Mediaboss Marketing

Stephen Miller stood in front of a gaggle of reporters this week and declared that Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free was an embarrassing footnote in American history.

He was talking about the White Houses push on the RAISE Act, a bill that would cut legal immigration to the US in half over the next decade (mostly by slashing family-based immigration and ending the countrys diversity visa" lottery). This was part of an effort by the White House, as John Cornyn said, to reopen a national conversation about legal immigration specifically, to introduce the possibility that it might in fact be bad in current quantities.

The White House also recently held a press conference to talk about how Central American immigrants are feeding into the gang MS-13: that they rape and murder people instead of assimilating, that they are criminals who have taken over Americas streets.

These arent just messages being sent from the White House, a "Too Much Immigration Is Bad" week along the lines of "Infrastructure Week" and "American Heroes Week." Theyre messages sent throughout the Trump administration and sometimes, the tiniest changes are the most revealing ones.

A couple of weeks ago, the Trump administration quietly changed the name of a grant given by US Citizenship and Immigration Services to local organizations from Citizenship and Integration to Citizenship and Assimilation.

The small tweak was a shot across the bow. Its a declaration of who should be considered fully American: not just putting down roots in a community, becoming integrated into its economy and civic life, but assimilating sloughing off something of ones ancestral culture to take on something American instead.

The Trump administration is reopening a conversation much bigger than "how many immigrants should the US admit." Its reintroducing the idea that diversity itself might not be a good thing for America. In Trumps America, diversity has rendered swaths of the country unrecognizable and even hostile to longtime Americans largely the white voters who make up Trumps base. Not only do they want to take their country back, but they are anxious never to "lose" it again.

For the past several decades, diversity has been something that both sides of the political aisle at least paid lip service to.

Not everyone saw diversity as something worth pursuing for its own sake, to be sure hence constant debates over affirmative action versus meritocracy.

But the idea of diversity, in and of itself, wasnt a wedge issue. It was a value that everyone claimed to uphold, and some simply doubted the strength of others commitment to it.

Those who believed that diversity was a threat to the American way of life an intrusion of foreign cultures, strange religions, and alien ideas didnt find any quarter for that belief in polite company, mass media, or politics. Now, they have their champion. The idea of diversity itself is now back up for debate.

There was an obvious upside, for Republicans, in defanging diversity turning it into a trope of apolitical, apple-pie Americana. Their base continued to be wary, at best, that newcomers to America strengthened the country. But their base was aging, and the younger generations of Americans, increasingly, took strength in diversity as a fact of life.

Crucially, those younger generations were, themselves, more ethnically diverse than their elders. The factoid that America will become a majority-minority nation by 2050 was more likely to be used as a talking point in political consultants presentations about building coalitions than voiced as an anxiety by mainstream politicians. America was coming to diversity just as inevitably as diversity was coming to America, and worrying about it made you seem like not only a racist but a fool.

Back when diversity was a settled question at least in public it was assumed that any politician (or company, or celebrity) would want people of different races, religions, and abilities highly placed at public events and featured in promotional campaigns. It was assumed that the president would do anodyne photo-ops like hosting a Ramadan break-fast things that would both remind Muslims in the US that America agreed they were Americans, and remind non-Muslims that someone can be American while observing religious holidays and eating traditional foods. There was an interest in treating everyone as, if not yet fully American, Americanizable and an awareness that maybe it would be America that would change to meet them, as much as the other way around.

There was an interest in portraying, and treating, no one as unassimilable. Trump has given those who worried immigrants might not integrate a voice a powerful one.

The distinction between assimilation and integration between the vision of America as a melting pot and America as a salad, to use the standard metaphors might seem like nothing more than a difference of degree: how much someone should have to change to become American once arriving here.

But its really a question of how diverse a country can be without breaking.

Whats really striking about the RAISE Act introduced in the Senate this week by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Purdue (R-GA) and endorsed by the White House is that its authors characterize it as a shift away from family-based immigration and toward merit-based immigration. But the bill doesnt actually shift slots allocated for the former toward the latter; it simply slashes family-based immigration, while leaving merit-based immigration flat, so that merit-based immigration becomes more common than family-based immigration by default.

By doing this, the bill wouldnt just be an unprecedented cut to legal immigration. It would make the very merit-based immigrants it claims to welcome less likely to want to stay because highly skilled immigrants often want to live with their families, too.

In theory, if America took integration as the goal of its immigration policy, it would encourage people to put down roots rather than coming to the US for a few years and leaving, or staying here without fully committing to citizenship. It would encourage their spouses to work, their children to attend US schools and learn English (and perhaps be cared for by members of the extended family when both parents are at work), their wages to stay in the American economy rather than being sent home in remittances.

But the worry at the core of chain migration is that at a certain mathematical tipping point, having an excess family member come renders the whole family less American (even if each family member has had to live in the US for a decade or longer before sending for anyone else).

If you believe that Americanness is brittle, you want to be damned sure the people youre bringing to America wont break it before you make too many commitments to let them stay.

The thing about assimilation, you see, is that the people most anxious about it tend to believe that there are some people who simply arent assimilable whether because theyre not evolved enough (per early-20th-century eugenicists), or because their cultures and worldviews are simply irreconcilable with American views of freedom and achievement (per early-21st-century anti-Sharia activists).

This is the power of the old complaint that when my ancestors came to this country they learned English and worked hard, nowadays immigrants just dont bother. Its false on both counts. But it also lends itself well to the assumption that these supposed individual moral failings can be prevented by changing the way America selects immigrants as a whole that you can predict which kinds of immigrants will and will not be willing to give up who they have been to become Americans.

This is a theme Trump has hit on anew lately. In his speech Friday on Long Island, he used it to characterize MS-13 gang violence as a failure of assimilation:

You say what happened to the old days where people came into this country, they worked and they worked and they worked and they had families and they paid taxes and they did all sorts of things, and their families got stronger and they were closely knit. We don't see that. Failure to enforce our immigration laws had predictable results. Drugs, gangs, and violence.

Trumps rhetoric is powerful because it ties a specific problem of gang violence to a whole wave of migrants from Central America deeming them all, to some extent, unassimilable.

Theres no indication that its true, any more than that it was true that the Mexican migrants of the last couple of decades were unassimilable, any more than its true that Muslim Americans are unassimilable.

For his audience, though, its very easy to take the high-profile incidents of aberrant behavior especially when that behavior is an act of gruesome violence and blow it up into a shared cultural value from a value system totally inimical to Americas own, and one that its adherents will simply refuse to abandon.

Its easy because, in part, mass media is the primary way that this audience sees other groups. Theyre not on the border, and they (or their parents) left cities like Detroit long ago. Perhaps its ironic that white people, who themselves retreated from pluralism en masse in the mid-20th-century there goes the neighborhood are now the ones believing that other spaces have been taken over by people alien or hostile to them, that there are now places in their own country they simply cannot go for fear of being targeted for violence.

The combination of not living quite close enough to people who are different, but living within close enough range to see things they might have done wrong on local news, is potent. It leads to absurd memes like the knockout game (the suburban legend that gangs of black teens were going around punching random white strangers in the head). It leads to fake news like European towns that have become no-go zones for non-Muslims. It leads to the US president saying that MS-13 has taken over whole cities in the US, and that the federal government needs to liberate those towns for its citizens.

If there are places that are simply forsaken to some Americans, places so alien to them that their very existence is a threat, diversity seems either already dead or not worth keeping alive.

Pluralism is a hard question. Of course its a hard question. But when you look at a few hundred refugees on Manus Island and see the beginnings of an inevitable horde that will overflow your country, you lose any perspective on that question. You lose any faith in pluralism entirely. All you have, instead, is a desperate need to cling to an America you deem so fragile it cant bear one extra inch of stretch or ounce of weight. Its a neurotic, smothering love.

Read more here:
The Trump administration is waging war on diversity - Vox

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner(R) has signed a law designating Aug. 4 as Barack Obama Day in the state, the governors office confirmed Friday.

The honorary holiday commemorates the former presidents birthday. Its not a legal holiday schools and state offices remained open Friday but is intended to celebrate Obamas career and recognize his political roots in the state.

August 4th of each year is designated as Barack Obama Day, to be observed throughout the State as a day set apart to honor the 44th President of the United States of America who began his career serving the People of Illinois in both the Illinois State Senate and the United States Senate, and dedicated his life to protecting the rights of Americans and building bridges across communities, reads the text of the bill.

The bill passed without any oppositionin both chambers of the states legislature.

An earlier version of the bill, which would have designated Aug. 4 as legal holiday, failed in March due to its nearly $20 million price tag.

Rauner voiced support for the honorary holiday in February.

Its incredibly proud for Illinois that the president came from Illinois. I think its awesome, and I think we should celebrate it, Rauner said to a reporter. I dont think it should be a formal holiday with paid, forced time off, but I think it should be a day of acknowledgment and celebration.

View post:
It's Officially Barack Obama Day In Illinois - HuffPost

A timeline of the resignations and firings of top government officials during President Donald Trump's administration.

President Donald Trump called July 31 a "great day" at the White House.

The characterization clashed with news headlines of internal upheaval: July 31 was the 10th and final day of Anthony Scaramuccis tenure as communications director and John Kellys first day as chief of staff after the forced departure of Reince Priebus.

In the past six months, the Trump administration has seen the firing or resignation of its chief of staff, communications director, press secretary, FBI director, ethics director, national security adviser and more.

Pundits and members of the media have remarked on the "chaotic" turnover.

But is the Trump turnover as rapid as it seems?

We compared the length of service of the most high-profile departed Trump staffers to people in the same role in the administrations of President Barack Obama and President George W Bush.

In context, the speed of Trumps hires and fires have been surprising, but not unprecedented across the board.

Chief of Staff

Bushs first: 1,911 days

Obamas first: 620 days

Trumps first: 189 days

Priebus was in fact the shortest-serving chief of staff in history. He served for 189 days, while the second-shortest stint (Kenneth Duberstein under Ronald Reagan) lasted 203 days.

Pete Rouse served for only 104 days as interim chief of staff for Obama in 2010 after his first chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, left to run for Chicago mayor. But Priebus wasnt in an interim role.

Communications director

Bushs first: 256 days

Obamas first: 92 days

Trumps first: 134 days

The communications director is the newest role on this list, created in 1969 by the Nixon administration. The first director was Herbert Klein, who lasted the longest in office. He was tasked with dealing with the Watergate scandal that eventually led to Nixons impeachment.

Trump has gone through three communications directors so far, with Scaramucci serving the shortest period as the second person named to the role.

His 10 days as communications director (he was not officially supposed to start until Aug. 15th) almost beat out Jack Koehler for shortest tenure. Koehler worked in the Ronald Reagan administration and stepped down after a week on the job, when news broke that he once belonged to a Nazi youth group.

Trumps first communications director was Republican operative Michael Dubke. He was on the job for 134 days. Press Secretary Sean Spicer took on his responsibilities for 53 days until Scaramucci came along, at which point he resigned.

There have been other brief tenures in the position in the recent past.

Ellen Moran served for 92 days at the start of the Obama administration, after which she became chief of staff for Commerce Secretary Gary Locke.

George Stephanopoulos, under the Clinton administration, served for 138 days. George W. Bushs first communications director, Karen Hughes, lasted just over eight months.

Press secretary

Bushs first: 906 days

Obamas first: 753 days

Trumps first: 182 days

Spicer, Trumps first press secretary, lasted 182 days.

There have been shorter tenures. Jerald Franklin terHorst was in office for one month at the start of Gerald Fords presidency and acting press secretary Stephen Early served for 13 days under President Harry Truman.

In more recent history, Bushs first press secretary, Ari Fleischer, lasted over two and a half years. Obamas Robert Gibbs worked in the role just over two years.

National Security Adviser

Michael Flynn set another record for shortest tenure as national security adviser, a position established in 1953 amid the Cold War.

Flynn was on the job for 24 days before he resigned (Feb. 13); the average is 2.6 years, according to the Washington Post.

Flynn acknowledged in his resignation that he misled Vice President Mike Pence and others about illegal conversations with a Russian official.

Stephen Hadley lasted four years as Bushs first national security adviser and Thomas Donilon lasted for two years and eight months under Obama.

FBI director

Former FBI director James Comey wasnt the shortest-serving FBI director in history, but his tenure is on the shorter end at three years and eight months. He is the second FBI director ever to be fired.

The last and only other time this happened was when Clinton fired William Sessions after he refused to step down amid ethical concerns in 1993.

Visit link:
How does Trump White House turnover compare to Bush, Obama? - PolitiFact

Roughly 100 anti-Trump protesters demonstrate peacefully in Market Square on February 19, 2017, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Jeff Swensen / Getty Images)

The Democratic Socialists of America, a traditionally progressive socialist organization founded in 1982, has seen it's membership increase multiply from roughly 5,000 to 25,000 members in the past year following the Bernie Sanders campaign and the subsequent election of Trump. Now, many on the left are looking at the organization as a barometer of sorts for the fate of the larger left. In addition, many are viewing the DSA convention this week in Chicago as a key turning point within the organization. Coming out of the DSA is a new caucus called the Libertarian Socialist Caucus. The LSC promotes a vision of "libertarian socialism" -- a traditional name for anarchism -- that goes beyond the confines of traditional social democratic politics. I asked John Michael Coln, a member of the group's provisional organizing committee, to talk about its vision and goals.

Adam Weaver: The DSA has a range of tendencies and is sort of a "big tent" of socialist politics. What made you want to form a Libertarian Socialist Caucus (DSA-LSC)? Tell us about yourself and what you see as the political influences of the group.

John Michael Coln: I've been a member of DSA for over a year; some of us involved have been members before the "Bernie and Trump bump." So it's not a matter of anarchists infiltrating and joining DSA ... but anarchists who have been members of DSA all along. We want to organize them as we believe that libertarian socialism is democratic socialism.

Once upon a time, before Trump and Bernie Sanders, there had been a thing called the Left Caucus which aimed to organize all the DSA members who wanted to push the organization to the left. It was good, I was part of it, but it's now basically defunct because with so many new members joining DSA, many are already to the left of the DSA. But what the existence of the Left Caucus proved was that caucuses based on ideological interests had a place in DSA. We want to be the first caucus within the DSA that had a more specific vision, that openly talks about a specific political direction that they would move towards. Rather than say we want to move the DSA to the left, we [are saying we] want to move to the left with specific positions and a specific manner. And not everyone who identifies with the left is going to agree.

Speaking for myself here, I believe that the LSC has an especially important role not just in promoting its own ideas, but also in setting an example for others for how to do caucuses right in being internally democratic, in co-existing, cooperating with and having cross-membership with other caucuses. Caucuses can be hubs of organizing activity, hubs of political education, hosting reading groups, etc. There's a dimension of caucuses that are akin to being political parties within the larger DSA.

It's important to note that you can't be in the LSC unless you are a dues-paying member of DSA. Most of our members were people who were already members of the DSA. There are some people who, because we announced our existence, joined DSA, and that's a consequence of the libertarian socialists already in DSA who were getting organized.

At the end of the day, the Libertarian Socialist Caucus, or any other caucus for that matter, is not an alien entity within DSA; rather it's a caucus of DSA members united around a shared interest.

What do you see as the commonalities and differences between the politics that you are looking to put forward and DSA's current politics and organizing? What are you looking to change?

I would contest the framing of the question a little bit. It's important to note that beyond the idea of big-tent socialism, the DSA doesn't actually have a party line. Outside observers, though, act as if DSA does, but the reality is it doesn't have a set of positions that you have to accept. Rather, the DSA is an internally democratic organization of socialists that adjudicate their disputes through liberal parliamentary norms of conflict resolution. In other words, if we disagree, like on the convention floor, it will be argued out on the floor between delegates. It's not a centralist organization where there's a party line and if you disagree you have to leave.

The problem is that, at this point, it's difficult to say exactly what LSC stands for because we don't have official positions. We just finalized our membership, and because we are democratic we haven't reached positions yet. There are probably shared values that we have that people in DSA don't have, and we want to promote those values and make them more popular.

These [values include] skepticism of the state, a critique of the state and seeing the state as going hand-in-hand with capitalism. A second component is a belief in radical democracy with a higher standard of democracy, one which is more rigorous. A lot of people believe that democracy is just elections. But we believe democracy means more than electionsthat it is participatory.

We want to advocate and convince people by the strength of our ideas that there are things DSA should be doing and should be promoting. We want to see more things like directly democratic neighborhood assemblies, worker cooperatives, participatory budgeting, radical syndicalism and municipalism that DSA is currently not promoting, as well as the things DSA is already doing, like organizing workplaces and fighting bosses and landlords. We see these as the fullest embodiment of the values that unite the different kinds of socialism within the DSA under its banner.

The DSA's convention is happening in Chicago this weekend. With over 40 proposals and with the huge influx of new members who have entered the organization, many observers see this convention as a turning point. Can you tell us what you see as the key issues at stake that will be debated at the coming convention? How is DSA-LSC leaning on these issues?

I do want to answer this one by saying, like I said before, LSC doesn't have an official position yet. The very first event that we are organizing [Friday] morning is our first general assembly where members of LSC will follow a procedure presented to our membership to make decisions about convention debates. We are going to go one-by-one through all of the floor debate questions that will happen at the convention. If our assembly can arrive at a consensus, we are going to ask the delegates present to vote in accordance with that.

We don't know how many will show up exactly, but we are expecting, based on our listserve, something like 20 confirmed delegates, and we are allowing any DSA member to attend.

A major decision at the convention will be elections for the 16-member National Political Committee of DSA, which acts as a sort of national level policy and steering committee for the organization. Right now there's the competing Momentum/Spring Platform and Praxis slates, individuals drafted and signed onto a "Unity Platform" document, and now members of DSA-LSC are putting forward their candidates as well, called DSA Friends and Comrades. What do you see as the competing visions represented?

I can't say anything on our official position on them. Speaking only for myself, I think that Momentum and Praxis both have some pros and they both have some cons. They are all good organizers and comrades that have done good work. But I personally disagree very strongly with what I would see as the centralizing tendencies in Momentum's positions. But I'm only speaking for myself, and I know for a fact that other LSC members have different opinions.

What I would say about both Momentum and Praxis is that the way they came about is that [their candidates] only represent themselves. My hope is that in the future LSC sets an example where candidates are selected by caucuses and are accountable to them rather than self-selecting. And I think that's important because the platforms of the slates have shaped the convention as a whole, and it's more democratic if those conversations arise from larger groups of members within the DSA.

The DSA Friends and Comrades coalition is something that came out of LSC members and was organized by LSC members informally and hasn't been approved by the group. We wish them well, and some of us will vote for them and promote them on our social media, but they don't represent the LSC. Next convention we aim to organize a primary and democratic process to put forward a slate.

Go here to read the rest:
A Turning Point on the Left? Libertarian Caucus Debuts at Democratic Socialist Conference - Truth-Out

When West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice stood next to President Trump during a campaign rally in Huntington, W.Va., on Thursday to announce that he was switching parties and becoming a Republican, it was a historic moment for the GOP.

Justice's decision gives Republicans control of 34 governorships tying a record set nearly a century ago. Democrats hold just 15 governorships. (Alaska's governor is an independent). Republicans now hold so-called trifectas control of a governor's mansion and both chambers of a state legislature in 26 states. Democrats have just six such trifectas. That's in addition to Republicans' complete control of the federal government.

And unlike their D.C. cousins, Republicans in statehouses across the country can point to conservative policy accomplishments this year, such as adding new restrictions on abortion, expanding gun rights, weakening private and public sector labor unions and expanding school voucher programs.

But a constellation of forces means that this level of Republican dominance in the states is brittle and in danger of shattering.

Large playing field, unpopular president

Perhaps the biggest reason Republicans are vulnerable is because of the extent of their past successes at the state level. Republicans are defending 27 of the 37 governors' seats that are up election between now and November 2018. And 14 of those 27 seats will be vacant including large, important states such as Florida, Michigan and Ohio mostly due to term limits.

While it's too early to tell how many races will be truly competitive, it's likely Republicans will face plenty of headwinds. State-level elections have become increasingly nationalized over the past two decades and the president's popularity can have a major impact on voter enthusiasm and turnout especially a challenge with a president as polarizing and unpopular as President Trump currently is.

Infighting and overreach

Years in power have also created problems for state-level Republicans. In Kansas, an overly ambitious plan to cut taxes orchestrated by Gov. Sam Brownback (who's been nominated to a State Department post in the Trump administration) starved the state of funds for its schools and other services. Kansas Republicans wound up bitterly divided over the issue and earlier this year, a moderate faction sided with Democrats to override Brownback's veto and rescind the tax cuts.

Similarly, a series of tax cuts in oil-dependent Oklahoma left the state poorly prepared for a downturn in energy prices. Republican lawmakers were forced to swallow their opposition and vote for tax hikes in order to keep the state solvent.

With Democrats all but vanquished in several Republican-dominated states, intra-Republican disputes have taken center stage. In Texas, Republicans are divided between a business-friendly faction that prioritizes low taxes and less regulation and social conservatives eager to pass the most conservative legislation possible, such as a bill limiting transgender access to bathrooms. Earlier this year, Florida Gov. Rick Scott was running campaign-style ads against fellow Republicans in the legislature over a dispute about economic development funds.

A combination of voters unhappy with the governing party's track record and internal party rifts that will play out in primary elections, sometimes leading to extreme or unqualified candidates, could weigh down Republican candidates up and down the ballot over the next year.

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announces that he is switching parties to become a Republican as President Trump listens on at a campaign rally Thursday in Huntington, W.Va. Justin Merriman/Getty Images hide caption

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice announces that he is switching parties to become a Republican as President Trump listens on at a campaign rally Thursday in Huntington, W.Va.

The maps and the courts

After the Republican wave election in 2010, victorious GOP state lawmakers took advantage of that year's decennial redistricting to further entrench their power, especially in swing states such as Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Republican-drawn legislative and congressional district maps in North Carolina, Texas, Virginia, Georgia and Alabama are already in federal court because of concerns about racial gerrymandering and North Carolina has already been ordered to redraw some of its districts.

But an even greater existential threat to Republican dominance at the state level comes from one of the most important Supreme Court cases of this fall's docket. Arguments in Gill vs. Whitford could determine whether Republican lawmakers in Wisconsin were allowed to take partisanship into account when drawing legislative boundaries. The Republican maps in Wisconsin were so formidably drawn that the GOP won 60 of 99 seats in the Wisconsin House even as Democrats drew more votes statewide in 2012 and 2014.

While both parties use partisan gerrymandering to their advantage, Republicans' dominance at the state level means the GOP has far more on the line from a Supreme Court decision.

Can Democrats capitalize?

The flip side of Republicans' dominance is the weakness of state-level Democrats. Going into the 2010 midterm elections, Democrats had full control of 17 states compared to Republicans' 10 states. Democrats acknowledge they've let their state parties wither and need to focus on rebuilding.

As former President Barack Obama told NPR's Steve Inskeep after the 2016 election, "you've got a situation where there are not only entire states but also big chunks of states where, if we're not showing up, if we're not in there making an argument, then we're going to lose."

But Democrats have a long way to go. A much touted effort to recruit candidates for this year's Virginia's House of Delegates elections has substantially increased the number of districts Democrats are competing in from 39 in 2015 to 67 today but that still leaves 33 districts where the party was unable to find a candidate to run.

Still, while Democrats haven't won any of the special U.S. House elections so far this year, they've significantly improved their margins even in deeply Republican districts suggesting that Democratic voters are highly motivated.

More evidence of enthusiasm comes from the latest Quinnipiac poll that has 52 percent of voters saying they prefer that Democrats control Congress compared to 38 percent for Republicans. Given the GOP edge in congressional and state legislative districts, Democrats will probably need popular sentiment to sway far in their favor if they are to have a hope of regaining power.

It's still 15 months until Election Day 2018 and plenty can still happen. But based on the landscape, it's hard to see how Republicans can maintain their current level of dominance.

Continued here:
In The States, Republicans Have Never Been So Dominant Or Vulnerable - NPR