Taking
into account the daily decisions of the new president of the United States of
America and the instability provoked internally and externally, the TA begins
to consult the American press directly and to include one or more relevant news
from the most relevant US press.
The
decisions announced by Donald Trump in the White House have already garnered
him several nicknames. One of them is "The White House Monster,"
which the Timor Agora adopts.
From
the Washington Post we transcribe the entire article that mentions the
"monstrous" activities and decisions of this new president that US
voters have chosen to head US destinations.
Mark Lane, in Washington DC for TA
----------------
Trump
has fired the acting attorney general who ordered Justice Dept. not to defend
president’s travel ban
President
Trump fired acting attorney general Sally Yates on Monday night after she
ordered Justice Department lawyers not to defend his immigration order
temporarily banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven
Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world.
In
a news release, the White House said Yates had “betrayed the Department of
Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens
of the United States.” Trump named in her place Dana Boente, the U.S. attorney
for the Eastern District of Virginia. Boente said he would enforce the
president’s directive until he was replaced by Trump’s attorney general
nominee, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala).
“Yes,
I will,” he said in a brief phone interview with The Washington Post. “I was
enforcing it this afternoon. Our career department employees were defending the
action in court, and I expect that’s what they’ll do tomorrow, appropriately
and properly.”
Later
Monday, he formally rescinded Yates’s order and ordered Justice Department
employees “to do our sworn duty and to defend the lawful orders of our
President.”
The
move came just hours after Yates ordered the Justice Department not to defend
Trump’s immigration order, declaring in a memo that she was not convinced the
order is lawful. Yates wrote that, as the leader of the Justice Department, she
must ensure that the department’s position is “legally defensible” and
“consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice
and stand for what is right.”
“At
present, I am not convinced that the defense of the Executive Order is
consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the Executive
Order is lawful,” Yates wrote. She wrote that “for as long as I am the Acting
Attorney General, the Department of Justice will not present arguments in
defense of the Executive Order, unless and until I become convinced that it is
appropriate to do so.”
The
stunning events marked the latest sign of turmoil over Trump’s announcement
Friday that he would shut the U.S. borders to refugees and those entering the
country from seven Muslim-majority countries.
More
than 100 State Department diplomats have signed a memo objecting to Trump’s order,
arguing that it will not deter attacks on American soil. The document, which
says Trump’s ban will generate ill will toward U.S. citizens, is destined for
what’s known as the department’s Dissent Channel, which was set up during the
Vietnam War as a way for diplomats to signal to senior leadership their
disagreement on foreign policy decisions.
Yates
was a holdover from the Obama administration, but her move still represented
notable disagreement from someone who would be on the front lines of
implementing it.
A
Justice Department official said that hours after Yates released her memo
refusing to defend the president’s executive order, she was delivered a one-line
letter from the head of the White House Office of Presidential Personnel saying
that she had been removed. The White House then announced her firing with a
statement criticizing her as “an Obama Administration appointee who is weak on
borders and very weak on illegal immigration.”
“It
is time to get serious about protecting our country,” the statement said. “Calling
for tougher vetting for individuals travelling from seven dangerous places is
not extreme. It is reasonable and necessary to protect our country.”
Sessions,
Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department permanently, is awaiting Senate
confirmation, although it could come as early as this week. The Senate
Judiciary Committee is scheduled to consider his nomination Tuesday, and the
entire Senate must wait one day before voting. A spokeswoman for Sessions
declined to comment.
Boente
(pronounced BEN-tay), who was sworn in at 9 p.m., said he would serve until
Sessions is confirmed, which he understood from news reports might happen by
week’s end. He declined to say when or by whom he was approached to take over
as acting attorney general, and he also declined to discuss the specifics of
Yates’s memo.
Boente
is a longtime federal prosecutor who has a remarkably low-key demeanor,
although he has supervised high-profile investigations and prosecutions. Assistant
U.S. attorneys from his office were involved in the probe of Hillary Clinton’s
use of a private email server, and they won the criminal convictions — which
were later vacated — against former Virginia governor Robert F. McDonnell (R). Boente
also led the prosecutions of former U.S. representative William J. Jefferson
(D-La.) and former New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin (D). At his swearing-in ceremony
as U.S. attorney, then-Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch called him “that
reliable middle child, the one you could always count on to be there for you.”
Boente
would not have been first in the line of succession ordered by Obama, who had
placed U.S. attorneys in the District of Columbia, Chicago and Los Angeles
ahead.
Yates’s
refusal to defend to Trump’s immigration order — and her firing over it —
capped a day in which resistance to the ban fomented inside the government and
across the country.
Civil
rights lawyers and others across the country increased the pressure on Trump on
Monday to dial back the ban — filing legal challenges to the executive order as
they worked to determine whether people were still being improperly denied
entry or detained. Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the American Civil Liberties
Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, who worked on one of the legal challenges,
said of Yates’s memo, “It sends a very strong message that there’s something
very wrong with the Muslim ban.”
Earlier
in the day, former president Barack Obama also weighed in on the executive
action through a spokesman, seeming to back those demonstrating against Trump’s
decree and declaring his opposition to “discriminating against individuals
because of their faith or religion.”
Obama
said that he was “heartened by the level of engagement taking place in
communities around the country” — an apparent reference to protests at airports
nationwide. He also disputed Trump’s claim that his ban was based on Obama
administration decisions.
A
Justice Department official familiar with the matter said Yates felt that she
was in an “impossible situation” and had been struggling with what to do about
a measure she did not consider lawful. A Justice Department official confirmed
over the weekend that the department’s Office of Legal Counsel had been asked
to review the measure to determine whether it was “on its face lawful and
properly drafted.”
In
her memo, though, Yates said her role was broader. She wrote that an Office of
Legal Counsel review does “not address whether any policy choice embodied in an
Executive Order is wise or just,” nor does it “take account of statements made
by an administration or its surrogates close in time to the issuance of an
Executive Order that may bear on the order’s purpose.”
That
could be a reference to Trump’s campaign trail comments about a “Muslim ban” or
the recent assertion by Trump surrogate Rudolph W. Giuliani that the president
had asked him “the right way to do it legally.”
Democrats
criticized Yates’s firing as an unfair termination of someone who was following
the law. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said, “What the Trump
administration calls betrayal is an American with the courage to say that the
law and the Constitution come first.” Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer
(D-N.Y.) said the termination “underscores how important it is to have an
attorney general who will stand up to the White House when they are violating
the law,” and said many have doubts about Sessions.
Others,
though, turned their ire on Yates.
“It
can’t be stated strongly enough how reckless, irresponsible and improper the
behavior was of the acting attorney general, Sally Yates, in refusing to defend
the president’s order,” senior policy adviser Stephen Miller told Fox News.
Miller
accused Yates of “refusing to defend the lawful powers of the president.” He
also said he had no doubt about the legality of the order.
George
J. Terwilliger III, a deputy attorney general in the George H.W. Bush administration,
said Yates’s memo was a “foolish, naked political move by what appears to be an
ambitious holdover official” that would only create “unnecessary disorder.”
Even
with Yates gone, there remain serious questions about the implementation of the
order. A lawsuit in Virginia asserted that dozens of people may have been
forced to give up their green cards by Customs and Border Protection agents,
although that figure could not immediately be substantiated. Lawyers in Los
Angeles said they had received similar reports, though they were still
exploring them.
The
ACLU’s Gelernt said that lawyers were “having trouble independently verifying
anything because the government will not provide full access to all the
detainees.” Of particular concern, he said, was that the government had not
turned over a list of detainees, as it had been ordered to do by a federal
judge in New York. He said that lawyers might be back in federal court in the
next day or so to forcibly get access to it.
The
ACLU lawsuit in New York is perhaps the most significant of a growing number of
legal challenges. The Council on American-Islamic Relations also filed a
sweeping challenge Monday, alleging that the order is meant “to initiate the
mass expulsion of immigrant and non-immigrant Muslims lawfully residing in the
United States.” The lawsuit lists 27 plaintiffs, many of them lawful permanent
residents and refugees who allege that Trump’s order will deny them citizenship
or prevent them from traveling abroad and returning home. Lawyers with the
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project filed a similar challenge in Washington
state.
Bob
Ferguson, Washington state’s attorney general, also filed a lawsuit on Monday
alleging broad, constitutional concerns with the order and its impact on
Washington — making him the first state official to do so. That lawsuit has the
support of Microsoft and Amazon.com, two companies based in Washington state. (Amazon
owner Jeffrey P. Bezos owns The Washington Post and has voiced Amazon’s opposition to the order personally.)
White
House press secretary Sean Spicer said that one lawsuit “doesn’t make any
sense” and sought to minimize the action as simply subjecting 109 people to
more rigorous screening. According to State Department statistics, about 90,000
people received nonimmigrant or immigrant visas in fiscal year 2015 from the
seven countries affected by Trump’s executive order.
Ed
O’Keefe, Rachel Weiner, Ellen Nakashima, Juliet Eilperin, John Wagner and Carol
Morello contributed to this report.
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