They Know That America Isn’t Great

[aubiefifty 16,767]

rollingstone.com

They Know That America Isn’t Great

Jamil Smith

11-14 minutes

June 1, 2019 8:14AM ET

The Trump administration plans to rig the Census to protect white Republican power

 

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross prior to a Roosevelt Room event at the White House February 6, 2019 in Washington, D.C.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

The president may be a fool, but that doesn’t make him an ineffective racist. That would presuppose that it takes great talent to be good at hating people and furthering that hatred through policy. Donald Trump is quite adept at finding America’s weaknesses, a trait he shares with the Russians who helped him win the election. Both his White House and the Kremlin know just where to look first: America’s persistent racism. It is always easier to find holes in the boat and to punch new ones, than to devise methods for plugging them and keeping everything afloat.

One such weakness is the Census, which this administration has sought to weaponize as an undocumented immigrant address book for ICE and, as a consequence, a way to erode Hispanic and Latinx influence at the ballot box. We knew that the Trump administration’s proposed citizenship question for the 2020 Census was racist. But the ACLU revealed Thursday new proof that the question, which the group is now challenging before the Supreme Court, was explicitly crafted with the purpose of helping white people become more politically powerful. 

Most everything Republicans do is to protect their power these days, and virtually all of them are white, so this isn’t a difficult calculus. Intent isn’t required for a racist act, but there still was plenty here. Thomas Hofeller — the late Republican strategist with a special talent for shaping racially discriminatory districts in places like North Carolina — “played a significant role in orchestrating the addition of the citizenship question to the 2020 Decennial Census” before his death last summer and intended to shape the citizenship question “in order to create a structural electoral advantage for, in his own words, ‘Republicans and Non-Hispanic Whites.’” Hofeller also added that it “would clearly be a disadvantage for the Democrats” and successfully predicted that implementing the question would “provoke a high degree of resistance from Democrats and the major minority groups in the nation.”

The administration also had the nerve to offer false justification for the citizenship question. In testimony before Congress in the spring of 2018, Ross insisted that the question’s intent was to enforce the 1965 Voting Rights Act — which, of course, prohibits racial discrimination in voting. It says a lot that the Trump administration sees these ramparts of our civil-rights infrastructure as devices to exploit.

This is all according to the letter that ACLU Voting Rights Director Dale Ho and nine fellow signatories filed in U.S. District Court on Thursday. “All of this shows that the administration not only dissembled about its purpose in adding the question,” Ho tells Rolling Stone, “but that is true purpose was the precise opposite of what it claimed it to be: to dilute minority voting power, rather than to protect minority voting rights.” 

The mechanism for diluting that power is simple: intimidation. A citizenship question introduces chaos into the Census, which counts everyone in the nation regardless of naturalization or immigration status. Since its possibility first arose in late 2017, experts have speculated that such a question would discourage participation in Hispanic and Latinx communities, so much so that people may not even open the door for Census takers. Why not? Why would they when they have every right to suspect that the Trump administration has weaponized the survey to use as an address book for ICE, allowing them to review the Census as a collection list for any and all undocumented people with the gumption to respond?

Demonstrators rally at the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC, on April 23, 2019, to protest a proposal to add a citizenship question in the 2020 Census.

So, the administration appears to think it can erase people unlikely to vote Republican either by deporting them or by discouraging their responses. That includes the folks who may be citizens or are otherwise here legally, but may have mixed-status families and don’t feel that in this political climate, they can even open the door for a U.S. Census taker. They’re erased, too

Thirteen Democratic Senators, including five of their current presidential contenders, sent a letter Friday requesting the inspectors general of the Justice and Commerce Departments to investigate the ACLU’s findings. They want to know why the administration hid Hofeller’s participation from the public, thereby obscuring the rather obvious “impermissible racial and partisan motivations” for adding the question in the first place.

As if to put an exclamation point upon this, Trump imposed a 5-percent tariff effective June 10 upon all goods imported from Mexico that he plans to escalate until authorities in that country stop migrants from crossing our southern border (even, presumably, if they are not Mexican and are doing so to engage in the legal process of seeking asylum). To boil down the stupidity of this: the president, by fiat and without the approval of Congress, said he will impose a tax on the American people so as to discourage them from from buying products imported from Mexico. He will double this tax to 10 percent on July 1 unless the migration flow “is alleviated through effective actions taken by Mexico.”

This speaks to a more inherent American flaw that the ACLU is trying to correct with their challenge before the highest court. “I think this is bigger than voting rights or the Census,” Ho tells me. “It goes to whether, in the Trump era, we will have a federal government that is accountable to the courts, and ultimately, to the public. The administration is saying it’s doing something for one reason, while we all know that it’s doing it for the exact opposite reason — and if we are powerless to stop it, then we really have reached an Orwellian moment.”

Americans would do well to understand that, especially right now. Democrats, in particular. They have a primary frontrunner in Joe Biden who is campaigning (to the extent that he is at all) as if he has a flux capacitor in his DeLorean, promising to take voters back to a time before Trump, when apparently Republicans confirmed Merrick Garland and weren’t birthers and all was well. I hope he takes a cue from some of his competitors—folks like Kamala Harris, who proposed an abortion-rights law based upon that same Voting Rights Act, including federal preclearance for states who restrict reproductive access; or Elizabeth Warren, who called for Congress to pass a measure allowing for a president to be indictable.

Whoever is planning to replace this president has to not just plan for the considerable triage ahead. They have to fully understand that the America they want to lead into the future has a lot of structural weaknesses that are due purely to the consistent refusal of its powerbrokers to rid it of the identity-based inequities that have provided white men unearned advantages since day one of the republic.

Democrats, no matter how much they wish to sell the halcyon days of the Obama years or wish away the trauma of the present, cannot ignore the horror of that reality. Trump is showing it to them unvarnished. He is exposing every hole in the boat and punching out new ones every day. Any true patriot would understand that the kind of racism like what we see at work in the Census citizenship question is not what makes America great. It is sabotage.

PMC

© 2019 Penske Media Corporation

 

 

[japantiger 4,051]

The citizenship questions was on every census survey until 1950.  Then on the long form until 2000...now it is still on the community survey....but Orange Man Bad....

Donald Trump could cure cancer, heart disease, AIDS and the piles, and you and Homey would decry the loss of healthcare jobs...

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

9 hours ago, aubiefifty said:

its powerbrokers to rid it of the identity-based inequities that have provided white men unearned advantages since day one of the republic.

Sounds like a Jamil is a racist. 

 The article stinks. You should be ashamed for posting the nonsense.

[DKW 86 7,419]

9 hours ago, japantiger said:

The citizenship questions was on every census survey until 1950.  Then on the long form until 2000...now it is still on the community survey....but Orange Man Bad....

Donald Trump could cure cancer, heart disease, AIDS and the piles, and you and Homey would decry the loss of healthcare jobs...

This was an excellent point. I wished every person in the Us would stop and listen to real history. 
Those that decry the "under God," Part of the pledge: 

Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, pledge to the flag of the United States. It was first published in the juvenile periodical The Youth’s Companion on September 8, 1892, in the following form: “I pledge allegiance to my Flag and the Republic for which it stands; one nation indivisible, with liberty and Justice for all.” The words “the flag of the United States of America” were substituted for “my Flag” in 1924, and the pledge was officially recognized by the U.S. government in 1942. In 1954, at President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s urging, the Congress legislated that “under God” be added, making the pledge read:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

https://www.britannica.com/event/Pledge-of-Allegiance-to-the-Flag-of-the-United-States-of-America

In God We Trust

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_God_We_Trust
 

It was adopted as the United States' motto in 1956 as a replacement of or alternative to the unofficial motto of E pluribus unum, which was adopted when the Great Seal of the United States was created and adopted in 1782.^[4][5]

The capitalized form "IN GOD WE TRUST" first appeared on the two-cent piece in 1864^[6] and has appeared on paper currency since 1957. A law passed in a Joint Resolution by the 84th Congress (P.L. 84-140) and approved by President Dwight Eisenhower on July 30, 1956, declared "In God We Trust" must appear on American currency. This phrase was first used on paper money in 1957, when it appeared on the one-dollar silver certificate. The first paper currency bearing the phrase entered circulation on October 1, 1957.^[6] The 84th Congress later passed legislation (P.L. 84-851), also signed by President Eisenhower on July 30, 1956, declaring the phrase to be the national motto.^[7][8][9]

 

^{Now, if we just get people to know THE REAL HISTORY of the US.}

 

 

[aubiefifty 16,767]

3 hours ago, SaltyTiger said:

Sounds like a Jamil is a racist. 

 The article stinks. You should be ashamed for posting the nonsense.

i cannot help it if you believe it or not. repuks have been gerrymandering and anything else they can to try and hurt non republicans trying to vote. federal judges have to step in too often with folks like walker and that idiot gov of ga.` the truth is it will not be long until the white man is a minority in this country. why do you think trump and his immigration policies are all aimed at people of color? 

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

2 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

trump and his immigration policies are all aimed at people of color?

Trump has no immigration policies aimed at anyone. 

[aubiefifty 16,767]

4 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

Trump has no immigration policies aimed at anyone. 

you are either lying or stupid. i am not sure which. maybe you need to read something other than fox news. i hate to get cold but you are getting old. at least you are not drunk.........

[auburn41 492]

Just now, aubiefifty said:

you are either lying or stupid. i am not sure which. maybe you need to read something other than fox news. i hate to get cold but you are getting old. at least you are not drunk.........

I can assure you I’m neither old or stupid, and I’m certainly not confused. 😂 you can ignore me from now on. 

[aubiefifty 16,767]

Just now, auburn41 said:

I can assure you I’m neither old or stupid, and I’m certainly not confused. 😂 you can ignore me from now on. 

funny how you did not call out the lying part with the old and stupid.....lol. i will give you a point for not blaming clinton..........

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

7 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

you are either lying or stupid. i am not sure which. maybe you need to read something other than fox news. i hate to get cold but you are getting old. at least you are not drunk.........

I am getting a bit old. Not drunk and not lying.

you are stupid fifty. Once again. President Trump has no immigration policies.  

[aubiefifty 16,767]

1 minute ago, SaltyTiger said:

I am getting a bit old. Not drunk and not lying.

you are stupid fifty. Once again. President trump has no immigration policies.  

maybe some one else will explain it to you or maybe you will figure it out. i have little faith in that .....

[auburn41 492]

4 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

funny how you did not call out the lying part with the old and stupid.....lol. i will give you a point for not blaming clinton..........

OK, well I’m not lying either. 😎😎😎

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

2 hours ago, DKW 86 said:

Those that decry the "under God," Part of the pledge

They should be thankful that they live in country were they are not forced to say the POA or spend US dollars.

[aubiefifty 16,767]

Just now, auburn41 said:

OK, well I’m not lying either. 😎😎😎

there you are again.............

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

4 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

maybe some one else will explain it to you or maybe you will figure it out. i have little faith in that .....

you explain please

[homersapien 11,367]

On 6/16/2019 at 11:49 AM, japantiger said:

The citizenship questions was on every census survey until 1950.  Then on the long form until 2000...now it is still on the community survey....but Orange Man Bad....

Donald Trump could cure cancer, heart disease, AIDS and the piles, and you and Homey would decry the loss of healthcare jobs...

And you would blame Obama and the Democrats for creating those diseases to start with.

Trump is an would-be authoritarian with a minority of support in this country.  He's trying to consolidate his power in spite of that.

Pull your head out man. 

 

Trump Blocked Congress From Seeing These Emails About The Census Unredacted

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/14/732599732/trump-blocked-congress-from-seeing-these-emails-about-the-census-unredacted

[japantiger 4,051]

On 6/18/2019 at 12:13 AM, homersapien said:

And you would blame Obama and the Democrats for creating those diseases to start with.

Trump is an would-be authoritarian with a minority of support in this country.  He's trying to consolidate his power in spite of that.

Pull your head out man. 

 

Trump Blocked Congress From Seeing These Emails About The Census Unredacted

https://www.npr.org/2019/06/14/732599732/trump-blocked-congress-from-seeing-these-emails-about-the-census-unredacted

Get help .. you are obviously troubled beyond what an adult should be.  You should have listened to what your teachers told you about LSD.

[homersapien 11,367]

11 hours ago, japantiger said:

Get help .. you are obviously troubled beyond what an adult should be.  You should have listened to what your teachers told you about LSD.

You are being duped by Dear Leader.  Such gullibility is very hard to admit which explains why you avoid addressing substance.

 

[japantiger 4,051]

12 hours ago, homersapien said:

You are being duped by Dear Leader.  Such gullibility is very hard to admit which explains why you avoid addressing substance.

 

Oh Homey, you think someone actually gives a s*** about whether Trump claimed privilege or not ....Isn't it clear that we only care about running concentration camps and killing illegal immigrants?

[NolaAuTiger 3,295]

On 6/16/2019 at 10:47 PM, aubiefifty said:

why do you think trump and his immigration policies are all aimed at people of color? 

Uhhh.... probably for the same reason a bear sh**s in the woods.

[aubiefifty 16,767]

On 6/16/2019 at 11:05 PM, SaltyTiger said:

I am getting a bit old. Not drunk and not lying.

you are stupid fifty. Once again. President Trump has no immigration policies.  

you might be right salty. the big one wanted was to separate families and the courts stopped him. and he is still pursuing that attack. so many of you on here claim to be christian but when something horrible like this happens you guys praise trump and spit on the very children you should be trying to protect. or you lie to yourselves and claim fake news. almost two thousand kids were taken from their families have little to no hope of being reunited. ever. but lets keep praising trump right? this is not a slam or being cute. some of you absolutely make me sick. you have thrown common decency out the window. now the right has hijacked religion to the complete delight of the con man in chief.

[aubiefifty 16,767]

Just now, aubiefifty said:

you might be right salty. the big one wanted was to separate families and the courts stopped him. and he is still pursuing that attack. so many of you on here claim to be christian but when something horrible like this happens you guys praise trump and spit on the very children you should be trying to protect. or you lie to yourselves and claim fake news. almost two thousand kids were taken from their families have little to no hope of being reunited. ever. but lets keep praising trump right? this is not a slam or being cute. some of you absolutely make me sick. you have thrown common decency out the window. now the right has hijacked religion to the complete delight of the con man in chief.

hell fella's do not mind me i am just part of the demonic forces arrayed against trump like i read in the headlines online this morning.

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

48 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

hell fella's do not mind me i am just part of the demonic forces arrayed against trump like i read in the headlines online this morning.

You are not a demonic force while I do not praise Trump or spit on children. Get real fifty.

We have a problem at the border. At least Trump is addressing it.

[aubiefifty 16,767]

40 minutes ago, SaltyTiger said:

You are not a demonic force while I do not praise Trump or spit on children. Get real fifty.

We have a problem at the border. At least Trump is addressing it.

Trump spiritual adviser calls his opponents a 'demonic network'

By Katelyn Caralle, U.s. Political Reporter In Orlando For Dailymail.com

6-7 minutes

---

Trump spiritual adviser opens campaign launch with prayer calling the president's opponents a 'demonic network' and saying his 2020 victory is in 'the name of Jesus Christ'

• Televangelist Paula White said there is a 'demonic network' aligned against President Donald Trump and his 'purpose'
• White, she serves as a spiritual adviser to Trump, did not specify who those enemies are, but other speakers alluded that it was the media and Democrats
• She made her claims during the prayer at Trump's 2020 reelection campaign launch in Orlando, Florida Tuesday night
• The spiritual leader called for 'unity' before bashing Trump's adversaries
• White touted her 18-year relationship with the president and said his victory is 2020 is the will of Jesus 
• Although spiritual adviser is not an official position with the administration, White does lead a White House evangelical advisory council 

Published: 09:31 EDT, 19 June 2019 | Updated: 13:41 EDT, 19 June 2019

Paula White, President Donald Trump's evangelical spiritual adviser, took stage to deliver a politically charged prayer at the start of the president's 2020 reelection campaign launch Tuesday night.

As the televangelist proclaimed her belief in the 'power of unity' and asked the thousands of Trump supporters gathered in Orlando, Florida to join hands with their neighbors, she bashed those who opposed the president as a 'demonic network.'

'Now, I need you to really go with me here,' she said to a rambunctious crowd. 'Let every evil veil of deception of the enemy be removed from people's eyes.'

'So right now, let every demonic network who has aligned itself against the purpose, against the calling of President Trump, let it be broken, let it be torn down in the name of Jesus!' she continued. 'Let the council of the wicked be spoiled right now.'

 

Donald Trump's personal spiritual adviser Paula White said during the prayer at his 2020 campaign launch that the president has a 'demonic network' up against him in reference to those who oppose him

• She did not specify who those forces were, both other speakers, including Donald Trump Jr., alluded to his enemies being those in the media and Democrats

 

Trump held a rally in Orlando, Florida Tuesday night, where thousands of supporters turned out, for his official announcement that he is running for reelection in 2020

Pastor Paula White delivers opening prayer at Trump's rally

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The evangelical leader has used this language is the past in reference to the current president. While speaking at the White House for the National Day of Prayer last month, she demanded 'every demonic network to be scattered right now.'

While speaking during a service earlier this month, she prayed God would defend Trump from 'any demonic attack' on the 'special day of prayer' on June 2, which Reverend Franklin Graham designated as the day to take time to pray for Trump.

White did not specify what enemies or demonic networks Trump was up again, but continued on to say he was facing strategies 'from hell' to divert his purpose.

'I declare that President Trump will overcome every strategy from hell and every strategy of the enemy – every strategy – and he will fulfill his calling and his destiny,' White prayed.

Even though there was no specification of his list of enemies in the dramatic prayer, other speakers, including his eldest son Donald Trump Jr., made reference to those up against Trump – the media and Democrats.

During her almost five-minute impassioned prayer, White said 'no weapon' would be able to be 'formed' against the president. She also said that it was the will of Jesus that Trump was president and it was his will that he would win again in 2020. 

 

White called for 'unity' and asked those in the crowd to hold hands with their neighbors, then went on to bash Trump adversaries

 

Trump and White, a televangelist, have been close for 18-years, which she touted right before her 5-minute prayer on Tuesday

 

Her position as spiritual leader to Trump is not official, but she has been close with this administration and defended it. She agave the prayer at Trump's inauguration ceremony

The spiritual leader does not hold any official title with Trump or the administration, but does lead a White House evangelical advisory council and said the prayer at Trump's inauguration.

Trump has a lot of support from the evangelical community, but White is a controversial figure, even within those circles.

Before beginning the prayer, White touted her 18-year relationship with the president and his family, lauding the upcoming night as one that would be full of 'victory.'

White said in a 2017 profile that she connected with Trump after he randomly called her to praise her televised sermons. White said he told her at the time she had the 'it' factor.

In May, White stepped down as pastor at City of Destiny megachurch in Apopka, Florida. She said she wants to focus on opening a christian university and 3,000 churches around the country.

 

so there is that part salty. if dems are not demonic why are you not calling out the obvious lie? people get hurt over this kind of crap

[SaltyTiger 7,794]

26 minutes ago, aubiefifty said:

Trump spiritual adviser calls his opponents a 'demonic network'

Quoting a lot of scripture and obviously a Christian. I can understand why you folks would be upset. She is a pretty lady.