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Mar 9, 2021 - Migrant Kids Jailed En Masse
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TODAY'S HEADLINES:

The number of migrant children detained at the U.S. border has tripled in the past two weeks, filling adult detention facilities as places in slightly-more-human shelters run out fast. If this is the new normal, it looks a lot like the old one.

Meanwhile, Republican politicians start their legal onslaught against the Biden administration, as a dozen state attorneys general filed suit challenging an executive order regarding climate change.

And lastly, DSA-backed candidates pull off a rout in the Nevada Democratic Party -- and establishment leaders threw a fit and took their ball home, quitting en mass rather than supporting the new progressive leadership.

THESE ARE THE STORIES YOU NEED TO KNOW:

President Biden is already facing a major immigration crisis, as the New York Times reports that the number of migrant children in federal custody has tripled in the past two weeks -- and his administration’s officials aren’t keeping up.

The Times reports that immigration authorities have detained more than 3,250 children who crossed the border unaccompanied in the past two weeks.

And instead of placing them in shelters, documents obtained by the Times show that more than 1,360 of the children have been detained in jail facilities. The law only permits children to spend 72 hours in federal detention before they have to be transferred to a shelter, and the documents show that the government is blowing right past that.

Homeland security, which operates the jails, is blaming Health and Human services, which operates the shelters, saying that the latter has been slow to pick kids up.

But either way, you’ve got children on the border being shuffled between one dismal situation and another perhaps slightly-less dismal one. It’s worth noting that adults and families are still largely being turned away en masse under pandemic restrictions. Unaccompanied children, however, are detained.

None of this is humane, and all of it needs a fix. If Biden is committed to being a better leader than his predecessor, he’s got to take decisive action soon.

GOP Starts Legal Onslaught on Biden

The GOP’s legal gameplan against the Biden administration is kicking into gear. On Monday, a group of 12 attorneys general from Republican-led states filed suit against the administration challenging an executive order that biden sent instructing the federal government to analyze the social costs of greenhouse gas emission.

The executive order itself was relatively mundane: signed on Biden’s first day in office, it basically audited where the federal government was at on climate change and reaffirmed Biden’s pledge to quote “advance environmental justice.” Endquote.

In response, the GOP singled out a single section, which established a working group comprised of the OMB head and several cabinet members tasked with looking at the social costs of various greenhouse gas emissions.

The Republican Attorney General gang jumped at that as some overreach of federal power, writing in their lawsuit that the directive was a threat to separation of powers and quoting an absurd Supreme Court dissent by Antonin Scalia.

Quote:“Frequently,” a threat to the separation of powers “will come before the Court clad, so to speak, in sheep’s clothing.... But this wolf comes as a wolf.”

Endquote.

Clearly, these dudes are, shall we say, high on their own supply. But the legal tactic could represent a real hangup for the Biden administration, which is sure to get an avalanche of similar tactics as the GOP looks to derail his agenda at least as much as liberal lawsuits were able to forestall some of Trump’s most destructive actions.

It doesn’t even matter if most of these cases fail or get thrown out -- if even one gets upheld or ruled in their favor, it’s a win for the GOP. And meanwhile, it costs the federal government time and money to be defending itself at every turn.

This is how politics works now, so we better get used to it -- and hope that Biden’s lawyers are better at their jobs than Trump’s were.

Progressives Take Over Nevada Democratic Party

In case that last story convinced you that the GOP was the only party capable of throwing weird temper tantrums, you won’t believe what we’ve got next.

In Nevada, the entire staff of the state democratic party quit this weekend, largely in protest to a slate of Democratic Socialist-backed progressive candidates sweeping internal leadership elections.

The Intercept reports that on Saturday, a coalition of progressive candidates backed by the local chapter of the DSA took over all five party leadership elections in the Nevada Democratic Party. In response, party leadership pre-emptively moved $450,000 out of the party’s larger war chest into separate accounts controlled by the establishment-led Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and then quit en masse.

The background drama behind all this is a bit more complicated to parse, involving multiple factions that supported Bernie Sanders and the tightly-controlled old guard of the state’s party that was run by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, but the Intercept has the details.

Judith Whitmer, the progressive who is now the new chair of the Nevada Democratic Party said quote: “We weren’t really surprised, in that we were prepared for it. But what hit us by surprise was the willingness to just walk away, instead of working with us.”

Let’s hope that at some point, an adult in the room of the national party decides to give their new progressive colleagues a more friendly welcome.

AND NOW FOR SOME QUICKER QUICKIES:

Some encouraging news from Brazil, where the Supreme Court invalidated the criminal convictions of former President Lula da Silva. Da Silva is now eligible to challenge fascist Jair [JAI-YEER] Bolsonaro in 2022, and could have pretty substantial support, as he was leading the country’s polls when he was convicted in 2018.

The first major poll of the New York City mayoral race has a familiar face out ahead. Andrew Yang leads all contenders with 32 percent, 13 points clear of his nearest challenger, former NYPD officer Eric Adams.

The trial of Andrea Sahouri [SA-HOO-REE], a Des Moines Register reporter arrested while doing her job covering the Black Lives Matter protests last summer, began on Monday. The prosecution is trying to obscure the fact that Sahouri was actively reporting during her arrest, and throwing the book at her regardless, setting a dangerous precedent for reporters working during civil unrest in the future.

And finally, Congress has a new frontrunner in its always-entertaining “biggest Nazi” competition, after Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar tweeted out a white nationalist group’s slogan on Sunday, a few days after speaking at their convention outside of CPAC. Seems like a great guy!

MAR 9, 2021 - AM QUICKIE

HOSTS - Sam Seder & Lucie Steiner

WRITER - Jack Crosbie

PRODUCER - Dorsey Shaw

EXECUTIVE PRODUCER - Brendan Finn