monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

For decades, the Department of Justice has used court-enforced agreements to protect civil rights, successfully desegregating school systems, reforming police departments, ensuring access for the disabled and defending the religious.

Now, under Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the DOJ appears to be turning away from this storied tool, called consent decrees. Top officials in the DOJ civil rights division have issued verbal instructions through the ranks to seek settlements without consent decrees — which would result in no continuing court oversight.

The move is just one part of a move by the Trump administration to limit federal civil rights enforcement. Other departments have scaled back the power of their internal divisions that monitor such abuses. In a previously unreported development, the Education Department last week reversed an Obama-era reform that broadened the agency’s approach to protecting rights of students. The Labor Department and the Environmental Protection Agency have also announced sweeping cuts to their enforcement.

“At best, this administration believes that civil rights enforcement is superfluous and can be easily cut. At worst, it really is part of a systematic agenda to roll back civil rights,” said Vanita Gupta, the former acting head of the DOJ’s civil rights division under President Barack Obama.

Consent decrees have not been abandoned entirely by the DOJ, a person with knowledge of the instructions said. Instead, there is a presumption against their use — attorneys should default to using settlements without court oversight unless there is an unavoidable reason for a consent decree. The instructions came from the civil rights division’s office of acting Assistant Attorney General Tom Wheeler and Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Gore. There is no written policy guidance.

Devin O’Malley, a spokesperson for the DOJ, declined to comment for this story.

Consent decrees can be a powerful tool, and spell out specific steps that must be taken to remedy the harm. These are agreed to by both parties and signed off on by a judge, whom the parties can appear before again if the terms are not being met. Though critics say the DOJ sometimes does not enforce consent decrees well enough, they are more powerful than settlements that aren’t overseen by a judge and have no built-in enforcement mechanism.

Such settlements have “far fewer teeth to ensure adequate enforcement,” Gupta said.

Consent decrees often require agencies or municipalities to take expensive steps toward reform. Local leaders and agency heads then can point to the binding court authority when requesting budget increases to ensure reforms. Without consent decrees, many localities or government departments would simply never make such comprehensive changes, said William Yeomans, who spent 26 years at the DOJ, mostly in the civil rights division.

Trump ally Michael Savage calls for government takeover of the media following shooting at GOP baseball practice

Right-wing radio host Michael Savage called for a government takeover of media following a shooting at a baseball practice of Republican members of Congress.

Five people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA), were wounded during baseball practice in Alexandria, VA. The assailant, “identified by multiple law enforcement officials as James T. Hodgkinson II,” was killed by police after they exchanged gunfire.

Responding to the shooting, Savage questioned whether Trump should “take control of Twitter” and asked, “Is it time for the government to take control of the out-of-control pirates on social media ... who do not monitor left-wing haters?” He also advocated for removing Rachel Maddow and others from the airwaves by the federal government, citing “their constant drumbeat of their hatred against Trump and Republicans, calling for, among other things, resistance with their sneers every night.”

Savage later argued that CNN and MSNBC were “practicing a silent form of jihad against America” and demanded that Republicans “call a hearing a make the heads of CNN and MSNBC answer to them as to what they are doing to curtail the sneering hatred of Rachel Madcow (sic) in particular.”

Savage concluded his tirade by warning that the violence created by the media’s “jihad” “is only the beginning,” arguing that the shooter was inspired to violence by “the hatred for Republicans and Trump” of the media.

It's infotainment that panders to the lowest common denominator. Journalism is dead. In it's place, rank partisan blowhards with a megaphone.

Three of the biggest names in voter suppression have a message for Attorney General Jeff Sessions: The Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department needs an extreme makeover. In an open letter published this week, former DOJ officials Hans von Spakovsky and J. Christian Adams joined Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and 22 other signatories in calling on Sessions to clean up the “ideological rot” left behind by the Obama administration and get rid of the “entrenched federal bureaucrats” who have zealously “jettisoned precepts like equal enforcement in favor of political and racialized dogmas.”

In the letter, the authors ask Sessions to shift the Civil Rights Division’s priorities: Instead of concentrating on issues like racism in American policing, as it did under the leadership of attorneys general Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, they suggest that the Sessions DOJ should put its energy toward putting an end to “politically-driven pursuits against state photo voter identification requirements” and tackling voter intimidation against white people. “Our nation is changing. The mosaic image of America is growing richer in color and detail as each decade passes,” the authors of the letter write. “For these reasons, the American people deserve a Division that seeks to represent and protect all citizens.” They continue:

Quote:

Together, we have witnessed longstanding conventions held from the mid-20th century prove outmoded in recent years and discovered new fronts in need of protection where civil rights are concerned—with particular respect to voting. Discrimination, dilution, and poor processes will always be constants, yet the victims can vary in our contemporary era.

Asked for an elaboration on which “longstanding conventions” in civil rights advocacy have become outmoded, a spokesman for the Public Interest Legal Foundation—the law firm where Adams is president—cited a pair of legal disputes over who counts as a “native inhabitant” of Hawaii and Guam. “We essentially argue that discrimination is a human problem that, if our government is to combat it, it must not be seen exclusively through old lenses,” the spokesman said in an email.

The publication of the letter to Sessions did not come as a surprise to civil rights lawyers, who are well-acquainted with many of its arguments and signitories. Kobach most recently drew headlines when it turned out he was one of Donald Trump’s sources for the claim that millions of people had voted illegally in the 2016 election. Von Spakovsky and Adams, meanwhile, are both prominent alumni of the George W. Bush–era Civil Rights Division, where they promoted the idea that election fraud is an urgent national problem and championed state voter identification laws that disproportionately depress turnout among minorities.

Von Spakovsky, now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation, has arguably done more than any other conservative activist to incubate and popularize the myth of widespread voter fraud. Adams, whose law firm is dedicated to fighting against “lawlessness in American elections,” is perhaps best known for resigning from the Justice Department in protest after the Obama administration dismissed voter intimidation complaints against the New Black Panther Party in 2009. Adams told Fox News he thought there was a “hostility” in the Civil Rights Division “to bringing cases on behalf of white victims for the benefit of national racial minorities.” A 2013 report from the DOJ’s inspector general found there was not enough evidence to support the claim.

“What they really want to do—and this has not been a secret, but they’re making it patently obvious—is use the Civil Rights Division as an engine for vote suppression,” said Samuel Bagenstos, who served as a political appointee in the division from 2009 to 2011 and is now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

Bagenstos pointed to a section of the letter about hiring practices, in which the authors argue political appointees should be given more hiring authority so as not to “leave the decisions in the hands of career bureaucrats who are reliably opposed to President Trump’s agenda.”

“They’re trying to make the case for repoliticizing hiring,” Bagenstos said, noting that a scathing 2009 inspector general’s report about the improper use of “political or ideological affiliations in assessing applicants” in the Bush-era Civil Rights Division conveniently went unmentioned in the Kobach/von Spakovsky/Adams letter. “This would take us back to some pretty dark days,” Bagenstos said.

The letter to Sessions arrives at a tense time for the civil rights community, with activists and attorneys around the country waiting to find out who will be nominated to lead the Civil Rights Division and whether that person will try to marginalize the division’s career staff.

The authors of the letter are eager to figure that out as well. In a press release published on his law firm’s website, Adams is quoted as saying that, after years of watching the “radicalized” Civil Rights Division advance “leftist causes,” Sessions “has an opportunity to begin the course correction necessary to protect all Americans from civil rights abuses.” In light of this, Adams says, “the most important position General Sessions will fill in the DOJ is the [Assistant Attorney General] for Civil Rights.”

Is Adams himself angling for the role? His spokesman declined to make him available for comment.

Finn, Mr. Trump won't be removed from office without clear evidence of wrongdoing and wide scale popular resentment of his presidency.

He was elected, not by all of us, but to represent all of us.

Suspicious behavior regarding contacts with Russian by his campaign staff while the country was being flooded with leaked material probably hacked by Russian operatives led to the current investigations. The investigations will determine the extent of Mr. Trump's culpability — which may be nothing. He is known to have had pretty extensive contacts with figures referred to as the "Russian Mafia" but those contacts themselves are not illegal. But that is part of the reason for the suspicion. His tax records should serve him well if he has nothing to hide. Let the investigation proceed.

On another front there are ethical concerns raised in the suit by Maryland and the D.C. — here again, he's been particularly tin-eared when it comes possible conflicts of interest. Whether his actions are illegal or not will be settled in the courts.

Mr. Trump's most rabid supporters said they wanted someone who would shake up the establishment, no more "business as usual". Well, this is what that looks like. This is why we normally don't elect politically-inexperienced pop culture icons to high office. Really — what did you expect?

I'm not saying I expected a Clinton presidency to be running any more smoothly — the 2016 election was a disaster waiting to happen with either outcome. The only way out I can see is the emergence of a new centrist party and the implementation of ranked choice voting. Not very realistic, I know. May be there is no solution. Maybe, thinking we could have it all and that the post-war economic boom would continue without consequences forever, we simply outsmarted ourselves. It's not as if the other western democracies are doing that much better.

gooeyjohn says:

Quote:

It's infotainment that panders to the lowest common denominator. Journalism is dead. In it's place, rank partisan blowhards with a megaphone.

Well, that's true. Michael Savage, Rush Limbaugh, AM talk radio, Breitbart, InfoWars are definitely rank partisan blowhards with a microphone.. Can't argue with that.

Evidently, that shooting Bernite thought otherwise, and there will be others like him. If I were still living in the states, I would buy a gun at this point. There is no trust left in the US, no binding force. And if you can't trust your neighbour anymore, you'd better get ready to defend yourself from him or her.

Finn, Mr. Trump won't be removed from office without clear evidence of wrongdoing and wide scale popular resentment of his presidency.

Despite narrowly winning a close election he has been a singular failure when it comes to reaching out to his opposition — which seems to be a key to his ineffectiveness so far.

The opposing party is not required to rubber stamp the calculated (and seemingly spiteful) undoing of every piece of legislation passed by the previous administration.

Suspicious behavior regarding contacts with Russian by his campaign staff while the country was being flooded with leaked material probably hacked by Russian operatives led to the current investigations.

The investigations will determine the extent of Mr. Trump's culpability — which may be nothing.

Let the investigation proceed.

Mr. Trump's most rabid supporters said they wanted someone who would shake up the establishment, no more "business as usual". Well, this is what that looks like. This is why we normally don't elect politically-inexperienced pop culture icons to high office. Really — what did you expect?

Youre a mystery . On some items you come across well informed and intelligent. Then you start posting like some 13 year old who has no idea about whats in the US Constitution re "rights of assembly, speech, petition, etc etc". If you want me to defend the 2nd amendment, you better start recognizing all the others.

Most of your colleagues recognize facts and recognize what makes our country great, when you begin to travel a road that ends in fascism,or worse, I think most of them will separate themselves from you,(except gungasnake, who's mostly just messin with your head)

Your use of the term "rabid" suggests you think the notion is extreme to the point of involving mental illness, and your question that ends the above paragraph suggests you include me in this group for which you have so much disdain. It may not matter one whit to you, but I don't appreciate either suggestion.

They might be initially attracted to candidates who eschew fiery rhetoric for serious and informed appeals for common sense compromise, but for too many people there really is no ground for compromise, it's increasingly becoming a black & white and even a Manichean nation. Of course I could be wrong, but as I've predicted before, the future of the Union is bleak.

I do not include you — or several of the other Trump supporters here — in that group.