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During one of the first big meetings Sen. Kamala Harris attended back in California following her swearing in, she said something many of the progressive activists who look to her as an icon were taken aback to hear.

As the Democratic party tries to claw its way back to control of Congress, she wanted them to at least consider rallying behind some of its most conservative and most vulnerable politicians.

It was a room full of people who did not want to hear that, Harris said Thursday in a meeting with reporters and editors in The Times Washington bureau. They were like, What happened? Why are you saying this?

Amid all the self-reflection and infighting among Democrats about how they find their way out of the wilderness, Harris is emerging as a more nuanced political character than many on either side of the political line expected.

Californias freshman senator, a civil rights crusader whose India-born mother and Jamaica-raised father met during political protests in the Bay Area, is so associated with the identity politics of the left that her Twitter feed was a punchline in a recent Saturday Night Live skit. But as she finds her way in Washington, Harris is embracing an approach somewhat at odds with that image. That became clear as she talked about the path back for Democrats, why she wont unconditionally slam the door on working with Trump, and what her mother told her about people like Supreme Court nominee Neil M. Gorsuch.

The pressure on Harris to unwaveringly fly the flag of the resistance is intense. She recalled the event in Los Angeles where she encouraged supporters not to turn their backs on Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota and Joe Manchin of West Virginia red-state Democrats some liberal activists would like to purge in their upcoming reelection bids.

We cant afford to be purists, Harris said. You have to ask that question of yourself: Are we going to be purists to this resistance to the point that you let these guys go? Or can you understand that you may not agree with 50% of their policy positions, but I can guarantee you will disagree with 100% of their replacements policy positions. So that is part of the question. What do we have to do in this movement to be pragmatic?

Harris hardly aligns herself with the counter-movement inside Democratic ranks that has pushed to reorient the partys focus more exclusively toward white, working-class voters in places like Scranton, Pa., and Lansing, Mich.

There is this conversation that weve got to go back and get him, she said, referring to the prototypical white, male Trump voter. The inference there is that to do that we need to walk away from that Latina or black mom. That is a mistake.

But she suggested the party has too often seized on wedge, identity politics issues that divide voters. What I do know about those two ladies and that guy is when we wake up at 3 in the morning or something is troubling us, it is never through the lens of, am I Democrat or Republican, or on our identity based on what other people have decided is our identity.

Instead, she said, it is economic issues that weigh on people: their bills, their job troubles, their difficulty getting health insurance.

We, as Democrats and progressives, cannot afford to be guilty of putting people in these narrow boxes based on what we have decided is their identity instead of seeing that they have lived full lives. They are full people, as multifaceted as the other people we know.

She pointed to the incident at a bar outside of Kansas City, Kan., in February in which an attacker shot and killed an Indian immigrant he mistakenly believed to be a Muslim. Patrons in the bar risked their lives trying to protect the victim, she said.

I bet you that patrons in that bar voted for Trump, Harris said. But when presented with that situation, at that moment, without reflection, they did the right thing. We cant afford to put people in boxes.

Harris expected to be taking her post in a very different Washington. Up until late on election night, she said, she had been looking forward to pushing a nationwide expansion of the climate-change initiatives that have taken root in California and taking a leadership role in removing restrictions on immigrants. It was during a private family dinner as votes were being counted across the country that what was confronting her became real. She said she saw her 9-year-old nephew in tears at what was intended to be a celebratory event.

That man cant win, the boy cried. Later, in the reception room where she declared her own victory, she saw similar scenes.

But despite pressure from activists on the left, Harris refuses to rule out working with the White House.

Political capital is something that does not gain interest, she said, when asked how she thought Democrats should respond if the White House offers to collaborate on joint priorities, such as federal money to rebuild outdated roads, bridges and airports. When youve got it, youve got to spend it. If the Trump administration puts in place a real, significant and genuine plan for infrastructure, I'll be down with it.

Some things, though, are non-negotiable, Harris said. She is not among the Democrats lamenting that too much political firepower might have been used fighting Gorsuch, whose confirmation moved forward Thursday after Republican leaders made the historic move of changing Senate rules to step around a Democratic filibuster.

If you look at the decisions this guy has written? Harris said. And everyone presents him as a nice guy. My mother had many sayings. One of them was, Just because somebody has good manners, doesnt make them a good person.

evan.halper@latimes.com

Follow me: @evanhalper

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Sen. Kamala Harris sees a path out of the wilderness for Democrats but can she sell it to them? - Los Angeles Times

IT ISNT ONLY Republicans, it seems, who traffic in alternative facts. Since Donald Trumps shock election victory, leading Democrats have worked hard to convince themselves, and the rest of us, that his triumph had less to do with racism and much more to do with economic anxiety despite almost all of the available evidence suggesting otherwise.

Consider Bernie Sanders, de facto leader of the #Resistance. Some people think that the people who voted for Trump are racists and sexists and homophobes and deplorable folks, he said at a rally in Boston on Friday, alongside fellow progressive senator Elizabeth Warren. I dont agree. Writing in the New York Times three days after the election last November, the senator from Vermont claimed Trump voters were expressing their fierce opposition to an economic and political system that puts wealthy and corporate interests over their own.

Warren agrees with him. There were millions of people across this country who voted for [Trump] not because of his bigotry, but in spite of that bigotry because the system is not working for them economically, the Massachusetts senator told MSNBC last year.

Both Sanders and Warren seem much keener to lay the blame at the door of the dysfunctional Democratic Party and an ailing economy than at the feet of racist Republican voters. Their deflection isnt surprising. Nor is their coddling of those who happily embraced an openly xenophobic candidate. Look, I get it. Its difficult to accept that millions of your fellow citizens harbor what political scientists have identified as racial resentment. The reluctance to acknowledge that bigotry, and tolerance of bigotry, is still so widespread in society is understandable. From an electoral perspective too, why would senior members of the Democratic leadership want to alienate millions of voters by dismissing them as racist bigots?

Sen. Bernie Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren speak at the Our Revolution Massachusetts Rally at the Orpheum Theatre on March 31, 2017 in Boston.

Photo: Scott Eisen/Getty Images

Facts, however, as a rather more illustrious predecessor of President Trump once remarked, are stubborn things. Interestingly, on the very same day that Sanders offered his evidence-free defense of Trump voters in Boston, the latest data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) was released.

Philip Klinkner, a political scientist at Hamilton College and an expert on race relations, has pored over this ANES data and tells me that whether its good politics to say so or not, the evidence from the 2016 election is very clear that attitudes about blacks, immigrants, and Muslims were a key component of Trumps appeal. For example, he says, in 2016 Trump did worse than Mitt Romney among voters with low and moderate levels of racial resentment, but much better among those with high levels of resentment.

The new ANES data only confirms what a plethora of studies have told us since the start of the presidential campaign: the race was about race. Klinkner himself grabbed headlines last summer when he revealed that the best way to identify a Trump supporter in the U.S. was to ask just one simple question: is Barack Obama a Muslim? Because, he said, if they are white and the answer is yes, 89 percent of the time that person will have a higher opinion of Trump than Clinton. This is economic anxiety? Really?

Other surveys and polls of Trump voters found a strong relationship between anti-black attitudes and support for Trump; Trump supporters being more likely to describe African Americans as criminal, unintelligent, lazy and violent; more likely to believe people of color are taking white jobs; and a majority of them rating blacks as less evolved than whites. Sorry, but how can any of these prejudices be blamed on free trade or low wages?

For Sanders, Warren and others on the left, the economy is what matters most and class is everything. Yet the empirical evidence just isnt there to support them. Yes Trump won a (big) majority of non-college-educated whites, but he also won a majority of college-educated whites, too. He won more young white voters than Clinton did and also a majority of white women; he managed to win white votes regardless of age, gender, income or education. Class wasnt everything in 2016. In a recent essay in The Nation, analysts Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel point out that income predicted support for McCain and Romney, but not Trump. Their conclusion? Racial identity and attitudes have further displaced class as the central battleground of American politics.

Trump supporters take part in a Make America Great Again rally in Salem, Ore., on March 25, 2017.

Photo: Alex Milan Tracy/Sipa USA/AP

Their view is backed by a detailed Gallup analysis of interviews with a whopping 125,000 Americans, which found that Trump supporters, far from being the left behind or the losers of globalization, earn relatively high household incomes and are no less likely to be unemployed or exposed to competition through trade or immigration. The bottom line for Gallups senior economist Jonathan Rothwell? Trumps popularity cannot be neatly linked to economic hardship.

Look, if you still believe that Trumps appeal was rooted in economic, and not racial, anxiety, ask yourself the following questions: Why did a majority of Americans earning less than $50,000 a year vote for Clinton, not Trump, according to the exit polls? Why, in the key Rust Belt swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, did most voters who cited the economy as the most important issue facing the country opt for Hillary over the Donald? And why didnt black or Latino working class voters flock to Trump with the same fervor as white working class voters? Or does their economic insecurity not count?

To be clear, no one is saying there werent any legitimate economic grievances in Trumpland, nor is anyone claiming that the economy played no role whatsoever. The point, however, is that it wasnt the major motivating factor for most Trump voters or, at least, thats what we learn when we bother to study those voters. Race trumped economics.

Defenders of the economy narrative have a gotcha question of their own: how can racial resentment have motivated Trump supporters when so many of them voted for Barack Obama, across the Rust Belt, in 2008 and 2012? Theyre not racists, filmmaker Michael Moore passionately argued last November. They twice voted for a man whose middle name is Hussein.

Klinkner, though, gives short shrift to this argument. First, he tells me, most of them didnt vote for Obama. There werent many vote switchers between 2012 and 2016. Second, working class whites shifted to Trump less because they were working class than because they were white. Klinkner points out that in 2016, Clinton, unlike Obama, faced a Republican candidate who pushed the buttons of race and nativism in open and explicit ways that John McCain and Mitt Romney were unwilling or unable to do.

People hold signs before a campaign rally for Donald Trump on Feb. 12, 2016 in Tampa, Fla.

Photo: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

If Democrats are going to have any chance of winning back the White House in 2020, they have to understand why they lost in 2016, and that understanding has to be based on facts and figures, however inconvenient or awkward. The Sanders/Warren/Moore wing of the party is right to focus on fair trade and income equality; the calls for higher wages and better regulation are morally and economically correct. What they are not, however, is some sort of silver bullet to solve the issue of racism. As the University of Californias Michael Tesler, author of Post-Racial or Most-Racial? Race and Politics in the Obama Era, has pointed out, the evidence suggests that racial resentment is driving economic anxiety, not the other way around.

Always remember: You have to identify the disease before you can begin work on a cure. In the case of support for Donald Trump, the results are in: It isnt the economy. Its the racism, stupid.

Top photo: Donald Trump greets supporters after a rally on Aug. 21, 2015 in Mobile, Ala.

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Top Democrats Are Wrong: Trump Supporters Were More Motivated by Racism Than Economic Issues - The Intercept

All the way back in December, experts predicted that Donald Trumps plan for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants would threaten Americas food supply. On Monday, John Hopkins Universitys Center for a Livable Future released a study condemning the current lack of protections for undocumented immigrant workers, arguing that both public health and national food security are being endangered by unfair labor practices.

Undocumented immigrants who are not protected by labor laws face many health risks in agricultural work, including pesticide exposure, injuries, poor air quality, contact with animal waste, exposure to antibiotic resistant bacteria, and exposure to novel strains of the flu virus. They remain the most vulnerable group of workers because of poor housing conditions and little or no access to reliable healthcare.

The food industry relies on immigrant labor to operate: According to the report, anywhere from 50 75 percent of the United States 2 million farmworkers are undocumented. Even more work at slaughter houses and other food processing facilities. Workers who are not protected under the law end up harming farmers in the long run: Work shortages caused by at-risk agricultural laborers cost American farms around 300 million dollars in 2010.

The report specifically cites fear of deportation as a key reason why some laborers may stop showing up to work, and if they dont work we dont eat. The food industry in the U.S. would collapse without the immigrant and migratory workforce, the report reads.

The reports researchers called for comprehensive immigration reform, which includes making them eligible for health insurance coverage, protections for workers who report unsafe working conditions, and an increase in the minimum wage.

Bob Martin, co-author of the report and director of CLFs Food System Policy Program, called out the current administrations attitude toward immigrants as part of the problem.

In a statement put out along with the study he said, Vilifying political rhetoric and enforcement actions that aim to punish undocumented immigrants fail to confront Americans reliance on these workers for the food they eat.

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Immigration Reform May be the Key to Saving America's Farms - Food & Wine

A U.S. border patrol agent keeps watch along the fence next to the Mexican border in Calexico, California. The U.S. immigration debate has moved to the fore once again with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, who made the issue a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, and now, of his presidency. Photo by Mike Blake/Reuters

Immigration has been a touchstone of the U.S. political debate for decades, as policymakers must weigh competing economic, security, and humanitarian concerns. Congress has been unable to reach an agreement on comprehensive immigration reform for years, effectively moving some major policy decisions into the executive and judicial branches of government, and fueling debate in the halls of state and municipal governments. Meanwhile, the fates of an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country, as well as rules for legal immigration, lie in the balance.

The immigration debate moved to the fore once again with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump, who made the issue a centerpiece of his presidential campaign. Shortly after taking office, President Trump signed executive orders on border security, interior enforcement, and refugees, which attempt to follow through on some of his controversial campaign pledges. Some U.S. cities, states, and individuals have challenged the orders in court.

Immigrants comprise about 13 percent of the U.S. population: some 43 million out of a total of about 321 million people, according to Census Bureau data from 2015. Together, immigrants and their U.S.-born children make up about 27 percent of U.S. inhabitants. The figure represents a steady rise from 1970, when there were fewer than 10 million immigrants in the United States. But there are proportionally fewer immigrants today than in 1890, when foreign-born residents comprised 15 percent of the population.

Illegal immigration. The undocumented population is about 11 million and has leveled off since the 2008 economic crisis, which led some to return to their home countries and discouraged others from coming to the United States. In February 2017, Customs and Border Protection reported a 36 percent drop in crossings from the year before, which some attribute to the Trump administrations policies.

More than half of the undocumented immigrants have lived in the country for more than a decade; nearly one-third are the parents of U.S.-born children, according to the Pew Research Center. Central American asylum seekers, many of whom are minors who have fled violence in their home countries, make up a growing share of those who cross the U.S.-Mexico border. These immigrants have different legal rights from Mexican nationals in the United States: under a 2008 antihuman trafficking law, minors from noncontiguous countries have a right to a deportation hearing before being returned to their home countries.

Though many of the policies that aim to reduce unlawful immigration focus on enforced border security, individuals who arrive to the United States legally and overstay their visas comprise a significant portion of the undocumented population. According to the Center for Migration Studies, individuals who overstayed their visas have outnumbered those who arrived by crossing the border illegally by 600,000 since 2007.

Legal immigration. The United States granted more than 1 million individuals legal permanent residency in 2015, nearly two-thirds of whom were admitted based on family reunification. Other categories included: employment-based preferences (14 percent), refugees (11 percent), diversity (5 percent), and asylees (3 percent). In 2016 there were more than 4 million applicants on the State Departments waiting list for immigrant visas [PDF].

Hundreds of thousands of individuals work legally in the United States under various types of nonimmigrant visas. In 2016, the United States granted [PDF] more than 180,000 visas to high-skilled workers, known as H-1B visas, and more than 200,000 visas to temporary workers in agriculture and other industries. The issuance of new H-1B visas is capped at 85,000 per year.

Immigrants made up roughly 17 percent of the U.S. workforce in 2014, according to Pew Research Center; of those, around two-thirds were in the country legally. Collectively, immigrants made up 45 percent of domestic employees; they also comprised large portions of the workforce in U.S. manufacturing (36 percent), agriculture (33), and accommodation (32). Another Pew study found that without immigrants, the U.S. workforce is expected to decline from 173.2 million in 2015 to 165.6 million in 2035; the workforce is expected to grow to 183.2 million if immigration levels remain steady, according to the report.

A 2016 Gallup poll found that 72 percent of Americans considered immigration a good thing for the United States, and as many as 84 percent supported a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if they meet certain requirements. A separate Gallup poll found that among Republicans, support for a path to citizenship (76 percent) was higher than support for a proposed border wall (62 percent).

Congress has debated numerous pieces of immigration reform over the last two decades, some considered comprehensive, others piecemeal. Comprehensive immigration reform refers to omnibus legislation that attempts to address the following range of issues: demand for high-skilled and low-skilled labor; the legal status of the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the country; border security; and interior enforcement.

The last time legislators came close to significant immigration reform was in 2013, when the Democrat-led Senate passed a comprehensive reform bill that would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants as well as tough border security provisions. The bill did not receive a vote in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.

Barack Obama. President Obama took several actions to provide temporary legal relief to many undocumented immigrants. In 2012, his administration began a program, known as Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), that offers renewable, two-year deportation deferrals and work permits to undocumented immigrants who had arrived to the United States as children and had no criminal records. Obama characterized the move as a stopgap measure and urged Congress to pass the Dream Act, legislation first introduced in 2001 that would have benefited many of the same people. As of September 2016, more than 750,000 people had taken advantage of DACA.

In 2014, Obama attempted to extend similar benefits to as many as 5 million undocumented parents of U.S. citizens and permanent residents. However, more than two dozen U.S. states sued the administration, alleging that the program, known as Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA), violated federal immigration law and the U.S. Constitution. A Texas federal judge blocked the program in 2015, and the Supreme Court effectively killed it in 2016.

Donald J. Trump. Trump made immigration and national security signature issues of his presidential campaign, often staking out controversial positions. During his first few weeks in office, he signed several executive orders attempting to follow through on some of his campaign pledges. The first, which focused on border security, instructed federal agencies to construct a physical wall to obtain complete operational control of the U.S. border with Mexico. The second, which focused on interior enforcement, broadened definitions of those unauthorized immigrants prioritized for removal, ordered increases in enforcement personnel and removal facilities, and moved to restrict federal funds from so-called sanctuary jurisdictions, which in some cases limit their cooperation with federal immigration officials. This rule also expands the application of expedited removal to anyone who cannot prove they have been in the United States for two years, allowing them to be removed without a court hearing. The third, which focused on terrorism prevention, banned nationals from Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen from entering the United States for at least ninety days; blocked nationals from Syria indefinitely; and suspended the U.S. refugee program for 120 days.

The actions, particularly the ban on travelers from seven Muslim-majority countries, drew widespread protests and legal challenges from individuals, cities, and states. In February 2017, a federal judge in Washington State imposed a nationwide restraining order on the so-called travel ban, ruling that the plaintiff states, Washington and Minnesota, had been injured by it and were likely to win their lawsuit challenging its constitutionality. After an appeals court affirmed the ruling, the Trump administration issued a revised order that, among other things, dropped Iraq from the list of affected countries, removed a provision giving preferential treatment to religious minorities (which was seen by critics as a way to exclude Muslims), and excluded those that already had U.S. visas. Additionally, the ban on Syrians was reduced to 120 days. In March, a federal judge in Hawaii imposed a temporary restraining order on this order.

President Trump lowered the annual cap of refugees admitted to the United States from 110,000 to 50,000, and his orders may also make it more difficult for individuals to seek asylum. According to U.S. figures, more than 83,000 people [PDF], many of whom were unaccompanied minors from Central America, filed for asylum in 2015. The new executive orders call for an amended questioning process for those seeking asylum, intended to vet for fraudulent answers. Experts say this change could allow immigration officers to be tougher in interpreting standards for asylum. Parents in the United States who pay smugglers to bring their children north could also face legal action, including deportation, under the executive orders.

States vary widely in how they treat unauthorized immigrants (or anyone suspected of being unauthorized). Some states, like California, allow undocumented immigrants to apply for drivers licenses, receive in-state tuition at universities, and obtain other benefits. At the other end of the spectrum, other states, like Arizona, have passed laws permitting police to question people about their immigration status.

The federal government is generally responsible for enforcing immigration laws, but it may delegate some immigration-control duties to state and local law enforcement. However, the degree to which local officials are obliged to cooperate with federal authorities is a subject of intense debate. Proponents of tougher immigration enforcement have labeled state and local jurisdictions that limit their cooperation with federal authorities as sanctuary cities. There is no official definition or count of sanctuary cities, but the Immigrant Legal Resource Center identifies more than six hundred counties with such policies.

The Obama administrations enforcement practices drew criticism from the left and the right. Some immigrant advocacy groups criticized his administration for overseeing the removal of more than 3 million people during his eight-year tenure, a figure that outpaced the administrations of former Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Many Republicans said the administration was soft on enforcement in narrowing its removal efforts to undocumented immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

President Trump decried sanctuary cities throughout his campaign and has issued executive orders to block federal funding to such municipalities and to reinstate a controversial program, known as Secure Communities, in which state and local police provide fingerprints of suspects to federal immigration authorities, and hand over individuals presumed to be in the country illegally. He also ordered the expansion of enforcement partnerships between federal, state, and local agencies. Several cities have filed lawsuits challenging Trumps attempt to block federal funding to sanctuary jurisdictions.

Experts say the prospect for comprehensive immigration reform is dim given President Trumps positions and general political divisions in Washington. There is no appetite in the Republican party to try to go down the comprehensive [immigration policy reform] road again, says CFRs Edward Alden. Some lawmakers may attempt to take a piecemeal approach, starting with enforcement measures, but bipartisan support for cherry picking policies is unlikely, he says.

However, one area of immigration policy that could see congressional action is the H-1B program. Democratic and Republican lawmakers have expressed interest in reforming the program, which critics say has been abused by companies to outsource skilled labor and cut costs. In March 2017, the Trump administration announced it would temporarily suspend a program to fast-track H-1B applications.

This backgrounder first appeared Mar. 28 on the Council on Foreign Relations website.

Originally posted here:
Where does the immigration debate stand under President Trump? - PBS NewsHour

Americans willnot have a secure food supply untilCongress enacts immigration reform that helps agriculture workers and their families acquire legal rights, according to a new study on U.S. agriculture and undocumented immigrants. Even without President Donald Trump's plan for mass deportations, the lack of job security and protections for undocumented farm workers has already createdboth public health and national food security issues, according to the report released this week from John Hopkins Universitys Center for a Livable Future.

Workers growing and processing America's food face a myriad of health risks,including pesticide exposure, injuries, poor air quality, contact with animal waste, exposure to antibiotic resistant bacteria, and exposure to novel strains of the flu virus, the report concluded. They also suffer from poor housing conditions, limited access to healthcare, povertyand uncertainty regarding their status in the U.S. All of these factors jeopardize the resiliency of the food system by maintaining an unstable and vulnerable workforce, which may threaten the supply and safety of food, the report states.

Aside from human rights concerns, whenundocumented workers get deported or become too sick to work, the nation's food supply suffers, the report found.Work shortages in 2010, for example, cost farms roughly $300 million, which can drive up the cost of food. In the dairy industry, for example, if all farm workers were deported, the price of milk would go up by 90 percent, the report noted.The John Hopkins study also cited a2008 Pew Commission on Farm Animal Production study that found a lack of safety in industrial animal processing operations could drive more new influenza viruses and human-to-human transmission.

This is no small problem, the study said.Up to 75 percent of the nation's 2 million farm workers do not have legal permission to work in the U.S. That figure doesn't even account for many other workers who spend their days at the nation'sslaughterhouses and other food processing facilities.

In short, the food industry would collapse without the immigrant and migratory workforce, the John Hopkins report reads.

Researchers suggested lawmakers push for legislation that would allow farm workers to obtainhealth insurance coverage and higher pay. It also said workers should be encouraged to report unsafe working conditions and be protected under the law for doing so.

Bob Martin, co-author of the report and director of CLFs Food System Policy Program, said Trump's plans to deport undocumented workers won't help.Vilifying political rhetoric and enforcement actions that aim to punish undocumented immigrants fail to confront Americans reliance on these workers for the food they eat, he said in a statement.

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US Food Supply Not Safe without Immigration Reform, Report Finds - Newsweek