memeorandum: The GOP's Immigration Meltdown (Wall Street Journal)

10:45 AM ET, June 19, 2018

Top Items:

The GOP's Immigration Meltdown — Restrictionists may cost Republicans their majorities in Congress. — Are Republicans trying to lose their majorities in Congress this November? We assume not, but you can't tell from the party's internal feuding over immigration that is fast becoming …

Discussion: Raw Story, Axios and The Week

New York Times:

Forget Tax Cuts. Trump Wants to Rally G.O.P. Base Over Immigration — WASHINGTON — As Republicans try to keep their midterm election strategy focused on the economy, tax cuts and falling unemployment, President Trump sent his clearest signal yet on Monday that he intends to make divisive …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and New Republic

Ginger Thompson / ProPublica:

Listen to Children Who've Just Been Separated From Their Parents at the Border — Leer en Español. — The desperate sobbing of 10 Central American children, separated from their parents one day last week by immigration authorities at the border, makes for excruciating listening.

Discussion: Politico, The Atlantic, Washington Post, ThinkProgress, Talking Points Memo, sandiegouniontribune.com, CNBC, HuffPost, New York Times, CNN, The Week, Splinter, Patterico's Pontifications, CBS Los Angeles, BloombergQuint, VICE News, USA Today, MyNorthwest.com, FiveThirtyEight, The Guardian, Department of Homeland …, Gizmodo, Al Jazeera English, Daily Wire, ImmigrationProf Blog, Esquire, Towleroad, The Hill, Washington Press, Breitbart, The Daily Caller, ABC News, Mediaite, RealClearPolitics, YouTube, FOX6Now.com, CBS News, Mashable, GeekWire, The Colorado Independent, Hot Air, Bangor Daily News, Law & Crime, IJR, Bloomberg, AOL, New York Post, Raw Story, Q13 FOX News, Mother Jones, The Daily Beast, Media Matters for America, America's Voice, Vox, VICE, Right Wing Watch, Balloon Juice, FOX 4 Kansas City WDAF-TV, POLITICUSUSA, Daily Kos, New Republic, Axios, Lawyers, Guns & Money and First Draft, more at Techmeme »

Former U.S. Attorneys:

Bipartisan Group of Former United States Attorneys Call on Sessions to End Family Separation — Dear Attorney General Jefferson B. Sessions: — We write as former United States Attorneys who have served under both Republican and Democratic Presidents. Like the majority of Americans …

Discussion: CNN, Politico, Washington Post, Talking Points Memo and Law & Crime

Salvador Rizzo / Washington Post:

The facts about Trump's policy of separating families at the border — “I hate the children being taken away. The Democrats have to change their law. That's their law.” — “We have the worst immigration laws in the entire world. Nobody has such sad, such bad and actually, in many cases …

Discussion: @politifact, HuffPost, The Crime Report and BloombergQuint

Margaret Sullivan / Washington Post:

A reporter at the White House decided to play the audio of children sobbing. Somebody had to. — Olivia Nuzzi had no plans of playing the heart-rending audio of Central American children crying for their parents when she arrived in the White House briefing room Monday.

Discussion: MSNBC

David M. Drucker / Washington Examiner:
Republicans fret about what family separations will cost them

Discussion: Washington Post, Roll Call and CNN

Adolfo Flores / BuzzFeed:
US Isn't Just Separating Children From Their Parents. It Also Has No Plan For Reuniting Them.

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA, New Yorker, Axios, The Week, Bloomberg, The Daily Signal, America's Voice, CNN, Law & Crime and KTLA

New York Times:
When Did Caging Kids Become the Art of the Deal?

Discussion: Vox, Splinter, The Atlantic and USA Today

Grace Sparks / CNN:
Majority oppose policy that causes family separation, but Republicans approve

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Times, Outside the Beltway, MSNBC, The Week, Raw Story, KTLA, Real Clear Politics, HuffPost, Political Wire, No More Mister Nice Blog, Gallup, CBS Sacramento and Politico

Anita Kumar / McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties — WASHINGTON — Aleksandr Burman, a Ukrainian who engaged in a health care scheme that cost the federal government $26 million and was sentenced to a decade in prison, paid $725,000 cash for a condo …

Betsy Woodruff / The Daily Beast:

Erik Prince: I ‘Cooperated’ With Mueller … Erik Prince, the founder of private security company Blackwater, has found himself embroiled in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation of potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. — During the campaign …

Discussion: Raw Story

Huileng Tan / CNBC:

China says the US ‘has initiated a trade war,’ and Beijing isn't afraid to fight back — China's Commerce Ministry said Tuesday morning that it will take counter measures if the U.S. publishes an additional tariffs list. — China's Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, said the country …

Discussion: Reuters, The Daily Caller, HuffPost and Conservative News Today

Jane Perlez / New York Times:
Kim Jong-un Returns to China, This Time With Leverage

Discussion: The Week, Washington Post and Political Wire

Washington Post:
Trump escalates China trade war, threatens tariffs on $200 billion in products

Discussion: National Review and Reuters

CNBC: Dow tumbles 400 points, wiping out gain for year, as Trump directs more tariffs at China

Emily Rauhala / Washington Post: North Korea's Kim makes another trip to China. That complicates things for Trump.

Alayna Treene / Axios:
Trump threatens additional tariffs on $200b worth of Chinese goods

Discussion: One America News Network, The Daily Beast, Politico and Breitbart

Politico:

Nielsen becomes face of Trump's border separations — The Homeland Security secretary has been seen as weak on enforcement, but on Monday she defended decisions that have left kids warehoused on the border. — Kirstjen Nielsen, President Donald Trump's secretary of Homeland Security …

Discussion: Shareblue Media, Vox, Washington Monthly, Talking Points Memo, Daily Kos, Raw Story, New York Magazine, Axios, Washington Post, The Week, CNN and Mediaite

Washington Post:

Trump defiant as crisis grows over family separation at the border — The Trump administration's move to separate immigrant families at the border and detain children apart from their parents spiraled into a humanitarian and political crisis Monday as the White House struggled to contain the growing public outcry.

Discussion: Daily Kos, Althouse, HuffPost, Vox, POLITICUSUSA, Breitbart, CNBC and The Week

David A. Graham / The Atlantic:
From ‘I Alone Can Fix It’ to ‘Change the Laws!’

Discussion: The Hill, Atlanta Black Star and Slate

New York Times:

How Anti-Immigration Passion Was Inflamed From the Fringe — WASHINGTON — Jeff Sessions and Stephen Miller spent years on the political fringe in the nation's capital as high-decibel immigration hard-liners, always warning about the dangers of open borders but rarely in a position to affect law or policy.

Discussion: Political Wire

McKay Coppins / The Atlantic:
The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants

Discussion: Washington Post, The Daily Caller, Vox, New York Times and The Guardian

John Kruzel / @politifact:
No, Donald Trump's separation of immigrant families was not Barack Obama's policy

Discussion: Vox, HuffPost and Wall Street Journal

Nancy Cook / Politico:
Trump aides plan fresh immigration crackdowns before midterms

Discussion: Raw Story, Boing Boing, POLITICUSUSA, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Townhall and New York Magazine

U.S. Department of Justice:

Joshua Adam Schulte Charged With The Unauthorized Disclosure Of Classified Information And Other Offenses Relating To The Theft Of Classified Material From The Central Intelligence Agency — Geoffrey S. Berman, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, John C. Demers …

Discussion: Reuters, The Daily Beast, Law & Crime and Axios

Josh Gerstein / Politico:
Ex-CIA engineer charged with massive leak to WikiLeaks

Discussion: CNN

Adam Goldman / New York Times: New Charges in Huge C.I.A. Breach Known as Vault 7

Matt Zapotosky / Washington Post:
Ex-CIA employee charged in major leak of agency hacking tools

Discussion: The Daily Caller, more at Techmeme »

Wichita Eagle:

Judge strikes down Kansas voter law, orders Kobach to take classes — TOPEKA — A federal judge has struck down a Kansas voter citizenship law that Secretary of State Kris Kobach had personally defended. — Judge Julie Robinson also ordered Kobach, who is seeking the Republican nomination for governor …

Discussion: MSNBC and Media Matters for America

Sam Levine / HuffPost:
Federal Judge Strikes Down Kansas Proof Of Citizenship Law

Discussion: Mother Jones and Splinter

Eli Rosenberg / Washington Post:

Migrant kids are ‘child actors,’ Ann Coulter says on Fox News, telling Trump not to be fooled — In the flourishing world of baseless conspiracy theories, this one, part hoax, part smear, has been having its moment. — The idea that people whose experiences speak to some of the consequences …

Discussion: The Hill and Washington Press

William McGurn / Wall Street Journal:

Impeach Rod Rosenstein — How Congress can remind the unelected government it answers to the elected part. — The long-awaited showdown between the Justice Department and Congress is finally here. — It started late Friday afternoon. While the rest of the country was parsing …

William Wan / Washington Post:

What separation from parents does to children: ‘The effect is catastrophic’ — This is what happens inside children when they are forcibly separated from their parents. — Their heart rate goes up. Their body releases a flood of stress hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline.

Darren Samuelsohn / Politico:

Call to suspend Mueller probe was just posturing, Giuliani says — President Donald Trump's attorney Rudy Giuliani said on Monday that he was actually just bluffing last week when he called for Justice Department leaders to suspend special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation within 24 hours.

Discussion: Talking Points Memo and HuffPost

Sohrab Ahmari / Commentary Magazine:

The SPLC Has Its Nose Rubbed in the Dirt — Belated justice. — Few left-wing pressure groups are as vicious and mendacious as the Southern Poverty Law Center. Founded in 1971, the SPLC today mainly exists to smear opponents of full-spectrum progressivism as “bigots” and “extremists.”

Steve Hendrix / Washington Post:

Bob Dole's final mission — Each Saturday, before Bob Dole sets off on his latest vocation, he has cornflakes, a little sugar on top, and a bottle of chocolate Boost. — It takes less time to get dressed now that the 94-year-old finally allows a nurse to help him, but it remains a rough half-hour on a body racked by injury and age.

Wall Street Journal:

U.S., South Korea Cancel Major War Game Planned for August — Move comes after President Trump's promise at Singapore summit to halt maneuvers on Korean Peninsula — WASHINGTON—The Pentagon said Monday that it had agreed with South Korea to cancel an important military exercise …