Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

WASHINGTON — A day after pledging that the 2020 census would not ask respondents about their citizenship, the Justice Department reversed course on Wednesday and said it was hunting for a way to restore the question on orders from President Trump.

Officials told a federal judge in Maryland that they thought there would be a way to still add the question, despite printing deadlines, and that they would ask the Supreme Court to send the case to district court with instructions to remedy the situation.

President Trump had been frustrated with Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross for mishandling the White House’s effort to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census, according to an administration official, and said on Wednesday that he was “absolutely moving forward” with plans to add it despite a Supreme Court decision rejecting the move.

It was the second time that Mr. Trump said he was directing the Commerce Department to defy a decision made by the Supreme Court last week that blocked the plan, which critics contend is part of an administration effort to skew the census results in favor of Republicans. On Tuesday, the Justice Department said that the census forms were being printed without the citizenship questionand Mr. Ross said that he was heeding the court’s ruling.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

A New York federal appeals court on Wednesday ordered the unsealing of up to 2,000 pages of judicial documents that are expected to show evidence relating to whether New York financier Jeffrey Epstein and his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, were recruiting underage girls and young women as part of an international sex trafficking operation.

The decision comes two days after the Miami Herald urged the court to issue a ruling in the civil case in the wake of last week’s Justice Department announcement in the federal criminal case that it would not void Epstein’s controversial 2008 non-prosecution agreement.

Using others as recruiters, Epstein lured underage girls to his waterfront estate in Palm Beach from 1997 to 2006 under the guise that he was hiring them to give him massages. He sexually abused them, the girls told authorities, then paid them to recruit other girls, mostly 13 to 16 years old. Epstein, now 66, was never federally prosecuted, having received immunity in exchange for pleading guilty to lesser charges in state court in 2008.

Maxwell, 57, the daughter of the late publishing magnate Robert Maxwell, has never been charged with a crime and has denied allegations that she acted as a “madam’’ of the operation. She nevertheless fought to keep the records in the New York civil case sealed.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

SEATTLE (AP) — Trump administration rules that impose additional hurdles for low-income women seeking abortions are on hold once again.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Wednesday vacated a unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel and said a slate of 11 judges will reconsider lawsuits brought by more than 20 states and several civil rights and health organizations challenging the rules.

The rules ban taxpayer-funded clinics from making abortion referrals and prohibit clinics that receive federal money from sharing office space with abortion providers.

Critics say the rule would force many clinics to find new locations, undergo expensive remodels or shut down.

Federal judges in Washington, Oregon and California blocked the rules from taking effect. U.S. District Judge Michael McShane in Oregon called the new policy “madness” and said it was motivated by “an arrogant assumption that the government is better suited to direct women’s health care than their providers.”

A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit overruled them two weeks ago. The judges called the rules “reasonable” and said they accord with a federal law that prohibits taxpayer funds from going to “programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”

With that decision vacated, the injunctions issued by the lower court judges are once again in effect. It’s not clear when new court arguments will be held.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Nationalism, political philosopher Isaiah Berlin observed, is the "inflamed desire of the insufficiently regarded" to prove their significance.

In his 1972 book https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691058385/reasonfoundation-20/ (The Crooked Timber of Humanity), Berlin wrote that nationalist fervor is a "pathological form of self-protective resistance," a victim mentality that serves as a sort of cultural coping mechanism, emerging from historical wounds or "collective humiliation."

It follows, then, that the United States would have little reason for such displays. For nearly a century—and certainly, for the past 30 years—America has been the exact opposite of "insufficiently regarded." There's no need to remind Americans, or the rest of the world, of that fact by parading tanks through Washington, D.C.

We've long left such vulgar displays of power to nations that feel the need to compensate for lacking what Americans enjoy—places like North Korea and the former Soviet Union. Or those that suffer from a pathological sense of victimhood and national inadequacy, like France. Instead, Americans celebrate the Fourth of July joyously with food and recreation. We don't wallow in our ability to destroy, or the fear that we could be destroyed.

But that will change Thursday, thanks to President Donald Trump—a man who seems to feel he is always insufficiently regarded, and who leads a conservative movement that increasingly exudes a victim mentality instead of embracing what makes America exceptional.

Showing off America's military might with a parade has been a priority for Trump ever since he witnessed a Bastille Day parade while visiting Paris in 2017. (Making America great again requires aping the French, apparently.) Earlier plans for a Veteran's Day parade were canceled over worries about cost and optics—marking Armistice Day with a celebration of weapons of war would have been horrifyingly ironic. Independence Day was selected as a suitable alternative.

Trump will preside over a partisan political rally on the National Mall later today, following a military parade through Washington, D.C., complete with tanks, flyovers by Air Force One and the Blue Angels, and military bands. Trump will be surrounded by military brass while it all goes down. "It will be the show of a lifetime," the president has promised.

It will certainly be memorable.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

CHILDISH DRAWINGS
Childish Drawings

When asked to express themselves over being detained by Donald Trump, the first thing that comes from migrant children are cages.

A charitable humanitarian respite center in Texas asked three children, ages 10 and 11, to depict their time in the custody of Trump’s US Customs and Border Protection agency. They didn’t draw sunshine, unicorns, and rainbows. All three children drew people in cages. After the traumatizing experience of leaving their homes to seek asylum in the United States, the Trump administration compounded their trauma by ripping them apart from their families and imprisoning them in cages. This is torture and will leave these children with scars they’ll carry for the rest of their lives.

A social worker at the center gave the drawings to the American Academy of Pediatrics, who then gave them to CNN. Dr. Colleen Kraft, immediate past president of the AAP said, “When a child draws this, it’s telling us that child felt like he or she was in jail.”

The pediatrician group was asked for advice from Kevin McAleenan, who is now the acting secretary of the Homeland Security, who then ignored their advice.

Kraft said, “we made recommendations and our government didn’t follow through with them.” They believe training CBP agents in identifying illnesses will prevent future deaths at the centers, where two children have already died.

The AAP visited one of the centers and didn’t find any pediatricians, but what they did find disgusted them. Dr. Sara Goza, president of the AAP said when visiting two CBP facilities, “The first thing that hit me when we walked in the door was the smell. It was the smell of sweat, urine, and feces. No amount of time spent in these facilities is safe for children.”

Donald Trump disagrees. He claimed in a tweet that many of “these illegal aliens are living better now than where they came from, and in safer conditions.” He also tweeted, “If illegal immigrants are unhappy with the conditions in the quickly built or refitted detention centers, just tell them not to come. All problems solved!” The rest of his tirade was blaming Democrats.

You know, it’s like Trump wants the conditions of these centers to be leaked out, despite barring the press, health and child care professionals, and elected representatives from visiting. Just like the child-separation policy was designed to discourage immigrants from seeking asylum, they’re hoping the horrid and traumatizing conditions at these facilities will do the same.

Senator and presidential candidate Kamala Harris called Donald Trump a “predator” yesterday. Some people are saying she took it too far. I don’t think she took it far enough. Donald Trump is a predator and has even boasted about it. But, he’s so much more. The man is a child abuser. What he’s doing is traumatizing children for life. His detention centers are torture chambers and concentration camps. Call Trump and the centers for what they are.

Hopefully, someday, I’ll get to draw Trump in a cage.