Donald Trump on the Green New Deal: 'That's a hoax like the hoax I just went through'
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Donald Trump has announced his plans for a sweeping reform to America's immigration system, calling for increased border security and the elimination of visa lottery systems he descibed as running contrary to the American belief system.
The president announced the immigration plan from the White House Rose Garden, where he claimed a strong US economy set up a perfect situation for the United States to take the plunge and fix its broken immigration system.
"We must implement an immigration system that will allow our citizens to prosper for generations to come," Mr Trump said to an assembled group of Republican lawmakers and supporters, with a warm Washington spring sun shining down.
Mr Trump's plan is likely dead on arrival, in spite of the president's use of the Rose Garden's gravitas to announce his intentions. The plan, which would drastically change Ameriac's immigration system, does nothing to address the roughly 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the US already — a major point of concern for many Democats, who control the House of Representatives.
The announcement came as Mr Trump's administration found itself in a tense stand-off with Iran, with a military commander for that nation warning that his country is on the "cusp of a full-scale confrontation with the enemy" as the US appeared to prepare for a potential armed conflict.
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US officials, in spite of those harsh words, indicated that America is not looking for war — and reports indicated that Mr Trump himself is uncomfortable with the idea of the war preparations in his own adminstration.
The comment from Iranian major-general Hossein Salami of the Revolutionary Guards comes despite reassurances from secretary of state Mike Pompeo and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that neither sides wants their dispute over economic sanctions to descend into war.
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Meanwhile, with the US already embroiled in a trade war with China over tariffs, the president has blacklisted foreign telecoms giants including Huawei from trading in the US in the interests of national security. Later on Thursday, the presiden plans to unveil plans to revamp the country’s immigration system and launches a website to combat the censorship of conservatives on social media.
As part of the plan, officials want to shore up ports of entry to ensure all vehicles and people are screened and to create a self-sustaining fund, paid for with increased fees, to modernise ports of entry.
The plan also calls for building border wall in targeted locations and continues to push for an overhaul to the US asylum system, with the goal of processing fewer applications and removing people who don't qualify faster.
While the officials insisted their effort was not a "political" plan, they nonetheless framed it as one they hoped Republicans would unite behind, making clear to voters what the party is "for."
"I don't think it's designed to get Democratic support as much as it is to unify the Republican Party around border security, a negotiating position," said South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally of the White House.
Indeed, the plan drew immediate criticism from Democrats as well as immigration activists, who remain deeply sceptical of Trump after past negotiation failures.
Democrats and some Republicans tried crafting a compromise with Trump last year that would have helped young Dreamer immigrants and added money for border security. But those talks collapsed over White House demands to curb legal immigration and a dramatic Senate showdown in which lawmakers rejected three rival proposals that aligned with the "four pillars" immigration plan Trump unveiled that year.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer criticised the White House for failing to engage in talks with Democrats over the latest proposal.
"Don't come up with a plan that Stephen Miller rubber stamps and say, 'Now, pass it.' It's not going to happen," Schumer said, referring to Trump's hard-line policy adviser.
Lisa Koop, director of legal services at the National Immigrant Justice Center, also criticised the various planks of the proposal, including its failure to address those brought to the US illegally as children who are currently protected from deportation by the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, or DACA, which Trump has tried to end.
"A plan that forces families apart, limits access to asylum and other humanitarian relief, and doesn't contemplate a path to citizenship for DACA recipients and other undocumented community members is clearly a political stunt intended to posture rather than problem-solve," she said.
Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which advocates for lower immigration rates, applauded a "very positive effort" on legal immigration, but said it was "undermined by the embrace of the current very high level of immigration."
Republicans on the Hill, too, voiced scepticism, even as administration officials insisted the plan had been embraced by those who briefed on it. A PowerPoint presentation shared with reporters on Wednesday referred to the plan as "The Republican Proposal," even though many GOP members had yet to see it.
Graham, who rolled out his own proposal on Wednesday to address the recent flood of migrants seeking asylum at the US-Mexico border, said he had advised Trump to try to cut a new deal with Democrats and believed Trump was open to that.
"I am urging the president to lead us to a solution," he said.
Missouri’s Republican-led senate has passed a bill to effectively ban abortion after eight weeks of pregnancy, even in cases of rape and incest. Senators approved the legislation by 24 votes to 10 in the early hours of Thursday morning, just hours before a Friday deadline to pass bills.
It will require another vote of approval in the state’s GOP-led House before it can be signed off by Republican governor, Mike Parson, who has already announced he supports the measure.
The move follows Alabama's senate passing a similar bill on Tuesday, effectively outlawing terminations in all cases unless the mother's life is in danger.
Leading Democrats Elizabeth Warren and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have both issued strong statements about this worrying regression of women's rights in the American South.
Here's the latest.
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Trump's old tweets have returned to haunt him before but this vintage cut from 2012 is especially damning given the current tensions with Iran and his own attempts to steer the national conversation away from the Mueller report and back towards 2020.
It also casts new light on his scaremongering about the migrant caravan during November's midterms.
As part of the Trump administration's assault on immigration, the State Department has been working to eliminate birthright citizenship, given to children of undocumented migrants who are born on US soil.
Opponents of the law dismiss the children as "anchor babies", whose parents cynically contrive to ensure they are delivered in American maternity wards to win citizenship on behalf of the whole family.
As Scott Bixby of The Daily Beast reports, the State Department issued new rules last summer that unilaterally changes its interpretation of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), a 1952 law that, along with the 14th Amendment, codifies eligibility.
“The US Department of State interprets the INA to mean that a child born abroad must be biologically related to a US citizen parent,” its website says. “Even if local law recognises a surrogacy agreement and finds that US parents are the legal parents of a child conceived and born abroad… if the child does not have a biological connection to a US citizen parent, the child will not be a US citizen at birth.”
What this means in practice, Bixby says, is that LGBT+ couples whose children were born overseas through gestational surrogacy and other forms of assisted reproductive technology (ART) are considered to be born “out of wedlock” and risk having their claim to birthright citizenship challenged and potentially invalidated. This could mean their being deported or even left stateless.
"Children born out of wedlock face higher legal and logistical hurdles to obtaining birthright citizenship," Bixby writes. "In addition to submission of DNA tests proving genetic links to US citizen parents, their parents must be able to testify that they can support their children financially, and must prove that they have been present in the United States for at least five years prior to the child’s birth."
The White House has launched a website to tackle what it sees as the problem of conservative voices being censored on social media.
The American Right has frequently complained about the alleged liberal bias of Silicon Valley tech giants, who have worked to purge their sites of neo-Nazis and hate speech.
A Florida radio station is going to run "inspirational" Trump speeches every hour during the 2020 election campaign, as if the Sunshine State weren't mad enough already.
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