monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Last Friday, at 4:00, the Bureau of Indian Affairs told Cedrick Cromwell, the chair of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe that the tribes 321-acre reservation would no longer be considered sovereign land. The Secretary of the Department of the Interior, David Bernhardt, had decided to remove the reservation from federal trust. But why?

The tribe has been trying to get approval for a casino on its land, which is about 18 miles from Rhode Island, where men close to Trump already operate two casinos. Their company, Twin River Worldwide Holdings, hired as a lobbyist Matthew Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union and a big Trump supporter, whose wife Mercedes is Trump’s director of strategic communications. Loss of sovereignty over their land will hurt the Wampanoag’s bid for the one remaining casino license in Massachusetts, thus leaving the Rhode Island casinos without competition and the remaining license up for grabs.

Heather Cox Richardson

government’s faltering response to the pandemic.

And speaking of falling short, why is your leader still allowing migrants in while disallowing Europeans?

Limbaugh Claims Media, Drudge Are Exaggerating Hospitalization Rates: You Would Think There’s ‘Not A Single Hospital Bed’ Left

Radio kingpin Rush Limbaugh claimed that the media — including The Drudge Report, whom he called out specifically — are exaggerating hospitalization numbers on his radio show Tuesday in light of the coronavirus pandemic.

“One of the things that interests me is the hospitalization numbers,” Limbaugh said. “Because if you look at Drudge, if you look at the drive-by media, you would believe there is not a single hospital bed in this country, right?”

“You have been led to believe that every hospital is overflowing,” the conservative radio host continued. “That dead bodies are in body bags and refrigerated trucks that are being parked off to landfills or whatever. I mean, some of the most incredible reporting I have seen, and it is in New York, it is in Washington D.C., Maryland, the Eastern Seaboard states. There’s just not a hospital bed around, the hospitals are overflowing. If you have to go to a hospital, you may as just well pack it in and die.”

I don't know to what fake news you are referring but the transfers to and from Germany under the Dublin Convention is suspended until further notice. (By the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.)

Last week, Germany closed its land borders to all foreign citizens except for those providing essential services coming from France, Luxembourg, and Switzerland in an effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus. However, the German Ministry of the Interior has confirmed that “asylum-seekers” are still welcome in Germany in spite of the ban, according to a report by Junge Freiheit.

In practice, this means that if a migrant were to illegally enter the European Union’s Schengen Zone via Italy or Greece and make it to France or Switzerland, he can still demand asylum in Germany, and thus must be allowed to traverse these countries so that he can formally request it on German territory

Sam Stein
@samstein
· 54m
President Trump was so distracted by impeachment that he couldn’t focus on coronavirus that he spent 21 days between 2/7 and 2/24 never mentioning coronavirus on twitter (impeachment ended on 2/5)

As a number of writers are pointing out, the claim from McConnell and others that the administration was distracted by impeachment when the pandemic hit contains within it the admission that there were consequential failures by the administration. So as a propaganda line, it isn't top drawer.

Then what will the U.S. be getting for its lengthy list of war crimes?

I don't have to name them. The onus is on you to do so.

If he can only focus on one thing at a time, he has no business being president, but we know that, which is why he'll be voted out in November.

Right Wing Watch
@RightWingWatch
· 5h
Right-wing evangelist Jonathan Shuttlesworth, a close friend of Rodney Howard-Browne, says he intends to hold a large Woodstock-like Christian gathering in defiance of stay-at-home orders.

GOP Gov Deflates Trump’s Claim There Aren’t Testing Issues: ‘Yeah, That’s Just Not True’

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan (R) got candid on Tuesday when asked about President Donald Trump’s claim that there haven’t been issues with the chaotic testing system during the COVID-19 outbreak.


“I haven’t heard about testing being a problem,” Trump told all the nations’ governors during a conference call on Monday.

“Yeah, that’s just not true,” Hogan said the next day during an interview with NPR’s “Inside Edition” host Rachel Martin. “I mean, I know that they’ve taken some steps to create new tests, but they’re not actually produced and distributed out to the states.”

...Fellow Republican Gov. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts had a similarly frank reaction last week to Trump’s rosy vision of the coronavirus outbreak.

“Yeah, no,” Baker said when a reporter asked if his state would be ready to lift social distancing measures by Easter, as Trump had hoped.

(sshhhh) (whispers) Let them do it.