would substantially expand the type of benefits that could be considered as grounds to reject any immigrants' application to extend their stay in the US or become a permanent resident and eventually a citizen.
The move continues efforts by the Trump administration to overhaul the US immigration system and the changes could have the effect of substantially tipping the scales in favor of high-income immigrants -- all without requiring an act of Congress. The changes could amount to an effective income test of immigrants to the US, critics say.
The expansion would going forward include programs like children's health insurance, tax credits and some forms of Medicaid as black marks against immigrants seeking to change their status to stay.
By including benefits used by family members of the immigrants, the proposal could also apply to benefits being used by US citizens, who may be the spouse or child of the immigrant applying for status
Trump admin considers rule that could limit immigrants' ability to stay in US
Trump admin considers rule that could limit immigrants' ability to stay in US
DHS spokesman Tyler Houlton said the proposed rule had been sent to the White House Office of Management and Budget -- the final step of the approval process before it's released.
Houlton would not comment on the specifics of the proposal, but did said that DHS is "committed to enforcing existing immigration law ... and part of that is respecting taxpayer dollars."
CNN first reported on the changes as they were in development last month. The Washington Post obtained a more recent version of the proposal on Wednesday.
Why the change matters
US law authorizes authorities to reject immigrants if they are likely to become a "public charge" -- or dependent on government.
Since the 1990s, that has meant that immigrants shouldn't use so-called "cash benefits," but a large number of programs were exempt from consideration.
Legal immigrants to the US wonder: Amid DACA attention, what about us?
Legal immigrants to the US wonder: Amid DACA attention, what about us?
But the new rule would include programs such as some forms of Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program, food stamps, subsidized health care under Obamacare and the Earned Income Tax Credit, according to the latest draft obtained by the Post.
In one change from the earlier draft obtained by CNN, educational programs that benefit children, including Head Start, will not be included under the administration's plan. Programs like veteran's benefits that individuals earn would also be excluded.
The rule would not explicitly prohibit immigrants or their families from accepting the benefits. Rather, it authorizes the officers who evaluate their applications for things like green cards and residency visas to count the use of these programs against the immigrant, and gives them authority to deny the immigrants visas on these grounds -- even if the program was used by a family member.
The decision sets up a difficult scenario for immigrants who hope to stay in the US. If they accept any public benefits -- or their family members do -- they could potentially be denied future abilities to stay. That includes decisions about whether to use health insurance subsidies for them or their children, or tax credits they qualify for otherwise.
How Trump changed the rules to arrest more non-criminal immigrants
How Trump changed the rules to arrest more non-criminal immigrants
Immigrants are no more likely to qualify for these programs than the native US population, according to tables included in the documents, the Post reported. There is no substantial difference in the rate between the two groups -- in some cases foreign-born residents are slightly more likely to use a program, but in some cases the native-born population is, according to the tabulations.

https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/29/politics/immigrants-rejected-government-benefits/index.html

Here’s How John Bolton Should Handle Iran

Here’s How John Bolton Should Handle Iran

 

BY MICHAEL LEDEEN 

Photo by Salampix/Abaca/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images)

Dear John,

You’re going to preside over the imminent Iran policy debate, and I’m sure you’ll do it the way we used to do it in the Reagan White House: bring the president the fullest possible picture of the disagreements among the Cabinet secretaries, and then he decides. He’ll undoubtedly ask what you think, and I hope you tell him that the Iran deal is beside the point -- that we need a real policy to bring down the regime of the Islamic Republic.

Many smart people think the deal can be fixed, but we know based on past experience that this is highly unlikely. They are full of surprises.

The Iranians and their allies have a long history of successful deception when it comes to nuclear weapons. As the Washington Post said some years ago, if you want to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons program, you need regime change.

We should not expect to know what’s going on at the Iranian nuclear sites. Or at sites in Syria, for that matter.

As luck would have it, the Israelis have just confirmed that they bombed a nuclear site in Syria a decade ago. Dan Raviv and Yossi Melman have written an excellent account of how Israeli intelligence, which is as good as it gets on such matters, came by the information that confirmed their worst fears: The Israelis stumbled on to it.

It was not the result of their own brilliance, brilliant though they may be. You can take it from Tamir Pardo, who was involved in the project, and who was later the head of Mossad:

“For years, Syria was building a nuclear reactor under our noses, and we did not know about it,” Pardo says today. “It was not built on the dark side of the moon, but in a neighboring country we always thought we knew almost everything about.”

They had plenty of help in their ignorance. Allies -- yes, including the CIA -- didn’t know anything.

Indeed, until Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi panicked when we invaded Iraq and revealed that he had a nuclear weapons project of his own, the Israelis didn’t know about that, either:

Based on foreign reports that have not been confirmed by Israel, Mossad operatives got lucky in March 2007. They broke into an accommodation where Othman (the head of the Syrian nuclear program, M.L.) had been staying in Europe and found a gold mine: a digital device belonging to Othman packed with information. All its data was collected and sent to Israeli intelligence laboratories.

However surprising this may seem in retrospect, nobody believed initially that vital information had been obtained, and so deciphering the material was not deemed an urgent priority. The data actually sat around for a few days until it was deciphered. “My intelligence officer entered my room,” recalls Ben-Barak (a Mossad operations officer M.L.) “and showed me the photos taken from the device.” He pauses and smiles. “Sometimes intelligence operations need luck.”

So the Israelis -- as good as it gets at this sort of thing -- needed luck to confirm the Syrian/North Korean/Iranian project. Just think of how much luck we might need to confirm what the Iranians are up to now.

If you think it through, and I know you have, I think you must conclude that the only way to fulfill the promise made by a series of American presidents -- that Iran will not be permitted to become a nuclear power -- is to focus on the regime, rather than fixing or nixing the Deal.

We can’t reasonably expect to know what they are actually doing in their secret places. We can’t expect the technologically advanced Western countries to effectively enforce sanctions (just look at the relentless flow of murderous material and know-how from the likes of Germany). We can’t starve the Iranian regime out of their dream of obliterating Israel, and us. When they say “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” that is precisely what they intend to do.

If millions of Iranians go hungry, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei could care less.

Our winning strategy is to subvert the regime and to support its internal enemies. It’s what we did to the Soviet Empire -- a far more formidable enemy than the Islamic Republic. You can draw on the skills and wisdom of those who worked with President Reagan to relegate comrade Gorbachev to the ranks of the world’s overpaid lecturers. Back then, we were surprised by the speed with which the Empire imploded. I am confident a similar outcome can be accomplished in Iran.

Give it a try.

https://pjmedia.com/michaelledeen/heres-john-bolton-handle-iran/

Why AG Sessions declined to appoint a special counsel

By Thomas Lifson

A lot of conservatives are upset that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has declined for now to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate claims of FBI abuses in surveilling the Trump campaign, and in declining to investigate the Uranium One deal, followed by well over a hundred million dollars of donations to Clinton family-controlled charities by parties benefitting from approval of that sale.  CNN first broke the story, obtaining a four-page letter that Sessions sent to Senator Grassley, and Representatives Goodlatte and Gowdy, who had requested a special counsel.
Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch: (Full disclosure: I am an enthusiastic donor)

Major fail from DOJ! AG Sessions writes he tasked a lawyer to investigate whether to investigate the Clinton/Obama abuses!  No wonder @RealDonaldTrump is frustrated.  https://t.co/p7N2YdCfZP

Mark Meadows, Chairman of the Freedom Caucus, was no less upset:

But, for the moment, at least, I see good reason for Sessions to take this position. In the letter, Sessions noted that he has asked the DOJ’s Inspector General Horowitz to investigate these matters, and, in a new disclosure, tasked US Attorney John W. Huber to investigate. Huber serves in Utah, far from the beltway, and was first appointed US Attorney by President Obama, and reappointed by Trump.
First of all, while the IG cannot convene a grand jury and subpoena witnesses outside the DOJ’s employees, Huber can. And the IG can and does make criminal referrals. There is tremendous inside expertise on the DOJ resident in the IG’s organization, meaning that there is no start-up delay and no learning curve in getting to work on abuses. So, with the IG digging up information, and referring it to Huber, further steps, including subpoenas to former DOJ and FBI employees, such as Andrew McCabe and James Comey, can be taken before a grand jury in Utah. Any indictments issued by that grand jury presumably could be tried before a federal jury in Utah, whereas a special counsel would most likely work with courts in the District of Columbia, Virginia, or Maryland, beltway strongholds. Which jury pool would you prefer? The District of Columbia or Utah?
Even more importantly, there is reason to believe that a lot of work already is underway by Huber and his staff. Scott Bixby in The Daily Beast:

 Asked when exactly Huber had begun evaluating issues raised by the committees addressed in the letter, Department of Justice spokesperson Sarah Isgur Flores told The Daily Beast only that Huber started “in advance of the Nov. 13th letter.” In that November letter, sent by Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd to the House Judiciary Committee, congressional leaders were told that “senior prosecutors” reporting directly to Sessions “will make recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened.”

Speaking this morning on Fox & Friends, Sara Carter said that IG has already made criminal referrals on FISA abuses, according to her DOJ sources. These presumably would have been referred to Huber.
In other words, knowledgeable and experienced IG investigators are working with an experienced and unimpeachable (Obama-appointed) US Attorney to go after suspected abuses. Appointing a special counsel would necessitate starting all over again, beginning with recruiting staff, and then taking a lot of time to familiarize themselves with the evidence developed to date, and learning about the procedures and rules of the FBI and DOJ.
How many extra months would be required? How much expertise would be lost?
Of course, if worries about the inability of the DOJ to investigate itself prove valid, a special counsel always can be appointed. But let’s wait a little and see what develops out of Salt Lake City.  Grand jury testimony is secret, but alert eyes might spot people like Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, and others entering the Scott M. Matheson Federal Courthouse in Salt Lake City one of these days.

Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2018/03/why_ag_sessions_declined_to_appoint_a_special_counsel.html#ixzz5BN4fHBma
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Trump Census Citizenship Question Helps Black Americans

Trump Census Citizenship Question Helps Black Americans

 

BY J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS 

In this March 5, 2018, photo, a boy looks through the first section of a newly-constructed structure along the border separating Mexicali, Mexico, right, and Calexico, Calif. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull)

After the Commerce Department decided to ask if people filling out the census are citizens, the crazed racial Left mobilized and called the change the return of Jim Crow. The change to the Census was a plot against minorities.

To them, Jim Crow keeps returning again and again. His return has more sequels than Rocky.

Jim Crow first came back as Voter ID. Jim Crow returned as keeping voter rolls clean. Then Jim Crow rode into town, again, when Kansas sought to ensure that only citizens are registering to vote.

Jim Crow also appeared when the federal Election Assistance Commission allowed Alabama and Georgia to change a federal voter registration form to ensure that only citizens were registering to vote. Jim Crow is also on the loose in Indiana, because that state compares Indiana voter rolls with other states via the interstate cross check program, to make sure people aren’t registered twice.

Jim Crow is on the loose everywhere, it seems. Anytime honest elections are promoted, Jim Crow appears.

I try not to give the crazed Left public relations advice, but it seems that crying wolf over and over isn’t the best strategy.

When it comes to the outrage about the Trump administration asking for citizenship information in the 2020 Census, the Jim Crow strategy is especially absurd.

Why? Because not having citizenship data on the Census most dramatically harms African-Americans.

Let’s borrow the absurd rhetoric of the crazed Left for a moment: the status quo -- not asking for citizenship data in the Census -- is Jim Crow. Jim Crow hurts black political power, and so does a lack of solid citizenship data in the decennial census.

Here's how.

In many urban areas, blacks compete with Hispanics for local office, particularly in Democratic Party primaries. Miami, Houston, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York City, and Chicago are places where local Democratic Party politics have deep African-American and Hispanic constituencies. In November, they are rock-solid Democrat voters to defeat Republicans. But in primaries, they often compete.

More importantly, the two groups also compete in line-drawing exercises, where districts are created for school board, county council, statehouse, and Congress. Racial line-drawing -- an exercise compelled by the Voting Rights Act whether you like it or not -- is reality. Racial line-drawing relies on census data, and each district must have essentially equal population under existing law.

This line drawing counts non-citizen Hispanics to generate Hispanic-majority districts with the minimum total population (citizen and non-citizen combined). But blacks have to ride in the back of the redistricting bus, because they are almost all citizens.

That’s where Trump’s Census change could revolutionize the dynamics of line-drawing in urban communities where blacks and Hispanics have concentrated populations.

Blacks have been losing political power in immigrant-heavy urban cores because non-citizens are not identified by the Census and are counted for redistricting.

And that’s what the critics of Trump’s census change are really terrified of.

Los Angeles provides a particularly stark example. For over a decade, African-American leaders in Los Angeles have been complaining to the Justice Department that blacks have fewer city council seats than they should. Instead, the seats are going to Hispanics because the districts are being drawn to benefit Hispanics instead of blacks.

But how could this happen, you ask? The lines are being drawn that way because the Census does not seek accurate citizenship data in the decennial census, and Los Angeles doesn’t use citizenship population to draw districts of equal citizen population.

Blacks in Los Angeles County are nearly all American citizens. The same is not true for the Los Angeles Hispanic population. Yet the exercise in line-drawing of county council seats treats non-citizens and citizens exactly alike.

These trend lines go back decades, and using census data to draw lines that did not take into account citizenship provided a mighty tailwind for Hispanic politicians to march through and unseat black leadership.

The Justice Department Voting Section has routinely received complaints from black civic leaders in Los Angeles that the DOJ should take action to create an additional African-American seat on council. That’s harder to do with the foggy Census citizenship data now available. As a result non-citizens are given the same political clout in line-drawing as citizens are given.

The Trump administration’s decision to ask for citizenship data can help stop a subtle but effective form of vote dilution in African-American communities. Savvy administration officials might consider defending the 2020 Census on these terms.

Los Angeles isn’t the only city where black citizens are losing political clout because of waves on non-citizen immigration -- waves that would be automatically counted for allocating political seats after 2020 if the Trump administration did not act to create a more accurate Census.

Redistricting games are always played on the margins. A line moved a few blocks, a concentrated cluster of one race tossed overboard into a district with a majority of the other race, or a single percentage point buoyed by non-citizens can make all the difference between victory and defeat. The Justice Department didn’t help decades ago when it sued to create more Hispanic districts in Los Angeles -- no doubt relying on foggy citizenship data because the citizenship question didn’t exist in the decennial census.

No matter how you slice it, failing to account for non-citizens in drawing district lines hastened the withering away of black political power in Los Angeles.

While it is true that “waves” of Latino immigrants changed the political structure of the city, it happened sooner and at a faster pace than it would have if only citizens were counted for redistricting.

When the Census failed to seek citizenship data, the resulting redistricting always provided non-citizen-heavy places a political subsidy. The earliest and most obvious victims are usually blacks in urban areas.

Had the GOP dreamed up a scheme to dilute black political power by terminating a hypothetical Census citizenship question, we would have heard endlessly about Jim Crow. For a change, the Jim Crow charge would have been accurate.

https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/trump-census-citizenship-question-helps-black-americans/

 Shooting survivors Tyra Hemans (center, L) and Emma Gonzalez (3rd from R), from Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, lead the cheers along with 11-year-old Naomi Wadler of Alexandria, Virginia (2nd R) at the conclusion of the "March for Our Lives" event demanding gun control after recent school shootings at a rally in Washington, U.S., March 24, 2018. REUTERS/Aaron P. Bernstein∧

Marjory Stoneman Douglas Teacher Says Many Students Feel They Are Misrepresented By Famous Classmates

KERRY PICKET

Reporter

America knows Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students through mainly a handful of pro-gun control activist students, but according to a faculty member of the school where the deadly shooting took place, many other students say the most visible activists do not represent them.

“I’ve had some students approach me privately to talk to me about it, but I should note that those student activists none of them were ever in any danger during this whole thing…none of them except for the one girl Samantha Fuentes,” the faculty member said, on the condition of anonymity, during an interview with NRATV that aired Friday on Dana Loesch’s “Relentless” program.

The Stoneman Douglas staffer continued, “But I have students in my class that were shot, but you don’t see them. They have the most personal experience of anyone except for that one girl.”

Stoneman Douglas students David Hogg, Emma Gonzales, and Cameron Kasky have been notable media representatives of their school and spoke at the “March for Our Lives” protest in Washington D.C. last Saturday, advocating for gun control policies.

The three student activists have also lashed out at the National Rifle Association, NRA Spokeswoman Dana Loesch, Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott, and any lawmaker who accepted money from the NRA.

Hogg is now leading a boycott against advertisers of conservative radio show host Laura Ingraham after Ingraham poked fun at him on Twitter over colleges where he had applied but had not been accepted.

Students privately revealed to the staffer their thoughts when they see one of their classmates on TV or hear them on radio and many of these unknown students do not support what Gonzalez, Hogg, and Kasky are saying in the public sphere, according to the faculty member.

“There have been a lot of my students that have spoken to me about it privately, and they’ve told me word for word as well as paraphrasing that these kids don’t speak for all students.”

The faculty member noted the constant spotlight on the school is not helping matters much since alleged gunman Nicolas Cruz shot and killed 17 staff and teens on February 14.

“Every single day since we’ve come back to school, I have kids out in the hall crying because of the emotional toll that it’s taken, and we haven’t started to heal yet, because we’re in the news every single day, and every single day there are helicopters circling overhead.”

The staffer added,  “It’s another thing going on like the kids with weapons that were found on school property and the shooter’s brother on school property and it’s just we can’t get away from it.”

Kerry Picket is a correspondent for NRATV and host on SiriusXM Patriot 125

http://dailycaller.com/2018/03/30/marjory-stoneman-douglas-staffer-says-many-students-feel-they-are-being-misrepresented-by-famous-classmates/

FACEBOOK EYES THE MIDTERMS

BY JOHN HINDERAKER IN MEDIA BIAS

Facebook employees conducted a press conference yesterday to “review our ongoing election efforts.” Facebook has happily (as it seems to me) bought into the dubious narrative that Russian agents significantly influenced the 2016 presidential election by propagating “fake news” on its platform. Facebook’s cure, in my view, promises to be much worse than the disease.

By now, everyone knows the story: during the 2016 US election, foreign actors tried to undermine the integrity of the electoral process. Their attack included taking advantage of open online platforms — such as Facebook — to divide Americans, and to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt.
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There are four main election security areas that we are working on. They are:

First, combating foreign interference,

Second, removing fake accounts,

Third, increasing ads transparency, and

Fourth, reducing the spread of false news.

There are an enormous number of fake accounts on Facebook. I have several thousand Facebook “friends,” and I find that between one-third and one-half of the friend requests I receive are obviously fakes, generally featuring comely young women who do not appear to be American citizens. I can’t believe that this profusion of fictitious accounts comes as news to Facebook.

The key point here, of course, is the company’s determination to “reduce the spread of false news.” In my opinion, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC etc. spread false “news” every day, but I don’t think that is what Facebook has in mind.

The term “fake news” is used to describe a lot of different types of activity that we would like to prevent. When we study these issues, we have to first define what is actually “fake.” The most common issues are:

Fake identities– this is when an actor conceals their identity or takes on the identity of another group or individual;

Fake audiences– so this is using tricks to artificially expand the audience or the perception of support for a particular message;

False facts – the assertion of false information; and

False narratives– which are intentionally divisive headlines and language that exploit disagreements and sow conflict. This is the most difficult area for us, as different news outlets and consumers can have completely different on what an appropriate narrative is even if they agree on the facts.

I think it remarkable that Facebook intends to take on “false narratives,” i.e., “intentionally divisive headlines and language.” Is it surprising that people disagree about “what an appropriate narrative is”? How Facebook intends to referee competing narratives, I can’t imagine. Well, no, actually I can.

How about “false facts”? Here, Facebook must rely on fact-checkers:

Today, I want to talk about one part of our strategy: our partnership with third-party fact-checking organizations. We’re seeing progress in our ability to limit the spread of articles rated false by fact-checkers, and we’re scaling our efforts.

Here’s how it works:

* We use signals, including feedback from people on Facebook, to predict potentially false stories for fact-checkers to review.

* When fact-checkers rate a story as false, we significantly reduce its distribution in News Feed — dropping future views on average by more than 80%.

* We notify people who’ve shared the story in the past and warn people who try to share it going forward.

* For those who still come across the story in their News Feed, we show more information from fact-checkers in a Related Articles unit.

* We use the information from fact-checkers to train our machine learning model, so that we can catch more potentially false news stories and do so faster.

So it all comes down to, who are the fact-checkers? A Facebook employee stated at the press conference that approved fact checkers will be those who have signed on to Poynter’s international fact checking network principles. You can see the list of signatories at the link; the only one that I recognize as more or less conservative is the Weekly Standard. Facebook has already said that it will use Politifact and Snopes, both left-leaning, as fact checkers. At the press conference, it got even worse:

In the US, we recently announced a partnership with The Associated Press to use their reporters in all 50 states to identify and debunk false and misleading stories related to the federal, state and local US midterm elections.

The Associated Press is the number one source of left-wing bias in the American press. Its “fact checks” are directed almost exclusively against President Trump and his administration, rarely against Democrats. I have written about them a number of times. In my judgment, the AP’s anti-Trump “fact checks” are wrong as often as they are right. Most often, they just assert Democratic Party talking points. If the AP is to be Facebook’s principal fact-checker for the midterm elections, Facebook may as well outsource the function to the Democratic National Committee.

The Left coined the phrase “fake news,” but President Trump co-opted it and made it his own. Nevertheless, Facebook appears poised to march doggedly on under the “fake news” banner, using it to repress conservative voices on its platform.

http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2018/03/facebook-eyes-the-midterms.php