Recapping HRC’s Fight to Protect Dreamers

The fight to protect Dreamers continues to intensify as the Trump administration moves further away from a bipartisan approach.

Confused by the latest developments? Let’s recap.

Dreamers are young immigrants who are unauthorized and were brought to the U.S. as children. Dreamers often do not know a home outside of the U.S. Polls show that a huge majority supports the government taking action to help Dreamers by halting all deportation proceedings and providing them with a pathway to citizenship. Dreamers came here through no fault of their own and often do not even speak the language of the country from which their families brought them.  It is estimated there are between 1.7 million and 3.6 million Dreamers currently in the U.S. and that as many as 75,000 of these immigrants could be LGBTQ.

In 2012, after years of congressional inaction, the Obama Administration took action by creating the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, which allowed certain qualified Dreamers to obtain temporary legal status in the U.S. and remain here to continue their studies, work and stay with their communities. HRC supported President Obama’s action on Dreamers and has also endorsed the bipartisan DREAM Act (H.R.3440/S.1615), that would explicitly authorize Dreamers to remain in the U.S. and stop their deportation. HRC has also signed on to numerous letters in support of Dreamers and made the DREAM Act  part of the organization’s lobby day on Capitol Hill this past fall.

However, despite widespread support for the Dreamers, the Trump Administration announced on Sept. 5, 2017, that it would instead end the DACA program within six months and begin to take action to put Dreamers into deportation proceedings. Many in Congress on both sides of the aisle opposed this move and sought to either pass a “clean” Dream Act that would grant legal authorization to the Dreamers or include such legislation in a Congressional spending bill. Lawmakers have attempted to come up with numerous bipartisan solutions, some of which President Trump has appeared to support, only to withdraw his support soon after. (It was during one of those meetings with Congress that Trump made his infamous comment denigrating Haitians and Africans.)

With the DACA deadline looming in late January, the White House released a document detailing their demands. In exchange for White House support for providing legal status to Dreamers:

• Congress would need to set aside $25 billion for a “border wall system” and other border security “enhancements”;
• The U.S. must severely curtail family reunification, which allows family members of U.S. citizens to join them in the U.S., thereby allowing families to stay together;
• The U.S. must end the Diversity Visa Program, which makes 50,000 immigrant visas available each year for immigrants from countries that had low numbers of immigrants to the U.S. in the previous five years; and
• The U.S. must also take a number of other steps, such as reforming immigration courts, hiring more staff and preventing synthetic drugs from entering the U.S.

This latest White House proposal lays out its wish list for immigration reform, one that would sharply curtain legal immigration while dramatically increasing spending to prevent illegal immigration. Until the White House proposal, bipartisan House and Senate discussions were focused on a “small deal” that would address the plight of Dreamers in exchange for additional border security. The White House proposal goes well beyond the scope of the many discussions that have been happening over the past few months.

Over the past year, the Human Rights Campaign has long opposed many of the White House proposals and has instead supported a “clean” Dream Act. However, in the context of earlier bipartisan legislation for Comprehensive and Inclusive Immigration Reform (CIIR), in 2013, HRC made CIIR an organizational priority, laying out a number of principles that should be included in an LGBTQ-inclusive CIIR effort, such as:

• Creating a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented immigrants in the U.S., as many as 250,000 of whom could be LGBTQ;
• Protecting the health and safety of LGBTQ immigrants by promoting alternatives to detention for vulnerable individuals, such as transgender immigrants, and by requiring detention facilities to provide medical care that addresses the needs of LGBTQ detainees;
• Improving the U.S. asylum system and eliminating the arbitrary one-year filing deadline that makes it far more difficult for persecuted LGBTQ people from abroad to claim asylum in the U.S.; and
• Keeping LGBTQ families together by reducing the backlog in family reunification visas.

Over the next few weeks, Congress will continue discussions over the fate of Dreamers. HRC continues to call for the passage of legislation to address Dreamers and allow them to stay in the U.S. legally. A short term solution for Dreamers is still achievable this year. Should the White House want a comprehensive agreement, those negotiations are worthwhile but clearly could not be completed in the near term.

It’s time to help Dreamers now.

www.hrc.org/blog/recapping-hrcs-fight-to-protect-dreamers?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed

New York Times includes supportive mom of a queer son in animated video series

www.glaad.org/blog/new-york-times-includes-supportive-mom-queer-son-animated-video-series

‘Character’ Is Stuffed With Contemporary Gay Erotic Art

www.advocate.com/photography/2018/2/01/character-stuffed-contemporary-gay-erotic-art

Trump Set to Release Sham Nunes Memo in Effort to Discredit Russia Investigation

Donald Trump is expected to approve the release of the sham Devin Nunes memo on Thursday morning following some redactions requested by the FBI, the Washington Post reports:

The redactions were the result of a review of the memo’s classified contents by White House and intelligence community officials, including Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. The memo, which has created a political firestorm, suggests that the early origins of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election were tainted by political bias.

Trump has been telling friends he believes the memo will discredit the Russia investigation, CNN reports:

In recent phone calls, Trump has told friends he believes the memo would expose bias within the agency’s top ranks and make it easier for him to argue the Russia investigations are prejudiced against him, according to two sources.

As the debate rages about whether the GOP memo is inaccurate and misleading — and whether it’s appropriate to reveal such classified intelligence at all — Trump appears to be more preoccupied with the political calculus. He views the memo as proof the intelligence community was unfairly targeting him and fodder for his ultimate goal of bringing an end to the Russia investigation that he has dubbed a “witch hunt,” sources said.

And Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) compared House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA), who prepared the hyper-partisan memo, to Joseph McCarthy in an interview on CNN: “The release of this memo is really reminiscent of the darkest days of the McCarthy era, with characterization assassinations.It endangers methods and sources of the intelligence community, and it reflects an effort to distract from the Mueller investigation.”

Sen. Richard Blumenthal slams the potential release of the Nunes memo: “The release of this memo is really reminiscent of the darkest days of the McCarthy era” t.co/iA9FW3QDb9 t.co/0xqsENsKAf

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) February 1, 2018

The memo, which allegedly claims that the FBI and DOJ abused their power with regard to Trump campaign surveillance was altered by Nunes before he sent it to the White House, Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) said late on Wednesday.

Schiff said the document already had “profound distortions and inaccuracies” before the changes were made, and called Nunes’ actions “deeply troubling” because the White House is now reviewing a document that was not shared with nor voted on by the entire House Intelligence Committee.

Schiff called on Republicans to withdraw the document it sent to the White House and called for a new vote on the memo and on another memo, written up by the Democrats on the committee. Majority Republicans have denied Democrats the opportunity to release a memo in response to the Nunes memo.

Tweeted Schiff: “Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release.”

BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release. pic.twitter.com/llhQK9L7l6

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 1, 2018

NBC News adds:

Jack Langer, a spokesman for Nunes, confirmed that the memo had been edited, but he told NBC News that the changes included “grammatical fixes and two edits requested by the FBI and by the Minority themselves,” referring to committee Democrats.

“The vote to release the memo was absolutely procedurally sound, and in accordance with House and Committee rules,” Langer said. “To suggest otherwise is a bizarre distraction from the abuses detailed in the memo, which the public will hopefully soon be able to read for themselves.”

But a senior Democratic source on the Intelligence Committee disputed that account, telling NBC News that the changes weren’t “cosmetic.”

“Instead, they try to water down some of the majority’s assertions,” the source said.

In a rare public statement yesterday, the FBI disavowed the memo.

Said the FBI in its statement: “With regard to the House Intelligence Committee’s memorandum, the FBI was provided a limited opportunity to review this memo the day before the committee voted to release it. As expressed during our initial review, we have grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray has reportedly urged the White House not to release the memo. At his State of the Union address last night, Donald Trump was overheard telling a Republican lawmaker that he’s “100 percent” going to release the memo.

The post Trump Set to Release Sham Nunes Memo in Effort to Discredit Russia Investigation appeared first on Towleroad.

Trump Set to Release Sham Nunes Memo in Effort to Discredit Russia Investigation

Jack The Ripper Letters ‘Were Victorian Fake News’
Letters supposedly signed by Jack the Ripper have been analysed by a forensic linguist who has come to some surprisingly topical conclusions.

It is said that the shadowy figure who stalked the foggy alleyways of Whitechapel in 1888 murdering five women during his reign of terror was also a prolific letter writer too – or was he?

Manchester University’s Dr Andrea Nini decided to focus on two of the earliest letters supposedly sent by the serial killer (more than 200 are attributed to him) – namely the ‘Dear Boss’ letter, in which the name Jack the Ripper was first written, and the ‘Saucy Jacky’ postcard.

Most of the letters signed ‘Jack the Ripper’ were – and still are – regarded as hoaxes. After the first four were received, police decided to publish them, after which hoaxers began to send copycat letters claiming to be written by him.

Dr Nini used modern techniques to analyse the letters, uncovering certain shared distinctive linguistic constructions, such as the use of the phrasal verb to keep back (to withhold), in two of the most iconic early texts. He also found evidence that a link exists between these letters and another key text in the case, the ‘Moab and Midian’ letter.

He said: “My conclusion is that there is very strong linguistic evidence that these two texts were written by the same person. People in the past had already expressed this tentative conclusion, on the basis of similarity of handwriting, but this had not been established with certainty. I also found evidence that could link the author of these two letters to the so-called ‘Moab and Midian’ letter, which some people believe was a hoax created by the Central News Agency of London.”

The theory that at least some of the Jack the Ripper letters constituted an early, Victorian brand of fake news, is not a new one.

In fact, former Bedfordshire murder squad detective Trevor Marriot has gone so far as to suggest the very concept of the Ripper would not have existed at all, were it not for a “drunken” journalist named Thomas Bulling with the aforementioned news agency.

In 2013 during an 11-year-cold case review of the killings, Marriot said: “The reality is there was a just a series of unsolved murders and they would have sunk into oblivion many years ago, but for a reporter called Thomas Bulling.”

Bulling, Marriot says, was paid to supply crime stories to newspapers, and the writing on the letters in question was “strikingly similar” to his own hand.

He added: “Police got a letter that Bulling had written about the murders which he signed Jack the Ripper. It has kept this mystery alive. You have to ask yourself if Jack is a myth… There just isn’t a Jack the Ripper as such.”

While Dr Nini’s findings do not identify the killer, nor definitively the author of the named texts, they do constitute new forensic evidence in the Jack the Ripper case.

Last year crime author Patricia Cornwell published a second book purporting to detail “proof” of the identity of London’s most famous serial killer, pointing the finger squarely at British impressionist painter Walter Sickert.

Cornwell’s prime evidence regards scientific analysis of stationery used by Sickert, the same of which was used in some letters sent to the police.

The best-selling author’s research has found that three Sickert letters and two “Ripper” ones came from a paper run of just 24 sheets.  

The killer’s identity continues to be one of the most enduring puzzles of our time, with other suspects ranging from Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, to the wife of an eminent Victorian surgeon and renowned poet Francis Thompson.

While the accused have been investigated by sleuths throughout the years, no-one has ever been able to conclusively prove the Ripper’s identity.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/jack-the-ripper-letters-were-victorian-fake-news_uk_5a733abce4b0146e5945191d

Trump-Pence Administration Refuses to Sign Statement Supporting Marriage Equality and Trans Rights

HRC strongly condemned the Trump-Pence administration’s refusal to sign a statement in support of an Inter-American Court of Human Rights’ ruling on marriage equality and transgender rights.

Earlier this month, the court issued an opinion that Costa Rica is in violation of its treaty obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights (ACHR) by not providing marriage equality or providing legal options for transgender people to change their gender marker on identity documents. While seven of the eight countries in the Organization of American States (OAS) LGBTI Core Group signed on to a statement supporting the court’s opinion, the United States did not.

“The Trump-Pence administration’s refusal to sign this statement in support of marriage equality and transgender rights is deeply troubling,” said Ty Cobb, director of HRC Global. “As the administration unleashes a torrent of attacks on the LGBTQ community here at home, it is also abandoning LGBTQ people around the world. We are in desperate need of leadership that will advance America’s commitment to LGBTQ human rights in the U.S. and abroad.”

The seven nations that signed the statement on January 22 are Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Uruguay. While the United States has not ratified the ACHR, Canada also has not, but that did not prevent their leadership from signing the statement.  It is also notable that Chile, which does not yet have marriage equality, and a number of countries that do not offer transgender individuals the option to legally change their official gender markers, signed the statement.

www.hrc.org/blog/trump-pence-administration-refuses-to-sign-statement-supporting-marriage-eq?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss-feed