* I literally gasped when I heard this. What the President of the United States said today should send up a red flag for every sentient being in this country.
“All of a sudden for the first time we’re getting gang members out, we’re getting drug lords out, we’re getting really bad dudes out of this country,” Trump said during a listening session with manufacturing CEOs. “And it’s a military operation because what has been allowed to come into our country.”
Of course we were immediately told that we shouldn’t take the president literally, because that would be against the law. But Trump sure does have an itchy trigger finger. Remember…it was only a few weeks ago that he was threatening to send the feds into Chicago.
* This is what happens when our leaders demonize brown people.
A 51-year-old Olathe [Kansas] man was charged Thursday in a Wednesday night shooting at an Olathe bar that left one man dead and two others wounded…
At least one witness reportedly heard the suspect yell “get out of my country” shortly before shooting men he thought were Middle Eastern. Both men, engineers at Garmin, appear to be originally from India.
* Just the other day I was thinking about John Boehner and how, if he had displayed a little more courage in getting the House to vote on the immigration reform bill passed by the Senate in 2013, perhaps we wouldn’t be hearing stories about a militarized deportation force. And then all of the sudden he popped up today to say this:
Former House Speaker John Boehner predicted on Thursday that a full repeal and replace of Obamacare is “not going to happen.”
Boehner, who retired in 2015 amid unrest among conservatives, said at an Orlando health care conference that the idea that a repeal-and-replace plan would blitz through Congress is just “happy talk.”…
On Thursday, Boehner said the talk in November about lightning-fast passage of a new health care framework was wildly optimistic.
“I started laughing,” he said. “Republicans never ever agree on health care.”
* Today the Supreme Court heard arguments on whether or not to review a lawsuit filed by the family of a Mexican teenager against a U.S. Border Patrol agent who fatally shot the 15-year-old from across the border in Texas in 2010. As Reuters reports:
Hernandez’s lawyers cited a report by the Washington Monthly magazine that said over a five year period, border agents were involved in 10 cross-border shootings, killing six Mexican nationals.
That is a reference to an article that appeared in the May/June 2013 issue of the Washington Monthly titled, “Over the Line: Why are U.S. Border Patrol agents shooting into Mexico and killing innocent civilians?” by John Carlos Frey in partnership with the Nation Fund for Investigative Reporting.
* Steve Benen summarizes:
Trump: We’re going to unveil a new Muslim ban this week.
Trump’s team soon after: Maybe next week.
Trump: Our health care reform plan is nearly done and will be unveiled soon.
Trump’s team soon after: We actually don’t have a health care reform plan and never will.
Trump: We’ll soon announce our great tax reform package.
Trump’s team soon after: No, we won’t.
In case you wonder why I’m still bearish on an infrastructure plan – that’s it in a nutshell.
* Finally, here is a great story about a victory for the resistance. Yesterday I wrote about how organizers were successful in electing a full slate of Democrats in Harris County Texas. Little did I know that my timing coincided with the day their newly elected Democratic Sheriff announced that his officers would no longer be deputized as part of Trump’s deportation force. Rachel Maddow has the story.
