I told you the other day, that the Trump Administration is putting up Utah resident and former State Department Foreign Service Officer, Ron Mortensen, for the top post at the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration. The position requires Senate approval and this is the beginning of what lies ahead for Mortensen on The Hill. Holly Richardson wants Utah’s Senators to block Trump nominee to head refugee program
There is nothing of major significance in the opinion piece by Holly Richardson (it is the same old stuff used against anyone with Mortensen’s views), but we learned a few more nuggets about the Mormon Church’s open borders viewpoint and its welcoming attitude toward Muslim migrants. And we learned more about Senator Mike Lee (once the darling of the conservative Tea Party movement in America).
From theSalt Lake Tribune:
The irony is thick. The very week that The New York Times published an opinion piece on “What Islamophobic Politicians Can Learn From Mormons,” Donald Trump nominated an immigration hardliner, Utahn Ron Mortensen, to oversee refugees and migration. As the Times piece points out, since 2015, 49 states have had Republican officials publicly attacking Islam. The one standout was Utah. Now, one Utahn with strong anti-immigrant positions could ascend to a position of prominence.
Who is Ronald Mortensen?
I had never heard of him, but CNN and other outlets call him an immigration hardliner, a “fellow” at the Center for Immigration Studies. Clearly a Trump supporter in Romney country, Mortensen said in August of 2016 that Trump is our only hope against corrupt elites. http://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4276026&itype=CMSID
Doing a quick scan of the Utah native’s writing at CIS, we see that he has mostly written about DACA and illegal alien issues, so his experience with the refugee program is apparently limited.
The most recent op-ed I found from him is from 6 months ago at The Hillabout how to structure an amnesty for the DACA ‘children’ entitled:
Want to pass the DREAM Act? Let’s combine mercy with justice
Hmmmm?
As a retired Foreign Service officer, he surely has a good feel for the countries and cultures that feed in to the UN/US Refugee Admissions Program, and if approved by the Senate (a very long shot!), he might be able to find some experienced people to surround himself with who know where the problems are with the USRAP. Continue reading “Trump nominates Ronald Mortensen to head State Department refugee program”→
According the NPRpeople lined up as early as this past Sunday in order to get a coveted seat for the hearing on the President’s travel ban.
Photo from a 2017 demonstration: https://www.timesheadline.com/world/us-supreme-court-cancels-trumps-muslim-ban-hearing-8776.html
National Public Radio‘s Nina Totenberg has a lengthy, pretty straightforward, story. Here is a bit of it:
The Supreme Court’s Grand Finale: Trump’s Travel Ban
The Trump administration’s travel ban finally reaches the U.S. Supreme Court Wednesday, posing enormous questions involving the structure of the American government and the values of the country.
At issue is the third version of the ban — which the president has complained is a “watered down” version. The court allowed it to go into effect while the case was litigated, but the lower courts have ruled all three versions either violate federal law or are unconstitutional.
Like the earlier two bans, version 3.0 bars almost all travelers from six mainly Muslim countries, and it adds a ban on travelers from North Korea and government officials from Venezuela.
The questions in the case are the stuff of history:
~Can the courts even review a presidential order on immigration that invokes national security?
~Did the president violate the immigration law’s command against discrimination based on nationality?
~And does the executive order violate the Constitution’s ban on religious discrimination?
The travel-ban argument will be the last of the term. And the importance of the argument is not lost on the court. For the first time since the same-sex-marriage arguments in 2015, the court is allowing same-day distribution of the session’s audio. Nonetheless, people started lining up at 7 a.m. Sunday in hopes of snagging a seat Wednesday.
The court itself will be under extreme pressure. There are only about two months left in the term and an unusually large number of cases yet to be decided.
One key question is this one:
Can the court consider Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric?
Why the Supreme Court will probably uphold the president’s travel ban.
A decision isn’t expected until June.
For more background visit my ‘Supreme Court’ category by clicking here. Don’t miss my post of two days ago, here.
Ben Rhodes, Samantha Power, John Kerry, and of course Obama. Four reasons (five if you throw in Susan Rice) why Trump won!
There is a new documentary film being released (in a few theaters near you) about the final year of the Obama Administration and how their foreign policy decisions (blunders!) helped put Trump in the White House.
But, the film idea didn’t start out that way. When filming began, Trump wasn’t supposed to win!
Be prepared for a sympathetic look, dripping with nostalgia, for the good ol’ days.
My special interest in viewing the film is to see what more the ever-cocky Samantha Power has to say. You will find her discussed many times over the years here at RRWfrom her earliest mention in 2008 as Obama’s ‘Iraqi refugee czar’ to her rise to her UN catbird seat. See the trailer (here if it doesn’t play below): Pay special attention to the 1:25 minute mark (5 months left which means it would have been early September 2016) where Samantha Power says this:
“We have to be sure to make it harder to dismantle if we take a different turn.”
Does she mean make it harder to dismantle Obama’s foreign policy legacy (which was pretty lousy anyway) in case Trump wins? Did she suspect then that Trump might very well succeed? The dossier and the FISA applications???? Wasn’t she fingered as a chief ‘unmasker?’ Hmmm!
(By the way, the 1:38 minute mark is pretty good too—Ben Rhodes realizes that they have lost!)
Now here is a bit of the text from the Times of Israelwhere the reporter seems to be wishing the Obama gang was back.
‘The Final Year’ follows the Obama administration’s last attempt to shape world affairs. (Magnolia Pictures)
For those tired of watching reruns of “The West Wing,” there’s a new political thriller out — and it just so happens to be real.
The recently released documentary “The Final Year” is the story of the Obama administration’s final 12 months in office as told by former president Barack Obama’s foreign policy team.
Leading roles are played by Obama administration stars. US Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power and Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, along with Secretary of State John Kerry — and the president himself — all race against the clock to broker a deal with Iran, negotiate a climate accord in Paris and find a solution to the Syrian crisis, among the other issues on their diplomatic agenda.
For the individuals portrayed in the documentary, “The Final Year” was intended to solidify Obama’s foreign policy legacy, but President Donald Trump’s ultimate victory leaves the Obama team more stunned than assured.
“We tried to change the ending but we couldn’t do it,” joked director Greg Barker in an interview with The Times of Israel …..
[….]
“Samantha [Power] gets very excited and we’re talking about these ideas, and I’m thinking, ‘Wow, this is great. We’re going to change the world.’”
But by the fourth quarter of Obama’s final term, the glamour of their vision had succumbed to the political reality of the office.
The role refugees played in Trump’s victory….
Barker said that Power now believes that the Obama administration’s failure to take definitive action in Syria prompted a domino-effect of world events.
“[Power] will say that you can make the case that without the Syria tragedy and the outflow of refugees, you may well not have had Brexit in the UK, you may well not have had Trump without this fear of ‘The Other’ which was perpetrated by a million refugees flowing into Europe,” Barker said.
“She’ll make the case that the world could be a very different place [if not for the Syria crisis],” he added.
More here.
Note that comments to the Times of Israel are not flattering to the team.
Heck, it would be fun to watch this in a theater wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat!
In a reporton what President Trump has done this year to make ‘conservative’ evangelicals happy, a reporter discusses the refugee program and names the federal resettlement contractors as being a group of Christian Conservatives unhappy with the President. Trump with evangelicals in the White House. I can assure you that no one was there laying on hands from the federal ‘religious’ resettlement agencies.
For most of the article the evangelicals are said to be happy over Trump’s actions so far. And, it is noted that 80% of evangelicals voted for him.
Then this:
Immigration and refugees
“When it comes to his very strong statements on life, on support for Israel, on the Iran nuclear deal, on religious freedom and on judges, we fully expect him to keep his pledge … to the American people.” — Ralph Reed.
After calling for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the U.S., Trump has signed executive orders temporarily suspending the refugees program, banning Syrian refugees and restricting travel to the U.S. from several predominantly Muslim countries and giving preference to refugees claiming religious persecution. He confirmed to CBN News he saw persecuted Christians as a priority.
Those orders have met with mixed reviews from the courts, as well as from conservative Christians, many of whom are involved in refugee resettlement through faith-based agencies including World Relief, Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services, Church World Service, Episcopal Migration Ministries and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.
Make no mistake, those five ‘faith-based’ ‘Christian’ agencies are anything but conservative. They are actively Open Borders Leftwing political activist organizations. They receive almost all of their funding from you, the taxpayer, and then act as if they are community organizers in the mold of the now discredited ACORN. [I know all of my regular readers know this, but lots of new readers don’t!—ed]
And, of course the reporter never mentions the fact that they are seeing their federal funding cut drastically and so are mad-as-wet-hens over that!
The Mormon Church is donating heavily to those Leftwing agencies!
I wondered if the Deseret News from Salt Lake City was purposefully calling them conservative because the Mormon Church is sending millions of dollars to them at this time.
If you are a Mormon and politically conservative, you better let the church know how you feel about that!
