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The Partnership for a New American Economy advocacy group is led by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. | Getty

The issue of immigration is as contentious as ever, with President Donald Trumps travel ban causing international chaos before it was halted by the courts and a new wave of immigration raids descending in communities nationwide.

But during this weeks congressional recess, pro-reform forces are nonetheless launching a massive and elaborate push to stir up public support for a comprehensive immigration overhaul.

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The Partnership for a New American Economy, the advocacy group led by former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, has recruited a number of congressional Republicans and Democrats to headline events promoting immigration across the country. During those events which range from roundtables to farm tours the group and lawmakers will promote new information compiled by the Partnership for all 435 congressional districts, 50 states and the 60 largest U.S. cities that details the impact of immigration in each area.

Some are well-known proponents of immigration reform, such as Florida Republican Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Carlos Curbelo. But the Bloomberg group has also brought on a number of GOP lawmakers who havent so far been marquee names in the immigration battle, including several from agriculture-heavy states: Oklahoma Reps. Frank Lucas and Steve Russell, and Georgia Reps. Doug Collins, Austin Scott and Drew Ferguson.

The Partnership has even enlisted supporters of Trump who stridently took hardline stances on immigration during his campaign for the White House to back their efforts: Irma Aguirre, a Nevada business owner and member of Latinos for Trump, and Mario Rodriguez, who sits on Trumps Hispanic Advisory Council.

"Immigration is top of the agenda politically, but the national discussion often bears little resemblance to the facts on the ground, said Jeremy Robbins, the groups executive director. In community after community and industry after industry, immigration is helping America and American workers."

About 100 events will be held nationwide during recess, primarily in conservative and swing districts and states, according to the group. Also participating will be local farm bureaus and chambers of commerce.

In conjunction with the new push, the Partnership is doing an ad blitz promoting immigration reform that will air inside cabs and digitally in cities such as Houston, Dallas, Las Vegas and Miami.

There are few legislative avenues for immigration this year, although the Trump administration intends to send a supplemental bill to Congress later this year to authorize construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. Key senators have also prepared legislation in case Trump revokes the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which grants deportation deferral and work permits to immigrants brought to the United States illegally at a young age.

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Bloomberg-backed group launches new immigration push under Trump - Politico

Michael Richards

A doctor turned businessman whos served since last spring on the board that oversees the three state universities is pledging his full support of tenure for professors and the free speech rights of campus protesters.

Im a strong supporter of freedom and that includes free speech and academic freedom in and outside of the classroom or on the campus and in the community, even if that free speech or those ideas differ from my own. The First Amendment is the bedrock of our freedom, Michael Richards, a member of the Board of Regents, saidMonday afternoon.

Richards has served on the boardsince last May. Hes a 1967 graduate of Osage High School and a graduate of the University of Iowa College of Medicine.

Last year, when there was an open Regents seatI volunteered, so that I might give something back to the state that has given so much to me and allowed so many opportunities, Richards said.

Richards current term on the Board of Regents expires in 2021, but he must get yes votes from 34 of the 50 state senators to win confirmation and remain on the board. On Monday afternoon, Richardswas quizzed by members ofthe Iowa Senate Education Committee.

Democrats on the committee asked him about bills Senate Republicans are hoping to pass and he gave careful answers. One bill would no longer let University of Iowa researchers use stem cells in their research. Richard didnt say whether he supports or opposes that bill.

As a practicing physician for 22 years, I support medical research, Richards said. Senator Liz Mathis pressed him, asking again: Including fetal tissue? Richard replied. I have supported medical research and Im not opposed to medical research.

Another bill essentially would get rid of the guns free zone designations for the three college campuses. Richards didnt say whether he supports the idea of letting people legally carry concealed weapons on the campuses, but he did tell legislators the Regents and the university presidents, rather than legislators, should make that decision.

With respect to guns on campus, I think the primary concern is to keep our students and faculty and staff safe, Richards said. I believe its best left up to the institutions to determine the best way to do that. I also believe there is a role for the Board of Regents in reviewing that.

Thecurrent president of the Board of Regents is leaving the board when his term expires in two months. Richards doesnot want that job.

No! Richards forcefullytold reporters after the meeting. I dont.

Richards, who lives in West Des Moines, is currently the managing partner of a business in Orange City that makes equipment used in medical facilities and the aerospace industry.

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Regent Richards says 1st Amendment 'bedrock of our freedom' - Radio Iowa

This story about Hillary Clinton divorcing husband Bill Clinton returned via Internet posts in February 2017 after originally appearing in November 2016.

An old claim that says former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton filed paperwork to divorce her husband, former President Bill Clinton, recently resurfaced. But it is fake.

"Hilary (sic) Clinton filed for divorce In New York courts!" read a headline on a Feb. 8, 2017, post on USANewsToday.org. Facebook flagged the post as part of its initiative to eliminate fake news from its news feeds.

The story cited ChristianTimesNewspaper.com as reporting Clinton filed a divorce petition in the Supreme Court of the State of New York for Westchester County.

We know the story isnt real, because this exact same hoax has circulated online before.

The ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, which was a website that trafficked in fake news, tried to sell people the exact same story on Nov. 10, 2016, after Clinton lost the election to President Donald Trump. The website, which now appears to be offline, did not carry a disclaimer identifying its news as fabricated. It did say it "does not take responsibility for any of our readers' actions that may result from reading our stories."

Some minor details of the ChristianTimesNewspaper.com story have been changed, but USANewsToday.org and several other fake news websites, as well reproduced essentially the same story in February. USANewsToday.org is a clickbait site registered to an address in Macedonia, where fake news is a lucrative cottage industry.

This mirrors a minor trend weve seen with fake news, in which a fabricated story that originally was posted weeks or months ago is suddenly resurrected and regains popularity.

While the original version of this story came after Clintons presidential campaign loss, we can only make an educated guess as to the reason why this claim made a comeback. Valentines Day, maybe?

The statement is no more accurate now than when it was first posted months ago. We rate it Pants On Fire!

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Internet resurrects false claim that Bill and Hillary Clinton are divorcing - PolitiFact (blog)

If the FBI concludes that Americans within Trumps orbit colluded with Russian intelligence officials to disrupt the U.S. election, the evidence and prosecutions should speak for themselves. But no matter what conclusions the FBI ultimately comes to, its director, James Comey, owes the country a public accounting of what his agents foundeven if nobody ends up being indicted.

Comeys own intrusions into the election look worse and worse with each passing day of the Trump administration. At every turn, we are reminded that Comey did horrible damage to Clintons campaign, notwithstanding his unique visibility into the Trump-Russia nexus.

Comey announced in July that hed recommended no charges be filed against Hillary Clinton, despite what he called her extremely careless handling of classified information through the use of a private email server. But eleven days before the election, he told several congressmen in a letter that there might be new evidence in the email investigationor there might be nothing. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Comey shortly afterward, decrying the clear double-standard Comey appeared to exhibit. As soon as you came into possession of the slightest innuendo related to Secretary Clinton, Reid wrote, you rushed to publicize it in the most negative light possible.

What Comey did was unforgivable, and likely history-changing. The most generous interpretation of it is that he inappropriately prioritized the FBIs reputation and his own over his obligation not to discuss investigations. In so doing, he ended up offering a play-by-play of the Clinton-email investigation, in a way that had a clear partisan effect. Making the public statement about closing the investigation last summer put him on the hook to testify before Congress; testifying before Congress arguably compelled him to keep Congress apprised of unexpected changes in the status of the investigation, which in turn compelled him to exculpate Clinton a second time, days before the election.

Comey made a huge and unnecessary mess.

But if we are being intellectually honest ourselves, we have to hold him to the precedents he set for himself, not to ones that would make things seem more fair. Comey should have kept quiet throughout the campaign, but by his own lightsaccording to his testimony before Congress last July, and contemporaneous reportinghe broke silence for three reasons that made the Clinton inquiry so unusual:

1. Because Clinton skeptics believed Attorney General Loretta Lynchas the head of the department investigating Clintons emailshad compromised her independence when she met privately and unexpectedly with Bill Clinton on her plane in Arizona.

2. Because the public interest in transparency was extraordinaryClinton was a presidential candidate, after all.

3. Because the investigation had essentially run its course, and could thus be aired without undermining its integrity. We sometimes think differently about closed investigations, he told Senator Angus King last month, after King implied Comey applied a double standard to Clinton and Trumpan acknowledgment, perhaps, that he wont be able to sit on Trump-related inquiries forever.

The Russian hacking and conspiracy investigations already meet the first two of these standards, but wont meet the third until they come to a close.

The new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, one of Trumps main campaign surrogates, is far more compromised than Loretta Lynch ever was. Sessionswho once called on Lynch to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Clintonis, in an act of astounding hypocrisy, refusing to recuse himself from the Trump/Russia investigation.

Likewise, the publics interest in knowing the FBIs findings in this case exceeds its interest in knowing the findings of the email investigation: Clinton was a candidate for the presidency, but Trump is now the president.

Comeys actions last summer and fall raised the question of whether he had committed an honest-but-profound error of judgment or an intentional act of grotesque partisanship. What, if anything, he ultimately tells us about Trumps ties to Russian election saboteurs will provide us an answer.

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James Comey Had Better Treat Donald Trump Just Like He Treated Hillary Clinton - New Republic

The Supreme Court hears arguments on Tuesday in a dispute over a Mexican familys ability to sue a U.S. Border Patrol officer who killed their son in a cross-border incident. Both governments filed briefs in the case, on opposite sides of the dispute.

Sergio Adrian Hernandez Guereca, 15, died in 2010 as he stood on Mexican soil by a border officer who fired his gun while on United States soil in Texas. The agent claimed Hernandez and others were throwing rocks at him as he was attempting to detain an illegal immigration suspect; the family says Hernandez was playing a game with his friends at the border location between El Paso and Juarez.

Hernandezs family sued the agent for damages, but in 2015 the Fifth Circuit Appeals Court said the family had no standing to sue because the teen was a Mexican citizen and not protected by the Fifth Amendment under its Due Process clause or by the Fourth Amendment. The full appeals court had unanimously ruled in favor of the agent.

The Supreme Court took the appeal in October 2016 and it also added a question about determining if the parents had a constitutional right to sue a Border Patrol officer.

The controversy will likely get its share of new attention because of the political situation involving the new Trump administration in Washington and its stance on immigration and Mexico.

However, the federal government brief in this case was filed by the Obama administration and it supports Jesus Mesa, Jr., the border agent. Among the arguments made by the Justice Department was that courts werent the proper location to settle a dispute that could involve foreign policy considerations, and that allowing such lawsuits would allow U.S. military and intelligence agencies to be sued for injuries incurred abroad.

The government of Mexicos brief argues that Mexico has a responsibility to maintain control over its territory and to look after the well-being of its nationals. It is a priority for Mexico to see that the United States has provided adequate means to hold the agents accountable and to compensate the victims.

In 2015, Constitution Daily Supreme Court correspondent Lyle Denniston explained to our readers the core constitutional issue in this case.

Overseas, or offshore, application of the rights spelled out in the Constitution was dealt a major setback in 1990, when the Supreme Court ruled that a Mexican national who was being held prisoner inside the United States had no Fourth Amendment right to challenge a search of his home in Mexico by a joint investigative team from the two countries, Denniston said, referring to a case called United States v. Verdugo-Urquidez.

Even a quarter-century later, however, just what that decision actually means about extraterritorial reach for the Constitution remains a matter of considerable debate. The main opinion said that constitutional rights do not apply outside the country to an individual who had no voluntary links to the United States. But Justice Anthony M. Kennedy supplied a necessary fifth vote to make a majority in that case, and his separate opinion suggested that he thought that the specific context of each case might actually make the difference in the analysis.

Then, Justice Kennedy wrote a major opinion for the Court in Boumediene v. Bush in 2008 extending the constitutional right of habeas corpus to the foreign nationals that the U.S. was then holding (and scores of whom it still holds) at the military prison at Guantanamo Bay.

That opinion, if understood to apply beyond the specific factual situation of the detainees at Guantanamo, would appear to stand for the proposition that the extraterritorial application of the Constitutions guarantee of rights depends upon objective factors and practical concerns (as Kennedy put it in the opinion), rather than the nearly categorical approach of the Verdugo-Urquidez decision in 1990, Denniston explained.

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US-Mexico border shooting case at Supreme Court today - Yahoo News