Happy New Year everyone.
In this new year, lets not forget how serious Fearless Leader's stance on immigration is.
Last September, Trump announced that he would end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), an Obama-era program that allowed approximately 800,000 undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children to receive work permits and remain in the country. Trump, however, delayed termination of this program — current DACA beneficiaries will start to lose their protections in March — and initially appeared open to a legislative solution that would restore benefits to people on DACA.
Now, however, Trump is demanding a fundamental overhaul of much of the nation’s immigration system as the price of a DACA fix.
Both family-based immigration and diversity visas are targeted by the Reforming American Immigration for a Strong Economy (RAISE) Act, a bill co-sponsored by Sens. Tom Cotton (R-AR) and David Perdue (R-GA) that the White House supports.
Richard Spencer, the white supremacist icon who popularized the term “alt-right,” said that the RAISE Act “sounds awesome.”
We should remain vigilant on the subject concerning conflicts of interest too.
The president has long maintained that he has separated himself from his many business interests.
Despite that, Trump has spent a significant amount of his time as president visiting his own businesses. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a good-governance watchdog group, calculated that he has visited one of his properties –– including his golf club in Northern Virginia, his Mar-a-Lago club in West Palm Beach, and his hotel in downtown Washington D.C. –– about one of every three days he’s been in office.
Jordan Libowitz, a CREW spokesperson, said the email raises serious concerns.
“This appears to confirm the worst fears about the Trump administration,” he said. “If this is true, it means the president, his family and his spokespeople lied repeatedly about his relationship with his business.”
“Presidents for decades have divested their assets so as to avoid even the appearance of them worrying about their business interests,” he added. “With Trump, it’s becoming hard to tell which of his jobs is his top priority.”
Also.
But no Trump property drew as much ire as the instantly-iconic Trump International Hotel in Washington D.C., situated a block from the Justice Department’s headquarters and halfway between the White House and the Capitol Building. Over the year, protesters regularly amassed in front of the building, causing snarled traffic and sometimes drawing jeers from people in the building.
That didn’t stop the president and his advisors from making frequent visits to the hotel, and it didn’t stop conservative groups from hosting numerous fundraisers and events there. Over the course of the year, the hotel’s sprawling, palatial lobby became the place to be seen for young Republicans, campaign alums, Trump-loving tourists, and general rubber-neckers. All this is despite prices that might make fiscal conservatives blanche; a small bottle of Evian water from room service runs $9, and chicken caesar salad clocks in at $30.