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President Joe Biden

Biden Starts Work With 15 Executive Actions Today

Reprinted with permission from American Independent

Hours after taking the oath of office, President Joe Biden will immediately begin cleaning up the mess Donald Trump made over the past four years.

On Wednesday, he will sign 15 executive orders and two directives to reset the federal government's approach to a wide array of issues.

These are the executive actions the Biden team says the president will sign.

COVID-19 mask mandate

Trump consistently refused to wear a mask or to encourage Americans to do so to curb the spread of the coronavirus, mocking them as "politically correct." President Biden will order mask use and social distancing on federal property and challenge every American to wear a face mask for the next 100 days.

Return To The World Health Organization

Trump announced in April that he would stop funding the World Health Organization in the middle of the pandemic, scapegoating it for the coronavirus' spread and his own botched response. Biden will end the withdrawal process and resume international public health cooperation.

Coordinated COVID-19 Response

After intentionally misleading the public and playing down the threat of the coronavirus, Trump lost interest in the crisis and did little to address it. Biden will designate a COVID-19 response coordinator to oversee improved testing, protection, and vaccination.

Eviction And Foreclosure Moratoriums

Thanks to Trump's failed response to the pandemic, millions of Americans have lost their jobs and fallen into poverty. Biden will urge government agencies to extend moratoriums on evictions and mortgage foreclosures until at least March 31.

Freezing Federal Student Loan Payments

With the ongoing economic troubles affecting many Americans with educational debt, Biden will also ask for an extension on existing freezes on principal and interest payments on direct federal loans until at least Sept. 30.

Rejoining Paris Climate Agreement

Trump, who once dismissed climate change as a hoax "created by and for the Chinese" to hurt American manufacturers, began the formal withdrawal of the United States from the 2015 Paris climate agreement in 2019. The accords aim to significantly limit the rise in global temperatures by reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Biden, who campaigned on a promise of taking environmental protection seriously, will immediately rejoin the agreement.

Undoing Anti-Environmental Actions

Biden will also take a series of actions to undo Trump's efforts to destroy the planet and climate. These will include beginning the long process of eliminating his pro-polluter regulations, revising fuel economy and emissions standards, protecting public lands, halting the destruction of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and revoking the permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline.

Ending Systemic Racism

Trump, who spent much of his term spouting his own racist views, took numerous steps to combat anti-racism education. Biden will order his administration to focus on "advancing racial equity for all" and will eliminate Trump's racist 1776 Commission, which sought to block schools from teaching kids about America's true history of slavery and discrimination.

Counting All Immigrants In Census

Trump repeatedly tried to find ways to exclude immigrants from the 2020 census and to leave out undocumented people. Biden will ensure an accurate count of the population as required by the Constitution.

Protecting Dreamers

Trump sought for years to eliminate the Obama administration's Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which offered legal protections for hundreds of thousands of young immigrants brought to the United States as children. The Supreme Court halted his efforts due to a paperwork error. Biden will restore and expand the program as he works to enact comprehensive immigration reform legislation.

Ending Muslim Ban

As a candidate in 2015, Trump promised a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what's going on." Once he took office, he banned travel from a number of majority-Muslim countries. Biden will eliminate this racist policy.

Stopping Extreme Immigration Policies

Trump issued an order in 2017 prioritizing the arrest and deportation of undocumented immigrants. Biden will revoke this order, allowing his administration "to set civil immigration enforcement policies that best protect the American people and are in line with our values and priorities."

Ending Construction Of Trump Border Wall

Trump's signature promise during the 2016 presidential campaign was to immediately build a massive wall along the entire U.S.-Mexican border, to be paid for entirely by Mexico. Instead, American taxpayers spent $15 billion to fortify existing fencing and build just 12 new miles of wall. Biden will immediately stop construction.

Protecting Liberian Immigrants

Biden will protect Liberian immigrants who have long been in the United States, extending existing protections until June 30, 2022. This extends a decadeslong program Trump sought to wind down.

Fighting Anti-LGBTQ Discrimination

Trump spent four years systematically rolling back protections for LGBTQ Americans. Biden will reaffirm protections against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Government Ethics Reform

Trump broke his promise to "drain the swamp" of government in nearly every way possible. Biden will order every executive branch appointee to adopt and adhere to an ethics pledge.

Fixing Regulatory Process

Trump issued orders making it nearly impossible for the government to protect consumers, workers, and the planet through regulations. Biden will repeal those restrictions, while putting on hold all of Trump's last-minute regulatory actions.

In a press release on Wednesday, his transition team said, "President-elect Biden will take action — not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration — but also to start moving our country forward."

Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.

Trump

Biden May Swiftly Reverse Trump Policies By Executive Order

Donald Trump's dearth of legislative accomplishments will make it much easier for President-elect Joe Biden to dismantle most of his policies — even if Democrats do not control the Senate.

"All that stuff was done administratively through the [president's] executive authority, and so a new executive can basically reject those and start from scratch," a source told CBS News on Wednesday.

According to the Washington Post, Biden is planning quick action to reverse executive actions taken by Trump.

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Defining Down Citizenship In The Age Of Trump

Defining Down Citizenship In The Age Of Trump

Reprinted with permission from TomDispatch.

It turns out that walls can’t always be seen. Donald Trump may never build his “great, great wall,” but that doesn’t mean he isn’t working to wall Americans in. It’s a story that needs to be told.

This past month, for instance, claims of ISIS’s near total defeat in Syria have continued to mount. As a result, numerous foreigners who had traveled there to fight for, or support, the caliphate have appealed to their home countries to take them back, presumably to stand trial for their support of terrorism. GermanyGreat BritainNew Zealand, and other nations have crafted responses that vary from lukewarm acceptance to outright denial of their citizenship status.

On that score, Donald Trump’s White House hasn’t just led the way, but has used the occasion to put yet more concrete and steel into the great wall his administration has been constructing around the very idea of what it is to be an American. Here in the United States, where the Statue of Liberty has been a welcoming beacon for more than a century, the Trump administration’s response has not just been a fierce aversion to the return of such people, but the use of one of them to help redefine ever more narrowly the very idea of citizenship, of who belongs to this country. In the rejection of the citizenship of a former ISIS bride with child, the president and his advisors have, in an unprecedented way, refused to uphold the rights of U.S.-born citizens, let alone naturalized ones.

Get Out and/or Stay Out

Donald Trump arrived in the Oval Office with an expressed desire to take an axe to the lawful notion of citizenship as either a right or a promise. In the first days of his presidency, he promptly began reducing the number of individuals who might someday be eligible for U.S. citizenship with a Muslim ban against the arrival of anyone from seven largely Muslim countries. During those first days in power, the president also issued an executive order aimed at specifically reducing the number of refugees from Syria who could enter the country, even as he actively advocated for the building of his great wall on our southern border to keep out Mexicans and Central Americans.

But walling Americans in and keeping others out proved only to be a starting point for the most xenophobic president the country had elected in at least a century. On becoming president, Trump made it crystal clear that he meant to reduce the number of non-citizens already living here as well. Yet another of his early executive orders was aimed at rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants who had been in this country, often for decades.

His promise and initial plan, never implemented, was to eliminate the prospect of future citizenship not just for undocumented immigrants already here, but for their children born here who, under the law, were certainly U.S. citizens. And he was true to his word. Over 2017 and 2018, he deported nearly half a million individuals who had come here illegally, many of whom had, until then, lived productive lives in this country for years, if not decades. So, too, he continued to threaten DACA, or “dreamers” program, designed to provide undocumented immigrants who arrived as children with protection against deportation. When it comes to that program, his intent is crystal clear, even if the courts and Congress have slowed him down so far.

Meanwhile, he also turned to naturalized citizens. On them, the Fourteenth Amendment is clear. It grants citizenship to all persons “born or naturalized in the United States andsubject to the jurisdiction thereof.” Under U.S. law, denaturalization can occur only in certain situations, such as if an individual lies on his or her application for citizenship or due to bad conduct — such as membership in a terrorist organization or an other-than-honorable discharge from the armed forces — in the first five years of citizenship.

During Trump’s presidency, there has been an all-out effort to find and prosecute such cases. Between 1990 and 2017, according to the National Immigration Forum, the Department of Justice filed an average of 11 cases of this sort a year. In 2017, that number more than doubled, and 2,500 new investigations were reportedly opened. In June 2018, the DHS even announced plans to create a new office in southern California, whose focus would be uncovering cases ripe for denaturalization.

From undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers to refugees, DACA kids, and naturalized citizens, the pattern has been evident and the message the same: “Get out and/or stay out.” Despite a powerful xenophobic period early in the twentieth century, this attitude has hardly been the essence of a country that, for most of its history, has welcomed strangers and given hope to those in search of safety, security, and the rights and liberties of America’s promise.

No longer. In September 2017, using an American foreign fighter designated as John Doe, the administration went after the concept of dual citizenship, too. Doe had been captured by Kurdish militia in Syria and was then handed over to U.S. forces in Iraq. A dual U.S.-Saudi citizen, he was not brought to this country to be investigated and possibly tried, but secretly held in military detention in Iraq, while being denied access to a lawyer. When the news of his detention was leaked to the media, lawyers at the ACLU filed a habeas corpus petition challenging it.  The courts then put limitations on the government’s plan to transfer this citizen to a third country. Finally, he was reportedly released to Bahrain to join his wife and daughter.

The Ultimate Slippery Slope

Recently, a providential ISIS case has allowed the Trump administration to turn more directly to the denial of citizenship for those born in this country.

Two weeks ago, lawyers representing a young U.S.-born woman, Hoda Muthana, filed papers in the District of Columbia on behalf of her father, challenging the administration on her fate. She had traveled to Syria in 2014, had become an ISIS bride, had borne a child, and now is asking to return to the United States with her son. The Trump administration has barred her from doing so, denying that she is even a citizen, despite the fact that she was issued U.S. passports in 2005 and again in 2014 and is the citizen of no other country. The government’s decision is based on the false claim that, though she was born in New Jersey, her father was then still a Yemeni diplomat serving in the U.S. on a diplomatic visa. Muthana, her family, and her lawyers dispute this claim, correctly insisting that she was born after his visa had ended. At that time, her mother, they also point out, was a legal permanent resident.

At the age of 20, Hoda Muthana, brought up in Alabama, was reportedly radicalized by ISIS online. She then took the money her parents had provided for tuition at the University of Alabama and absconded to Syria. Her goal: to become an ISIS bride.  She married an ISIS fighter and bore him a son. When her husband was killed, she married another fighter, and yet another after his death. Online, she promoted violent acts in the U.S. and elsewhere on behalf of ISIS. “Go on drive bys, and spill all of their blood, or rent a big truck and drive all over them. Veterans, Patriots, Memorial, etc. day… Kill them,” she tweeted.

Muthana is now living in a Kurdish displaced-persons camp in Syria where, she claims, she has seen the error of her ways and, on return, is willing to take her chances in a court of law. Thirteen other foreign fighters from the U.S. have already returned home to face trial. In denying her citizenship, however, the Trump administration is obviously using a distinctly unpopular figure, a willing former Islamist terrorist, to strike at the very heart of the idea of citizenship. Depending on how her case is decided in courts that are increasingly filled with judges chosen by President Trump, it could change the way the government handles citizenship for the U.S.-born; and as citizens are at the top of the pyramid, it could strike yet a stronger blow against those with lesser guarantees under the law who are now distinctly in Donald Trump’s sights.

Muthana does not hold dual nationality, which means that any withdrawal of her citizenship would actually violate international law as the Geneva Conventions specify that no person can be rendered stateless by the revocation of his or her citizenship.

In other words, the attempt to block Hoda Muthana’s return represents a potentially giant step by the Trump administration, setting a precedent that could weaken the formerly sacrosanct idea of citizenship in the United States. Consider this the ultimate slippery slope, one that could, over time, transform both the image, and the reality, of what it means to be an American.

Will the Statue of Liberty Be Denied Citizenship?

Halfway through Trump’s presidency, his administration has also moved to use citizenship as an exclusionary factor in other ways, continuing to craft a new, ever more restrictive vision of what it means to be an American. His team has proposed, for example, adding a “citizenship” question to the U.S. Census, taken every 10 years, in hopes of depressing the count of immigrants who are not yet citizens. That, in turn, could change the way political power and federal funding are distributed, reducing voting rights and potentially the number of congressional representatives in a handful of key states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas, where the majority of undocumented immigrants reside.

Sued for this proposal on constitutional and procedural grounds, the government lost at the district level in federal court. As U.S. District Court Judge Jesse Furman stated, the attempt to add the citizenship question was “arbitrary and capricious,” as well as “unlawful for a multitude of independent reasons.” Moreover, Furman said, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and his aides “tried to avoid disclosure of, if not conceal, the real timing and the real reasons for the decision to add the citizenship question.” (The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear the case during its spring 2019 term.)

The United States is hardly alone in reconsidering the nature of citizenship in a world where the populist right is obviously on the rise, at least not when it comes to those foreign fighters for ISIS. The German government recently decided that such fighters with dual citizenship will, in the future, lose their German citizenship. New Zealand has agreed to take back an ISIS fighter, recognizing that rendering a person stateless is a violation of the Geneva Conventions. Great Britain has stripped citizenship from several individualsaccused of terrorism or ISIS affiliations, something at least theoretically permissible under the law there (as it is not in the U.S.). And Belgium just decided to revoke the citizenship of two women who joined the Islamic State, while accepting the citizenship of their six children.

In several countries, the conversation is not limited to foreign fighters. A report by the Center for Migration Studies, for instance, concludes that recent actions taken by the Australian, Canadian, and British governments illustrate a troubling expansion of a trend in which the revocation of citizenship is a response to transnational terror threats.

In its urge to build walls of every sort, seen and unseen, however, the Trump administration has taken the global lead in creating a world in which citizenship will be ever more narrowly defined. The Statue of Liberty has stood in New York harbor for well over a century. If President Trump succeeds in his assault on citizenship as an inclusive, irremovable right, then Lady Liberty will find herself, like Ellis Island, a mere reminder of another world, of a lost America, a country that once was a beacon of hope for those fleeing oppression. Perhaps it will even be sent back to France.

Karen J. Greenberg, a TomDispatch regular, is the director of the Center on National Security at Fordham Law and editor-in-chief of the CNS Soufan Group Morning Brief. She is the author of Rogue Justice: The Making of the Security State. She also wrote The Least Worst Place: Guantánamo’s First 100 Days. Julia Tedesco helped with research for this article.

Copyright 2019 Karen J. Greenberg

IMAGE: A plane is seen during take off in New Jersey behind the Statue of Liberty in New York’s Harbor as seen from the Brooklyn borough of New York February 20, 2016. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid/File Photo

What Should We Do About A Mentally Ill President?

What Should We Do About A Mentally Ill President?

It’s time to face up to the obvious: The President of the United States is deranged.

I don’t mean that he’s merely idiosyncratic or pushing policies that I think are crazy, nor do I say this as just another political jab. I mean that Donald J. Trump literally is mentally ill.

OK, I’m no doctor, but you don’t need a doctorate in mental disorders to see that his behavior in public and on Twitter is beyond abnormal — it’s psychotic. As we’ve seen, he routinely plunges uncontrollably into prolonged fits of petty paranoia; he succumbs to delusions of imperialist grandeur; he spouts absurd right-wing rumors as facts (while simultaneously denying that actual facts are true); and he is pathologically addicted to lying, bizarrely repeating his most blatant fabrications even after they’ve been totally debunked.

A sane, temperamentally-balanced president — possessing all the power and majesty that America’s supreme office conveys to an Oval Office occupant — doesn’t get into demeaning public snits with the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger; doesn’t feel a constant need to puff himself up with ridiculously false claims, like his frantic insistence that the crowd at his inaugural celebration was the largest ever; doesn’t rage rabidly at media outlets that question his competence or displease him, blasting them as “enemies of the people;” and doesn’t unleash a furious, all-out attack on Barack Obama just because some screwball radio talk-show conspiracy theorist made a claim that the former president had wiretapped Trump’s campaign.

These are not mere eccentricities, not just Trump being Trump — it’s obvious that the guy is not well and is unable to handle the stressful demands of being president of our democratic republic. Indeed, his flaky behavior suggests he’s on the brink of a personal breakdown, and his ever-more-frequent retreats to his posh Florida golf resort tells us he doesn’t even want to do the job.

Many people who attain high public office grow in their position of trust. Some, however, just bloat.

Trump has put bloat on spectacular since entering the White House, where he’s had a disastrous start. He chose a cabinet and staff mostly made up of ideological quacks, incompetents and Wall Street grifters. Yet, buoyed by his explosive ego, the president pronounced his start historic: “I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done.”

Sadly, he’s right. For example, they made a reckless, autocratic, and unconstitutional attempt to ban millions of Muslim immigrants from our land. They embarrassed America with a hasty, failed, and deadly military raid in Yemen. They had to ax the kooky guy he chose to be his national security advisor. They’ve even apparently been caught colluding with Russian meddlers in our politics. Some record!

And now Trump has embraced a GOP replacement of Obamacare, hailing a”Trumpcare” substitute that will jack-up our health care costs, cut benefits, and eliminate coverage entirely for millions of working-class and poor people — all while also sneaking in yet another underhanded tax cut for the rich! It’s so awful that even hordes of Republican lawmakers have gagged, refusing to swallow it. Yet, lost in self-deception, Trump calls it “wonderful”.

We have a president who is detached from reality, careening from one mess to another. But who will say: “The emperor has no clothes”? He’s so far gone that when he read his recent address to Congress straight off the teleprompter, without his usual pugnacious ranting, Republican enablers of his antics and even the media establishment he scorns applauded him for being “presidential.”

Huh? The speech was a nasty wad of lies and right-wing nonsense. If the occasional appearance of sanity is all we ask of Trump, then his reign of insanity will be our fault. His loved ones and his party should intervene — for his sake and for America’s. But they won’t. Will we?

IMAGE: DonkeyHotey / Flickr