Chris Hedges's Blog, page 370

Trump Says He Needs to Deal With Dem Leaders to End Shutdown

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump held out little hope Sunday that another round of talks between top aides and congressional staff would produce meaningful progress toward ending the partial government shutdown, seeming to undercut his team by saying he needed to deal directly with Democratic leaders.

“Ultimately, it’s going to be solved by the principals,” Trump told reporters at the White House before leaving for staff meetings at Camp David as the shutdown headed into its third week. A second round of discussions between administration officials and Capitol Hill aides was scheduled for Sunday afternoon.

“I don’t expect to have anything happen at that meeting,” said Trump about the talks led by Vice President Mike Pence. “But I think we’re going to have some very serious talks come Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.”

The president suggested that he, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer could solve the impasse over money for a U.S.-Mexico border wall “in 20 minutes, if they want to. If they don’t want to, it’s going to go on for a long time.”

With Trump insisting on $5.6 billion for the wall and Democrats resolute in saying they won’t go along, Trump reaffirmed that he would consider declaring a national emergency in an effort to circumvent Congress and spend money as he saw fit. Such a move would seem certain to draw legal challenges.

Trump also asserted that he could relate to the plight of the hundreds of thousands of federal workers who aren’t receiving paychecks, though he acknowledged they will have to “make adjustments” to deal with the shutdown shortfall. A day earlier, the president had tweeted that he didn’t care that “most of the workers not getting paid are Democrats.”

He said he planned to call the heads of American steel companies in hopes of coming up with a new design for the barrier he contends must be built along the southern border. Trump had previously promised a concrete wall, but now says it could be made of steel slats. His administration has already spent millions constructing wall prototypes near the border in San Diego.

The White House team appointed by Trump met with congressional aides on Saturday and reported no breakthrough. After being briefed by Pence, Trump tweeted that the group had not made much headway.

With the talks stalled, Pelosi, D-Calif., said House Democrats intended to start passing individual bills to reopen agencies. The first would be the Treasury Department, to ensure people receive their tax refunds.

Democrats said the White House did not budge on the president’s demand for the wall money. The White House said money was not discussed in depth, but the administration was clear about the need for a wall and the goal of resolving the shutdown all at once, not piecemeal.

Acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he believes Democrats “think they’re winning the PR battle and they’re willing to drag this out because they think it hurts the president.” Democrats familiar with the meeting said the White House position was “untenable.”

A White House official said the meeting included a briefing on border security by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen. Democrats sought written details from the Department of Homeland Security on their budget needs; the White House said it would provide that.

Mulvaney said Trump was willing to forgo a concrete wall for steel or other materials.

“If he has to give up a concrete wall, replace it with a steel fence in order to do that so that Democrats can say, ‘See? He’s not building a wall anymore,’ that should help us move in the right direction,” Mulvaney told NBC.

The president has suggested his definition of the wall is flexible, referring to slats and other “border things.” Democrats have made clear they see a wall as immoral and ineffective and prefer other types of border security funded at already agreed upon levels.

Trump had campaigned on the promise that Mexico would pay for the wall. Mexico has refused. He’s now demanding the money from Congress.

Demise of a California City Holds Blueprint for Restoring Democracy

“From Kleptocracy to Democracy: How Citizens Can Take Back Local Government”
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“From Kleptocracy to Democracy: How Citizens Can Take Back Local Government”

A book by Fred Smoller

The city of Bell, California, is a three-square-mile tabletop of warehouses, loading docks, 1940s-era bungalows, and packed apartment complexes, all of it splintered by the hard lines of the 710 and 5 freeways. This tiny municipality made national news in July 2010 when the Los Angeles Times reported that city manager Robert Rizzo was paying himself $800,000 and doling out nearly $100,000 in salaries and benefits to six other City Council members.

I’m a second-generation Angeleno who was born in East Los Angeles and now live in Highland Park some 12 miles north of Bell. My family knew of Bell the same way we knew of places like Maywood and Cudahy—small, unassuming, and located in what’s colloquially called “The Corridor of Corruption.” My father and I figured this civic plundering probably wasn’t unique, but questions still loomed. Why did it take so long for anyone to catch wind of this in the first place, and who else was involved in bringing the crooked city officials to justice?

Fred Smoller’s “From Kleptocracy to Democracy: How Citizens Can Take Back Local Government” is the tantalizing play-by-play I have waited almost eight years to read. With a narrative that is as accessible as it is concise, Smoller guides us through the history of Bell, the kleptocrats’ rise to power, and the broken system that allowed them to creep in. But this is no historical recounting or even cautionary tale. The engrossing read comes equipped with actionable steps at each chapter for increasing transparency between the citizens and their local government.

Smoller, a professor at Chapman University, breaks local government down into three components: citizens, city officials, and the press. Each holds a specific responsibility to ensure the eco-political health of the city. Citizens are to stay informed about major local issues. Officials are to be responsive to public inquiries in exchange for the support of their residents. The press tells the world how the wheels are turning. This wasn’t happening in Bell.

Smoller refers to the press in traditional terms as “the public’s watchdog,” meant to “bark” when it sees a misappropriation of power. Bell’s watchdogs were muzzled long ago with the last local independent paper, The Industrial Post, going out of business in 1985. The Los Angeles Times barely paid attention until 2010.

Perhaps if there had been a local press to cover the arrival of Robert Rizzo—some seven years after the paper’s demise—there would have been more scrutiny of the new city manager with a shoddy track record. If elected officials are meant to work by the will and power of the public, Rizzo was acutely aware he needed to corral this power to maintain his own control. As his tenure wore on, Rizzo’s measures to keep the public in the dark became increasingly aggressive. City council meetings were held in the early evening, cutting off involvement from the majority working-class residents of Bell.

In 2005, a special election—one which would grant Bell a charter which Rizzo believed would allow Bell to raise city officials’ salaries above the state limits—was held the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. The selected date was intentional. Following the holiday, most people would be back at work and the date itself was weeks after most other elections. Unsurprisingly, the special election had a turnout of only one percent of the city’s residents. This is also to say nothing of the expense this election had on taxpayer funds.

For Rizzo, it might be said, this rigging was less about money and more about power. In an exploitive strategy to bolster revenue, police efforts were focused on impounding cars, rather than protecting Bell’s residents. Rizzo, in turn, also distributed at least $1.5 million in no-interest loans to more than 50 Bell staffers in a “Godfather”-esque display of favors.

Smoller writes, “To Rizzo, Bell’s citizens were customers whose interest in city hall went no further than the quality of the services they received and the amount of taxes they paid.” In the presentation of a public system being warped to fit the transactional philosophy of private enterprise, the reader can’t help but hear echoes of Donald Trump’s campaign to “run America like a business.”

The same callous attitude is also present in Rizzo’s own words, which Smoller carefully details in all their blatant arrogance and avarice.

“If that’s a number people choke on, maybe I’m in the wrong business,” Rizzo is quoted. “I could go into private business and make that money. This council has compensated me for the job I’ve done.”

It’s a statement that’s contrasted against the City Council’s documented $673 monthly salaries plus stipends for sitting on commissions that didn’t exist. And none of the parties involved were oblivious to the self-serving nature of their actions. According to an email exchange between assistant city manager Angela Spaccia and the then-chief of police, Randy Adams, Rizzo had a favorite saying: Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. “So as long as we’re not Hogs … All is well!” wrote Spaccia.

In a twist of fate, the officials’ own sloppy greed made them careless in drafting their charter, which ultimately stated that their pay had to stay within state limits. “Had the charter been worded differently,” Times reporter Jeff Gottlieb states in his interview, “council members might not have faced criminal charges.”

Once the Times broke the headlines on Bell, Smoller delivers the thoroughly satisfying roller coaster of righteous anger that followed. From this surge of awakening and ire, we see the heroes emerge—intelligent and inquiring community members who were either immigrants or their first-generation children. This includes intrepid Times reporter Ruben Vives, a once-undocumented child immigrant from Guatemala, as well as Bell residents and future local leaders Cristina Garcia and Ali Saleh. The diversity, camaraderie and efficiency of these heroes upend any baseless argument that immigrants are somehow weakening American society.

The Bell scandal was the impetus for BASTA (Bell Association to Stop The Abuse), a local activism group co-founded by Saleh, Garcia, and other Bell locals that would go on to launch a recall against the council. At the helm of BASTA were Latino and Muslim American organizers, two groups who have faced the brunt of the Trump administration’s vitriol. Yet both communities worked in tandem to execute a rapid outreach plan to reclaim power for their city’s residents—a patriotic act by anybody’s definition.

“From Kleptocracy to Democracy” has eerie present-day parallels. When we have a presidential administration often accused of spreading fake news and calling the media “a public enemy,” we see the attacks on our own “public watchdogs.” When this administration threatens immigrants and extends its hostility to their children, Smoller’s work reminds us of the toppling power of stalwart immigrants and their progeny. Perhaps the administration’s enmity hints at an underlying fear that those among us with immigrant roots are potentially the most civically involved. Undoubtedly, it must feel like a personal affront when a corrupt city official feels so emboldened as to plunder a community that others worked so hard to join.

Intended to be generally accessible, Smoller’s prose flows smoothly, reading less like a stiff academic analysis and more part-civic-user-guide, part-case-study-thriller. If there is one dynamic to lament, it is the sparse use of images and graphics in the text. Maybe it’s the history student in me, but when I see an artifact in the pages of my text it underscores the reality and documentation of the occurrences. Having more graphics to convey many of the milestones in the Bell narrative would have satisfied other visual learners.

What sets “From Kleptocracy to Democracy” apart from mere historical recounting is Smoller’s lucid explanation of the radius of municipal power. So many people either do not see themselves as welcomed in these spaces or do not realize what they can access. Detailed recommendations prevent Smoller’s meticulous documentation of the events from being seen as simply a cautionary tale. History is a living entity, and Smoller vividly demonstrates how these errors of the past both impact the present and are liable to be repeated. The ability to vote and additional avenues of civic engagement—community organizing, volunteering, reporting—are all presented as effective checks on local leaders.

While “From Kleptocracy to Democracy” will appeal to readers who lived through the events of the Bell scandal, it will resonate with anyone seeking to make a progressive and sustainable impact in their cities. For cynical and irregular voters out there, this book lights a fire. Readers will wonder how much their own votes could have swung the election of a council member; is that official accurately representing their own vision for their community? Who is the local city manager? And, above all else, what can we do about it now?

As Smoller writes, “The ideas are there […] [but] without such changes, future Bell scandals are inevitable.” The solutions are as simple as reading, voting, and speaking up.

Angela M. Sanchez is a 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow and author of the children’s picture book “Scruffy and the Egg.” She received her master’s in higher education from UCLA.

In the Face of Climate Disaster, Washington Post Advocates Suicidal Approach

The Washington Post (12/8/18) argues that “Mr. Hogan’s plan…makes sense,” given that “car usage nationally is expanding at roughly twice the rate of population growth.”

As world leaders gathered in Poland for the UN climate conference, the Washington Post threw its support behind a $9 billion plan to add over 100 miles of toll lanes to Maryland highways in the traffic-choked DC region. The Post offered its hearty initial support, despite the fact that studies show adding more lanes leads to more cars on the road, when cars already consume “a quarter of the world’s oil” (New York Times, 12/13/18).

At the climate conference—which came on the heels of a major UN report finding that the world has just 12 years to drastically cut emissions to avert catastrophe—there was a sense of urgency. “To waste this opportunity in [Poland] would compromise our last best chance to stop runaway climate change,” said UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres. “It would not only be immoral, it will be suicidal.”

Meanwhile, at the Post—which seemed to be channeling President Trump’s drill, baby, drill approach to the environment—there was excitement over Republican Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan’s highway expansion plan, which the newspaper (12/8/18) hailed as “potentially one of the most audacious public/private partnerships in the nation.”

Marylanders, however, are far less enthused (Post, 10/12/18). And with good reason: A joint study by US PIRG and Frontier Group found Hogan’s plan to be one of the country’s top “boondoggles.” The public interest groups noted that rather than easing congestion, adding lanes just encourages more drivers to use the roads. Traffic quickly rebounds to the level it was at before the expansion, while pollution increases and the public purse is drained.

Public/Private Partnerships

“At first, it sounded like a good idea,” the Indianapolis Star (6/18/17) reported of Indiana’s public/private highway project.

In order to avoid the perception that expanding highways costs the public money, Hogan is turning to private interests to finance and operate the toll lanes in exchange for future toll revenue. These so-called public/private partnerships (P3s) are attractive to lawmakers because they require little to no upfront public money. (“It won’t cost us tax dollars,” Hogan claimed—as though tolls aren’t also money spent by the public.) But things can get messy down the road.

In Indiana, then-Gov. Mike Pence turned to foreign investors to fund a highway expansion in 2014. Three years later, as Pence entered the White House as vice president, the project was two years behind schedule, $137 million over budget and boosting car accidents nearly 50 percent, leading the Indianapolis Star (6/18/17) to label it “Mike Pence’s infrastructure mess.”

In Virginia, which the Post (12/8/18) holds up as a P3 model, there have been challenges as well. Express lanes on the Beltway—nicknamed “Lexus lanes” for their high tolls—have operated at a financial loss, even as the Australian company financing and operating them remains highly profitable (Post, 10/12/18).

A unique feature of P3s is that their complexity offers investors a variety of ways to maintain profitability, even at a cost to the public, Jeremy Mohler of In the Public Interest explained in a Postop-ed (10/12/18). For instance, if too many vehicles on the Virginia Beltway are carpools, which aren’t charged tolls, the state is penalized.

In addition to Mohler, further criticism of Hogan’s plan has appeared in the Post. The paper (6/26/18) reported on the study that called the plan a boondoggle, as well as the project’s troubled start.

The initial $68.5 million proposal to oversee Hogan’s mega-project was “caught in scandal,” the Post (6/30/18) reported. The governor killed the initial proposal after revelations that the state’s unusual contracting process resulted in two out of the three primary contractors having ties to Hogan’s transportation secretary (Post, 4/20/18). (The secretary cited the rush to lure Amazon’s second headquarters to Maryland as a reason for the questionable procurement. In its unsuccessful bid to lure Amazon—whose CEO, Jeff Bezos, owns the Post—Maryland offered a whopping $8.5 billion in public goodies.)

The Post reported on the troubling start to Hogan’s plan at the time, but since then it’s been largely forgotten, as has the study which showed the highway expansion to be a boondoggle. What’s more, the Post (12/8/18) waited until after Hogan’s reelection to inform readers that his highway expansion is likely to require taking people’s private property, possibly “razing businesses, houses and apartments.”

Meanwhile, the Post only gives the faintest of nods to climate change, even as Hogan puts the issue front and center—as a justification for highway expansion. “The science is clear,” Hogan lectured Josh Tulkin, director of the Sierra Club’s Maryland chapter, at a Board of Public Works meeting, “people’s traveling at greater speeds do produce lower carbon emissions. Challenging that is like being a climate change denier.” (You may be unsurprised to learn that increasing highway capacity is not an effective way to reduce carbon emissions.) Asked by the governor whether he was “pro-traffic,” Tulkin explained that adding more lanes induces more demand, an argument Hogan found unpersuasive.

But the science is clear: Heading off climate disaster necessitates rapid changes, including getting cars off the road. Meanwhile, the Post is advocating for the opposite—suicidal—approach. The newspaper’s message seems to be, Let the good times roll, at least for those in the Lexus lanes.

Record Number of Americans Want to Leave the U.S.: Report

While most Americans still want to stay put, the number of U.S. citizens—particularly young women—who would leave the country if they could has increased dramatically under President Donald Trump, according to new Gallup polling results.

Released Friday as part of the Gallup World’s Poll, the survey found that while only 11 percent and 10 percent wanted to leave the county under former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, respectively, that number surged to 16 percent in 2018 under Trump.

While the survey, explained Gallup, “does not ask people about their political leanings, most of the recent surge in Americans’ desire to migrate has come among groups that typically lean Democratic and that have disapproved of Trump’s job performance so far in his presidency: women, young Americans and people in lower-income groups.”

While these figures fall in line more or less with global averages of other developed nations in the world, and Gallup notes there’s not likely to be a mass migration out of the United States any time soon, the number do put an emphasis on the current president’s low favorability and approval ratings.

For some, the irony of the poll was hard to miss:

While Donald Trump has spent much of his presidency focused on the number of people who want to get into the U.S., since he took office, record numbers of Americans have wanted to get out. https://t.co/yv7uRvrG2j pic.twitter.com/MenockQ4Yk

— Douglas Jacobberger (@Bergermiste) January 5, 2019

While the poll did not gauge respondent’s political affiliations—and both Bush and Obama experienced highs and low in terms of overall approval—Gallup says its previous polling did not register these kinds of shifts about the desire to migrate.

According to Gallup’s Julie Ray and Neli Esipova, what they refer to as the “Trump effect” has become “a new manifestation of the increasing political polarization” in the country and is influencing at least some people’s desire to leave. “Before Trump took office, Americans’ approval or disapproval of the president was not a push factor in their desire to migrate.”

And just where would they go? Most—26 percent, Gallup found—would head north to Canada.

For complete methodology and specific dates of the polling, please review Gallup’s Country Data Set details.

Political Elites Imitate Working-Class Obscenities but Despise the Real Thing

Why does Donald Trump get a pass on speaking and acting obscenely but Rashida Tlaib is pilloried for calling him a Mofo? It is because US corporate media and political elites expect the wealthy to do bad imitations of working class profanity (so as to fool the rubes into voting for them), but despise the real thing.

Rashida Tlaib is the daughter of a Ford factory worker and one of 14 children. Although she earned higher degrees, including a law degree, she grew up in a disprivileged working class family–inasmuch as they were Palestinian refugees and hardly part of the labor aristocracy. Tlaib came by her ability to curse like a sailor honestly. She didn’t go to finishing school or come out as a debutante. She has said that her grandmother, a Palestinian from the working class in the old country, “told it like it is,” by which I take it she means she was capable of some salty language.

Rich people masquerading as the guy you’d like to have beer with are not a new thing in American politics. Corporate media, increasingly staffed with Ivy League millionaires that are a huge contrast with the dogged, penniless gumshoes of journalism past, gives this appropriation a pass. Columnists such as David Brooks have, in addition, made an industry of spreading the falsehood that the working class is conservative and despises its supposed allies among professionals for being effete liberals.

George W. Bush, from Connecticut, affected a Texas accent but couldn’t even get sayings like “fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me” right.

His father, George H. W. Bush in running for vice president in 1984, after debating his Democratic counterpart Geraldine Ferraro, was caught on microphone saying that “we tried to kick a little ass last night.” When Ferraro’s campaign challenged him on vulgarity (that was vulgarity back then) and sexism, Bush senior explained his remark as a “Texas football expression.” The Bushes were investment bankers in Ohio, and Bush senior’s father became a senator in DC, and he was, again, from Connecticut.

I remember reading a pundit at the time of the Ferraro brouhaha who explained that Bush senior was trying to sound working-class, but was tone deaf, what with having been born with a silver spoon in his mouth. You see, a real working-class guy would never have spoken like that about a woman.

Bush senior was running on a ticket with Ronald Reagan, from a middle class family who became a multimillionaire actor, and who once decried the Johnson administration’s war on poverty, denying that there was any hunger in America. He said, yes there is hunger in America–some people are dieting.

The Trumps may not be classy, but they wouldn’t know working-class if it fell on them like a meteor. Yet Donald J. Trump, the billionaire or at least multi-millionaire son of a New York real estate tycoon and grandson of a hotelier, affects a folksy way of talking to his Red State rallies. I suppose his obscenities, such as bragging about grabbing women by the pussy or calling African countries shitholes, are intended to ape the way he imagines his construction workers talk. And by the way, the myth of working class support for Trump is just that. He was elected by Republicans, and only about 14% of white working class voters who supported Obama in 2012 switched to Trump in 2016– a tiny minority who happened to be strategically placed with regard to the electoral college.

Trump is not only foul-mouthed himself (Tlaib told him to “put up a mirror” when he criticized her language) but his obscenity goes much deeper than language. There are Arab-Americans in Tlaib’s district who cannot see their loved ones because of Trump’s racist visa ban. He cut taxes on the super-rich, taking away key government services from people in the 13th District who need them to survive. The Federal workers at Detroit Metro in Wayne County are being made to work without pay and to risk losing their homes. Trump’s disdain for African-Americans is well-known, and I imagine most people in Detroit call him obscene names.

Tlaib represents people who lost their mortgages under a Republican president in 2008-9, and who never came back from that disaster. She represents African-Americans in Detroit who have been mechanized out of work. By this fall some 60 percent of Michiganders had a poor opinion of Trump, but that includes the red counties in the west of the state. Detroit and Dearborn Heights and Wayne County despise Trump with a passion. No Republican even dared try to run against Tlaib there.

These are, then, the voters who cast their ballots for Tlaib. They are beaten-down white workers and Arab-Americans fighting prejudice and African-Americans left behind by plutocrats like Trump. They work hard, eke out a living, and they cuss. They came by it honestly. They aren’t pretend working class like Trump or the Bushes. They put Rashida Tlaib in Congress for one purpose.

To impeach the Mofo, Trump.

Mexico Sets Ambitious Plan to Stimulate Economy in Border Region

MEXICO CITY — President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador launched an ambitious plan Saturday to stimulate economic activity on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border, reinforcing his country’s commitment to manufacturing and trade despite recent U.S. threats to close the border entirely.

Mexico will slash income and corporate taxes to 20 percent from 30 percent for 43 municipalities in six states just south of the U.S., while halving to 8 percent the value-added tax in the region. Business leaders and union representatives have also agreed to double the minimum wage along the border, to 176.2 pesos a day, the equivalent of $9.07 at current exchange rates.

Lopez Obrador, who took office on Dec. 1, said the idea is to stoke wage and job growth via fiscal incentives and productivity gains. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly complained that low wages in Mexico lure jobs from the U.S. Mexico committed to boost wages during last year’s negotiations to retool its free trade agreement with the U.S. and Canada.

Speaking from Ciudad Juarez, a manufacturing hub south of El Paso, Texas, Lopez Obrador said Saturday he agrees with Trump that Mexican wages “should improve.” He decried, for instance, that Mexican auto workers earn a fraction of what their U.S. counterparts take home, topping out at just $3 an hour versus a typical wage of $23 an hour in the U.S.

Yet the economic plan comes at a delicate moment for the border region. Trump threatened as recently as last week to close the U.S.-Mexico border “entirely” if Democrats refuse to allot $5.6 billion to expand the wall that separates the two countries.

Economy Minister Graciela Marquez noted Saturday that the border region targeted for economic stimulus accounts for 7.5 percent of Mexico’s gross domestic product. And in recent years, she said, the 43 municipalities included in the plan have boasted combined economic growth of 3.1 percent, above the national average of 2.6 percent for the six years through 2017.

Much of that robustness owes to trade and proximity with the U.S., the world’s biggest economy.

“We have to take advantage of this locomotive that we have on the other side of the border,” she said.

Marquez expressed optimism that the stimulus plan will direct more Mexican and foreign investment into the border region. The plan for the border region is part of what Lopez Obrador calls “curtains of development” to shore up different corridors of the country so that Mexicans stay rather than migrating in search of better economic prospects.

Wall Debate Obscures Other Struggles at the Border

SAN DIEGO — In Washington, it’s all about the wall. At the border, it’s only part of the story.

Border authorities are struggling with outdated facilities ill-equipped to handle the growing increase in family migrants, resulting in immigrants being released onto the streets every day. The immigration court system is so clogged that some wait years for their cases to be resolved, and lacks funding to pay for basic things like in-person translators. An increase in sick children arriving at the border is putting a strain on medical resources.

But the Washington debate has focused almost exclusively on the $5 billion in wall spending that President Donald Trump wants. Other proposals being discussed keep the rest of the Homeland Security department funding at existing levels.

“The wall is a tool. Unfortunately even if it’s implemented across the border it isn’t a solution to all the problems,” said Victor M. Manjarrez, a former Border Patrol sector chief with more than 20 years of experience, now a professor at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Trump has suggested migrants won’t bother to come if he gets his way, making other immigration issues less problematic. Walls and fencing currently blanket about one-third of the border — mostly built under President George W. Bush — and the president wants to extend and fortify them. But contracting, designing and building new wall systems complete with updated technology could take years.

Trump met Friday with Congressional leaders who said the president threatened the shutdown could go on for “years.” Trump later said he’d considered using executive authority to get a wall built on the border.

“You can call it a barrier, you can call it whatever you want,” Trump said a day earlier, flanked by immigration union heads. “But essentially we need protection in our country. We’re going to make it good. The people of our country want it.”

Meanwhile, the House passed a bill Thursday evening to fund the government without the $5 billion, with new Democratic Speaker Nancy Pelosi calling the wall an “immorality.”

The debate overlooks major bottlenecks in the immigration system as more families and children traveling alone turn themselves in to authorities to seek asylum, instead of trying to elude capture as almost everyone did just a few years ago. In some cases, migrants are climbing existing border fence and seeking out agents to surrender.

The backlog in immigration courts has more than doubled to 1.1 million cases since shortly before Trump took office, according to Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse. Families and children now account for about six of 10 Border Patrol arrests, but there are only about 3,300 family detention beds and the number of unaccompanied children in government care has soared under Trump.

Border crossers are stuck in short-term holding cells for days and there has been a spike in sick migrant children, including two who died in custody.

In addition, the wall will do little to address the issue of visa overstays — when immigrants come to the country legally and remain here after their papers expire. Authorities say there were nearly 740,000 overstays during a recent 12-month period.

And border agents continue to struggle with growing numbers children and families. Officials say they are stopping about 2,000 people a day, more than 60 percent children and families, higher than during many periods under President Barack Obama. They referred 451 cases to a medical provider from Dec. 22 to Dec. 30, more than half children.

David Aguilar, the Border Patrol chief from 2004 to 2010 and a former acting Customs and Border Protection commissioner, said agencies that oversee long-term immigration custody need more funding to immediately step in after the Border Patrol makes an arrest. He says the agency is “overwhelmed” in dealing with all the children and families coming across the border now, much different from 1990s and 2000s.

“The demographics and the flows that are crossing the southern border are very different from the demographics and flows when we built the original walls … back in 2006 and 2008,” he said.

Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee last month, said stations were not built to manage the crush of families coming over. The wall was important, he said, but so were these other issues. He said they needed budgeting for medical care and mental health care for children in their facilities.

Trump has significantly increased the number of immigration judges but, A. Ashley Tabaddor, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges, said it came without enough support staff. About a week before the shutdown, judges were told the courts ran out of money for many in-person translators and that, as a result, it would have to reach them telephonically. A hearing that might last three minutes would last 20 minutes.

The shutdown is already having an impact on the immigration system. E-Verify, the online government system where employees can confirm eligibility of their employees to work legally in the U.S. is down.

Courts were only functioning for those who were detained. Other cases will be reset for a date once funding resumes, according to the website for the courts, which are overseen by the Department of Justice.

Immigration lawyers said that will only worsen the already overwhelming backlog. Immigration attorney Jeremy McKinney said he expects cases in Charlotte, North Carolina will be moved to 2020 because this year’s docket is already full.

“The situation is a lose-lose,” he said.

In contrast, the funding problems have only minimally affected the U.S. government agency tasked with reviewing immigrants’ applications for green cards and other benefits. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is a fee-based agency, said its offices are open and immigrants should attend appointments as expected.

___

Long reported from Washington, DC. Associated Press Writer Amy Taxin in Santa Ana, Calif. contributed to this report.

U.S. Sends Troops for Possible ‘Violent’ Congo Vote Protests

KINSHASA, Congo — On the eve of the first expected results of Congo’s long-delayed presidential election, President Donald Trump said military personnel had deployed to Central Africa to protect U.S. assets from possible “violent demonstrations,” while the country’s powerful Catholic church warned of a popular “uprising” if untrue results are announced.

Congo faces what could be its first democratic, peaceful transfer of power since independence from Belgium in 1960, but election observers and the opposition have raised concerns about voting irregularities as the country chooses a successor to longtime President Joseph Kabila.

The first results are expected on Sunday, and the United States and the African Union, among others, have urged Congo to release results that reflect the true will of the people. The U.S. has threatened sanctions against those who undermine the democratic process. Western election observers were not invited to watch the vote.

While Congo has been largely calm on and after the Dec. 30 vote, Trump’s letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said about 80 military personnel and “appropriate combat equipment” had deployed to nearby Gabon to support the security of U.S. citizens and staffers and diplomatic facilities. More will deploy as needed to Gabon, Congo or neighboring Republic of Congo, he wrote.

The U.S. ahead of the vote ordered “non-emergency” government employees and family members to leave the country.

The Catholic church, an influential voice in the heavily Catholic nation, caused surprise on Thursday by announcing that data reported by its 40,000 election observers deployed in all polling stations show a clear winner. As regulations say only the electoral commission can announce election results, the church did not give a name.

The electoral commission on Friday said the church’s announcement could incite an uprising. The church on Saturday, in a letter to the commission seen by The Associated Press, replied that releasing untrue results could cause the uprising instead.

Congo’s ruling party, which backs Kabila’s preferred candidate Emmanuel Ramazani Shadary, has called the church’s attitude “irresponsible and anarchist.”

Leading opposition candidate Martin Fayulu, a businessman and lawmaker, has accused Congolese authorities of impeding his campaign. His campaign manager, Pierre Lumbi, on Saturday accused the electoral commission of being “in the process of postponing the publication of the results.”

The commission’s rapporteur, Jean-Pierre Kalamba, said “we will see tomorrow” and that 44 percent of the results had been compiled.

At stake is a vast country rich in the minerals that power the world’s mobile phones and laptops, yet desperately underdeveloped. Some 40 million people were registered to vote, though at the last minute some 1 million voters were barred as the electoral commission cited a deadly Ebola virus outbreak. Critics said that undermines the election’s credibility.

The vote took place more than two years behind schedule, while a court ruled that Kabila could stay in office until the vote was held. The delay led to sometimes deadly protests as authorities cracked down, and Shadary is now under European Union sanctions for his role in the crackdown as interior minister at the time.

Kabila, who took office in 2001 after his father was assassinated, is barred from serving three consecutive terms but has hinted that he could run again in 2023. That has led many Congolese to suspect that he will rule from the shadows if Shadary takes office.

Internet and text messaging services were cut off the day after the election in an apparent effort by the government to prevent social media speculation about the results. The United States has urged that internet service be restored, and a United Nations human rights spokeswoman has warned that “these efforts to silence dissent could backfire considerably when the results are announced.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Proposes Perfectly American Tax on Ultra-Rich

In an effort to fund policies that would reduce fossil fuel and carbon emissions within the next 12 years, Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York has proposed a tax rate on the super-rich that is more moderate than U.S. tax policy during parts of the 20th century. In a video clip released Friday, she tells journalist Anderson Cooper of “60 Minutes” that taxing incomes above $10 million at a 60 percent to 70 percent rate could be a good step.

“There’s an element where, yeah, people are going to have to start paying their fair share in taxes,” she said, echoing Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to remind skeptics that historically, income rates in the U.S. have been much higher.

The tax would be marginal, meaning it would not apply to a top earner’s entire income. “That doesn’t mean all $10 million are taxed at an extremely high rate,” Ocasio-Cortez said, “but it means that as you climb up this ladder you should be contributing more.”

The approximately 16,000 Americans earning more than $10 million are at the very top of the top 1 percent of earners. Such a tax could bring in approximately $720 billion over 10 years, according to the Tax Policy Center’s Mark Mazur.

From 1918 to 1921, during World War I, and then again from 1936 to 1980, the highest marginal income tax rates were at or above 70 percent, according to the Tax Policy Center. Rates have reached as high as 94 percent.

“Her tax policy is more generous to the rich than Jimmy Carter’s was, and the 1 percent wasn’t nearly as well-off in the 1970s as it is now,” Eric Levitz wrote in New York Magazine.

Some economists, including Emmanuel Saez and Thomas Piketty, have also argued in favor of a higher tax rate on the super-rich.

“Until the 1970s, policy-makers and public opinion probably considered—rightly or wrongly—that at the very top of the income ladder, pay increases reflected mostly greed rather than productive work effort,” Saez and Piketty wrote in 2013, arguing that a top tax rate could be set as high as 83 percent. Since the 1970s, they wrote, countries that made large tax cuts for top earners did not grow faster than countries that continued large taxes for the very rich.

When Sanders proposed a 90 percent tax on the rich in 2015, Josh Bivens, of the Economic Policy Institute, said: “It’s not that radical, unless you’re calling Eisenhower’s America a radical place, and given that no one would propose a high rate like that on anything like an ordinary income, it would basically be irrelevant to the tax burden of the vast majority of Americans.”

“You can get a hell of a lot of money from taxing the 1 percent,” Edward Wolff, a tax expert at New York University, told The Washington Post.

National Parks Struggle to Stay Open, Safe During Shutdown

Nonprofits, businesses and state governments nationwide are putting up money and volunteer hours in a battle to keep national parks safe and clean for visitors as the partial U.S. government shutdown lingers.

But such makeshift arrangements haven’t prevented some parks from closing and others from being inundated with trash. Support groups say donations of money and time could run short if the budget impasse between President Donald Trump and congressional Democrats lasts much longer. Some are calling for parks to close for the duration of the standoff, which Trump said Friday could last “months or even years.”

“Our national parks deserve better than an improvised patchwork of emergency care,” Diane Regas, CEO of the Trust for Public Lands, said in a letter to Trump that noted reports of theft, poaching and accumulating piles of garbage and human waste. “They need robust funding and full-time protection, or they should be closed.”

Ryan Zinke, who recently stepped down under fire as Interior Department secretary, had ordered many national parks to stay open, saying visitors should not be penalized for the political feud over a border wall with Mexico. During an interview with The Associated Press, Zinke said visitors should take action to keep parks clean.

“Grab a trash bag and take some trash out with you,” he said. “In order to keep them open, everybody has to pitch in.”

The park service has reached deals with more than 60 partner groups, concessionaires and states to handle trash removal, restroom cleanup and other basic tasks at more than 40 parks — and, in a few cases, to keep park staffers on the job, spokesman Jeremy Barnum said Friday.

The state of New York was footing the bill to operate the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island National Monument, while a private company donated portable toilets at several locations on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The National Park Foundation took charge of repairing and operating the National Christmas Tree.

Another nonprofit donated more than $50,000 to keep 15 rangers temporarily on the job at Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee and North Carolina.

At Joshua Tree National Park in Southern California, volunteers have hauled away garbage, cleaned restrooms and restocked them with toilet paper, said John Lauretig, executive director of Friends of Joshua Tree.

“We’ve been dubbed the ‘Toilet Paper Angels,’” he said.

Yosemite National Park in California reported Friday that a man died after falling into a river on Christmas Day, and a spokesman said a statement was not issued more promptly and the investigation is taking longer than usual because of the shutdown.

People living near Yosemite have organized work crews, while businesses in neighboring towns are offering incentives for visitors to remove their rubbish.

The Rush Creek Lodge in Groveland gave a complimentary coffee, cocktail or dessert to all bringing a full trash bag from the park. Spokeswoman Teri Marshall said the lodge was trying to devise a slogan for the promotion.

″‘Turning garbage into goodies’ is where I think I might be hanging our hat,” Marshall said.

People visiting Yosemite on Saturday will be receiving garbage bags and tips on how best to use the park during the shutdown, courtesy of the Tuolumne County Visitors’ Bureau. One recommendation: “Go before you go,” a reference to the limited number of open bathrooms, executive director Lisa Mayo said.

Grand Canyon National Park is open with help from Arizona, which was paying about $64,000 a week to cover restroom cleaning, trash removal and snow plowing. Anyone with permits to hike in the backcountry or raft on the Colorado River could go, but the park wasn’t issuing new permits, spokeswoman Emily Davis said.

Utah chipped in about $7,500 a day from Dec. 22 to 31 to keep Zion, Bryce Canyon and Arches national parks running. Since then, the nonprofit Zion Forever Project has committed $16,000 to keep a skeleton crew on hand and the bathrooms and visitor center open at Zion, which was drawing several thousand people a day, executive director Lyman Hafen said.

“It’s extremely demoralizing for the park service folks who want to be doing their job and caring for the park the way they do,” Hafen said.

Three Republican congressmen from Utah — Chris Stewart, Rob Bishop and John Curtis — sent a letter Friday to Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt asking him to take emergency measures to restart regular operations at the state’s five major national parks.

Friends of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park raised $114,000 to keep the park for open for nine days with limited service, executive director Elizabeth Fien said. The money was used to pay law enforcement staff and rangers, including one who monitors endangered nene, or Hawaiian goose.

The Death Valley Natural History Association said it would pay to keep the visitor center at Death Valley National Park open until at least Thursday. Winter is a busy time at the park straddling the California-Nevada line, drawing visitors to its salt flats, dunes and canyons when the usual scorching temperatures are at bay.

A support group for Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan was cleaning toilets and grooming a popular trail for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing. But snow-covered parking lots weren’t plowed, and the visitors center near Lake Michigan was closed, leaving the volunteer group to consider putting up an information tent.

“A lot of people who go to the park are looking for advice about where to go — what areas are good for snowshoeing and which might be dangerous, and there’s no one here to tell them,” said Kerry Kelly, the group’s chairman. “It’s extremely frustrating.”

Another nonprofit was paying a private company to clean portable toilets near two popular trailheads at Shenandoah National Park, which includes a 101-mile (163-kilometer) section of the Appalachian Trail.

Some parks have closed, including Arches and Canyonlands in Utah, where a snowstorm made roads impassable. Park officials posted on Twitter that the shutdown left no money for snowplowing. In California, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park has closed and Muir Woods National Monument will shut down Monday because of overflowing trash and human waste.

At the Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Florida’s Everglades, no rangers were available to empty a metal tube where visitors deposit $5 entry fees on the honor system. After a canoe rental company notified authorities, officers with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service emptied the cash box and were monitoring it as part of their limited operations.

Conservation groups warned that volunteers could provide only a minimum level of service. Without full-time, professional staffing, natural resources and cultural artifacts could be damaged and people could be injured, they said.

“The political pressure to keep the parks open needs to come off so managers can evaluate what they’re capable of protecting and whether they can keep visitors safe,” said Kristen Brengel, vice president of government affairs for the National Parks Conservation Association.

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McCombs reported from Salt Lake City and Flesher from Traverse City, Michigan. Associated Press writers Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana; Felicia Fonseca in Flagstaff, Arizona; Krysta Fauria in Los Angeles; Jocelyn Gecker in San Francisco; Audrey McAvoy in Honolulu; Jonathan Matisse in Nashville, Tennessee; Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia; and Jennifer Kay in Miami contributed.

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