“Maybe Hate Is What We Need”: Part 3 of the Complete (and growing) Timeline of Trump Hatred.

A History of Donald Trump’s racism. There is so much in 2019, that Part 3 covers that.

3 January 2019: Trump admin wants to send more troops to border to string concertina wire:⁠

The Department of Homeland Security has requested more U.S. troops to be deployed at the border to add 160 miles of concertina wire on top of existing border fencing, according to three U.S. officials.

If approved by Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, the addition of troops to enhance the fencing could extend the military’s current deployment at the border until the end of September, based on the rate of construction, according to two officials. The military mission, which began two months ago, was set to end on Jan. 31.

7 January 2019: Only six immigrants in terrorism database stopped by CBP at southern border in first half of 2018:⁠

U.S. Customs and Border Protection encountered only six immigrants at ports of entry on the U.S-Mexico border in the first half of fiscal year 2018 whose names were on a federal government list of known or suspected terrorists, according to CBP data provided to Congress in May 2018 and obtained by NBC News.

The low number contradicts statements by Trump administration officials, including White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, who said Friday that CBP stopped nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists from crossing the southern border in fiscal year 2018.

Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen told reporters on Monday the exact number, which NBC News is first to report, was classified but that she was working on making it public. The data was the latest set on this topic provided to Congress. It is possible that the data was updated since that time, but not provided to Congress.

10 January 2019: Republican Steve King wonders how “White Supremacist” and “White Nationalist” became offensive:

Controversial Representative Steve King, the Republican from Iowa, wondered in an interview published on Thursday how language like “white nationalist” and “white supremacist” became offensive.

King has long been labeled by his critics as a racist — which he denied — and in an interview with The New York Times he said race wasn’t what mattered to him but rather the culture carried to “United States by whites from Europe.”

“White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?” King told the Times. “Why did I sit in classes teaching me about the merits of our history and our civilization?”

14 January 2019: House Republican leaders move to strip Rep. Steve King of his committee assignments over comments about white nationalism:⁠

A panel of Republican leaders voted unanimously Monday to keep veteran Iowa lawmaker Steve King off House committees, a firm rebuke to an influential opponent of illegal immigration who sparked outrage last week after openly questioning whether the term “white supremacist” was offensive.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said the decision by the Republican Steering Committee, which seats lawmakers on House committees, followed his own recommendation and was meant to send a message about the GOP at large.

“That is not the party of Lincoln,” he said of King’s comments. “It is definitely not American. All people are created equal in America, and we want to take a very strong stance about that.”

15 January 2019: Judge strikes down Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to 2020 Census:⁠

A federal district judge Tuesday struck down the Trump administration’s plan to add a question on citizenship to the 2020 Census, ruling that Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross exceeded his authority under federal law.

The much-awaited decision by Judge Jesse Furman is likely to wind up at the Supreme Court, which next month is scheduled to consider a portion of the case — whether Ross can be required to give a deposition about the reasons for his decision. But Furman’s ruling temporarily makes that question moot.

Ross announced the addition of the citizenship question last March, but it has been tied up in court. The government has not asked about individuals’ citizenship on the Census since 1950.

Opponents, including California, New York, the American Civil Liberties Union and immigration rights groups, contend fears of deportation among undocumented immigrants will cause them to be undercounted.

In his 277-page ruling, Judge Furman discounted Ross’s contention that he made his decision based on the Justice Department’s request. Instead, Furman said, Ross opted for the citizenship question for other reasons and then tried to conceal them.

“The court can — and, in light of all the evidence in the record, does — infer from the various ways in which Secretary Ross and his aides acted like people with something to hide that they did have something to hide,” Furman said.

17 January 2019: Trump Supporter arrested for threatening Rep. Maxine Waters and Former President Obama:⁠

Stephen Taubert of Syracuse, New York, was arrested by the U.S. Capitol Police for threatening to kill Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., and for threatening to “hang” former President Barack Obama. Taubert used “overtly bigoted, hateful language” in his threats, according to federal prosecutors. On July 20, 2018, Taubert called the congresswoman’s Los Angeles office to say he would find her at public events and kill her and her entire staff. In a letter to the judge just days before Taubert’s trial began, his defense attorney, Courtenay McKeon, noted: “During that time period, Congresswoman Waters was embroiled in a public feud with the Trump administration. … On June 25, 2018, in response to Congresswoman Waters’ public statements, President Trump tweeted: ‘Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has … just called for harm to supporters … of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!’” As McKeon insisted to the judge: “This context is relevant to the case.” A federal jury ultimately convicted Taubert on three federal charges, including retaliating against a federal official and making a threat over state lines. He was sentenced to nearly four years in prison.

18 January 2019: King Tries To Fundraise Over Backlash To White Supremacist Remarks:⁠

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) is attempting to fundraise off of the controversy that’s swelled in recent days over his remarks about white supremacy to the New York Times earlier this month, the Des Moines Register reported.

In a campaign email to supporters, King criticized the “unhinged left” and Republican “NeverTrumpers” for the backlash to his remarks, despite condemnation and calls for his resignation from people in his party who are friendly with Trump.

“The unhinged left has teamed up with Republican ‘NeverTrumpers’ and is pulling out all the stops to destroy me,” King reportedly wrote, blaming the “rabid leftist media” for attacking him over his support of Trump and his stance on immigration.

After King questioned why the terms white supremacist and white nationalist were considered offensive, Republicans and Democrats denounced his remarks. Republican leadership moved to strip King of all his committee assignments and the House voted in favor of a disapproval resolution over the matter.

19 January 2019: Trump offers 3-year extension of protection for ‘dreamers’ in exchange for $5.7 billion for wall; Democrats call it a ‘non-starter’:⁠

President Trump on Saturday offered Democrats three years of deportation protections for some immigrants in exchange for $5.7 billion in border wall funding, a proposal immediately rejected by Democrats and derided by conservatives as amnesty.

Aiming to end the 29-day partial government shutdown, Trump outlined his plan in a White House address in which he sought to revive negotiations with Democrats, who responded that they would not engage in immigration talks until he reopened the government.

Trump proposed offering a reprieve on his attempts to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program and temporary protected status (TPS) for immigrants from some Latin American and African nations, in exchange for building hundreds of miles of barriers on the southern U.S. border and hiring thousands of new law enforcement agents to be deployed there.

“This is a common-sense compromise both parties should embrace,” Trump said. He added: “The radical left can never control our borders. I will never let it happen.”

But the initial reaction to the offer from Democrats and conservative border hawks was hostile, raising doubts that it would be enough to break an impasse that has resulted in 800,000 federal workers being furloughed or forced to work without pay and numerous government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, operating at minimal staffing levels.

The shutdown has become the longest in U.S. government history.

22 January 2019: Trump Supporter harasses Iraqi Family in Florida:⁠

David Boileau of Holiday, Florida, was arrested by the Pasco County Sheriff’s Office for allegedly burglarizing an Iraqi family’s home and “going through” their mailbox, according to a police report. After officers arrived at the home, Boileau “made several statements of his dislike for people of Middle Eastern descent,” the report said. “He also stated if he doesn’t get rid of them, Trump will handle it.”

The police report noted that a day before, Boileau threw screws at a vehicle outside the family’s house. On that day, Boileau allegedly told police, “We’ll get rid of them one way or another.” Boileau, 58, has since pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of trespassing, and he was sentenced to 90 days in jail.

5 February 2019: Former KKK Leader David Duke endorses Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 Presidential Campaign:⁠

White supremacist and former GOP Louisiana state senator David Duke appeared to endorse Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s 2020 campaign for president as other Democrats are being blasted by pro-Israel lobbyists and publications.

Duke, who was head of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1970s, posted a set of tweets endorsing Gabbard’s 2020 presidential run and changed the background of his Twitter account Monday, which boasts more than 50,000 followers. A “Tulsi Gabbard for President” banner features the banner tagline, “Finally a candidate who will actually put America First rather than Israel First!”

Duke also endorsed Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election, although the then-Republican candidate Trump denied any knowledge of the former KKK Grand Wizard in a March 2016 interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Duke again lauded Trump’s presidency following the deadly Charlottesville, Virginia rally in which Trump claimed there were decent people on “both sides.”

Gabbard has received fairly supportive coverage from pro-Israel and Jewish media publications despite her mild criticism of Israel during last May’s border crisis in Gaza. She was highly touted by pro-Israel lobbyists and U.S. conservatives after criticizing former President Barack Obama for refusing to use the phrase “radical Islamic terror” during his tenure.

“Tulsi Gabbard is currently the only Presidential candidate who doesn’t want to send White children off to die for Israel,” Duke tweeted Monday evening in a now-pinned post showing a picture of Gabbard meeting with a U.S. military member and his child in a hangar. However, Gabbard is not mentioned once in The New York Times article Duke shared about the president calling to keep U.S. troops in Iraq to “watch Iran.”

7 February 2019: Metropolitan Republican Club Leader Says He Advised Nazi-Friendly German Party:⁠

The new president of New York’s Metropolitan Republican Club boasted to members about advising a far-right group in Germany that endorses shooting migrants and forgetting the Holocaust, and flirts with Nazis.

Ian Walsh Reilly was elected last Wednesday to lead the club, which has counted Theodore Roosevelt, Nelson Rockefeller, and Michael Bloomberg as members. Unlike those moderate Republicans, Reilly is a full-throated supporter of the far-right. Serving previously as the club’s chairman, he’s believed to have invited Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes to speak to the club in October, which led to a violent melee between Proud Boys and antifascists outside.

Reilly told prospective voters during the club’s elections last week that his support for the far-right wasn’t limited to the United States.

“Last year I founded a consultancy with a friend who is also active in GOP politics. The Yorkville Group is what we called it,” Reilly said. “It has provided services, not just to statewide candidates like [New York candidate] Jonathan Trichter, but to international political parties like Alternative fur Deutschland.”

15 February 2019: Christopher Paul Hasson arrested:⁠

The FBI in Maryland arrested a Marine veteran and U.S. Coast Guard lieutenant, Christopher Paul Hasson, who they said was stockpiling weapons and “espoused” racist and anti-immigrant views for years as he sought to “murder innocent civilians on a scale rarely seen in this country.” In court documents, prosecutors said the 49-year-old “domestic terrorist” compiled a “hit list” of prominent Democrats. Two months later, while seeking Hasson’s release from jail before trial, his public defender, Elizabeth Oyer, told a federal judge: “This looks like the sort of list that our commander-in-chief might have compiled while watching Fox News in the morning. … Is it legitimately frustrating that offensive language and ideology has now become part of our national vocabulary? Yes, it is very frustrating. But … it is hard to differentiate it from the random musings of someone like Donald Trump who uses similar epithets in his everyday language and tweets.”

Hasson faces weapons-related charges and was being detained as he awaits trial. He has pleaded not guilty.

25 February 2019: House Democrats press the U.S. military about how it is screening for white nationalism and other extremism in the ranks:⁠

A series of incidents in which U.S. troops have been arrested in cases involving white nationalism is of “significant concern, particularly given their combat and weapons training,” several House Democrats said in a letter on Monday, pressing the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security for information about how they screen for recruits.

Maryland Reps. Elijah Cummings, Anthony Brown and Jamie Raskin and California Rep. Jackie Speier wrote that they applaud the actions taken by federal agencies in the arrest this month of Coast Guard Lt. Christopher P. Hasson, a self-proclaimed white nationalist who authorities say had a list of journalists and politicians that he planned to kill.

But citing that case and others in 2017, the lawmakers asked acting Pentagon chief Patrick Shanahan and Department of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen, who oversees the Coast Guard, how Hasson and others who demonstrated extremist views were able to circumvent the military’s checks.

“Our hope is that these incidents are isolated events and are not indicative of a larger, systemic issue within the United States Armed Services,” the lawmakers wrote. “Beyond the extremes of domestic terrorism, we are additionally concerned with low level racism and other identity-based harassment that disrupts unit cohesion, impacts readiness, and degrades the ability of our servicemembers to protect our nation. Servicemembers who experience or witness racist or hateful behavior must be able to report such behavior without fear of repercussions.”

26 February 2019: Facebook, Instagram bans far-right anti-Muslim UK activist Tommy Robinson:⁠

Far-right U.K. activist Tommy Robinson has been banned by Facebook and Instagram for violating the platforms’ community standards.

Facebook said in a statement Tuesday that it removed Robinson’s official profiles on the networks over anti-Muslim content that the company said “has repeatedly broken” anti-hate speech standards.

“Tommy Robinson’s Facebook Page has repeatedly broken these standards, posting material that uses dehumanizing language and calls for violence targeted at Muslims,” Facebook said. “He has also behaved in ways that violate our policies around organized hate.

“This is not a decision we take lightly, but individuals and organizations that attack others on the basis of who they are have no place on Facebook or Instagram.”

The 35-year-old Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, founded the anti-Muslim “English Defense League,” a group that has organized violent protests against Muslims in the U.K. for years.

He previously spent 13 months in jail for violating the country’s laws limiting publicity of criminal trials after live-streaming video outside of a courthouse. It was reported last July that President Trump’s ambassador for international religious freedom pressured the U.K. on Robinson’s treatment while in jail. The State Department pushed back on the report, however, saying the “characterizations” of the meeting were “completely false.”

In banning Robinson, Facebook also pointed to his offline activity.

“When ideas and opinions cross the line and amount to hate speech that may create an environment of intimidation and exclusion for certain groups in society — in some cases with potentially dangerous offline implications — we take action,” the statement read.

Robinson still has a profile on YouTube, though the website suspended advertising on his channel last month. He was banned from Twitter and PayPal last year.

28 February 2018: After denying racism, videos resurface of Rep. Mark Meadows vowing to send Obama “home to Kenya”:⁠

After Rep. Mark Meadows defended himself against allegations of racism during a House committee meeting Wednesday, critics resurfaced two 2012 videos of the North Carolina Republican in which he vowed to send then-President Barack Obama “home to Kenya.”

The videos were shared by liberal commentators in response to an exchange between Meadows and Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., during a hearing featuring President Donald Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen. Meadows invited Lynne Patton — a longtime Trump associate and current Housing and Urban Development official — to the hearing and referred to her while disputing Cohen’s allegation that the president is a racist.

“Just because someone has a person of color, a black person working for them, does not mean they aren’t racist,” Tlaib said. She added that the use of Patton as a political “prop” was “racism in itself.”

Meadows angrily denied the implication of racism and asked for Tlaib’s comment’s to be “stricken from the record.”

“There’s nothing more personal to me than my relationship — my nieces and nephews are people of color. Not many people know that,” Meadows said. He also denied bringing Patton to the hearing as a human “prop” and said, “It’s racist to suggest that I asked her to come in here for that reason.”

4 March 2019: Nazi salutes and a swastika made of red cups: Newport Beach students condemned for ‘abhorrent anti-Semitic activity’:⁠

Gathered around a table covered in dozens of red plastic cups, a group of young people grins widely, posing for a photo. Their arms are extended out in what appears to be a Nazi salute. In front of them, the cups have been arranged into the shape of a swastika.

School officials in Newport Beach, Calif., announced Sunday that they are working with law enforcement to investigate several photos that were reportedly taken at a party over the weekend attended by high school students from the area, according to the Los Angeles Times. The images surfaced early Sunday and have since sparked widespread condemnation from school administrators, elected officials and community organizations over the display of anti-Semitic symbolism — just the latest in a series of similar incidents at schools and colleges around the country this year.

“We have a concern both for the physical health of students who are underage drinking as well as the mental health of our students or their friends that thought this was an okay thing to do,” Newport-Mesa Unified School District President Charlene Metoyer told CBS Los Angeles. The Southern California school district covers more than 58 square miles and includes the cities of Newport Beach, Costa Mesa and Corona del Mar.

In other pictures that were circulated on social media, people could be seen toasting over the makeshift swastika as text superimposed over the image read, “ultimate rage.” Another caption on a picture of the cups described the scene as a “German rage cage.”

“More should’ve been done to make sure the students recognize the severity of the symbols they were using,” Metoyer said. “It is not something funny. It’s a very, very serious situation.”

The school district could not be reached for comment early Monday. The Times and the Orange County Register reported that some of the teens were believed to be affiliated with Newport Harbor High School, a public school in the district that serves 2,400 students.

6 March 2019: Milo Yiannopoulos has officially been banned from Australia after a cancelled tour and a string of controversies:⁠

Right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos has officially been banned from Australia, following the sudden cancellation of his November tour in the country.

According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian government rejected the former Breitbart editor’s visa application and barred him from entering the country on the basis of his character.

A letter sent to Yiannopoulos from Australian immigration officials prior to Wednesday’s decision reportedly noted that they have a right to prevent someone from entering the country who could potentially “incite discord in the Australian community or in a segment of that community.”

6 March 2019: U.S. officials made list of reporters, lawyers, activists to question at border:⁠

Customs and Border Protection has compiled a list of 59 mostly American reporters, attorneys and activists for border agents to stop for questioning when crossing the U.S-Mexican border at San Diego-area checkpoints, and agents have questioned or arrested at least 21 of them, according to documents obtained by NBC station KNSD-TV and interviews with people on the list.

Several people on the list confirmed to NBC News that they had been pulled aside at the border after the date the list was compiled and were told they were being questioned as part of a “national security investigation.”

CBP told NBC News the names on the list are people who were present during violence that broke out at the border with Tijuana in November and they were being questioned so that the agency could learn more about what started it.

The list, dated Jan. 9, 2019, is titled “San Diego Sector Foreign Operations Branch: Migrant Caravan FY-2019 Suspected Organizers, Coordinators, Instigators, and Media” and includes pictures of the 59 individuals who are to be stopped. The people on the list were to be pulled aside by Customs and Border Protection agents for questioning when they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border to meet with or aid migrants from the Honduran caravan waiting on the Mexican side of the border.

6 March 2019: 471 parents were deported from US without their children during family separations:⁠

The Trump administration identified 471 parents who were removed from the United States without their children, according to the latest court filing in an ongoing lawsuit.

At least some of those parents were deported “without being given the opportunity to elect or waive reunification” in accordance with a court order in June 2018 that required the government to better document waivers.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman says prior to instituting the new waiver procedure ordered last June, separated parents were routinely asked by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and their home consulates if they wished to be reunited with their children before being removed to their home countries.

The revelation came in a filing in the family separation lawsuit Ms. L et al. vs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement et al. The administration has previously acknowledged that parents were removed without their children, but the latest report provides an updated count — which had been requested by the American Civil Liberties Union to serve as a baseline to better track reunifications.

7 March 2019: Guidelines ask agents to target Spanish speakers at border:⁠

Border agents have been told to explicitly target Spanish speakers and migrants from Latin America in carrying out a Trump administration program requiring asylum seekers wait in Mexico, according to memos obtained by The Associated Press that reveal some inner workings of a top government priority to address the burgeoning number of Central Americans arriving in the country.

The Trump administration launched the program in late January in what marks a potentially seismic shift on how the U.S. handles the cases of immigrants seeking asylum and fleeing persecution in their homeland. The program initially applied only to those who turned themselves in at official border crossings, but a memo from a division chief of the Border Patrol’s San Diego sector says it expanded Friday to include people who cross the border illegally.

The guidance includes instruction about various groups of immigrants who are not to be sent back to Mexico and instead go through the traditional asylum process in the U.S. immigration court system. They include pregnant women, LGBT migrants and people suffering medical issues. Authorities said previously that Mexican asylum seekers are excluded, as are children traveling alone.

U.S. officials must check if the asylum seeker has any felony convictions and notify Mexico at least 12 hours before they are returned. Those who cross illegally must have come as single adults, though the administration is in talks with the Mexican government to include families.

The program is being implemented as border arrests soared in February to a 12-year-high and more than half of those stopped arrived as families, many of them asylum seekers who generally turn themselves in instead of trying to elude capture. Guatemala and Honduras have replaced Mexico as the top countries, a remarkable shift from only a few years ago.

13 March 2019: Jacob Wohl Faked Death Threats Against Himself:⁠

Right-wing personality Jacob Wohl appears to have faked death threats against himself and submitted them to police as evidence that he was facing “terroristic threats,” according to newly released documents.

Wohl and fellow provocateur Laura Loomer went to Minneapolis last month to “investigate” whether their quest to prove that Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) married her own brother — a charge based on flimsy blog comments that has been disproven.

Wohl’s videos to his fans were premised on the idea that Minneapolis is an incredibly dangerous place, and often featured him wearing a bulletproof vest. At one point in a new video about their trip, Wohl goes to a Minneapolis police station to report death threats he says he and his team have received since being in the city.

One of those threats came via direct message from a Twitter account called @Drakehomes612, who described himself as a Minneapolis “diversity coordinator.”

“I hope you fuckin know that if [I] bump into you in Dinkytown or anywhere else in my city I’m going shoot you and shit on your fucking bodies,” the account wrote to Wohl’s team. “Get that fuck out my city you piece of shit. Now.”

But @Drakehomes612 isn’t a real account. As journalist Tony Webster first noticed, @Drakehomes612 is one of the fake accounts Wohl created in the run-up to his Twitter ban. A source familiar with Wohl’s fake accounts confirmed to me that @Drakehomes612 was run by Wohl before being deleted by Twitter. That means Wohl was sending himself fake death threats, presumably in an attempt to up the drama during his Minneapolis videos.

Wohl submitted the faked messages to police as proof that he was facing “terroristic threats” via Twitter. The faked messages threatening to “shit on your fucking bodies” were included in a packet of police documents related to the case issued on Wednesday by the Minneapolis Police Department.

15 March 2019: 49 killed in terrorist attack at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand:⁠

Forty-nine people are dead and scores more are injured after a heavily armed gunman clad in military-style gear opened fire during prayers at a mosque in the center of Christchurch, New Zealand, on Friday. A second mosque was also targeted in what Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern called a well-planned “terrorist attack,” making for “one of New Zealand’s darkest days.”

Portions of the ghastly attack were broadcast live on social media by a man who police confirmed had also released a manifesto railing against Muslims and immigrants. The 74-page document states that he was following the example of notorious right-wing extremists, including Dylann Roof, who murdered nine black churchgoers in Charleston, S.C., in 2015.

Authorities said initially they had four people in custody but later revised that number to three. One man in his late 20s, whom the authorities declined to name, was charged with murder and was expected to appear in court on Saturday morning. It was not clear how the other two people were connected. Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the attack was the work of an “extremist right-wing violent terrorist,” and confirmed that one of the people arrested was an Australian citizen. None of them had been on security watch lists, officials said.

Police also deactivated an improvised explosive device and were working to disarm a second that had been attached to a vehicle used by the suspects. Two homes were evacuated around a “location of interest” in Dunedin, about 220 miles south of Christchurch, according to the Associated Press. Counterterrorism forces were activated across New Zealand and Australia, as New Zealand elevated its national security threat level to “high” for the first time.

New Zealand Police Commissioner Mike Bush said 41 people were killed at Al Noor Mosque on Deans Road, opposite a large downtown park. Seven more were fatally shot about three miles away at a mosque in Linwood, an inner suburb of Christchurch. Another person died at the hospital.

Health officials said 48 patients, including both young children and adults, were being treated for gunshot wounds at Christchurch Hospital, while additional victims were seeking medical treatment elsewhere. About 200 family members were at the hospital awaiting news about loved ones.

Video of the shooting begins with the gunman driving to the mosque clad in tactical gear, his car full of weapons. It shows the shooting from his perspective — a chilling record of mass violence that police have warned people not to share. The shooter fires hundreds of rounds of bullets at defenseless worshipers inside and outside Al Noor Mosque, where the majority of the bloodshed occurred, retreating at one point to his car for another weapon. He doubles back on injured victims to make sure they are dead. The violence lasts about six minutes.

Nour Tavis, who was at the mosque and escaped after someone smashed a window in the building’s exterior, said that the shooter had turned his gun on everyone the man could find inside.

“Everyone,” Tavis told the New Zealand Herald, in tears. “Young people, old man, old woman.”

Tavis said he saw the man shoot a friend’s five-year-old daughter.

The 74-page manifesto left behind after the attack was littered with conspiracy theories about white birthrates and “white genocide.” It is the latest sign that a lethal vision of white nationalism has spread internationally. Its title, “The Great Replacement,” echoes the rallying cry of, among others, the torch-bearing protesters who marched in Charlottesville in 2017.

The digital platforms apparently enlisted in the shooting highlight a distinctly 21st-century dimension of mass gun violence — one sure to put more pressure on social media companies already under scrutiny about how they police their services. Government officials in New Zealand warned its citizens that sharing video of the attack was likely against the law.

Schools and public buildings, as well as the Christchurch Hospital, were on lockdown for hours on Friday afternoon as the police commissioner advised residents of Christchurch, the largest city on the South Island, to stay off the streets. The city, known for its relative stoicism in the aftermath of a series of large earthquakes, was quietly tense as residents came to terms with the gravity of the day’s incidents.

Bush appealed to Muslims nationwide, asking them to stay away from mosques while the security risk remained grave.

“I want to ask anyone that was thinking of going to a mosque anywhere in New Zealand today not to go, to close your doors until you hear from us again,” he said at a news conference.

In a country of nearly 5 million, more than 46,000 residents are Muslim, according to data from the 2013 Census, up 28 percent from 2006.

Members of a refugee family who had fled Syria’s civil war appeared to be among the victims, Ali Akil, an Auckland-based spokesman for Syrian Solidarity New Zealand, said in an interview. The family’s father was killed, a son was seriously wounded, and another son was reported missing, Akil said, citing information he had received from a friend of the family.

Akil said the family had likely come to New Zealand in the past four or five years, to “a safe haven, only to be killed here.”

The prime minister said New Zealand has suffered an “extraordinary and unprecedented act of violence,” lamenting in particular that a target was placed on the country’s migrant population. “They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home,” she said.

“They are us,” Ardern intoned.

The “extremist views” that she said motivated the attackers “have absolutely no place in New Zealand,” Ardern said, “and, in fact, have no place in the world.”

She said the attackers chose New Zealand “because we represent diversity, kindness, compassion, a home for those who share our values.” Addressing them directly, she said: “You may have chosen us. But we utterly reject and condemn you.”

Before the attack, someone with apparent advance knowledge of unfolding events posted links to the 74-page manifesto on Twitter and the message board 8chan, as well as to a Facebook page where the individual promised that the attack would be streamed live. The Twitter posts included images of weapons and ammunition, as well as the names of perpetrators of past mass-casualty shootings.

In the manifesto, the purported shooter identified himself as a 28-year-old white man born in Australia. He described his motivation, which he said involved defending “our lands” from “invaders” and ensuring “a future for white children.”

He aimed to “directly reduce immigration rates,” he said, explaining that he had chosen to target New Zealand to illustrate that there was nowhere “left to go that was safe and free from mass immigration.”

Twitter said it has suspended the account where the links first appeared and was “proactively working to remove the video content from the service,” according to a spokesman. Facebook “quickly removed both the shooter’s Facebook and Instagram accounts and the video” as soon as the social media company was alerted by police, spokeswoman Mia Garlick said in a statement. “We’re also removing any praise or support for the crime and the shooter or shooters as soon as we’re aware.”

The aggregation and discussion website Reddit was also “actively monitoring the situation” and removing “content containing links to the video stream,” a spokesman told The Post.

Further afield, Felix Kjellberg, a YouTube celebrity from Sweden who goes by “PewDiePie” and flirts openly with Nazi symbolism, distanced himself from the violence after the man who live-streamed his rampage asked viewers to “subscribe to PewDiePie.”

16 March 2019: Milo Yiannopoulos banned from entering Australia following Christchurch shooting comments:⁠

Milo Yiannopoulos has been banned from entering Australia for a tour following his comments regarding the Christchurch terror attack.

Immigration Minister David Coleman has described the attack, in which 50 people were killed and dozens injured, as an “act of pure evil” as he confirmed Yiannopoulos would not be allowed to enter the country.

“Yiannopoulos’s comments on social media regarding the Christchurch terror attack are appalling and foment hatred and division,” Mr Coleman said.

“The terrorist attack in Christchurch was carried out on Muslims peacefully practicing their religion.

“Australia stands with New Zealand and with Muslim communities the world over in condemning this inhuman act.”

Yiannopoulos had described Islam as a “barbaric, alien” religious culture on social media after the terror incident, prompting the Government’s change of heart.

“I’m banned from Australia, again, after a statement in which I said I abhor political violence,” Yiannopoulos said on social media after the announcement.

16 March 2019: QAnon Supporting Mobster committs first Mob Boss Murder in 30 years:⁠

Anthony Comello, 24, of Staten Island, New York, was taken into custody for allegedly killing Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, the reputed head of the infamous Gambino crime family. It marked the first mob boss murder in New York in 30 years, law enforcement officials told ABC News the murder may have stemmed from Comello’s romantic relationship with a Cali family member.

Court documents since filed in state court by Comello’s defense attorney, Robert Gottlieb, said Comello suffers from mental defect and was a believer in the “conspiratorial fringe right-wing political group” QAnon. In addition, Gottlieb wrote: “Beginning with the election of President Trump in November 2016, Anthony Comello’s family began to notice changes to his personality. … Mr. Comello became certain that he was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself, and that he had the president’s full support. Mr. Comello grew to believe that several well-known politicians and celebrities were actually members of the Deep State, and were actively trying to bring about the destruction of America.”

Comello has been charged with one count of murder and two counts of criminal possession of a weapon. His trial is pending, and he has pleaded not guilty.

16 March 2019: Trump Still Won’t Name ‘White Supremacist Terrorism’ and His Base Loves It:⁠

Donald Trump understands his base better than anyone. He gets what makes them cheer and what turns them off. And Trump’s response to Friday’s horrific white supremacist terrorist attack in New Zealand that saw 49 Muslims murdered was coldly calculated to play to them, especially his refusal to use the term “white supremacist terrorism.”

But first there was to Trump’s reaction to the terrorist attack on Twitter where he spoke of standing, “in solidarity with New Zealand” and declaring, “We love you New Zealand!” Great sentiment but where was the mention of Muslims, as in, “I stand with the Muslim community today”?! After all, the 49 victims were all Muslims killed in their place of worship because they were Muslim.

There’s no doubt Trump’s failure to say any kind words about Muslims was by design. Trump understands that would likely upset his base whom he has fed a diet of anti-Muslim hate, from declaring that “Islam hates us” to calling for a total ban on Muslims coming to this country, and his 2016 comment that takes on a different meaning after Friday’s terror attack: “We’re having problems with the Muslims coming into this country…You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not.”

And then, Friday afternoon, it got worse. Responding to a question by an ABC reporter about whether he believed there was a growing threat of white nationalism worldwide, Trump responded, “I don’t really,” adding, “I think it’s a small group of people that have very, very serious problems.” Our own ears and eyes (as well as statistics) tells us that’s a lie. Again, this reaction is because Trump gets his base better than anyone.

Of course, this is the same Trump who hammered Hillary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for not saying the phrase, “radical Islamic Terrorism.” As Trump declared then, “Now, to solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name. She won’t say the name.”

18 March 2019: House Judiciary Committee Planning Hearing on the Rise of White Nationalism:⁠

The House Judiciary Committee is planning on hosting a hearing in the coming weeks addressing the rise of white nationalism in the U.S. and the hate crime and hate speech surrounding the movement, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the committee’s schedule.

The hearing comes on the heels of two mass shootings at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand that killed 50 people. According to local law enforcement, the man charged with those attacks wrote a manifesto outlining his white nationalistic ideology as well as his anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim views.

The gunman also praised President Donald Trump as “a symbol of renewed white identity and common purpose,” though he said he did not support the president’s policies. The president has dismissed the idea that he inspired the shooting, but the attacker’s manifesto has sparked a renewed focus on Trump’s rhetoric toward immigrants, especially those who hail from countries where Islam is the dominant religion, and his lack of condemnation for white nationalist groups.

“For those who subscribe to this white nationalism ideology, they feel a sense of empowerment when they hear elected officials in the U.S., Europe, Australia, and New Zealand promote their white extremist ideological viewpoints in mainstream political rhetoric,” said John Cohen, the former deputy under secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “Increasingly we have experienced a dramatic increase across the West in hateful rhetoric and targeted acts of violence by individuals who do so specifically in response to what they see as an attack on white society.”

19 March 2019: Immigrant dies in Border Patrol custody, 4th death in recent months:⁠

A 40-year-old Mexican immigrant died in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) custody Monday, the fourth time a person has died after being apprehended by the agency in recent months.

The CBP says that the man, who has not been identified, died at the Las Palmas Medical Center after being arrested for illegal re-entry on Sunday.

The agency says the man was diagnosed with flu-like symptoms, liver failure and renal failure.

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the family and his loved ones,” CBP Assistant Commissioner for Public Affairs Andrew Meehan said in a statement. “CBP remains committed to ensuring the safe, humane and dignified treatment of those within the care of our custody. Consistent with CBP policy, CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility has initiated a review.

“The Department of Homeland Security Office of the Inspector General and the Government of Mexico has been notified. At this time, CBP is not releasing the identity of the individual. CBP will release more details as available and appropriate, and will ensure an independent and thorough review of the circumstances.”

This death follows the deaths of three other immigrants while in CBP custody in recent months.

In February, a 45-year-old man died after being diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and congestive heart failure.

In December, two children, 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin and 8-year-old Felipe Alonzo Gomez, died in custody, prompting a review of CBP policy.

Jakelin began having seizures roughly eight hours after being taken into custody with her father.

Felipe died after he was transferred to a hospital for exhibiting flu-like symptoms.

5 April 2019: ‘I’ll put a bullet in her’: Trump supporter charged with threatening to kill Rep. Ilhan Omar:⁠

A New York man is in custody after federal authorities say he threatened to kill freshman Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar.

Patrick W. Carlineo, 55, of Addison, was arrested Friday morning and charged by criminal complaint with threatening to assault and murder Omar, a Democrat representing Minnesota.

On March 21, a staff member in Omar’s office received a phone call around 12:20 p.m., the criminal complaint states. During the call, an individual, eventually identified as Carlineo, allegedly said to the staff member, “Do you work for the Muslim Brotherhood? Why are you working for her, she’s an (expletive) terrorist. I’ll put a bullet in her (expletive) skull.”

After receiving the call, Omar’s office referred the threat to the United States Capitol Police, which began an investigation in coordination with the FBI.

6 April 2019: Trump blocks three Florida congresswomen from visiting Homestead child detention center:⁠

Three South Florida congresswomen say they’ll attempt to tour the Homestead shelter for migrant kids on Monday, even though the Trump administration has blocked them from doing so.

U.S. Reps. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Donna Shalala and Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, all Democrats, were verbally denied entry by the Department of Health and Human Services, despite a new law mandating Congressional access there.

HHS confirmed the denial to access.

“We have had significant interest for facility visits. To ensure a facility visit does not interfere with the safety and well-being of our [children], we require a minimum two-week notification at the convenience and availability of the facility. This has been policy since 2015,” the department told the Miami Herald in a statement Saturday.

8 April 2019: Trump says DHS Secretary Nielsen leaving:⁠

Kirstjen Nielsen, the secretary of Homeland Security who has become a face of President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration push, is leaving the administration, President Donald Trump announced on Twitter Sunday afternoon.

“Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen will be leaving her position, and I would like to thank her for her service,” Trump said on Twitter.

“I am pleased to announce that Kevin McAleenan, the current U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner, will become Acting Secretary for @DHSgov. I have confidence that Kevin will do a great job!” Trump continued.

Nielsen did not resign willingly, a person close to her told CNN, but was under pressure to do so. Nielsen did not fight nor grovel to keep her job, the source said. Nielsen should be staying for a week of transition, another White House official said.

McAleenan is a holdover from the Obama administration. He was sworn in on March 20, 2018, as commissioner of US Customs and Border Protection. He is expected to serve as the acting secretary “in the short term,” meaning he is not expected to be in the position for the long term, according to a White House official.

Senior administration officials told CNN that Nielsen had a 5 p.m., meeting at the White House with Trump where she was planning to discuss with him the immigration and border issues and a path forward. She had no intention of resigning, according to one of the sources, but rather was going there with an agenda.

Trump had grown increasingly frustrated with the situation at the border, which has seen an influx in migrants, predominantly from Northern Triangle countries.

In California on Friday, a senior administration official tells CNN, Trump told border agents he wanted them to stop letting people cross the border, despite the fact that Central American asylum seekers according to US law can do so.

Nielsen “believed the situation was becoming untenable with the President becoming increasingly unhinged about the border crisis and making unreasonable and even impossible requests,” a senior administration official tells CNN.

“I hereby resign from the position of Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), effective April 7th 2019,” Nielsen wrote in her resignation letter. “Despite our progress in reforming homeland security for a new age, I have determined that it is the right time for me to step aside.”

Nielsen later tweeted that she “agreed to stay on as Secretary through Wednesday, April 10th to assist with an orderly transition and ensure that key DHS missions are not impacted.”

8 April 2019: European nationalists form alliance for elections:⁠

European nationalist parties have announced an alliance, with the aim of changing the balance of power in the European Union.

Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini of the right-wing League party announced the venture on Monday at a news conference in Milan.

He was joined by Germany’s far-right AfD, the Finns Party and the Danish People’s Party — fellow nationalists.

They are campaigning in the European Parliament elections on 23–26 May.

Competing in different countries, they plan to form a parliamentary group — the European Alliance for People and Nations — to challenge the power of centrist parties.

Alternative for Germany (AfD) chairman Jörg Meuthen said at least 10 parties would take part.

“We want to reform the European Union and the European Parliament, without destroying them,” he said. “We want to bring radical change.”

Under parliament rules, a group has to consist of at least 25 MEPs from a minimum of seven EU countries. The EU has 28 member states.

9 April 2019: Trump picks Miller, setting up potential clash with Kushner on immigration:⁠

President Donald Trump’s choice of Stephen Miller to lead on immigration sets up a potential policy clash with one of the most influential people in the White House, the president’s son-in-law.

The move comes as Trump, focused on challenges in securing the border, sent Jared Kushner back to the drawing board to develop new ideas on immigration reform after being unsatisfied with the results of an initial proposal for a legal immigration framework, according to two sources familiar with the talks.

It’s the latest power shift in just a few months after Kushner, who is married to Trump’s daughter Ivanka, had emerged as the new figurehead trying to come up with a plan to fix the legal immigration system following his success on criminal justice legislation.

“The clock is ticking on all this stuff,” said a former Trump official who remains in contact with people inside the White House. “There is no way that Stephen can continue to push a very hard right restrictionist policy and for Jared to be pushing a middle-of-the-road, slightly left of center policy, and something doesn’t come in conflict.”

12 April 2019: Trump says administration giving ‘strong considerations’ to releasing immigrant detainees in ‘sanctuary cities’:⁠

President Trump said Friday that his administration is giving “strong considerations” to a plan to release immigrant detainees exclusively into “sanctuary cities,” reviving a proposal that White House officials insisted had been rejected months ago after only informal consideration.

His comments on Twitter followed a Washington Post report that the administration had been eyeing districts of political adversaries, including that of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), to release detainees.

“The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy — so this should make them very happy!” Trump wrote.

Due to the fact that Democrats are unwilling to change our very dangerous immigration laws, we are indeed, as reported, giving strong considerations to placing Illegal Immigrants in Sanctuary Cities only….

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

….The Radical Left always seems to have an Open Borders, Open Arms policy — so this should make them very happy!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

His tweets suggested that the plan, which immigration officials had rejected in November and February, was again viable and that the administration is now considering sending all detainees to sanctuary cities to the exclusion of other communities.

13 April 2019: Trump told CBP head he’d pardon him if he were sent to jail for violating immigration law:⁠

President Donald Trump told Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan he would grant McAleenan a pardon if he were sent to jail for having border agents block asylum seekers from entering the US in defiance of US law, senior administration officials tell CNN.

Trump reportedly made the comment during a visit to the border at Calexico, California, a week ago. It was not clear if the comment was a joke.

Two officials briefed on the exchange say the President told McAleenan, since named the acting secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, that he “would pardon him if he ever went to jail for denying US entry to migrants,” as one of the officials paraphrased.

The White House referred CNN to the Department of Homeland Security. A DHS spokesman told CNN, “At no time has the President indicated, asked, directed or pressured the Acting Secretary to do anything illegal. Nor would the Acting Secretary take actions that are not in accordance with our responsibility to enforce the law.”

Trump denied reports he offered pardons in a tweet late Friday night.

17 April 2019: Facebook teams with rightwing Daily Caller in factchecking program:⁠

Facebook’s controversial factchecking program is partnering with the Daily Caller, a rightwing website that has pushed misinformation and is known for pro-Trump content.

The social network said Wednesday it had added CheckYourFact.com, which is part of the Daily Caller, as one of its US media partners in an initiative that has faced growing backlash from journalists and internal problems. The collaboration was first reported by Axios.

Factcheckers in the program are tasked with debunking potential false stories on Facebook to help stop their spread, but some journalists have said the effort hasn’t been effective, and one of its major American partners, Snopes.com, cut ties earlier this year.

The Daily Caller, co-founded by the far-right Fox News host Tucker Carlson, publishes conservative news stories and commentary and has faced repeated accusations of running false and offensive content. In January, the site was widely condemned for the way it reported on a fake nude photo of the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and its coverage of immigration and the White House has typically aligned with Trump’s agenda.

Check Your Fact is billed as the “fact-check department” of the Daily Caller, and the site says it is “non-partisan” and “loyal to neither people nor parties”. It has dedicated reporters rating content as true and false and says it is a for-profit subsidiary of the Daily Caller Inc, of which Carlson is a majority owner.

Facebook launched its factchecking program after the 2016 presidential election saw viral propaganda and false news on its platform and other social media sites. The company now partners with a wide range of media outlets around the globe, and its current US partners include the Associated Press, Factcheck.org and PolitiFact.

Asked about its collaboration with the Daily Caller, a Facebook spokesperson noted that any news organization can apply to join the program after it gains certification from the non-partisan International Fact-Checking Network, run by the journalism institute Poynter. Poynter could not immediately be reached.

18 April 2019: Trump Supporter arrested for threatening to kill three prominent Democrats:⁠

The FBI arrested John Joseph Kless of Tamarac, Florida, for calling the Washington offices of three prominent Democrats and threatening to kill each of them. At his home, authorities found a loaded handgun in a backpack, an AR-15 rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. In later pleading guilty to one charge of transmitting threats over state lines, Kless admitted that in a threatening voicemail targeting Rep. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., he stated: “You won’t f — -ing tell Americans what to say, and you definitely don’t tell our president, Donald Trump, what to say.” Tlaib, a vocal critic of Trump, was scheduled to speak in Florida four days later. Kless was awaiting sentencing. In a letter to the federal judge, he said he “made a very big mistake,” never meant to hurt anyone, and “was way out of line with my language and attitude.”

24 April 2019: FBI arrests Trump Supporter for sending threatening and violent emails:⁠

The FBI arrested 30-year-old Matthew Haviland of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, for allegedly sending a series of violent and threatening emails to a college professor in Massachusetts who publicly expressed support for abortion rights and strongly criticized Trump. In one of 28 emails sent to the professor on March 10, 2019, Haviland allegedly called the professor “pure evil” and said “all Democrats must be eradicated,” insisting the country now has “a president who’s taking our country in a place of more freedom rather than less.” In another email the same day, Haviland allegedly wrote the professor: “I will rip every limb from your body and … I will kill every member of your family.”

According to court documents, Haviland’s longtime friend later told the FBI that “within the last year, Haviland’s views regarding abortion and politics have become more extreme … at least in part because of the way the news media portrays President Trump.” Haviland has been charged with cyberstalking and transmitting a threat in interstate commerce. His trial is pending.

25 April 2019: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey called Rep. Ilhan Omar after Trump’s tweet sparked a flood of death threats:⁠

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey phoned Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar on Tuesday and stood by the company’s decision to permit a tweet from President Trump that later resulted in a flood of death threats targeting the congresswoman.

The previously unreported call focused on an incendiary video that Trump shared on April 12, which depicts Omar discussing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks interspersed with footage of the Twin Towers burning. The clip did not include the full context of Omar’s remarks, which were taken from a public event on the broader issue of Islamophobia.

Omar pressed Dorsey to explain why Twitter didn’t remove Trump’s tweet outright, according to a person familiar with the conversation who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was private. Dorsey said that the president’s tweet didn’t violate the company’s rules, a second person from Twitter confirmed.

Dorsey also pointed to the fact that the tweet and video already had been viewed and shared far beyond the site, one of the sources said. But the Twitter executive did tell Omar that the tech giant needed to do a better job generally in removing hate and harassment from the site, according to the two people familiar with the call.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Omar declined to comment. Following the president’s tweet, Omar said on April 14 that she had witnessed an “increase in direct threats on my life — many directly referencing or replying to the president’s video.” Other Democratic leaders later condemned Trump as well.

In a statement, Twitter confirmed the call took place. “During their conversation, [Dorsey] emphasized that death threats, incitement to violence, and hateful conduct are not allowed on Twitter,” the company said. “We’ve significantly invested in technology to proactively surface this type of content and will continue to focus on reducing the burden on the individual being targeted. Our team has also consistently been in touch with Rep. Omar’s office.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

28 April 2019: Trump Repeats a False Claim That Doctors ‘Execute’ Newborns:⁠

WHAT TRUMP SAID

“The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully. And then the doctor and the mother determine whether or not they will execute the baby.”

President Trump revived on Saturday night what is fast becoming a standard, and inaccurate, refrain about doctors “executing babies.” During a more than hourlong speech at a rally in Green Bay, Wis., Mr. Trump admonished the Democratic governor, Tony Evers, for vetoing a Republican bill that could send doctors to prison for life if they fail to give medical care to children born alive after a failed abortion attempt.

The comments are the latest in a long string of incendiary statements from the president on abortion.

He wrote in January on Twitter that Democrats had become the “Party of late term abortion” when efforts to expand abortion rights in Virginia and New York gained national attention. About a week later, in his State of the Union address, he falsely said New York’s law would allow “a baby to be ripped from the mother’s womb moments before birth.” And in February he responded to the blocking of a federal measure similar to the Wisconsin bill by tweeting that Democrats “don’t mind executing babies AFTER birth.”

The New York Times has previously fact-checked these claims, finding that late-term abortions are rare. In Wisconsin, only 1 percent of all abortions in 2017 occurred after 20 weeks of pregnancy, according to the most recent annual report from the state’s Department of Health Services. The numbers are similarly low at the national level.

29 April 2019: White nationalists target bookstores, libraries in protests nationwide:⁠

When a group of self-avowed white nationalists interrupted an author chat Saturday at bookstore Politics and Prose with a megaphone and chants of “This land is our land,” workers were surprised — but not unprepared.

The Northwest Washington bookstore began training employees earlier this year to respond to flash protests, co-owner Bradley Graham said. The decision came after previous author events, including a talk last month by former homeland security secretary Janet Napolitano, drew the ire and attention of left-wing activists and agitators.

Politics and Prose isn’t alone.

Bookstores, libraries and book fairs have become frequent targets of white nationalist groups, who in recent years have interrupted author talks, children’s reading hours and, in one instance, threatened to burn down a bookstore in Berkeley, Calif.

“One of the issues is we can’t always anticipate what author or event might draw protesters or a demonstration,” Graham said. “Clearly, when the political climate heats up, there would seem to be more kindling that could be lit. But whether this will translate to more disturbances at author talks, I certainly hope not, but who knows.”

2 May 2019: Facebook bans extremist leaders including Louis Farrakhan, Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos for being ‘dangerous’:⁠

Facebook said on Thursday it has permanently banned several far-right and anti-Semitic figures and organizations, including Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, Infowars host Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos and Laura Loomer, for being “dangerous,” a sign that the social network is more aggressively enforcing its hate-speech policies at a moment when bigoted violence is on the rise around the world.

Facebook said it was going to remove the accounts, fan pages, and groups affiliated with these individuals on both Facebook and its sister site, Instagram, after it reevaluated the content that they had posted previously, or had examined their activities outside of Facebook, the company said. The removal also pertains to at least one of the organizations run by these people, Jones’ Infowars.

“We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today,” Facebook said in a statement.

3 May 2019: Army Investigating Soldier’s Alleged Leadership In Neo-Nazi Terror Group:⁠

An active-duty soldier in the U.S. Army is under investigation for his alleged leadership role in a neo-Nazi terror group, a military official has confirmed to HuffPost.

Last month, independent journalist Nate Thayer published an article identifying 22-year-old Corwyn Storm Carver as a recent leader of the Atomwaffen Division, a violent, Charles Manson-worshipping, white supremacist group whose members and supporters were implicated in five murders in 2017.

Carver is a private first class in the 1st Armored Division, stationed at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas.

“I can confirm that Pfc. Carver is an active-duty Soldier stationed here at Fort Bliss,” Lt. Col. Crystal Boring, a spokeswoman for the 1st Armored Division, told HuffPost in a statement. “There is an ongoing investigation into this matter, and per Army policy, additional information cannot be released until adjudication.”

The investigation will likely look into whether Carver’s alleged membership in Atomwaffen violated Army regulations regarding extremist activity and discrimination.

3 May 2019: Europe’s Populists Unite Around Italy’s Salvini Ahead of EU Elections:⁠

Italy’s populist interior minister is uniting Europe’s right-wing parties under an anti-migrant, anti-Islam, anti-bureaucracy banner for this month’s European Union elections, pledging to reshape the continent from its technocratic heart in the EU’s base in Brussels.

The latest target of Matteo Salvini’s wooing: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. The two bonded over a shared vision for a Europe with sturdy borders during a visit to Hungary by Salvini that included a tour of razor-wire fences Orban had built in 2015 to keep out asylum-seekers.

Frans Timmerman, a Dutch politician who is second in command of the EU’s executive arm and running to be elected president, called the Salvini-Orban meeting “a love scene … based on family values but which means discrimination.”

5 May 2019: Trump taps Mark Morgan, former Obama official who supports border wall, to head ICE:⁠

President Trump announced Sunday that he has chosen Mark Morgan to head U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, taking senior leaders at the agency by surprise.

“I am pleased to inform all of those that believe in a strong, fair and sound Immigration Policy that Mark Morgan will be joining the Trump Administration as the head of our hard working men and women of ICE,” Trump wrote in a tweet. “Mark is a true believer and American Patriot. He will do a great job!

ICE leaders did not know Trump had picked Morgan and learned of the decision from the president’s tweet, according to two senior administration officials.

“ICE leadership had no advance notice of Morgan’s selection before the tweet,” said one senior administration official.

Morgan, a career FBI official who served as the chief of the U.S. Border Patrol at the end of the Obama administration, has spoken publicly in favor of Trump’s efforts to build a wall along the border with Mexico.

5 May 2019: U.S. mosques see heightened security concerns for Ramadan:⁠

In addition to cooking, praying and decorating, some Muslims around the country are preparing for the holy month of Ramadan, which begins Sunday night, in a solemn new way: active-shooter training.

A string of recent high-profile attacks on houses of worship, including one in March in Christchurch, New Zealand, that killed 51 Muslim worshipers, has led more U.S. mosques this year to take up the topic of security. Their approaches include conducting preparedness drills, hiring armed or undercover security officers, training volunteers, installing cameras and adding locks.

At Dar Al-Hijrah, a large Northern Virginia mosque where 1,000 people pray every day during the holy month, leaders have long held an annual pre-Ramadan meeting to discuss security before their busiest time. This year, said Saif Rahman, a staffer, “the meeting was a little more anxious.”

After the October synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, the mosque began offering active-shooter response training sessions for its members. After the Christchurch shooting, it hosted a meeting for staff from mosques across the region, where Rahman taught other mosque leaders about public funds they can apply for if they want to hire security guards. Recently, Dar Al-Hijrah increased its security presence to not just busy prayer times, but every prayer time — five times a day. This Ramadan, those guards suggested a new practice: searching attendees’ bags when they enter.

6 May 2019: Once Defiant, All Four White Supremacists Charged in Charlottesville Violence Plead Guilty:⁠

Last year, when federal authorities arrested and charged four members or associates of a white supremacist gang for their roles in the infamous 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, the men and their supporters struck a defiant tone.

The men proclaimed their innocence, and their backers described them in social media posts as “patriots” and “political prisoners.” The gang, known as the Rise Above Movement and based in Southern California, set up an anonymous tip line for people to share evidence that might exonerate the imprisoned members, and it established a legal defense fund, with donations taken via PayPal and bitcoin.

But in the following months, the men, one after the other, have pleaded guilty. Last Friday saw the final two guilty pleas, including one from Ben Daley, 26, one of the group’s leaders. He was joined by Michael Miselis, 30, a former Northrop Grumman aerospace engineer. The men pleaded guilty to conspiracy to riot.

“These avowed white supremacists traveled to Charlottesville to incite and commit acts of violence, not to engage in peaceful First Amendment expression,” U.S. Attorney Thomas T. Cullen said in announcing the guilty pleas. “Although the First Amendment protects an organization’s right to express abhorrent political views, it does not authorize senseless violence in furtherance of a political agenda.”

7 May 2019: U.S. asylum screeners to take more confrontational approach as Trump aims to turn more migrants away at the border:⁠

The Trump administration has sent new guidelines to asylum officers, directing them to take a more skeptical and confrontational approach during interviews with migrants seeking refuge in the United States. It is the latest measure aimed at tightening the nation’s legal “loopholes” that Homeland Security officials blame for a spike in border crossings.

According to internal documents and staff emails obtained Tuesday by The Washington Post, the asylum officers will more aggressively challenge applicants whose claims of persecution contain discrepancies, and they will need to provide detailed justifications before concluding that an applicant has a well-founded fear of harm if deported to their home country.

The changes require officers to zero in on any gaps between what migrants say to U.S. border agents after they are taken into custody and testimony they provide during the interview process with a trained asylum officer.

13 May 2019: Trump joins GOP criticism of Rep. Tlaib over remarks on Holocaust, Israel:⁠

President Trump on Monday joined prominent House Republicans in condemning Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) for recent comments on the Holocaust and Israel that the freshman lawmaker says have been deliberately distorted to ignite attacks against her.

“Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust,” Trump said in a tweet. “She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people. Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?”

Democrat Rep. Tlaib is being slammed for her horrible and highly insensitive statement on the Holocaust. She obviously has tremendous hatred of Israel and the Jewish people. Can you imagine what would happen if I ever said what she said, and says?

The controversy was sparked by an interview published Saturday on Yahoo News’s “Skullduggery” podcast during which Tlaib, one of the first two Muslim women in Congress, was asked about her support for a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Tlaib began her response by noting that the United States commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day two weeks earlier. She then discussed her Palestinian ancestors and the founding of the state of Israel, saying she was “humbled by the fact that it was my ancestors that had to suffer” to create a safe haven for the Jewish people.

“There’s, you know, there’s a kind of a calming feeling, I always tell folks, when I think of the Holocaust and the tragedy of the Holocaust, and the fact that it was my ancestors — Palestinians — who lost their land, and some lost their lives, their livelihood, their human dignity, their existence, in many ways, had been wiped out . . . I mean, just all of it was in the name of trying to create a safe haven for Jews, post-the Holocaust, post-the tragedy and the horrific persecution of Jews across the world at that time,” Tlaib said.

She added that the events of the past have informed her views on how to approach a solution to the conflict.

“I love the fact that it was my ancestors that provided that [safe haven], in many ways,” Tlaib said. “But they did it in a way that took their human dignity away, right? And it was forced on them. And so, when I think about one-state, I think about the fact that, why couldn’t we do it in a better way?”

Tlaib’s comments were picked up by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which published an article with the headline, “Tlaib Says She Is Humbled Her Ancestors Provided ‘Safe Haven’ for Jews After Holocaust.”

On Sunday, two of the top House Republicans criticized Tlaib’s use of the phrase “calming feeling,” falsely accusing her of using the phrase to describe her views about the Holocaust itself.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) speaks at a rally calling on Congress to censure President Trump on Capitol Hill, April 30. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Reuters)

“There is no justification for the twisted and disgusting comments made by Rashida Tlaib just days after the annual Day of Holocaust Remembrance,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in a statement. “More than six million Jews were murdered during the Holocaust; there is nothing ‘calming’ about that fact.”

Rep. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), the № 3 Republican in the House, issued a statement describing Tlaib’s remarks as “sickening.”

14 May 2019: Kushner skirts GOP senators’ key questions on his immigration plan:⁠

President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, faced pointed questions about his plan to overhaul the immigration system in a closed-door meeting with Republican senators Tuesday — and failed to offer solutions to some key concerns, according to GOP officials who cast doubt on the viability of the proposal.

Publicly, senators emerged from their weekly Capitol Hill luncheon applauding the White House senior adviser’s pitch to move U.S. immigration toward a merit-based system that prioritizes highly skilled workers, a task he undertook at Trump’s behest.

But privately, Republican officials said Kushner did not have clear answers to some questions from the friendly audience, prompting Trump’s other senior adviser, Stephen Miller, to interrupt at times and take over the conversation.

A senior Trump administration official familiar with the meeting disputed that characterization, saying that Kushner, Miller and senior economic adviser Kevin Hassett jointly presented the plan as a team.

“This is a detailed proposal that we can unify Republicans around,” the official said. “That gives us a much stronger position to then discuss other things.”

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to freely discuss what transpired at the meeting.

At one point, Kushner told Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) that his plan would not address Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the program that shields some young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children from deportation. This left several senators confused because dealing with the “dreamers,” as the group of immigrants is often called, is crucial for securing any Democratic support.

19 May 2019: Australian lawmaker who blamed Muslims after New Zealand mosque shootings voted out of office:⁠

A right-wing Australian senator who said Muslims were the “real cause of bloodshed” following the New Zealand mosque shootings has failed to retain his seat in the country’s latest elections.

Queensland’s Fraser Anning has been voted out of his Senate seat in the Parliament of Australia, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

BuzzFeed News reported that Senate results have yet to be finalized but that Anning appears to have fallen short. His term is set to expire at the end of June.

He sparked massive backlash in March for comments about Muslims following the shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which left 51 dead.

“I am utterly opposed to any form of violence within our community, and I totally condemn the actions of the gunman,” Anning wrote in a statement at the time.

“However, whilst this kind of violent vigilantism can never be justified, what it highlights is the growing fear within our community, both in Australia and New Zealand, of the increasing Muslim presence,” he continued. “The real cause of bloodshed on New Zealand streets today is the immigration program which allowed Muslim fanatics to migrate to New Zealand in the first place.”

20 May 2019: Russian documents reveal desire to sow racial discord — and violence — in the U.S.:⁠

Russians who were linked to interference in the 2016 U.S. election discussed ambitious plans to stoke unrest and even violence inside the U.S. as recently as 2018, according to documents reviewed by NBC News.

The documents — communications between associates of Yevgeny Prigozhin, a Kremlin-linked oligarch indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller for previous influence operations against the U.S. — laid out a new plot to manipulate and radicalize African Americans. The plans show that Prigozhin’s circle has sought to exploit racial tensions well beyond Russia’s social media and misinformation efforts tied to the 2016 election.

The documents were obtained through the Dossier Center, a London-based investigative project funded by Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky. NBC News has not independently verified the materials, but forensic analysis by the Dossier Center appeared to substantiate the communications.

One document said that President Donald Trump’s election had “deepened conflicts in American society” and suggested that, if successful, the influence project would “undermine the country’s territorial integrity and military and economic potential.”

The revelations come as U.S. intelligence agencies have warned of probable Russian meddling in the 2020 election.

22 May 2019: ‘Powder keg’ in Dayton: Ohio city braces for KKK rally:⁠

City leaders in Dayton, Ohio, called for calm ahead of a rally in the city this Saturday planned by a group linked to the Ku Klux Klan.

Mayor Nan Whaley (D) encouraged people to avoid Dayton’s downtown area Saturday as counterprotesters are expected to clash with the Honorable Sacred Knights of Indiana.

“The City Commission and I hope that May 25 can be remembered not as a day of hatred and bigotry, but as a day that our community demonstrated that we are united against hate. There are many ways to show this opposition, but for public safety we are encouraging people to avoid downtown during the rally on May 25,” she said in a video Tuesday.

“Extremists such as this hate group are not interested in a conversation and try to use these events to provoke responses from the crowd. Our goal for May 25 is to ensure that everyone in our community is safe and that we meet this attack on our values by celebrating what makes Dayton great.”

4 June 2019: Republicans ready to quash Cuccinelli:⁠

Ken Cuccinelli has spent years attacking Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans. Now, it’s time for payback.

President Donald Trump wants Cuccinelli, who most recently led the anti-establishment Senate Conservatives Fund, to be director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. But there may be nobody in Washington whom McConnell and his allies would take more pleasure in defeating, and the bottom line is Cuccinelli has little chance of getting approved for the job, Republican senators said.

“He’s spent a fair amount of his career attacking Republicans in the Senate, so it strikes me as an odd position for him to put himself in to seek Senate confirmation,” said Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who ran the GOP’s campaign arm for two election cycles. “It’s unlikely he’s going to be confirmed if he is nominated.”

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Senate GOP’s chief vote-counter, called the bid “a long shot,” adding, “They’ll go forward with it or they won’t, but I will suspect he’ll have plenty of obstacles once he gets here.”

5 June 2019: Trump administration cancels English classes, soccer, legal aid for unaccompanied child migrants in U.S. Shelters:⁠

The Trump administration is canceling English classes, recreational programs and legal aid for unaccompanied minors staying in federal migrant shelters nationwide, saying the immigration influx at the southern border has created critical budget pressures.

The Office of Refugee Resettlement has begun discontinuing the funding stream for activities — including soccer — that have been deemed “not directly necessary for the protection of life and safety, including education services, legal services, and recreation,” said U.S. Health and Human Services spokesman Mark Weber.

Federal officials have warned Congress that they are facing “a dramatic spike” in unaccompanied minors at the southern border and have asked Congress for $2.9 billion in emergency funding to expand shelters and care. The program could run out of money in late June, and the agency is legally obligated to direct funding to essential services, Weber said.

The move — revealed in an email an HHS official sent to licensed shelters last week, a message that has been obtained by The Washington Post — could run afoul of a federal court settlement and state licensing requirements that mandate education and recreation for minors in federal custody. Carlos Holguin, a lawyer who represents minors in a long-running lawsuit that spurred a 1997 federal court settlement that sets basic standards of care for children in custody, immediately slammed the cuts as illegal.

5 June 2019: FBI arrests Trump Supporter over threats to kill Democratic Lawmakers:⁠

The FBI arrested a Utah man for allegedly calling the U.S. Capitol more than 2,000 times over several months and threatening to kill Democratic lawmakers, whom he said were “trying to destroy Trump’s presidency.” “I am going to take up my second amendment right, and shoot you liberals in the head,” 54-year-old Scott Brian Haven allegedly stated in one of the calls on Oct. 18, 2018, according to charging documents. When an FBI agent later interviewed Haven, he “explained the phone calls were made during periods of frustration with the way Democrats were treating President Trump,” the charging documents said. The FBI visit, however, didn’t stop Haven from making more threats, including: On March 21, 2019, he called an unidentified U.S. senator’s office to say that if Democrats refer to Trump as Hitler again he will shoot them, and two days later he called an unidentified congressman’s office to say he “was going to take [the congressman] out … because he is trying to remove a duly elected President.” A federal grand jury has since charged Haven with one count of transmitting a threat over state lines. Haven pleaded not guilty and was awaiting trial.

7 June 2019: Central Park Five Prosecutor Linda Fairstein Was Dropped By Her Book Publisher After Netflix’s “When They See Us” Premiere:⁠

One week after the premiere of Netflix’s When They See Us, a miniseries about the wrongful rape conviction of five black and Latino teenagers in New York City in 1989, former prosecutor Linda Fairstein has been dropped by her book publisher.

A spokesperson for Dutton, an imprint of Penguin Random House, confirmed to BuzzFeed News on Friday that “Linda Fairstein and Dutton have decided to terminate their relationship.” They had no further comment.

After rising to become a top sex-crime prosecutor in Manhattan and prosecuting the infamous Central Park Five case in which five boys said their confessions were coerced by police and detectives, Fairstein went on to become a bestselling crime author. She wrote several books, including Deadfall, Killer Look, Devil’s Bridge, and her most recent novel, Blood Oath, which was published in March.

When They See Us, the Netflix series created by Ava DuVernay, premiered last week on the streaming service and sparked another wave of outcry about injustice in the case, prompting #CancelLindaFairstein to begin trending on Twitter.

“All of Linda Fairstein’s cases need to be reopened immediately. Just as fast as they were willing to throw those innocent boys in jail that’s how fast they need to start this process,” Twitter user @THensons3 wrote.

Fairstein did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.

Although Dutton confirmed that the two have parted ways, Fairstein’s author page still appears on the Penguin Random House website.

8 June 2019: Mexico Doesn’t Back Up Trump’s Twitter Claims of Big Farm Deal:⁠

President Donald Trump hinted at additional measures between the U.S. and Mexico, a day after he vowed that Mexico would soon make “large” agricultural purchases from the U.S. as part of a deal on border security and illegal immigration that allowed Mexico to avoid U.S. tariffs.

“Some things not mentioned in yesterday’s press release, one in particular, were agreed on. That will be announced at the appropriate time,” Trump said Sunday in a series of four tweets about Mexico, the media and other matters.

Three Mexican officials said Saturday they were not aware of any side accord in the works, and that agricultural trade hadn’t been discussed during three days of negotiations in Washington that culminated in a joint communique late Friday.

Mexico’s ambassador to the U.S. predicted on Sunday that trade in agricultural goods “could increase dramatically” now that tariffs aren’t going ahead and if the USMCA, the trilateral trade pact with the U.S., Mexico and Canada designed to replace NAFTA, is ratified — but didn’t cite a specific deal with Washington on farm purchases.

9 June 2019: Trump Claims Mexico Deal Has Secret Provisions, Potentially Roiling Relations Again:⁠

President Trump asserted on Sunday that there were secret, undisclosed elements to his new immigration agreement with Mexico as he sought to deflect criticism that he achieved less than he had claimed with his threat to impose punitive tariffs.

Mr. Trump insisted that Mexico had agreed to take significant actions to stem the flow of migrants at the border with the United States that it had not previously taken and that some of them had yet to be revealed. But he vowed to revive his plan to place tariffs on imports if Mexico does not follow through.

“We have been trying to get some of these Border Actions for a long time, as have other administrations, but were not able to get them, or get them in full, until our signed agreement with Mexico,” the president wrote on Twitter. “Importantly, some things not mentioned in yesterday press release, one in particular, were agreed upon. That will be announced at the appropriate time.”

Mr. Trump’s tweets came as he assailed The New York Times over a report that the deal that he announced with such fanfare on Friday night consisted largely of actions that Mexico had previously agreed to take in prior discussions. “Another false report in the Failing @nytimes,” Mr. Trump wrote.

The Times issued a statement standing by its article. “We are confident in our reporting, and as with so many other occasions, our stories stand up over time and the president’s denials of them do not,” the statement said.

The idea that the agreement included secret provisions could once again roil relations between the two countries, which have been fraught since Mr. Trump took office. Angry that the number of apprehensions at the border has soared to the highest level in 13 years, Mr. Trump threatened at the end of May to impose tariffs on all Mexican imports starting on Monday and escalating up to 25 percent. He called off the tariffs on Friday night after securing the agreement by Mexico to do more to stop the flow.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico was already under pressure at home not to cave in to what critics called the bullying tactics of a bombastic American leader. As it was, some critics were accusing him of building Mr. Trump’s border wall but on Mexico’s own southern border with its own troops. The suggestion that Mr. López Obrador made additional concessions that have not been disclosed could increase domestic pressure on his government.

Mr. Trump did not elaborate on what secret provisions he was referring to, and the White House did not respond to requests for clarification on Sunday. He may have been hinting at a “safe third country” treaty that the administration has long sought but failed to secure with Mexico.

Under such a treaty, migrants entering Mexico would have to apply for asylum there. The United States would then have the legal ability to reject asylum seekers who tried to enter the country if they had not sought refuge in Mexico first.

But officials from both countries said the two sides reached no commitment on such a treaty, and they said the provisions that were included in the deal were essentially reaffirmations of actions Mexico had already agreed to in previous discussions. American officials argued privately that the value of the agreement may be greater dedication by Mexico to actually follow through on such commitments to avoid another threat of tariffs by Mr. Trump.

Kevin K. McAleenan, the acting secretary of homeland security, said the agreement did advance Mexico’s commitment to fighting border crossings beyond previous discussions, citing in particular a promise to deploy a newly formed national guard to its own southern border as well as elsewhere in the country.

“All of it is new,” Mr. McAleenan said on “Fox News Sunday.” “I mean, we’ve heard commitments before from Mexico to do more on their southern border. The last time they deployed down there is about four or five hundred officers. This is more than a tenfold commitment to increase their security in Chiapas. That’s where people are entering from Guatemala and southern Mexico.”

Mr. McAleenan did not explain Mr. Trump’s tweets except to say that the two countries would continue to talk about what they could do to combat illegal immigration. “There are going to be further actions, further dialogue with Mexico in immigration, on how to manage the asylum flow in the region,” he said.

While critics questioned the value of the deal after Mr. Trump called off the new tariffs, Mr. McAleenan said the threat made a difference. “People can disagree with the tactics,” he said. “Mexico came to the table with real proposals.”

But the two sides offered divergent descriptions of what would count as success. Mr. McAleenan said Mexico’s actions had to result in “a vast reduction in those numbers” of people crossing the border, which reached a 13-year high in May. But Mexico’s ambassador said the goal was to have the numbers “go down like to previous levels that we had maybe last year or in 2018.”

Ambassador Martha Bárcena Coqui said Mexico had already been deploying its national guard but would increase it starting on Monday. She described the agreement as less concrete and more of a start to a more precise accord.

“It’s a joint declaration of principles, which is the base that gives us the base for the road map that we have to follow in the incoming months on immigration and cooperation on asylum issues and development in Central America,” she said on “Face the Nation” on CBS.

She suggested there could be elements that had yet to be publicly disclosed. “I think there are a lot of the details that we discussed during the negotiations and during the conversations that we didn’t put in the declaration because this is different — different paths that we are to follow,” she said.

The president’s opposition said Mr. Trump had little credibility in claiming a great victory. “In February, @realDonaldTrump declared a bogus emergency to build a wall he said will ‘solve’ immigration,” Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, wrote on Twitter. “Then he made a bogus tariff threat even GOP in Congress rejected Now he claims a bogus ‘deal’ Mexico volunteered to do months ago Common thread? All bogus.”

In his own tweets on Sunday, Mr. Trump threatened to turn to tariffs again if Mexico did not live up to the agreement and reduce the flow of migrants at the border. He also attacked The Times and CNN for their reporting on the agreement. “The Failing @nytimes, & ratings challenged @CNN, will do anything possible to see our Country fail!” he wrote. “They are truly The Enemy of the People!”

In its statement, The Times responded that “calling the press the enemy is undemocratic and dangerous.”

Undaunted, Mr. Trump repeated his claim in another tweet on Sunday evening: “The Failing @nytimes story on Mexico and Illegal Immigration through our Southern Border has now been proven shockingly false and untrue, bad reporting, and the paper is embarrassed by it. The only problem is that they knew it was Fake News before it went out. Corrupt Media!”

Mr. Trump has repeatedly denied stories in The Times that were later confirmed as true. Just last week, he assailed The Times and CNN for reporting that he called Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, “nasty” despite a recording where he was clearly heard using the word. Last year, he posted on Twitter a distorted version of a meeting he had with A.G. Sulzberger, the publisher of The Times.

Most notably, he tried to get his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, to draft a memo falsely denying a Times report that the president had told him to fire Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, according to the report by Mr. Mueller.

10 June 2019: Ken Cuccinelli named acting head of Citizenship and Immigration Services:⁠

Former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli (R) on Monday began his new job as acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), a controversial appointment that could set up a showdown between the White House and Senate Republicans.

President Trump tapped Cuccinelli to lead the agency, which is tasked with administering the nation’s legal immigration system, at a time when he is seeking to crack down on illegal migration and make it tougher for immigrants to obtain benefits.

“Our nation has the most generous legal immigration system in the world and we must zealously safeguard its promise for those who lawfully come here,” Cuccinelli said in a statement distributed by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). “I look forward to working with the men and women of USCIS to ensure our legal immigration system operates effectively and efficiently while deterring fraud and protecting the American people.”

Cuccinelli’s appointment was weeks in the making, with Trump eyeing the fellow immigration hard-liner for a top role at DHS.

He will replace Lee Francis Cissna, who was forced out as USCIS chief late last month amid a rolling shakeup at the department that was engineered by top White House policy adviser Stephen Miller.

10 June 2019: The Wall Street Journal publishes: Linda Fairstein’s piece on “Netflix’s False Story of the Central Park Five”:⁠

Fairstein writes (falsely):

Reporters and filmmakers have explored this story countless times from numerous perspectives, almost always focusing on five attackers and one female jogger. But each has missed the larger picture of that terrible night: a riot in the dark that resulted in the apprehension of more than 15 teenagers who set upon multiple victims. That a sociopath named Matias Reyes confessed in 2002 to the rape of Ms. Meili, and that the district attorney consequently vacated the charges against the five after they had served their sentences, has led some of these reporters and filmmakers to assume the prosecution had no basis on which to charge the five suspects in 1989. So it is with filmmaker Ava DuVernay in the Netflix miniseries “When They See Us,” a series so full of distortions and falsehoods as to be an outright fabrication.

It shouldn’t have been hard for Ms. DuVernay to discover the truth. The facts of the original case are documented in a 117-page decision by New York State Supreme Court Justice Thomas Galligan, in sworn testimony given in two trials and affirmed by two appellate courts, and in sworn depositions of more than 95 witnesses — including the five themselves. Instead she has written an utterly false narrative involving an evil mastermind (me) and the falsely accused (the five).

I was one of the supervisors who oversaw the team that prosecuted the teenagers apprehended after that horrific night of violence. Ms. DuVernay’s film attempts to portray me as an overzealous prosecutor and a bigot, the police as incompetent or worse, and the five suspects as innocent of all charges against them. None of this is true.

12 June 2019: Neo-Nazi website hit with $4.1 million defamation penalty:⁠

A federal judge awarded a Muslim-American radio host $4.1 million in monetary damages Wednesday after he successfully sued a neo-Nazi website operator who falsely accused him of terrorism.

SiriusXM Radio show host Dean Obeidallah filed the civil complaint against The Daily Stormer founder Andrew Anglin, who hasn’t responded to Obeidallah’s libel lawsuit. Anglin’s whereabouts are unclear.

Last month, U.S. District Court Judge Edmund Sargus Jr. agreed to enter a default judgment against Anglin and his company, Moonbase Holdings LLC. Sargus announced the award after a Wednesday morning hearing.

Sargus said he was convinced nothing in Anglin’s statements were protected speech under the First Amendment. He also issued an injunction ordering the materials about Obeidallah taken down from the website and forbidding Anglin from discussing them further.

Afterward, Obeidallah praised the ruling and the message it sends to Anglin “and others of that ilk.”

12 June 2019: Elizabeth Lederer, Prosecutor of Central Park Five, Resigns From Columbia Law:⁠

Elizabeth Lederer, the lead prosecutor in the Central Park jogger case, which resulted in the wrongful conviction of five black and Latino boys, said on Wednesday that she would not return as a lecturer at Columbia Law School. Her decision was the latest fallout from a recent Netflix mini-series about the case.

The mini-series, “When They See Us,” created and directed by Ava DuVernay, had renewed demands that the law school fire Ms. Lederer, a part-time lecturer there and a current prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. She led the prosecution against the boys, who were accused of brutally raping a white female jogger in the park in 1989. They said the police had coerced them into confessing, and their convictions were overturned more than a decade later.

In an email to Columbia Law students on Wednesday evening, Gillian Lester, the dean of the school, said Ms. Lederer decided not to seek reappointment as a lecturer, writing that the mini-series had “reignited a painful — and vital — national conversation about race, identity, and criminal justice.” The email included a statement from Ms. Lederer saying that she had enjoyed her years teaching at Columbia but would not be returning.

“Given the nature of the recent publicity generated by the Netflix portrayal of the Central Park case,” the statement said, “it is best for me not to renew my teaching application.”

Ms. Lederer and the Manhattan district attorney’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Wednesday night.

18 June 2019: Trump Deploys ‘Both Sides’ Rhetoric Yet Again, This Time About Central Park 5:⁠

Here we go again.

President Donald Trump on Tuesday refused to apologize for his role in raising public fury against the now-exonerated Central Park Five, repeating his infamous phrasing that there were people on “both sides” of the case.

April Ryan, White House correspondent for the American Urban Radio Networks, asked Trump if he would apologize for the full-page ads he took out in 1989 calling for the five black and Latino teenagers to face the death penalty for allegedly raping a woman in Central Park.

“You have people on both sides of that,” Trump responded. “They admitted their guilt.”

Despite telling the court that their confessions had been coerced by law enforcement, the teenagers spent six to 13 years in prison for the crime. In 2002, DNA evidence found that a convicted serial rapist had been responsible, and the Central Park Five were exonerated. The city of New York made a $41 million dollar settlement with the men for the ordeal, and the case has largely been seen as an indictment of institutional racism in the criminal justice system.

“If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case,” Trump told Ryan. “So we’ll leave it at that.”

Trump defended the ads in 2016, saying that “They admitted they were guilty.”

Trump first infamously deployed his “both sides” rhetoric in the aftermath of the Charlottesville, Virginia white nationalist rally, where a white nationalist drove his car into a crowd of people, killing a counter-protester. A few days after the rally, Trump told reporters there were “very fine people on both sides” of the rally. As recently as April, Trump was still defending his comments.

19 June 2019: When They See Us: Trump stands by 1989 Central Park Five comments:⁠

US President Donald Trump has stood by his comments about five men who were wrongly convicted for the brutal rape of a jogger in Central Park in 1989, saying they had “admitted their guilt”.

Following the arrest of the five teenagers, Mr Trump paid for newspaper adverts calling for the return of the death penalty in the state.

Charges against them were dismissed in 2002, after another man confessed.

They say their earlier confessions were a result of police coercion.

The case has received renewed public attention in recent weeks, following the release of Netflix mini-series When They See Us.

“They put a bounty on our heads by taking out these full-page ads calling for our deaths,” one of the men, Yusef Salaam, said last month.

Mr Trump was asked by a reporter at the White House on Tuesday if he would apologise to the five men, who became known as the Central Park Five, for the newspaper ads.

“Why do you bring this question up now? It’s an interesting time to bring it up,” he said.

“You have people on both sides of that. They admitted their guilt. If you look at Linda Fairstein and if you look at some of the prosecutors, they think that the city should never have settled that case. So we’ll leave it at that.”

21 June 2019: ICE raids targeting migrant families slated to start Sunday in major U.S. Cities:⁠

President Trump has directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct a mass roundup of migrant families that have received deportation orders, an operation that is likely to begin with predawn raids in major U.S. cities on Sunday, according to three U.S. officials with knowledge of the plans.

The “family op,” as it is referred to at ICE and the Department of Homeland Security, is slated to target up to 2,000 families facing deportation orders in as many as 10 U.S. cities, including Houston, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles and other major immigration destinations, said the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the law enforcement operation.

Acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan has been urging ICE to conduct a narrower, more-targeted operation that would seek to detain a group of about 150 families that were provided with attorneys but dropped out of the legal process and absconded.

27 June 2019: Trump Wants To Withdraw Deportation Protections For Families Of Active Troops:⁠

The Trump administration wants to scale back a program that protects undocumented family members of active-duty troops from being deported, according to attorneys familiar with those plans.

The attorneys are racing to submit applications for what is known as parole in place after hearing from the wives and loved ones of deployed soldiers who have been told that option is “being terminated.”

The protections will only be available under rare circumstances, the lawyers said they’ve been told.

“It’s going to create chaos in the military,” said Margaret Stock, an immigration attorney who represents recruits and veterans in deportation proceedings. “The troops can’t concentrate on their military jobs when they’re worried about their family members being deported.”

Officials with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which offers parole in place as a “discretionary option,” declined to discuss questions about the ending of the program.

Defense Department and military service officials didn’t immediately respond to questions about the program.

27 June 2019: Tree fire outside Las Vegas LGBTQ center investigated as arson:⁠

Arson investigators were pursuing leads after someone intentionally torched a palm tree in front of the Gay and Lesbian Community Center of Southern Nevada early Thursday, according to Las Vegas Fire & Rescue.

No one was injured, and an arrest has not been announced.

Shortly after 3 a.m., fire crews responded to the center in the 400 block of Maryland Parkway and found the tree in flames, Fire Department spokesman Tim Szymanski said.

The flames did not spread to the building and were extinguished within a few minutes, he said.

Due to trees catching fire regularly during this time of year — because of illegal fireworks — investigators did not deem the incident suspicious and they left, Szymanski said.

But about 6 a.m., after employees went into work and made a customary surveillance video review, the center summoned Metro Police, which in turn called Las Vegas Fire & Rescue, which handles arson investigations, Szymanski said.

On its Facebook page, the center noted that the incident occurred in the final days of Pride Week. “We are glad that our building is safe,” the post went on to say. “This vengeful act reminds us to be alert, be safe, and if you see something, say something.”

The tree was valued at $500, Szymanski said.

28 June 2019: James A. Fields Jr., avowed neo-Nazi in Charlottesville car attack, sentenced to life in prison:⁠

Nearly two years after James A. Fields Jr. rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters at a white-supremacist rally here, the avowed neo-Nazi and convicted murderer apologized in court Friday as a judge sentenced him to life in prison for 29 federal hate crimes.

“Every day I think about how things could have gone differently, and how I regret my actions,” he said in a packed courtroom. “I am sorry.”

Fields, 22, whose vehicular attack killed one woman and injured 35 other people, pleaded guilty to the 29 counts in April in a deal with prosecutors, who agreed to drop an additional charge that carries a possible death sentence. In a separate case stemming from the deadly incident, Fields was convicted of first-degree murder and other crimes in December by a Virginia jury that voted for a life term plus 419 years in state prison.

His sentence in the state case is due to be imposed July 15, meaning Friday’s sentencing in U.S. District Court in Charlottesville was the first for Fields, an Ohio native with a years-long history of espousing racist and anti-Semitic views.

30 June 2019: Federal judge orders CBP to let doctors into migrant children detention centers:⁠

A federal judge has ordered U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to allow medical professionals into detention facilities holding migrant children, CNN reported Sunday.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee ordered that health professionals be allowed in the facilities to ensure the conditions are “safe and sanitary” for children being detained there and to assess the children’s medical needs.

The order pertains to all of CBP’s facilities in the El Paso and Rio Grande Valley sectors in Texas, CNN reported. The centers are the subject of a lawsuit regarding the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement and reports of unsafe and unsanitary conditions at detention centers.

Prosecutors had requested immediate action to address conditions they said threaten the wellbeing of children.

The Hill has reached out to CBP for comment.

Last week, prosecutors asked the court to hold the Trump administration in contempt and take immediate action to remedy unsafe conditions at border facilities.

“The children, including infants and expectant mothers, are dirty, cold, hungry and sleep-deprived,” prosecutors said, referring to conditions at detention centers, including one in Clint, Texas.

Gee, an Obama appointee, ruled late Friday that an independent monitor must ensure conditions in detention centers are promptly addressed, setting a July 12 deadline, according to The New York Times.

At a recent hearing, Department of Justice senior litigation counsel Sarah Fabian testified that the department is compliant with the law, arguing a toothbrush and soap were not necessary to fulfill safe and sanitary conditions for detained children.

Former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas), a 2020 presidential candidate, is scheduled to visit the Border Patrol facility in Clint on Sunday. Democratic presidential candidates visited a detention facility in Homestead, Fla., last week and commented on the horrific conditions they witnessed.

1 July 2019: Dems call for firing Border Patrol agents over ‘vile’ Facebook posts:⁠

Senior Democrats touring migrant detention facilities on Monday called for the immediate firing of Customs and Border Protection agents who joked about migrant deaths and posted vulgar images of freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among a secret Facebook group.

The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, led by Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas), condemned the “derogatory and sexist comments regarding immigrants and members of Congress” and called for a full investigation by the Department of Homeland Security as well as the officers’ removal.

Castro and other Democrats vowed to scrutinize the agents’ Facebook posts as part of a congressional tour of border facilities in Texas, where lawmakers spoke to mothers with young children who had been detained there, and learned of what they called unacceptable conditions.

“Unfortunately, there are many within [Customs and Border Patrol] who have become desensitized to the point of being dangerous to the migrants in their care,” Castro said at a news conference in Clint, Texas, after touring the town’s notoriously overcrowded facility for migrants. “I expect there will be a congressional investigation to get to the bottom of it.”

The tour — which was organized by Border Patrol officials and required lawmakers to give 48 hours’ notice — did not show overcrowding or poor conditions. But lawmakers said migrants who spent time there told a different story.

“They went out of their way to show us facilities that were mostly empty,” Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) said in a phone interview after the tour. “They tried to show us orderliness, cleanliness. But when members of Congress spoke to people that were being detained in the holding cells, that’s not what they described… They described being deprived of daily showers and certain other rights.”

1 July 2019: Trump says immigration raids will happen after July 4:⁠

President Trump said Monday that delayed immigration raids will begin after the July 4 holiday.

The president made the announcement in the Oval Office while signing legislation providing $4.6 billion in funding to address the influx of migrants from Central America at the southern border.

“After July 4, a lot of people are going to be brought back out,” Trump told reporters.

Trump said late last month he was temporarily delaying the sweeping raids and told Congress it had two weeks to pass new restrictions on asylum laws, a policy opposed by Democrats who control the House.

The raids planned by Immigration and Customs Enforcement were called off after Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) called Trump and urged him to scuttle the operations. There were also concerns inside the administration that leaks about the raids could have jeopardized them.

Trump telegraphed that the raids are likely to take place after his two-week deadline passes, telling reporters Saturday at a news conference in Osaka, Japan, they would take place “sometime” after July 4 “unless we do something pretty miraculous.”

The two-week time period was mostly consumed by July 4 recess, when members of Congress are not in Washington. House Democrats had cited the recess as a reason to further delay the raids.

3 July 2019: Border agency knew about secret Facebook group for years:⁠

Customs and Border Protection officials have been aware for up to three years that a secret Facebook group for current and former Border Patrol agents was posting offensive messages — far longer than previously reported.

Border Patrol leadership knew about photos posted to the group as far back as 2016, when agents reported them, according to a current Homeland Security official. The images — several of which were provided to POLITICO — show agents engaging in conduct that includes simulating sex acts and taking selfies while defecating. A former DHS official said he was aware of the Facebook group during the past year.

Neither official knew of any serious punishment ever leveled at members of the Facebook group.

ProPublica reported Monday that comments in the “I’m 10–15” Facebook group posted as recently as last week mocked the death of a 16-year-old detained Guatemalan migrant, made bigoted remarks about throwing a burrito at two Latina congresswomen, and posted obscene and misogynistic illustrations of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). The group’s name refers to the code used to signal “aliens in custody.”

Top Homeland Security Department officials, including acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan and Border Patrol Chief Carla Provost, denounced those posts this week and pledged to hold any culpable agents accountable.

“Reporting this week highlighted disturbing & inexcusable social media activity that allegedly includes active Border Patrol personnel,” McAleenan wrote. “These statements are completely unacceptable, especially if made by those sworn to uphold the @DHSgov mission, our values & standards of conduct.”

5 July 2019: CBP officials knew about derogatory Facebook group years ago and have investigated posts from it before:⁠

U.S. Customs and Border Protection was aware of the inflammatory Facebook page where alleged Border Patrol agents posted racist, sexist and violent images — and the agency has investigated posts from the group on at least one occasion, an official said.

CBP’s Office of Professional Responsibility, akin to an internal affairs division, received content from the group once called “I’m 10–15” in 2016, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a personnel investigation. The office carried out an inquiry and took disciplinary action, but the official did not say how many employees were involved or what sort of discipline was dispensed.

Even though some in the agency have known about the Facebook group for as many as three years, CBP officials do not conduct regular monitoring of private pages, the official said, adding that it would potentially interfere with members’ First Amendment and privacy rights. Instead, CBP responds when it’s presented with reports of wrongdoing.

Officials have said they weren’t aware of the recent posts to “I’m 10–15” — which has reportedly been renamed America First — and Kevin McAleenan, acting secretary of Homeland Security, pledged “an immediate investigation” after the website ProPublica published an investigation revealing a bevy of offensive posts on the page.

“Any employee found to have compromised the public’s trust in our law enforcement mission will be held accountable,” McAleenan said on Twitter.

The fact that CBP officials knew the group existed — first reported by Politico — enraged lawmakers and migrant advocates.

“What is profoundly disturbing is that the Border Patrol agents and leadership who posted these heinous things have power over migrants — including vulnerable women and children,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Tex.) on Twitter. “This is truly a broken agency in desperate need of complete reform.”

6 July 2019: Right-wing activists file ‘formal complaint’ with Hillary Clinton’s local Police Department, demanding her arrest:⁠

A group of right-wing activists filed a “formal complaint” with the New Castle Police Department, in New York, this weekend calling for criminal charges to be brought against a notable area resident: former U.S. secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Members from the Equal Justice Tour, a group of radical right-wing activists advocating for the arrest of Clinton, marched to the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate’s local police department near her home in Chappaqua on Saturday to drop off the complaint documents with officers. A New Castle Police Department officer confirmed to Newsweek their arrival at roughly 2:30 p.m. local time.

A live-streamed video of the incident, shared on Facebook, depicted a member of the group handing over the documents to an officer inside the police station.

“Some of us are veterans and we swore to defend the Constitution from domestic enemies,” the activist told the officer, adding that Clinton “was a public servant and she should be held accountable, so now we’re looking to hold her accountable.”

“You, as a lawful officer, you took an oath to uphold justice, uphold the law and so these,” he added while holding up a small stack of papers that he said were “signed and notarized.”

“Okay, I will take these and I will forward them to the prosecutor,” the officer responded, politely.

8 July 2019: Pompeo launches controversial commission to examine ‘unalienable rights’:⁠

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Monday the creation of a commission to review the role of human rights in U.S. foreign policy.

The Commission on Unalienable Rights is meant to provide advice on human rights based on the nation’s founding principles and the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Pompeo said, arguing that there is confusion over what constitutes a human right.

“As human rights claims have proliferated, some claims have come into tension with one another, provoking questions and clashes about which rights are entitled to gain respect,” Pompeo said while delivering remarks to reporters but without taking any questions. “Nation-states and international institutions remain confused about their respective responsibilities concerning human rights.”

The commission drew swift scrutiny from critics who worry the panel will undermine protections for abortion rights and marginalized groups such as LGBT people.

Critics were first concerned in May when a notice for the commission, published in the Federal Register, said the group would provide “fresh thinking about human rights discourse where such discourse has departed from our nation’s founding principles of natural law and natural rights.”

The term “natural law” has been used by opponents of same-sex marriage.

“If this administration truly wanted to support people’s rights, it would use the global framework that’s already in place. Instead, it wants to undermine rights for individuals, as well as the responsibilities of governments,” Joanne Lin, national director of advocacy and government affairs at Amnesty International USA, said in a statement Monday. “This politicization of human rights in order to, what appears to be an attempt to further hateful policies aimed at women and LGBTQ people, is shameful.”

The commission will be headed by Mary Ann Glendon, a Harvard Law School professor and former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican during the George W. Bush administration.

In brief remarks alongside Pompeo, Glendon said the commission will “do our very best to carry out your marching orders and to do so in a way that will assist you in your difficult task of transmuting principle into policy.”

“I wanted to thank you especially for giving a priority to human rights at this moment when basic human rights are being misunderstood by many, manipulated by many and ignored by the world’s worst human rights violators,” Glendon told Pompeo. “You’ve asked us to work at the level of principle, not policy, and you’ve asked us to take our bearings from the distinctive rights tradition of the United States of America, a tradition that is grounded in the institutions without which rights would not be possible: constitutional government and the rule of law.”

8 July 2019: Trump Invites Creator Of Anti-Semitic Cartoon To The White House:⁠

An artist who drew a “blatantly anti-Semitic cartoon” which showed U.S. government officials as puppets of George Soros and the Rothschilds, has been invited to the White House by President Donald Trump.

The Anti-Defamation League called Ben Garrison’s cartoon published in 2017 “blatantly anti-Semitic” and said that “the thrust of the cartoon is clear: (then-National Security Advisor H.R.) McMaster is merely a puppet of a Jewish conspiracy.”

The cartoon, which the ADL said was commissioned by right-wing radio host Mike Cernovich, shows left-wing Jewish philanthropist George Soros pulling the strings of McMaster and former CIA director Gen. David Petraeus. Above Soros, a green hand labeled “Rothschilds,” the well-known Jewish banking family, manipulates him.

Cernovich is known for starting the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which claimed that the Clintons were running a pedophile ring in the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant.

The Rothschilds often appear in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, which have them running a secretive international Jewish cabal that controls the world.

Garrison tweeted an image of his invitation to the White House for a social media summit, saying he was “honored.”

9 July 2019: Judge Rejects Justice Dept. Request to Change Lawyers on Census Case:⁠

A federal judge in New York on Tuesday rejected the Justice Department’s request to switch its legal team midway through a case challenging the Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

The sharply worded order, by United States District Judge Jesse M. Furman, may further hobble an already struggling battle by the administration to save the citizenship question. Efforts to block it have become a crucial political issue as the next census — and the redrawing of political boundaries in 2021 that will use fresh census data — draws near.

On Sunday, the Justice Department said it was replacing the legal team defending the citizenship question. It offered no explanation for the change, which came in the middle of a prolonged clash over whether the administration’s arguments for adding the question could be believed.

But on Tuesday, as a new team of lawyers began to notify the court of its appearance in the case, Judge Furman barred the old lawyers from leaving until they met a legal requirement to satisfactorily explain their departure and show that it would not impede the case. He excepted only two lawyers on the team who had already left the department’s civil division, which was overseeing the lawsuit.

9 July 2019: Trump Seeks to Hire 80 Foreign Workers at Mar-a-Lago:⁠

Mar-a-Lago, the so-called “winter White House,” is looking to hire 80 workers from other countries this year, a move that could bring out critics of Donald Trump.

The resort, which received 78 H-2B visas in 2018–19 is looking to slightly increase the number for the coming year. A separate request by the Trump Organization seeks 14 visas for workers at the Trump National Golf Club in nearby Jupiter, Fla.

Companies, especially resorts, use H-2B visas regularly to recruit workers, but because Donald Trump has been so vocal about immigration issues, these sorts of requests from his properties are often spotlighted. Fla. Senator Marco Rubio went after Trump in the 2016 election for his use of international employees.

The H-2B is a visa that is targeted to low-cost, low-skilled workers and is not under any executive review. H2-Bs, in other words, provide temporary work visas for people to fill seasonal jobs that Americans don’t want.

Last year, Trump banned residents of Haiti from obtaining those visas, which caused some headaches at Mar-a-Lago. The resort reportedly employs more Haitians than nearly any other nationality. (Romania is the only other one that comes close, according to The New Yorker.)

9 July 2019: White supremacist accidentally sets own head on fire while trying to burn down synagogue:⁠

A far-right extremist accidentally set himself on fire while trying to burn down an historic synagogue.

Tristan Morgan was spotted walking away with a petrol can in his hand as smoke spewed from the 18th century building in Exeter, Devon, last summer.

CCTV footage shows the 52-year-old using a small axe to break a window of the building before pouring liquid through it from a green petrol can.

He then tosses something through the window and is almost immediately sent flying backwards as he is engulfed in a ball of flames.\

The defendant admitted arson, encouraging terrorism by publishing a song entitled “White Man” to live-streaming website Soundcloud, and having a copy of the White Resistance Manual when he appeared at the Old Bailey.

10 July 2019: Audio Suggests Secret Plan for Russians to Fund Party of Italy’s Salvini:⁠

Over clanking coffee cups at Moscow’s luxurious Metropol hotel in October last year, a close aide to Matteo Salvini, Italy’s most powerful politician and the emerging leader of Europe’s nationalists, sat for more than an hour with a couple of Italian colleagues and some Russian officials.

Unbeknown to them, Italian reporters watched them in the hotel, and in February they published an account in an Italian magazine alleging that the kaffeeklatsch was busy negotiating a complicated plan to secretly finance Mr. Salvini’s hard-right League party with Russian money ahead of the European elections.

The report intrigued analysts and liberal politicians, but its cloudy provenance and Mr. Salvini’s continued denials led the questions to taper off, even as Mr. Salvini’s poll numbers and full-throated support of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia increased. But on Wednesday, BuzzFeed News published an audio that seemed to confirm the Italian report’s version of the meeting.

The recording was the second to come to light in just months that appeared to reveal how Mr. Putin has actively sought to destabilize the European Union by supporting nationalist, populist parties like the League. In May, the Austrian government fell after a video revealed the leader of Austria’s right wing discussing public contracts in exchange for Russian campaign aid.

For now, in Italy, where Mr. Salvini appears immune to political injury, the audio did not seem likely to threaten his grip on power. But it did raise new questions about Russia’s willingness to meddle in Europe, and the willingness of pro-Russian nationalists in the heart of Western Europe to accept that help.

“Funding to an Italian political party by a foreign state is illegal,” said Emanuele Fiano, an Italian member of Parliament in the opposition Democratic Party, who on Wednesday called on Mr. Salvini to appear before the Lower House to explain the financial negotiation heard on the tape.

“It’s also dangerous to know that an Italian party has a contract of collaboration with a foreign state,” he added in an interview.

Two former prime ministers from the Democratic Party also called on Wednesday for an official inquiry.

Mr. Salvini, who is Italy’s deputy prime minister and minister of the interior, on Wednesday denied, again, taking any funding from Russia.

10 July 2019: Labor Secretary Acosta wants to slash funding to anti-sex trafficking agency by 80%:⁠

Alexander Acosta, the US labor secretary under fire for having granted Jeffrey Epstein immunity from federal prosecution in 2008, after the billionaire was investigated for having run a child sex trafficking ring, is proposing 80% funding cuts for the government agency that combats child sex trafficking.

Acosta’s plan to slash funding of a critical federal agency in the fight against the sexual exploitation of children is contained in his financial plans for the Department of Labor for fiscal year 2020. In it, he proposes decimating the resources of a section of his own department known as the International Labor Affairs Bureau (ILAB).

The bureau’s budget would fall from $68m last year to just $18.5m. The proposed reduction is so drastic that experts say it would effectively kill off many federal efforts to curb sex trafficking and put the lives of large numbers of children at risk.

ILAB has the task of countering human trafficking, child labor and forced labor across the US and around the world. Its mission is “to promote a fair global playing field for workers” and it is seen as a crucial leader in efforts to crack down on the sex trafficking of minors.

Katherine Clark, a congresswoman from Massachusetts, said Acosta’s proposed cut was “reckless” and “amoral”. When seen alongside the sweetheart plea deal he granted Epstein in 2008, when Acosta was US attorney in Miami, she said, it indicated that the labor secretary did not see protecting vulnerable children as a priority.

“This is now a pattern,” Clark told the Guardian. “Like so many in this administration Mr Acosta chooses the powerful and wealthy over the vulnerable and victims of sexual assault and it is time that he finds another line of work.”

Clark grilled Acosta about the proposed cuts in April, when he presented his departmental budget to the House appropriations subcommittee. On that occasion, she said, she found him “rude, dismissive, challenging”.

“I’m sure this is a very uncomfortable topic for him,” Clark said, “but I don’t think he should be able to hide from it.”

11 July 2019: General tapped to be Joint Chiefs vice chairman accused of sexual misconduct:⁠

A senior military officer has accused the Air Force general tapped to be the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of sexual misconduct, potentially jeopardizing his nomination. Members of Congress have raised questions about the allegations and the military investigation that found insufficient evidence to charge him.

The officer told The Associated Press that Gen. John Hyten subjected her to a series of unwanted sexual advances by kissing, hugging and rubbing up against her in 2017 while she was one of his aides. She said that he tried to derail her military career after she rebuffed him.

The Air Force investigated the woman’s allegations, which she reported days after Hyten’s nomination was announced in April, and found there was insufficient evidence to charge the general or recommend any administrative punishment. The accuser remains in the military but has moved to a different job.

“My life was ruined by this,” she told the AP.

11 July 2019: Trump administration will no longer push to add citizenship question to 2020 Census, ending a heated legal and political standoff:⁠

President Trump on Thursday said he is no longer seeking to add a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, likely ending a contentious legal and political standoff over the decennial survey.

Instead Trump said he is ordering every federal agency to give the Commerce Department records on the numbers of citizens and noncitizens, including databases from the Homeland Security Department and the Social Security Administration.

“I’m proud to be a citizen, you’re proud to be a citizen, the only people that are not proud to be citizens are the ones who are fighting us all the way about the word citizen,” Trump said.

The move comes after administration officials spent days exploring the possibility of including the question on the census despite a Supreme Court ruling last month that the government could not without a solid justification, calling the administration’s original rationale for the addition “contrived.”

In the wake of that ruling, the Commerce Department announced last week that it would drop the question saying it needed to begin printing the survey. But an angry Trump reversed that decision the next day saying that he was not giving up on the issue.

12 July 2019: Labor Secretary Acosta resigns, Trump says, after questions of how Acosta, as U.S. attorney, handled plea deal for sex offender Epstein:⁠

Jeffrey Epstein was indicted this week on charges of sex trafficking involving girls. In 2008, Alexander Acosta signed off on a plea deal for Epstein after similar accusations that was widely viewed as too lenient.

14 July 2019: Trump tweets racist attacks at progressive Democratic congresswomen:⁠

President Donald Trump used racist language on Sunday to attack progressive Democratic congresswomen, falsely implying they weren’t natural-born American citizens.

Trump did not name who he was attacking in Sunday’s tirade but earlier this week he referenced New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez when the President was defending House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

A group of Democrats, who are women of color and have been outspoken about Trump’s immigration policies, last week condemned the conditions of border detention facilities. The group of women joining Ocasio-Cortez were Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts.

Trump implied in the series of tweets that the congresswomen weren’t born in America and sarcastically suggested, “they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

Later Sunday, Ocasio-Cortez wrote on Twitter that the country she “come(s) from” and “swears to” is the US and suggested that Trump is “angry because you can’t conceive of an America that includes us.”

“You rely on a frightened America for your plunder,” the New Yorker wrote in a tweet.

Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Pressley are natural-born US citizens, while Omar was born in Somalia and immigrated to the US when she was young. Omar became a citizen in 2000 when she was 17 years old, according to the New York Times.

Trump’s tweets come as interest in the conditions of detention centers housing migrants has risen sharply and raids to round up undocumented immigrants are being conducted Sunday by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in multiple major cities across the nation.

CNN has reached out to the White House for comment on who Trump was targeting in his tweets.

Omar, responding to the President’s attacks on Sunday, threw punches at Trump in a pair of tweets, writing that “As Members of Congress, the only country we swear an oath to is the United States.”

“Which is why we are fighting to protect it from the worst, most corrupt and inept president we have ever seen,” Omar wrote, adding that Trump is “stoking white nationalism” because he is “angry that people like us are serving in Congress and fighting against your hate-filled agenda.”

Tlaib and Pressley also hit back at Trump on Twitter, with Tlaib saying she is “fighting corruption” in the US “every day when I hold your (administration) accountable as a U.S. Congresswoman,” and Pressley saying the tweets are “what racism looks like.”

“WE are what democracy looks like. And we’re not going anywhere. Except back to DC to fight for the families you marginalize and vilify everyday,” Pressley wrote in a tweet.

Trump continued his attacks on the progressive House members Sunday evening, claiming they “speak so badly of our country.” In a pair of tweets, he said he was sad to see Democrats sticking up for the House members, and that he looked forward to the 2020 election if they continue with this strategy.

14 July 2019: Despite weeks of threats, ICE raids begin with a whimper yet still stoke fears:⁠

Long-threatened Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids appeared to begin Sunday on a decidedly small scale, with a scattering of arrests that nonetheless sparked new fears in immigrant communities.

The raids — hyped for weeks by President Trump — were to take place in major U.S. cities including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Miami, Denver, Atlanta, Baltimore and Houston.

As of Sunday evening, there were no reports of arrests in the Los Angeles area. And the widespread raids that some feared failed to materialize.

In Florida, ICE agents were seen knocking on doors near Miami International Airport on Sunday and in the migrant farming community of Immokalee on Friday, but there had been no reports of arrests, said Melissa Taveras of the Miami-based Florida Immigrant Coalition.

“We don’t know if they’re doing it on purpose — saying these cities are the targets so then smaller places are targeted,” Taveras said.

Taveras said migrant advocates were advising families to memorize the phone number of a relative or an attorney they could call if they were detained by ICE, and to ensure a relative knew their full name, date of birth and what location they’re being taken to so that they could try to get released.

She said she has been in contact with migrant families hiding in their homes. She said it felt as though they were preparing for a storm.

“The overall environment is very much like a hurricane: When is it going to come, is it going to hit us, is it going to move north?” she said.

In Houston, there was no sign of ICE raids early Sunday.

“It’s actually really quiet. We’re driving around and it’s really empty,” said Cesar Espinosa, executive director of immigrant advocacy group Fiel Houston.

Espinosa was driving to check out a report that two migrants had been picked up by ICE at an apartment complex late Saturday. Nearly a dozen churches have volunteered to house migrants during the raids, providing food and other supplies. But many were sheltering in place.

“We’re advising people to just continue with their lives,” Espinosa said, “and know their rights so they know what to do.”

By late Sunday afternoon, Venus Rodriguez was reaching out to migrant families hiding at home and preparing to emerge Monday.

“They’re going to attempt to go to work, because they need the money,” said Rodriguez, 43, a U.S. citizen and a community organizer on Houston’s north side. “It’s a scary situation for a lot of them.”

While some officials have said that only recent migrants with deportation orders will be targeted in the ICE raids, she said, “a lot of them are not trusting that. They think they might just start picking people up.”

Rodriguez attended Mass at a local Catholic church Sunday where the pews were emptier than usual.

“That’s one place you should feel safe,” she said. “This is horrible.”

14 July 2019: Lindsey Graham: “I don’t care” if migrants “stay in these facilities for 400 days”:

Speaking with Sunday Morning Futures host Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business Network, Senator Lindsey Graham vehemently disagreed with humanitarian concerns raised by Vice President Mike Pence’s recent tour of a migrant detention facility in Texas. “I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we’re not going to let those men go that I saw,” said Graham. “It would be dangerous.”

Graham was referring to now-viral footage of Pence’s tour, which saw the vice president blithely overlooking a fenced room filled to capacity with migrants protesting unsanitary conditions. Pence subsequently claimed over Twitter that the men “were in a temporary holding area because Democrats in Congress have refused to fund additional bed space,” and derided CNN for allegedly “ignoring the excellent care being provided to families and children” in a separate facility.

President Donald Trump likewise tweeted on Sunday that “Friday’s tour showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children’s detention centers are. Great reviews!”

Friday’s tour showed vividly, to politicians and the media, how well run and clean the children’s detention centers are. Great reviews! Failing @nytimes story was FAKE! The adult single men areas were clean but crowded — also loaded up with a big percentage of criminals……

Graham, meanwhile, emphasized that the facility was “overwhelmed,” and claimed “all of [the detained migrants] broke our law.”

Graham on the migrants he saw at a detention facility: “I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days

“What I saw is a bunch of people who have been here before, broke the law before, and we’re not going to let them go,” he continued. “I don’t care if they have to stay in these facilities for 400 days, we’re not going to let those men go that I saw. It would be dangerous.”

15 July 2019: ‘I don’t find them racist’: Steve Mnuchin defends Trump’s ‘go back’ tweets against Congresswomen of Color:⁠

Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin on Monday defended President Donald Trump’s tweet stating that progressive Congresswomen of color should “go back” to countries where they came from by saying he did not find the president’s comments racist.

Mnuchin stood by the president when asked to comment on Trump’s tirade during a briefing on regulating cryptocurrencies.

“I don’t find them racist,” Mnuchin said. “The president just went on and clarified his comments. I think he speaks for himself on that. He was very clear but again, we’re focused on cryptocurrencies and then I’ll do some debt ceiling stuff.”

A reporter said, “You think they’re not racist, if I could have a follow up,” but Mnuchin ignored the request and went on to another question.

15 July 2019: McConnell silent on Trump tweets — even as some congressional Republicans decry them:⁠

Mitch McConnell has been a fierce, consistent defender of President Donald Trump. And as congressional Republicans Monday began criticizing Trump’s blasts at four Democratic congresswomen, McConnell remained silent, promising only he’d respond to questions Tuesday.

Trump said Sunday the congresswomen should “go back” to their home countries, even though all four are U.S. citizens and three were born in the U.S.

McConnell, the Senate majority leader, had nothing to say about the matter Sunday and again Monday. When reporters questioned him Monday the Kentucky Republican said, he’d “be happy” to answer questions at his weekly press availability Tuesday afternoon.

McConnell refused to talk about the tweets, and did not mention them in his remarks opening the Senate Monday. Democrat Amy McGrath, a former Marine fighter pilot who announced last week she’d challenge McConnell for re-election, warned on Twitter against becoming “numb to these statements. These words are wrong and un-American.”

McConnell has been adverse to publicly weigh in on Trump’s Twitter habits, though last fall, he reportedly called Trump to tell him that his tweeted criticism of Christine Blasey Ford, who accused Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexual assault, was not helpful for the confirmation process.

15 July 2019: Neo-Nazi gets second life sentence in murder of protester in Virginia:⁠

A Virginia state judge on Monday sentenced a self-professed neo-Nazi to a second life prison term for killing a demonstrator when he drove his car into a crowd protesting against white supremacists in Charlottesville two years ago.

Charlottesville Circuit Court Judge Richard Moore sentenced James Fields, 22, to life plus 419 years, as recommended by the jury that found him guilty last December of murder plus eight counts of malicious wounding and a hit-and-run offense.

“Mr. Fields, you deserve the sentence the jury gave. What you did was an act of terror,” Moore said.

16 July 2019: Defending Trump, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway asks a reporter: ‘What’s your ethnicity?’:⁠

White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Tuesday responded to questions about President Donald Trump’s attacks on four congresswomen of color by asking a reporter about his heritage.

Andrew Feinberg, a White House reporter for Breakfast Media, a website about politics and technology, asked Conway, “If the president was not telling these four congresswomen to return to their supposed countries of origin, to which countries was he referring?”

Conway paused and then asked him, “What’s your ethnicity?”

“Why is that relevant?” Feinberg replied.

“Because I’m asking a question. My ancestors are from Ireland and Italy,” Conway shot back.

The exchange took place with members of the media on the White House driveway Tuesday morning, when, following an appearance on Fox News, Conway was repeatedly asked what Trump meant when he tweeted earlier this week that a quartet of progressive congresswomen should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

From there, the exchange turned into a tense back-and-forth that included Conway saying that “a lot of us are sick and tired of this country, of America coming last to people who swore an oath of office.”

“My own ethnicity is not relevant to the question I’m asking,” Feinberg said.

“Are you saying the president was telling the Palestinian American to go back to the occupied territories?” he continued.

That question was a reference to one target of Trump’s remarks, Democratic Rep. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, a Palestinian American who was born in Michigan.

16 July 2019: Eric Garner’s Death Will Not Lead to Federal Charges for N.Y.P.D. Officer:⁠

A contentious, yearslong debate inside the Justice Department over whether to bring federal civil rights charges against an officer in the death of Eric Garner ended on Tuesday after Attorney General William P. Barr ordered that the case be dropped.

The United States attorney in Brooklyn, Richard P. Donoghue, announced the decision one day before the fifth anniversary of Mr. Garner’s death at the hands of police officers on Staten Island.

The case had sharply divided federal officials and prompted national protests over excessive force by the police.

20 July 2019: In ‘Send Her Back’ Fallout, Trump Amplifies Praise From Right-Wing British Commentator:⁠

President Trump on Saturday extended the debate over a chant of “send her back!” at his campaign rally in North Carolina this week when he retweeted a right-wing British commentator who has drawn repeated condemnation over a long history of anti-Muslim remarks and for casting blame on a Jewish leader for provoking a synagogue shooting.

Sending fresh mixed signals about his view of the chant directed at a Democratic lawmaker, Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Mr. Trump shared video of the episode posted by the commentator, Katie Hopkins, who has said “Islam disgusts me” and who last year appeared to link a rabbi’s pro-migrant work to the mass shooting at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Ms. Hopkins was celebrating the moment in Greenville, N.C., on Wednesday, suggesting that the crowd’s chant could be a new slogan for Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign. “Send her back is the new lock her up,” she wrote, referring to a refrain from the 2016 campaign directed at Trump’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton.

“Well done to #TeamTrump,” she added.

Mr. Trump, who has shifted his account of how he responded to the chant about Ms. Omar, posted Ms. Hopkins’s tweet on his own feed while adding commentary that placed some distance between himself and his supporters that night in Greenville.

“As you can see, I did nothing to lead people on, nor was I particularly happy with their chant. Just a very big and patriotic crowd. They love the USA!” Mr. Trump wrote early Saturday from his golf club in Bedminster, N.J.

The chant followed Mr. Trump’s attack on Ms. Omar and three of her fellow Democratic congresswomen of color — Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna S. Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan — in which the president called on the lawmakers to “go back” to their countries. All of them are American citizens, and all but Ms. Omar, a Somali refugee, were born in the United States.

A day after the Greenville rally, Mr. Trump, under pressure from congressional Republicans and even his own daughter, falsely claimed that he had tried to interrupt the chant, something clearly disproved by the video. Speaking to reporters on Friday, he declined an opportunity to criticize the chant, calling his supporters “incredible patriots” and saying he was unhappy that Ms. Omar “can hate our country.”

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump was aware of the background of Ms. Hopkins, who is a notorious right-wing agitator and former columnist for The Daily Mail whose attacks on Muslims in particular have largely exiled her from the mainstream news media. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Trump has often amplified, through retweets, the voices of white nationalists, fierce critics of Islam, conspiracy theorists and other activists and commentators from the far right. In May, Mr. Trump retweeted a conspiracy-theory account under the handle Deep State Exposed — whose Twitter profile claims 10 retweets by the president in all — that declared: “The ‘elite’ proclaim America must submit to Islam or else!!! #Trump2020.” That month he also retweeted a message ending with an A-O.K. emoji, which has become a symbol of the white nationalist movement.

23 July 2019: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Republican Challenger Appears to be a QAnon Conspiracy Theorist:⁠

A Republican House candidate challenging Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has made frequent references to the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory, potentially making her the latest QAnon believer to run for federal office in 2020.

Danielle Stella, a Minneapolis special education teacher, made a stir on the right-wing internet in June when she launched her campaign against Omar, a frequent target of President Donald Trump. But her campaign strategy appears to include outreach to QAnon fans, with Stella’s Twitter account posting twice last week using the hashtag “#WWG1WGA” — a reference to the QAnon motto “Where we go one, we go all.”

Stella’s Twitter account also follows a number of prominent QAnon promoters.

25 July 2019: Trump’s Border Patrol Chief Was In Secret, Racist Facebook Group:⁠

The head of the U.S. Border Patrol said Wednesday that she joined a Facebook group whose members mocked migrants and lawmakers so she could read what her personnel thought about her, and said she knew little about the group.

Chief Carla Provost said during a congressional subcommittee hearing in Washington that she logged on to Facebook very rarely and that she immediately reported her membership in the group to an oversight division of U.S. Customs and Border Protection after she realized she was a member.

Provost earlier this month had issued a statement condemning the posts without saying that she was a member.

25 July 2019: N.J. School Board Member: ‘My Life Would Be Complete’ If Rep. Rashida Tlaib Died:⁠

A New Jersey school board member faces calls to resign over offensive comments he made on Facebook targeting Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), both of whom are Muslim.

Daniel Leonard, a member of the Toms River Board of Education in New Jersey, has said he won’t step down over the comments, which he posted to his Facebook page in April. In one post, Leonard refers to Omar as a “terrorist,” and in another he says his “life would be complete” if Tlaib were dead.

In another post, Leonard shares an Islamophobic fake ad for “Sharia Barbie” that is described as coming with “JIHAB, BRUISES & QURAN.” The “JIHAB” is an apparent reference to a hijab, or a Muslim headscarf.

25 July 2019: Trump Administration Considering ‘Travel Ban’ On Guatemalans After Asylum Snub:⁠

The Trump administration is actively investigating imposing a travel ban against Guatemala unless the Central American nation takes significant steps to curb illegal migration northward.

In a move reminiscent of the pressure campaign President Trump launched against Mexico over immigration, the travel ban is the most explosive option of three that the administration says it’s considering against the Central American nation, according to White House and other U.S. sources familiar with the plans. Trump charged Guatemala with backing out on an immigration deal with the United States.

“If Guatemala doesn’t take significant action to help protect our borders, then we will, of course, look at all manner of solutions to the serious crisis we face,” a White House official told NPR, “whether it’s a travel ban, significant actions on remittances and/or tariffs.”

The White House is looking at the authority already granted to the executive branch to suspend the entry of classes of people when it’s considered detrimental to national interests.

Trump said Wednesday that the United States was planning to take “severe” action against the government of Guatemala after, he said, it broke a deal with the United States to serve as a safe third party country.

26 July 2019: Ex-Miss Michigan Joins Trump Campaign After Being Dethroned For racist Social Media Posts:⁠

A pageant queen crowned Miss Michigan then dethroned the next day for offensive social media posts about black people and Muslims has now joined an arm of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign.

Kathy Zhu made the announcement Thursday night on Twitter, writing that she is “so excited” to be named to the Women for Trump advisory board, which encourages women to vote for Trump in 2020.

26 July 2019: $250 million Sandmann lawsuit against Washington Post dismissed by federal judge:⁠

The $250 million lawsuit filed by Nick Sandmann against the Washington Post has been dismissed by a federal judge.

William Bertelsman, who heard oral arguments in the case earlier this month, issued the ruling on Friday.

Nick and his attorneys, Todd McMurtry and L. Lin Wood, alleged that the gist of The Washington Post’s first article conveyed that Nick had assaulted or physically intimidated Nathan Phillips, engaged in racist conduct, and engaged in taunts.

But, Bertelsman wrote, “this is not supported by the plain language in the article, which states none of these things.”

Bertelsman accepted Nick’s assertion that he was only standing motionless across from Phillips, without ill intent.

But the Eastern District of Kentucky judge ruled that Phillips, who told the media he felt threatened, had a First Amendment right to express his opinion.

“He concluded that he was being blocked and not allowed to retreat,” Bertelsman wrote. “He passed these conclusions on to The Post. They may have been erroneous, but, as discussed above, they are opinion protected by the First Amendment.”

Phillips and Nick were captured on videos that went viral in January when they stood across from each other on the National Mall. Nick stared at Phillips as Phillips participated in a song with other Native Americans.

27 July 2019: Trump Attacks Elijah Cummings As ‘Brutal Bully’ From ‘Rodent Infested’ District:⁠

President Donald Trump slammed one of his leading congressional opponents, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), in a Saturday morning Twitter rant calling him a “brutal bully” and berating his majority-black Baltimore district as a “rodent infested mess.”

It’s the latest in a series of attacks in which the president has used language widely condemned as racist to insult a nonwhite member of Congress, this time prompted by Cummings’ comments about inhumane conditions at the southern border.

“Rep, Elijah Cummings has been a brutal bully, shouting and screaming at the great men & women of Border Patrol about conditions at the Southern Border, when actually his Baltimore district is FAR WORSE and more dangerous,” Trump wrote.

The president went on to defend conditions at the border as “clean, efficient & well run,” deriding Cummings’ city as a “disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess” and a “very dangerous & filthy place.”

27 July 2019: Nancy Pelosi Denounces Trump’s ‘Racist Attacks’ On Rep. Elijah Cummings:⁠

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) condemned President Donald Trump’s Saturday Twitter attack on Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) and his majority-black West Baltimore district, deeming it downright racist.

Defending the House Oversight and Reform Committee chair, Pelosi called him “a champion in the Congress and the country for civil rights and economic justice, a beloved leader in Baltimore, and deeply valued colleague.”

“We all reject racist attacks against him and support his steadfast leadership,” she tweeted.

28 July 2019: Mulvaney: Trump’s tweets on Cummings not racist:⁠

Acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said on Sunday that President Donald Trump’s tweets attacking Rep. Elijah Cummings were not racist, saying the president was just fighting back against “lies.”

On Saturday, Trump tweeted that Democrat Cummings’ Baltimore-area district “is considered the worst run and most dangerous anywhere in the United States. No human being would want to live there.”

On “Fox News Sunday,” host Chris Wallace pointed out that the median household income in Cummings’ district is in the upper half nationally and that Columbia, Md., has been called the “safest city” in the country.

“What this is about, though, is the president fighting back against what he saw as being illegitimate attacks about the border” in a recent House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing chaired by Cummings, Mulvaney responded.

During the hearing on the U.S.-Mexico border, Cummings asked acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan, “What does that mean when a child is sitting in their own feces, can’t take a shower?”

Mulvaney disputed the assertions, calling them inaccurate and noting Cummings hasn’t been to the border during the Trump administration.

“When the president hears lies like that, he is going to fight back, and that’s what you saw in those tweets,” Mulvaney said.

Wallace responded: “This goes back to what happened with the four members of ‘the Squad’: Nobody objects to the president defending his border policies, but this seems, Mick, to be the worst kind of racial stereotyping — let me finish — black congressman, majority-black district.”

29 July 2019: Trump labels Al Sharpton a ‘con man’ amid attacks on Cummings:⁠

President Donald Trump launched a Twitter offensive against another African American leader Monday, following up his weekend complaints about Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) by alleging that civil rights activist Al Sharpton “Hates Whites & Cops.”

“I have known Al for 25 years. Went to fights with him & Don King, always got along well,” Trump wrote online, referencing the famed black boxing promoter.

“He ‘loved Trump!’ He would ask me for favors often,” the president wrote of Sharpton. “Al is a con man, a troublemaker, always looking for a score. Just doing his thing. Must have intimidated Comcast/NBC. Hates Whites & Cops!”

Trump’s insult accompanied a re-posted message from Sharpton, in which the reverend tweeted a picture of himself on what appeared to be an airport escalator and wrote: “Arrived in DC from Atlanta, headed to Baltimore. Long day but can’t stop.”