DOJ is Now Officially Using The ‘I-Word,’ and Advocates are Outraged
by Rachel Stockman | 11:00 am, July 31st, 2017

There has been shift in the language that the U.S. Department of Justice is using in its press releases, and it’s not sitting well with some. The DOJ, under the leadership of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has now begun using the term “illegal aliens” to refer to immigrants who do not have the proper paperwork to be in the United States. Last week, in announcing stricter rules for so-called sanctuary cities, a DOJ announcement said, “So-called ‘sanctuary’ policies make all of us less safe because they intentionally undermine our laws and protect illegal aliens who have committed crimes.”

The DOJ also sent this press release out last month:

Attorney General Sessions Speaks with Families of Victims Killed by Illegal Aliens
06/29/2017 12:00 AM EDT
Today Attorney General Jeff Sessions met with families who have lost loved ones because of crimes committed by illegal aliens. In the meeting they discussed the progress being made by the Trump Administration to strengthen laws protecting Americans from crimes committed by illegal aliens and, the need to keep working to ensure that federal immigration laws are enforced.
Advocates for immigration reform contend that the term “illegal” is a “racial slur” and believe it is dehumanizing. Instead, they prefer if the term “undocumented immigrant” is used.

“They’re using a legally inaccurate term that’s deployed to unfairly label and scapegoat people who are out of status due to a variety of systemic circumstances,” Xakota Espinoza from the Center for Racial Justice Innovation, told LawNewz.com

http://lawnewz.com/high-profile/sessions-doj-is-now-using-term-illegal-aliens-and-advocates-are-outraged/

So it’s official: One of the first major pieces of bipartisan legislation to pass Congress during Trump’s presidency has been explicitly designed to sharply limit his powers.

The bill takes Obama-era sanctions against Russia that are in place under executive orders — that is, directives that only the president has authority to enact and rescind — and officially enshrines them in the law. It also establishes a new congressional review process that would allow Congress to block the White House from taking steps to ease sanctions if it wanted to. And it imposes a fresh batch of sanctions on Russia, Iran, and North Korea.

Trump now faces an awkward dilemma: veto the legislation and endure the humiliation of seeing Congress — controlled by his own party — override him with ease, as lawmakers in both parties have pledged to do. Or sign the legislation and endure the humiliation of agreeing to a bill that his administration lobbied against in its bid to cling to a key bargaining chip in negotiations with Russia.

Trump wanted to keep sanctions under his control as he angles to turn things around in the rapidly souring US-Russian relationship. Moscow despises US sanctions, and their removal would be central to any kind of major reset between the two countries.


https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/28/16055630/congress-trump-russia-sanctions-veto

The New York Police Department will not attend President Trump's major law enforcement and immigration policy speech in Long Island, N.Y. on Friday, where he plans to lay out the administration's plan to defeat the MS-13 gang.

“We have a lot to do, a lot of work to do in New York City,” said Police Commissioner James O’Neill on Friday.


The commissioner's jurisdiction of New York does not extend to all of Long Island, where the meeting on gang violence is taking place. It is not clear if the NYPD would have been expected to attend the event.

New York is a sanctuary city, and Trump's speech is expected to take a hard line on the link between immigration enforcement and the rise of gang-related crime.

http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/344350-nypd-will-not-attend-trump-speech-on-ms-13-gang-in-long-island

“I fired one guy the other day,” Scaramucci said Wednesday night in the phone call, according to the report, after he demanded Lizza tell him the source of his dinner-party scoop. “I have three to four people I’ll fire tomorrow [Thursday]. I’ll get to the person who leaked that to you. Reince Priebus — if you want to leak something — he’ll be asked to resign very shortly.”

http://deadline.com/2017/07/anthony-scaramucci-reince-preibus-new-yorker-interview-1202137748/

The Silent Parade, one of the first mass protests against lynching and anti-black violence in the United States, is the subject of a July 28, 2017 Google Doodle that commemorates its 100th anniversary.

The parade took place on July 28, 1917 along New York City’s Fifth Avenue, and, as Google notes, the only sound “was the muffled beat of drums.” Google chose the Silent Parade for a Google Doodle to honor “those whose silence resonates a century later.”


At the time, the parade was also called the “Silent Protest Parade.” Its NAACP organizers wrote in a promotional flyer for the parade that they were marching to rouse the “conscience of the country.”

Here’s what you need to know:

1. Nearly 10,000 People, Including Children, Marched in Silence During the 1917 Silent Parade

On July 28, 1917, notes Google, “the only sound on New York City’s Fifth Avenue was the muffled beat of drums as nearly 10,000 African American children, women, and men marched in silence in what came to be known as the Silent Parade.”


The parade had a dress code that created a scene of unity.

As Alexis Newman described it for Black Past.org, “Children, dressed in white, led the protest, followed by women behind, also dressed in white. Men followed at the rear, dressed in dark suits. The marchers carried banners and posters stating their reasons for the march. Both participants and onlookers remarked that this protest was unlike any other seen in the city and the nation. There were no chants, no songs, just silence.”

http://heavy.com/news/2017/07/silent-parade-google-doodle-the-1917-new-york/

Sergei Magnitsky was murdered as my proxy. If Sergei had not been my lawyer, he would still be alive today.

That morning I made a vow to Sergei’s memory, to his family, and to myself that I would seek justice and create consequences for the people who murdered him. For the last seven and a half years, I’ve devoted my life to this cause.

Even though this case was characterized by injustice all the way through, the circumstances of Sergei’s torture and death were so extreme that I was sure some people would be prosecuted. Unlike other deaths in Russian prisons, which are largely undocumented, Sergei had written everything down. In his 358 days in detention, Sergei wrote over 400 complaints detailing his abuse. In those complaints he described who did what to him, as well as where, how, when, and why. He was able to pass his hand-written complaints to his lawyers, who dutifully filed them with the Russian authorities. Although his complaints were either ignored or rejected, copies of them were retained. As a result, we have the most well-documented case of human rights abuse coming out of Russia in the last 35 years.


When I began the campaign for justice with this evidence, I thought that the Russian authorities would have no choice but to prosecute at least some of the officials involved in Sergei Magnitsky’s torture and murder. It turns out I could not have been more wrong. Instead of prosecuting, the Russian authorities circled the wagons and exonerated everybody involved. They even went so far as to offer promotions and state honors to those most complicit in Sergei’s persecution.

https://www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/534864/

Mr. Putin, though powerful, depends on the support of a small circle of powerful elites, in and out of government, who both keep him in power and help him enforce his will. In exchange, Mr. Putin sees that they are taken care of. The Magnitsky Act, by sanctioning some of those elites, sent a message that Mr. Putin might not be able to uphold his end of the bargain.

It also called into question whether lower-ranked officials could trust that they would be protected from punishment for tolerating or participating in illegal acts at the behest of Mr. Putin or his allies.

And the law embarrassed Mr. Putin by showing that his influence was not strong enough to prevent the law’s passage, despite his vigorous lobbying against it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/10/world/americas/kremlin-adoptions-sanctions-russia.html

Now, Senator Sanders and his wife are taking the case more seriously. Jeff Weaver, Sanders’ longtime top political adviser who heads Sanders’ political organization, Our Revolution, confirms to Politico Magazine that Bernie and Jane Sanders have lawyered up. The couple has retained Rich Cassidy, a well-connected Burlington attorney and Sanders devotee, and Larry Robbins, the renowned Washington-based defense attorney who has represented I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby and disgraced former Rep. Bill Jefferson, to represent Jane Sanders in the matter.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/06/22/bernie-sanders-jane-sanders-lawyer-bank-fraud-investigation-burlington-college-215297