TRUMP AGENDA - At the Border

"Border security and legal asylum process not mutually inconsistent, Rep. Lance says" PBS NewsHour 6/25/2018

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Outrage over separated immigrant families boiled over into a new week, while President Trump said on Sunday that the U.S. should immediately deport immigrants who cross the border illegally without legal proceedings.  Yamiche Alcindor reports, then Judy Woodruff talks with Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) about the prospect of immigration legislation to address the separations, DACA and border security.

Again, Trump wants to ignore law and our Constitution.  Hale the King.....NOT!





"Running for their lives was the only option for these migrants" PBS NewsHour 6/25/2018

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SUMMARY:  For many of the immigrant families now separated in the U.S. by Trump administration policy, their stories began with terror and persecution in their home countries.  In Mexico City, Nick Schifrin meets two Central American families making the arduous journey north.

"What constitutional rights do undocumented immigrants have?" by Gretchen Frazee, PBS NewsHour 6/25/2018

On Sunday, President Donald Trump tweeted that undocumented immigrants should be immediately returned “from where they came” with “no Judges or Court Cases.”

This, along with the administration’s “zero-tolerance” immigration policy and the recent spike in family separations at the border — a practice President Donald Trump ended through executive order — has called attention to the legal rights of immigrants under U.S. law.

What rights do undocumented immigrants have to a court hearing, to an attorney or to free speech?  What rights do their children have to education?

How those rights play out in practice is more complex.

To answer those questions, we must start with a more basic question–does the U.S. Constitution apply to undocumented immigrants?

“Yes, without question,” said Cristina Rodriguez, a professor at Yale Law School.  “Most of the provisions of the Constitution apply on the basis of personhood and jurisdiction in the United States.”

Many parts of the Constitution use the term “people” or “person” rather than “citizen.”  Rodriguez said those laws apply to everyone physically on U.S. soil, whether or not they are a citizen.

As a result, many of the basic rights, such as the freedom of religion and speech, the right to due process and equal protection under the law apply to citizens and noncitizens.  How those rights play out in practice is more complex.

Right to due process

What the law says: The Fifth Amendment states that “no person … shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.”

The issue of due process is at the heart of many immigration cases, including Reno v.  Flores, the 1993 Supreme Court case that has returned to the spotlight with the surge in family separations.  The case led to an agreement requiring the government to release children to their parents, a relative or a licensed program within 20 days.

In the ruling, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote “it is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings.”

How it works in practice:  Immigrants have the right to due process.  But in reality, says, Andrew Arthur, a resident fellow in law and policy at the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, “courts of law run the gamut.”

In some cases, immigrants are not granted a hearing at all.  When asked about the president’s tweet, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders pointed to the process of “expedited removal,” which was created by the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.

“Just because you don’t see a judge doesn’t mean you aren’t receiving due process,” Sanders said.

Under the expedited removal process, immigrants who have been in the country illegally for less than two years and are apprehended within 100 miles of the border can be deported almost immediately without going through a court hearing.

The exception is asylum seekers, who must be granted a hearing.

Those who are not processed through expedited removal have the right to due process in an immigration court, where the main goal is to decide whether a person has a legal claim to remain in the U.S.

“In immigration court, you have very few rights,” said John Gihon, an immigration attorney who spent six years as a prosecutor for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before moving into private practice.

Gihon says the bar for what constitutes evidence is lax in immigration court.  Documents do not have to be authenticated, and hearsay, a statement made by someone outside of the court, as opposed to on the witness stand, counts as admissible evidence.  Hearsay is not allowed in most U.S. courts.

“In the majority of cases, it’s a lock solid 100 percent guaranteed conviction because there is little defense, and most would confess they crossed the border illegally,” Gihon said.

The right to legal counsel

What the law says:  The Sixth Amendment states that “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall…have the assistance of counsel for his defense.”

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1963 case Gideon v Wainwright that if a person is too poor to hire an attorney, the government must appoint one.

How it works in practice:  Because most deportation proceedings are civil rather than criminal cases, the right to legal counsel often doesn’t apply.

The Trump administration’s zero-tolerance policy now requires most illegal border crossings to be tried as criminal cases, the exception being parents who cross the border illegally with children.  After public outcry about separating families, the head of Customs and Border Protection said Monday the agency has stopped referring parents for prosecution.  Other immigrants will still be charged with a crime.

Under the law, anyone facing a criminal charge has the right to counsel.  However, the government is only required to provide counsel if the person is accused of a felony.  Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor.

In recent weeks, people have donated millions of dollars to nonprofit groups to pay for immigrants’ legal fees.

The Trump administration’s decision to criminally charge immigrants has overwhelmed the courts, as demonstrated last month by a leaked photo of a trial in Pecos, Texas.

The image shows dozens of men in orange jumpsuits being tried en masse.  In such proceedings, reports the Intercept, which originally published the photo, trials can last only minutes per defendant.

The right to be with your family

What the law says:  Critics of family separation have pointed to the legal right to “family integrity.”  This right is not spelled out in the Constitution but was established through court rulings in the early 20th century, Rodriguez said.

“People have a right to be with and commune with their family.  It’s a very basic principle,” she said.

The government can split up families in extraordinary circumstances, such as in the case of child abuse, but it cannot do so without going through a legal process.

How it works in practice:  Before Trump signed the executive order Wednesday, the administration had divided families as a matter of course, without considering the individual cases.  The ACLU sued, arguing the policy was unconstitutional.

The court has not issued a final ruling, and the President’s executive order could change the case.  But a judge did rule earlier this month that the case could proceed, saying immigrants have a right to “familial association” under the Constitution.

Right to vote or hold office

What the law says:  The Constitution does not prohibit anyone from voting.  Instead, it spells out who cannot be denied the right to vote.  The 14th Amendment says men who are U.S. citizens and over the age of 21 must be allowed to vote, unless they have committed a crime.  The 15th Amendment prohibits anyone from denying the right to vote based on skin color and the 19th Amendment prohibits denying the right to vote based on sex (aka being a woman).

It wasn’t until 1926 that all states passed laws barring noncitizens from voting.  Congress passed a law 70 years later prohibiting illegal immigrants from voting “for the office of President, Vice President, Presidential elector, Member of the Senate, Member of the House of Representatives, Delegate from the District of Columbia, or Resident Commissioner.”

How it works in practice:  If you are not a U.S. citizen, voting in a federal election could land you in prison for up to three years or lead to deportation.  States can impose their own, sometimes harsher, penalties for breaking the law.

However, because elections are largely a local affair, some states allow local governments to decide whether noncitizens can vote in local elections.

In fact, noncitizens in Chicago have been allowed to vote for school board since 1989.  New Yorkers who were not citizens were given the same right from 1969 until 2003, when local school boards were abolished there.  Now San Francisco and Maryland are also giving noncitizens the right to vote in some local elections.

The right to education

What the law says:  There is no “right to education” in the Constitution but two other sections do come into play when considering whether undocumented migrant children should have access to education.

First, in the case Plyler v. Doe, the Supreme Court ruled that if children who are citizens have access to a free, public education, so should undocumented immigrant children.  That is because the 14th Amendment says the government cannot “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

What it means in practice:  The court case means undocumented children cannot be prohibited from enrolling in a public school.

But what if a child is being detained and, therefore, does not have access to a public school.  That is where, once again, the Flores settlement comes into play.

The settlement requires that facilities where children are kept must meet minimum requirements for providing health care, education, recreation and other child care services.

Right against unreasonable search and seizure

What the law says:  The Fourth Amendment establishes the right “against unreasonable searches and seizures.”

What it means in practice:  While this law would generally apply to both citizens and noncitizens, there is a key caveat known as the “border search exception.”

This exception dates back to the very first Congress, which passed a law allowing searchers at the border as a means to collecting duties.

As a result, courts have long upheld that searches at the border are not considered “unreasonable” for the very fact that they occur at the border.

The question courts have grappled with since is what constitutes the border.  Searches at airports and other ports of entry for example are often considered legal.  The Justice Department has also established a 100-mile wide “extended border” where Border Patrol agents can conduct searches if they meet certain criteria.

FREEDOM OF PROTEST - The NFL

Constitution of the United States - Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

You may not agree with the NFL protest but they do have the right, as you have the right to say you don't like it.

"NFL players team up in defiance and solidarity" PBS NewsHour 9/25/2017

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SUMMARY:  Football stadiums across the country became fields of protests as more than 200 NFL players sat, kneeled or locked arms during the National Anthem in response to President Trump's remarks and tweets about professional athletes.  Jeffrey Brown reports on the player's protests, then Judy Woodruff speaks with Jerry Brewer of The Washington Post about the debates these acts have sparked.

TRUMP - The Shame of our Nation

The only 'fake news' comes from the Trump Administration and his puppet Republican Congress.  The 'main stream' media is the people's shield against abuse of power.

PULITZER PRIZE - ProPublica and New York Daily News

"ProPublica, New York Daily News Win Pulitzer Gold Medal" ProPublica 4/10/2017

ProPublica and the New York Daily News today won the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, honoring their joint investigation on abuses in the New York City Police Department's enforcement of the nuisance abatement law.  The award is the fourth Pulitzer Prize for ProPublica and the 11th for the Daily News.

THE STORY:

"The NYPD Is Kicking People Out of Their Homes, Even If They Haven't Committed a Crime" by Sarah Ryley for ProPublica and the New York Daily News, 2/4/2016

THE MORNING OF MAY 4, 2011, Jameelah El-Shabazz watched out the window of her Bronx apartment as a team of police officers fanned across the rooftop of Banana Kelly High School?  The 43-year-old mother of five said she didn't think much of the scene — drug raids were common in her neighborhood.

As she did most mornings, El-Shabazz said she went to her bedroom to feed her newborn son and to worship before a shrine of candles and carvings arranged atop her wardrobe?  Her most treasured object was a wooden tray her father had brought her from Nigeria?  A deity of the Ifa religion, which she practices as a high priestess, was carved on its surface and covered in a residue of finely crushed eggshells?  El-Shabazz used the substance, known in her faith as efun powder, to cleanse the shrine?  She took fresh clumps of the powder from a cup and began to break it up in her hands.

That's when the narcotics officers kicked in the door.

Her baby shrieked as the gun-wielding officers tore apart rooms looking for PCP, which an anonymous informant had claimed was being sold from the apartment?  They ordered everyone to lie on the ground, then turned to her eldest son, Akin Shakoor, who along with another son was having frequent run-ins with police?  El-Shabazz said the officers told Shakoor if he didn't give up the drugs, “they would take all of my children away from me and make sure that I was put out of my apartment.”

As evidence, police seized 45 paper cups of the eggshell powder, the sacred wooden tray, and a small amount of marijuana?  They arrested El-Shabazz, her teenaged sister Najah El-Shabazz, and Shakoor, then 21, and took them outside past the handcuffed residents of four other apartments that were raided that morning.

Najah was released, court filings say, but Jameelah El-Shabazz and Shakoor sat in cells on Rikers Island for the next week awaiting the results of police lab tests?  Finally, the results confirmed what she had told the officers all along: the wooden tray and the 45 paper cups of powder were drug-free?  Jameelah El-Shabazz and Shakoor were released from Rikers and fully exonerated.

But El-Shabazz's battle with New York's legal system was only beginning?  That September, another of her sons called to say the police were back, this time with a lawyer and a court order to seal the Bronx apartment?  Her entire family had to leave — immediately.

El-Shabazz was facing a nuisance abatement action, a little-known type of lawsuit that gives the city the power to shut down places it claims are being used for illegal purposes?  The case against her was based on the same drug allegations that had been dismissed in May?  Incredibly, the filing, signed by a New York Police Department attorney, stated, “recovered during the execution of the search warrant were forty-five (45) paper cups of cocaine.”

The nuisance abatement law was created in the 1970's to combat the sex industry in Times Square?  Since then, its use has been vastly expanded, commonly targeting apartments and mom-and-pop bodegas even as the city's crime rate has reached historic lows?  The NYPD files upward of 1,000 such cases a year, nearly half of them against residences.

The process has remarkably few protections for people facing the loss of their homes.

Three-quarters of the cases begin with secret court orders that lock residents out until the case is resolved?  The police need a judge's signoff, but residents aren't notified and thus have no chance to tell their side of the story until they've already been locked out for days?  And because these are civil actions, residents also have no right to an attorney.

Perhaps most fundamentally, residents can be permanently barred from their homes without being convicted or even charged with a crime.

A man was prohibited from living in his family home and separated from his young daughter over gambling allegations that were dismissed in criminal court?  A diabetic man said he was forced to sleep on subways and stoops for a month after being served with a nuisance abatement action over low-level drug charges that also never led to a conviction?  Meanwhile, his elderly mother was left with no one to care for her.

In partnership with ProPublica, the Daily News reviewed 516 residential nuisance abatement actions filed in the Supreme Courts from Jan?  1, 2013 through June 30, 2014?  Our analysis also reviewed the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases against hundreds of people who were banned from homes as a result of these actions.

• 173 of the people who gave up their leases or were banned from homes were not convicted of a crime, including 44 people who appear to have faced no criminal prosecution whatsoever.

• Overall, tenants and homeowners lost or had already left homes in three-quarters of the 337 cases for which the Daily News and ProPublica were able to determine the outcome?  The other cases were either withdrawn without explanation, were missing settlements, or are still active.

• In at least 74 cases, residents agreed to warrantless searches of their homes, sometimes in perpetuity, as one of the conditions of being allowed back in?  Others agreed to automatically forfeit their leases if they were merely accused of wrongdoing in the future.

• The toll of nuisance abatement actions falls almost exclusively on minorities, our analysis showed?  Over 18 months, nine of 10 homes subjected to such actions were in minority communities?  We identified the race of 215 of the 297 people who were barred from homes in nuisance abatement battles?  Only five are white.

Runa Rajagopal of the Bronx Defenders, who leads a division that represents people in the civil courts, called the practice a “collective punishment” on the entire family of those accused of a crime, “used by the NYPD to exert power and control largely over communities of color.”

The NYPD declined to answer any questions about specific cases.

Officials emphasized that because these are civil cases, they're handled separately from criminal cases and thus have lower standards of proof.

“The law does not require criminal conviction, does not require [a] particular disposition of a criminal case, does not even require an arrest of anyone,” said Lawrence Byrne, the NYPD's Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters in an interview with the Daily News last year.

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Assistant Commissioner Robert Messner, who heads the NYPD's Civil Enforcement Unit, concurred, saying, “You have to remember, it's an action about a place.  It's not about people.”

The department's chief spokesman, Stephen Davis, said in a statement that the suits are intended to prevent crimes from reoccurring at 'repeat offender' locations.  “Each nuisance abatement order and settlement is signed-off by a judge.” Davis added.

Though a nuisance abatement threatened to force El-Shabazz out of her home, she doesn't appear to have been the intended target.  Two of El-Shabazz's sons were already known to police when her apartment was raided in 2011.

Akin Shakoor had been arrested at the building at least twice before, in 2009, for misdemeanor possession of drugs.  He pleaded both cases down to non-criminal violations.  Her other son, Jehadh Shakoor, was arrested in the neighborhood with marijuana in 2008, and with PCP in 2009, and convicted of misdemeanor possession charges.  (El-Shabazz said the officers also often harassed a third son, who was an honor student in high school and is now in college.)

The narcotics officer behind nuisance abatement cases against El-Shabazz and others, Detective Peter Valentin, has his own history.  The Daily News earlier identified him as the most-sued officer on the NYPD's 35,000-member force.  Valentin was put on desk duty in 2014 for allegedly fabricating buys from confidential informants.

The NYPD has embraced nuisance abatement actions as part of its controversial “Broken Windows” strategy of aggressively pursuing low-level offenders to prevent more serious ones.

This decades-old approach — which has introduced large numbers of black and Hispanic New Yorkers to the criminal justice system through stop-and-frisks, summonses and misdemeanor arrests — has touched off waves of protests in recent years.

Though little heard of, nuisance abatement actions have long been a key component of the strategy.  William Bratton, fresh into his first tenure as the city's top law enforcement official, hailed such actions in a 1995 white paper on quality-of-life policing as “probably the most powerful civil tool available to the police,” allowing officers to “sweep down on a location and close it without warning.”

Since Bratton wrote those words, the number of nuisance abatement actions filed each year has quintupled.

Bratton was hired back as police commissioner in 2014.  While he has significantly reformed other aspects of quality-of-life policing, the department does not appear to have adjusted its policies when it comes to nuisance abatement actions. 

Sidney Baumgarten, the former city official who commissioned the drafting of the nuisance abatement law in the 1970s, said it is now being abused.  He is alarmed by the sheer volume of cases, especially those aimed at households in which no one has been convicted of a crime.

“I think it's wrong.  I think it's unconstitutional.  I think it's over-reaching,” he said.  “They're giving up their constitutional rights.  And why?  Because they're afraid they're going to be evicted from their home, with their children.  There's a certain amount of compulsion, and threat and coercion, by the very nature of the process they're using.”

In most other cities, officials can't initiate a nuisance abatement action unless they've given landlords the opportunity to solve problems first.  Authorities can only restrict access to a home after a court process that involves all parties.

But in New York, the NYPD begins nearly every nuisance abatement action by making an emergency appeal to a civil court judge without the landlord or tenant present, alleging the dangers a residence poses.  Affidavits detailing three instances of a particular crime, such as drug dealing or gambling, in a one-year period are enough for a judge to authorize an action.

The allegations can be based entirely on the work of confidential informants or undercover officers and need not have led to arrests.  The Daily News and ProPublica identified 17 nuisance abatement actions against residences and 64 against businesses in which no arrests were documented.

When they file a case, the police always ask the judge for permission to lock out the occupants of the residence until the case is resolved.  These requests for what's known as “temporary closing orders” state that the location is being used in an “ongoing illegal manner,” and that the “public health, safety and welfare require immediate abatement of the public nuisance.”

However, the NYPD's court filings routinely do not describe the alleged “ongoing” illegal activity that would justify immediately throwing people out of their homes.  Instead, the Daily News and ProPublica analysis found, police filings describe purported offenses that occurred, on average, at least five months earlier for businesses and six months earlier for residences.

Judge Fern Fisher, the deputy chief administrative judge for the city's courts, expressed concern.  “If it's six months old, then it's not all that much of an emergency that you can't wait three or four days for the (other) party to come in and tell their side of the story,” she said.

Prompted by the Daily News and ProPublica's findings, Fisher issued an advisory notice to judges on Feb. 1 that recommended limiting the granting of temporary closing orders of homes before the tenant or homeowner has come to court.  The notice also cautioned against granting such orders when the evidence of alleged illegal activity is old, or based on “statements with multiple layers of hearsay” and the word of confidential informants.

The Daily News and ProPublica found temporary closing orders were granted in 75 percent of the residential cases examined.  Some judges granted the requests nearly every time.  Queens Judge Orin Kitzes signed them in 235 out of 236 cases that came before him.  Others, such as Manhattan Judge Michael Stallman, routinely crossed out that portion of applications.  Stallman said he does this because the NYPD's attorneys never have any evidence of ongoing illegal activity or information about the outcomes of the underlying criminal cases.

“I can't remember the last time that I've ever had information about the disposition of a criminal case,” he said.  “I've repeatedly indicated that it's difficult for me to evaluate a civil case where I don't even know whether the criminal case is pending.”

NYPD's Messner said his lawyers “talk to” the precinct officers to confirm the location still poses a problem, but don't include this information in court filings for the sake of efficiency.

“The judges don't want to read tomes,” he said.  “We could do 100 cases a year instead of 800 cases a year, with, you know, tremendous levels of detail.  But we wouldn't end up with a better product.  We'd just end up helping a lot less people.”
 The NYPD's Byrne said when officers serve temporary closing orders, they can use their discretion to determine if certain family members can stay.

By law, people affected by temporary closing orders have a right to a court appearance within three business days.  But they could wait as long as five days if their court date would otherwise fall on a weekend.  At the courthouse, the NYPD's attorney usually offers to settle the case without going to trial — often by requiring tenants to bar specific people from their homes or to give up their leases.  Then the closing order is lifted.

But if tenants decide to fight the case, they may not be allowed to go home until the case is resolved.  Though cases rarely go to trial, settlement negotiations can take weeks.

Luis Rivera, 58, was shut out of his apartment in the Bronx for nearly a month in 2013 while he fought his case.  It alleged the requisite three violations: Five months earlier, police said a confidential informant had bought heroin at the apartment on two occasions.  Shortly thereafter, during a raid on the apartment, police said they found seven small paper envelopes of white powder, a marijuana cigarette and two gravity knives.  They arrested Rivera, along with two other men who were staying with him.

Rivera was described by people who knew him as having significant mental and physical impairments.  One woman, who asked not to be named, said she let Rivera sleep on a chair in her studio apartment after the nuisance abatement action left him homeless.  She said the officers should have known he was too sick for the streets.

“He was not doing good at all,” she said.  “He had cancer; he was on the transplant list.  You could tell he was very sick.  There were times when he didn't remember what was what.  He would shit on himself and everything.”

In court filings, Rivera said he did not understand what was happening when the police arrested him a second time as they served him with the nuisance abatement action.  When he was released, he simply went home, then was arrested a third time for violating a temporary closing order.

“My understanding was that I could go back to my apartment because I was given my keys.  I was handed some papers but I am not able to read or understand them on my own,” he said in an affidavit filed through his attorney, Rajagopal.  “I am still very confused as to how or why the police were able to evict me from my home without a hearing or trial.”

The criminal charges against Rivera and the other two men were eventually dismissed, and Rivera was allowed back in his apartment after signing a settlement with strict terms limiting who could visit.

He died last September.

RELIGION - Where Some Christians Fail

These 'Christians' fail because they do NOT believe in 'equal treatment under the law' in our Constitution.

"Claims of 'Homosexual Agenda' Help Kill Hate Crimes Laws in 5 States" by A.C. Thompson and Patrick G. Lee, ProPublica 2/6/2017

Some Christian groups have no problem protecting people from crimes driven by racial or religious hatred.  They just draw the line at sexual orientation.

Last year, lawmakers in South Carolina introduced legislation that would have increased the standard penalties for anyone who assaults, intimidates or threatens another individual if they did so because of the victim's “race, religion, color, sex, age, national origin, or sexual orientation.”

Drafted by Democratic legislators after white supremacist Dylann Roof murdered nine African-American parishioners at a church in Charleston, the bill never even came up for a vote.  It was a familiar fate.  In recent years, at least a half-dozen other hate crimes proposals have died in the South Carolina statehouse.

Much the same story played out in Indiana, where Republican state Sen. Susan Glick authored similar legislation in 2016; Glick's bill would have increased time behind bars for those convicted of harming or intimidating someone if the assailant's motivation was driven by the victim's gender identity, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion or immigration status.

The legislation passed in the Senate by a vote of 34-16 but died in the House without so much as a hearing.

Since the 1980s, nearly every state in the union has enacted some sort of hate crimes law, as have Washington, D.C., and the federal government.  While the laws vary from state to state, they generally bolster penalties for those who commit crimes — assault, vandalism, credible threats of physical violence, among others — because of some sort of bias against the victim.

South Carolina and Indiana are among a small handful of states that have failed to pass such laws.  Wyoming, Arkansas and Georgia are the other hold-outs.

Much of the opposition to creating hate-crime legislation in these states has come from well-organized groups of Christian fundamentalists who on religious grounds disapprove of any sort of legal protections for gays, lesbians and transgender people.  For these critics, the primary concern is legal language stepping up punishment for crimes motivated by contempt for the LGBT populace, measures they view as a small but dangerous part of a broader “homosexual agenda.”

One of the Christian groups is the Family Research Council.  Contacted by ProPublica, the FRC's national office directed questions about hate crimes to Ryan McCann, an Indiana activist and lobbyist who works with the organization.

McCann views hate crimes laws as a sort of Trojan Horse: If Indiana adopts such a law, McCann said, LGBT advocates will use the precedent to argue for further legal safeguards, including anti-discrimination statutes, which he opposes.

Christian conservatives such as McCann have become potent activists against hate-crime legislation — lobbying, organizing their followers to petition statehouse lawmakers, and providing many of the key arguments against the laws.

“Homophobia and resistance to providing protections for LGBT people obviously play a role in the push back,” said Robin Maril, associate legal director for Human Rights Campaign, a national LGBT advocacy organization.

Statehouse experts are quick to point out that Christian conservatives aren't the only people who can be hostile to hate crimes laws.

Jeannine Bell, a law professor at Indiana University's Maurer School of Law, said some legislators in that state believe the laws will create an inequitable justice system that “serves particular groups and not others.” (Bell, who has studied the laws, disagrees: “That is a misunderstanding.  Everyone has a race.”)

Lynne Bowman of Human Rights Campaign noted that, in general, Republican-controlled legislatures have not been supportive of hate crimes bills regardless of the language.

The range of concerns can include worries about limiting free speech or doubts that police and prosecutors can truly know a perpetrator's state of mind or motivations at any given moment.  There have even been some expressions of misgiving among civil rights advocates that the legal hurdles created by hate-crime laws — establishing with certainty, for instance, someone's specific motivations — can be counter-productive.

Decades ago, in a landmark 1993 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court examined the fundamental fairness of hate-crime legislation.  The court held that carefully crafted hate crimes laws do not infringe on the free exercise of speech, a finding that resolved the major constitutional questions on the matter.  The case centered on a racially motivated incident in Wisconsin in which an African-American man assaulted a white teen, leaving the victim in a coma.

In the five states without hate-crime laws, however, there is little question that Christian activists have had an impact.

Bowman, a senior field director with Human Rights Campaign, said “homophobia” gives lawmakers “an easy excuse to stand up against these bills.”

For the past two decades, much of the resistance to hate crimes legislation has been orchestrated by a trio of intertwined conservative Christian groups.

The oldest and most prominent is Focus on the Family, the Colorado-based ministry founded by James Dobson.  The sprawling organization, which produces a vast array of media on biblical topics and funds anti-abortion counseling centers for pregnant women, operated on a budget of nearly $90 million in 2013, the last year for which full tax records are available.

Focus on the Family portrays hate crimes laws as part of a plot to marginalize Christians and ban them “from the public arena.”

Dobson's ministry helped to spawn the Alliance Defending Freedom, a network of fundamentalist Christian lawyers who have argued that the laws infringe on religion while “creating additional legal protections for those engaged in homosexual behavior that are not available to everyone else.”

But it is the FRC, a third offshoot based in Washington, D.C., that has emerged as perhaps the most effective foe of hate crimes legislation.

When Congress took up the issue in 1999, an FRC leader told the Senate Judiciary Committee that revising the federal code to cover hate crimes could lead to the prosecution of “people who merely oppose homosexual activism.”  Ten years later, as Congress debated the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, the FRC decried the act as a “thought crimes” bill.

Since then, the “thought crime” claim has become a common talking point in conservative Christian circles and the FRC's regional chapters have sought to halt hate crimes legislation at the state level.

In 2007, the FRC chapter in Arkansas urged lawmakers there to vote against hate crimes legislation authored by a veteran Democratic legislator.  The bill failed.  In a blog post, chapter leader Jerry Cox proudly touted the group's accomplishments, saying it had spent years fighting “to make sure Arkansas' civil rights and hate-crimes laws are not used to promote a homosexual agenda.”

McCann of the FRC is straightforwardly explicit about the group's thinking.

“The gay-rights groups and the folks on the left only want to get the terms ‘sexual orientation' and ‘gender identity' into the law,” said McCann.  “Unfortunately, that's all they care about — their agenda.”

In Indiana, groups affiliated with the FRC have enjoyed great success in killing hate crimes bills over the past decade.  The Republican Party currently enjoys a super-majority in the state, controlling both legislative chambers and the governor's office.  But “even under Democrat rule these hate crimes bills didn't get a hearing,” said McCann, who helps to lead the Indiana Family Institute, a group associated with the FRC and Focus on the Family.

Currently McCann is pushing legislators to stop five different hate crimes bills pending in the statehouse.

Though the FRC describes its mission as the advancement of “faith, family and freedom in public policy,” critics take a very different view: The Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed it an anti-gay “hate group.”

The FRC has vigorously denied the characterization.  The allegations are “an attempt to discredit FRC's work and cut us out of public policy debates and media coverage over homosexuality and same-sex ‘marriage,'” the organization said in a 2010 statement.

The FRC has cultivated powerful allies, some of them in the White House.  As Wired recently reported, both President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the organization's “Values Voter Summit,” while a range of current or pending administration officials — Reince Priebus, Mike Pompeo, Tom Price, Jeff Sessions — have all spoken at FRC events.  Ed Prince, the father of Betsy DeVos, provided millions of dollars in funding to the FRC in the group's early days.  DeVos, a Michigan billionaire, has been tapped by the Trump administration to serve as U.S. Secretary of Education.

__________________________________________________

While 45 states have enacted hate crimes laws, the statutes vary dramatically around the country.  In 15 of those states, the laws do not cover gays and lesbians; in 28 they don't cover gender identity or transgender individuals.

In Georgia, state Sen. Vincent Fort, a Democrat, said he has sponsored at least five bills that have been defeated largely because they covered sexual orientation.  “Some people have said, ‘If you don't include gay people, it might pass,'” he recalled.  Still, he insists he'll never support “any bill that excludes gay people.  I'm not going to have anything to do with a hate crimes law that, in effect, is discriminatory.  Wouldn't that be ironic?”

Wendell Gilliard of South Carolina tells a similar tale.  A Democrat from Charleston, Gilliard has introduced “four or five hate crimes bills” in the state House of Representatives — and all of them have come to nothing.  The lawmaker, who is African-American, said he's been barraged with angry emails and phone calls about his bills — not about race but from people “quoting biblical verses about homosexuality.”

Opponents of the bills under consideration in Indiana claim the legislation, if passed, could be used to prosecute preachers who portray homosexuality as a sin.  “Let's pray that silencing speech is not the next step in the ‘gay' agenda that the media embraces and pushes in the statehouse,” wrote Micah Clarke, an Indiana lobbyist and leader of an FRC chapter, in a newsletter sent to his group's members.

Clarke declined to be interviewed.

“There are gay-rights activists all over the country who are trying to silence those who don't agree with them,” said McCann, the Indiana lobbyist.  As far as he's concerned, the bills provide special treatment to members of “favored political classes” and are likely to muzzle fundamentalist Christians.

“Those are ‘alternative facts,'” said one clearly frustrated lawmaker, Greg Taylor, a Democrat from Indianapolis who has authored two hate crimes bills currently pending in the state Senate.  “It's mind-boggling.”

Robin Maril of Human Rights Campaign describes the rhetoric coming from her political foes in Indiana as “irresponsible” fear-mongering.

“It's absolutely not true.  But it sounds scary and it plays into people's fears,” Maril told us.  “None of this legislation would ever impede an individual's ability to speak out.  ...  We are not policing ministers' ability to give sermons.”

TRANS IN AMERICA - Update on Texas Ruling

"How a legal ruling on transgender bathroom access affects schools" PBS NewsHour 8/22/2016

NOTE:  Many business, like Starbucks, already have 'any gender' restrooms.  This allows more efficient use because it gives two restrooms that anyone can use because they are just alike and lock behind the user.  No more waiting if only one restroom is in use, like you can have if there's men's and women's restrooms.  So why cannot schools do the same?  Are we stuck with outdated idea on design?  Just make a shower + restroom an individual unit that locks behind the user, therefore are non-gender specific.  Lockers would be in the only 'public' area.

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Just in time for the start of school, a federal judge in Texas has blocked the Obama administration's directive regarding transgender bathrooms and locker rooms.  That rule said that students should be able to choose the facilities that match their gender identity.  William Brangham talks with Education Week's Evie Blad about how schools are responding.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM (NewsHour):  This ruling is the second setback in recent weeks for transgender advocates.  Earlier this month, the Supreme Court said a Virginia school board could block a transgender student from using the boys bathroom while the higher court decides if it will take up these broader case.

Yesterday's decision is the first to say that the Obama administration's directive could be blocked nationwide.  Those directives instructed school districts to allow trans students to use the bathroom of their choice.  Texas is one of 13 states challenging the constitutionality of the directive.

In this case, the judge wrote that the administration had exceeded its authority under Title IX, the 1970s-era law banning sex discrimination in schools.

To help us wade through the meaning of all this, I'm joined now by Evie Blad, who is the Education Week reporter who's been covering this story.

So, Evie, what does this ruling say, and how significant is this?

EVIE BLAD, Education Week:  It's very significant, in that it's the first time we have heard a federal court weigh in on a nationwide basis.

There are several cases winding their way through the federal courts now, but the only one that has had a ruling so far applied only in one circuit.  And it's significant, in that the school year is about to start, and this judge is saying, nationwide, that the Obama administration's regulations under Title IX, its civil rights guidance, doesn't need to be implemented.

So what that means is if a school doesn't want to create a policy allowing transgender students to use the rest room of their choice, it doesn't have to.  But if a school has a policy that it wants to have, it can keep that policy.  It just doesn't have a federal directive to do so.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  So, Texas was one of a bunch of states that had objection to these rules.  What is the essence of their objection?

EVIE BLAD:  Well, there are two primary things that you will see in these lawsuits.

One is something that we're all familiar with, which is the argument that folks are making about privacy rights of students.  Does my student or my child who isn't transgender have a right to use a restroom that doesn't have transgender students in it?

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES - Article XIV

CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES - Article XIV

1:  All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.  No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

The idea of preventing application of Article XIV to children of immigrants is punishing the child, that makes this immoral and unethical.

"How widespread are U.S. births by foreign tourists and undocumented migrants?" PBS NewsHour 8/25/2015

Excerpt

SUMMARY:  Some GOP presidential candidates have decried birthright citizenship and so-called “anchor babies” -- children born in the U.S. to parents in the country illegally.  There’s also talk of “maternity tourism,” when foreigners arrive to give birth before returning home.  Judy Woodruff learns more from Doris Meissner of the Migration Policy Institute and Susan Berfield of Bloomberg Businessweek.

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  Back in this country, the volatile issue of immigration continues to spark debate in the 2016 presidential campaign.  The latest round centers on babies born in the U.S. to parents who are not American citizens.

DONALD TRUMP Republican Presidential Candidate:  I will use the word anchor baby.  Excuse me.  I will use the word anchor baby.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Donald Trump started this latest furor over a term that immigration advocates view as derogatory.  He complained of children born in the U.S. who immediately gain American citizenship and become the means for entire families, here illegally, to stay.

Fellow Republican Jeb Bush weighed in as well.

JEB BUSH, Republican Presidential Candidate:  There ought to be greater enforcement.  That’s the legitimate side of this, greater enforcement, so that you don’t have these anchor babies, as they’re described, coming into the country.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  By yesterday, an exasperated Bush was trying to douse criticism for using the term.

JEB BUSH:  You give me the name you want me to use, and I will use it.  How about that?

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Moreover, the former Florida governor insisted that, unlike Trump, he wasn’t talking about Latinos at all.

JEB BUSH:  What I was talking about was the specific case of fraud being committed, where there’s organized efforts.  And, frankly, it is more related to Asian people coming into our country having children in that organized effort.

JUDY WOODRUFF:  Bush campaign aides call the practice birth tourism, with foreigners arriving legally just in time to have a child.

Numbers are hard to come by.  The nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute estimates some 230,000 children are born in the U.S. each year with at least one parent here illegally, while the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors stricter rules, estimates 36,000 births a year by women who come to the U.S. to have a baby, then leave to go back home.  Others say that number is smaller.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS - Are Civil Forfeiture Laws Abused?

"Are Innocent Citizens at Risk of Police Seizure of Their Cash, Cars and Homes?" PBS Newshour 8/19/2013

Excerpts

SUMMARY:  Property seizure is a profitable practice for local law enforcement agencies, long used to deprive mobsters and drug kingpins.  But the police can also take personal goods away from citizens who haven't been proven guilty of a crime.  Ray Suarez talks to Sarah Stillman who investigated civil forfeiture for The New Yorker.

SARAH STILLMAN, The New Yorker:  Well, most people are familiar with this idea of criminal forfeiture.

And that's a widely supported notion that, if you're profiting from crime -- let's say you're a big drug kingpin -- and you have bought your Malibu mansion and your Gulfstream jet with the proceeds of your crime, then those things will be taken away from you.  And that make a lot of sense again to people.

But many folks are unfamiliar with the idea of civil forfeiture, which is actually a case brought against, directly against a piece a property, where you don't need to be proven guilty of a crime for your goods to be taken away.  And many of the conventional protections that you have under the criminal process are not afforded to you in a civil forfeiture case.

RAY SUAREZ:  So, there's no trial.  There's no requirement to provide evidence to prove the state's suspicion.  They just take your stuff.

SARAH STILLMAN:  Exactly.

And you don't even have the right to a lawyer.  So, conventionally, if you're facing the loss of your home or the loss of your car or cash, normally, at the very least, you would have someone who is able to represent you in these claims.

In places like Washington, D.C., you have to even pay $2,500 simply for the right to contest the case.  And you're, again, not entitled to representation when you do that.  So it can be a very costly process and also just a very confusing, arduous process to figure out, how do you contest?