Democrats contend that asking the citizenship question will lead to an under-count on the U.S. census because a material number of non-citizens will refuse to respond to it, thereby creating a concomitant series of harmful effects in locales with large illegal immigrant populations. This argument flies in the face of logic and history.
Instead of attempting to put the question on census forms, or adding it separately, Trump said he was issuing an executive order directing the Commerce Department to obtain citizenship data through means other than the census. That includes documents from the Department of Homeland Security, which houses citizenship and asylum services, and the Social Security Administration.
“Today I’m here to say we are not backing down in our effort to determine the citizenship status of the United States population,” the president told reporters in the Rose Garden, after slamming “far-left Democrats” seeking to “conceal the number of illegal aliens in our midst.”
Jason Chaffetz, Republican – Utah, chaired the Committee on Oversight & Government Reform from 2015 to 2017
During the Obama admin there were more than 80K times someone was here illegally, got caught, convicted of a crime & was released back out into the public. We either have the rule of law or we don’t.
Jason Chaffetz
Ken Cuccinelli – acting Director of the Citizenship and Immigration Services office
“They’re ready to just perform their mission, which is to go and find and detain and then deport the approximately one million people who have final removal orders,”
Ken Cuccinelli
Cuccinelli, said ICE’s efforts to remove undocumented immigrants have been “held up” and “interfered” with by the politics in Washington. He suggested that people should not be surprised about officials carrying out these operations.
“Here we are talking about ICE doing its job as if it’s special, and really this should be going on a rolling basis,” he said, adding later, “They’re looking forward to just doing their jobs.”
However back in 2013, she supported a bill that required the construction of 700 miles of border fencing.
White House Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney
“We still don’t understand why the Democrats are so wholeheartedly against [the wall]. They voted for it in 2006. Then-Senator Obama voted for it. Senator Schumer voted for it. Senator Clinton voted for it. So we don’t understand why Democrats are now playing politics just because Donald Trump is in office,”
Mick Mulvaney
Mulvaney is referring to the Secure Fence Act of 2006, a bill pushed by the Bush administration that provided $1.4 billion for 700 miles of fencing along the southern border. In 2006, Schumer, along with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton (who were then senators from Illinois and New York, respectively) voted in favor of the bill.
An impeachment inquiry becomes an all-encompassing endeavor. While ongoing, it tends to push into the background, almost to the point of oblivion, all other legislative work. It certainly sucks oxygen from the rest of Congress’ other executive-administrative oversight functions.
The Mueller report gives Democrats good reason to verbally bash Trump.
As for the substance of impeachment, the Mueller report provides too little fodder for a serious attempt to charge the president with “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.”
Obviously there was not enough evidence to justify a charge of illegal conspiracy with Russian entities. The obstruction of justice question is more nuanced.
Mueller’s investigation into Trump’s election campaign and accusations of Russian involvement found insufficient evidence of obstruction of justice, according to his report released on April 18. However, six weeks later, Mueller implied that Trump was guilty.
In the first half of Mueller’s report, investigators did find evidence of Russian meddling in the United States’ 2016 elections. Indictments were handed down to these Russians. Mueller said about them: “These indictments contain allegations, that we are not commenting on the guilt or innocence of any specific defendant. Every defendant is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty.”
One standard for the Russians, but a very different one for Donald Trump.
“if we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer.”
John Hickenlooper
John Hickenlooper – Democratic Candidate running for President in 2020
John Hickenlooper, a former governor of Colorado and mayor of Denver, stood before several thousand of the Democratic party’s most liberal activists and was boo’ed over the things he said.
Things such as “socialism is not the answer.” And that most people don’t want to give up their private health insurance for a government-run system. And that “we shouldn’t try to tackle climate change by guaranteeing every American a government job,”.
“Medicare for all may sound good, but it’s actually not good policy, nor is it good politics.”
John Delaney
John Delaney – Democratic Candidate running for President in 2020
Former Maryland congressman John Delaney criticized the proposed single-payer system that its backers have branded Medicare-for-all and received a chorus of boo’s.
“My plan to address gun violence is simple — we will make it harder for people who should not have a gun to get one,”
Cory Booker
Cory Booker – Democratic Candidate running for President in 2020
Cory Booker proposes that every gun owner should be required to apply for a federal license, a process that would include not only a background check, but also safety training and an interview.
On the not-so-publicised down-side is that registries are useless on their own terms, which is why they have been abandoned in failure almost everywhere they have been tried.
Perhaps the best example of such failure comes from Canada, which founded a long-gun registry to great fanfare in 2003 and . . . abolished it just nine years later after it had cost over one thousand times more than was projected and had failed to help solve a single crime.
In Canada, in New Zealand, and at various levels within the United States, gun registries have routinely been exposed as expensive, pointless, and, because they divert resources from anti-crime measures that actually work, counterproductive.
Nothing more about Senator Booker’s plan gives us confidence that it would end differently.
