memeorandum: 'Don't leave me, Mom': Detainee tells of separation from son (Associated Press)

2:50 PM ET, June 19, 2018

Top Items:

Burgess Everett / Politico:

Trump loses temper over border wall funding — The president complained in a private meeting that Senate Republicans won't fully fund his wall — and threatened a shutdown in September. — President Donald Trump is getting frustrated with his administration's own demands for border wall funding.

Discussion: Townhall and Raw Story

McKay Coppins / The Atlantic:

The Outrage Over Family Separation Is Exactly What Stephen Miller Wants — When the news stories began to surface last month of sobbing young migrant children being forcibly removed from their parents at the border, many close White House watchers instantly suspected Stephen Miller was behind it.

Discussion: Vox, ThinkProgress, Washington Monthly, New Republic, New York Times, The Guardian, Washington Post, Lawyers, Guns & Money, Shakesville, Washington Free Beacon, Mediaite, Raw Story, Splinter, Shareblue Media, The Daily Caller and POLITICUSUSA, more at Mediagazer »

Wall Street Journal:

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: Vox, Washington Post, New York Times, Raw Story, Axios, The Week and CNN

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, Outside the Beltway, twitchy.com, Vox, Washington Monthly, Talking Points Memo, Hot Air, Daily Kos, Booman Tribune, Raw Story, New York Magazine, Splinter, Washington Post, The Week, Axios, CNN and Mediaite

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: Washington Post, CNN, Vox, America's Voice, IJR, Politico, Law & Crime, HuffPost and Talking Points Memo

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: New York Times, The United Methodist Church, @politifact, Talking Points Memo, Bloomberg, FiveThirtyEight, MyNorthwest.com, Motherboard, Breitbart, New York Magazine, IJR, Rewire.News, HuffPost, Political Wire, Refinery29 and The Crime Report

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

Discussion: Vox, IJR and The Hill

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

Discussion: Splinter, Patterico's Pontifications, The Guardian and Vox

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 …

McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Exclusive: US officials likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant kids — WASHINGTON — The Trump administration has likely lost track of nearly 6,000 unaccompanied migrant children, thousands more than lawmakers were alerted to last month, according to a McClatchy review of federal data.

miamiherald:
Up to 1,000 children held by immigration authorities now living in Homestead compound

Discussion: Splinter

Nick Miroff / Washington Post:
In Trump's efficient U.S. family separation system, reunions take far longer

Discussion: Media Matters for America, AOL, Bloomberg and America's Voice

Nick Wadhams / Bloomberg:

U.S. Plans to Withdraw From UN Human Rights Council Today — Haley has said panel wages ‘pathological’ anti-Israel campaign — U.K.'s Johnson has said council is flawed but has value — The Trump administration plans to announce its withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council …

Discussion: Townhall, Politico, Axios, Talking Points Memo, IJR, MSNBC, Lawyers, Guns & Money and Pacific Standard

Carol Morello / Washington Post: U.S. expected to back away from U.N. Human Rights Council

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

Julia Ainsley / NBC News:

Former ICE Director: Some migrant family separations are permanent — “You could be creating thousands of immigrant orphans in the U.S.,” said ex-Acting Director John Sandweg. — WASHINGTON — The former head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement told NBC News that migrant parents separated …

Discussion: CNN

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: Portland Mercury, Media Matters for America and The Root

Philip Bump / Washington Post:
How to mislead with statistics, DHS Secretary Nielsen edition

Discussion: Mother Jones, Los Angeles Times, Media Matters for America, New York Times, Splinter, Media Matters for America, MSNBC and BloombergQuint

Axios:

Don Junior cancels fundraiser with Bush son — Donald Trump Jr. and George P. Bush had formed an unlikely alliance despite their fathers, Donald Trump and Jeb Bush, loathing each other — with Don Jr. backing George P. in his re-election campaign for Texas land commissioner …

Discussion: Politico, Washington Post, CNN, Political Wire, Mediaite, Raw Story, Splinter, The Daily Caller, twitchy.com, RedState, The Gateway Pundit and Breitbart

CNBC:

Dow tumbles 400 points, wiping out gain for year, as Trump directs more tariffs at China — Stocks fell sharply on Tuesday after President Donald Trump's latest threat to China increased fears of an impending trade war between the world's largest economies.

Shannon Vavra / Axios:
The big picture: Trump's latest Chinese tariffs announcement

Discussion: Politico and One America News Network

Huileng Tan / CNBC:
China says the US ‘has initiated a trade war,’ and Beijing isn't afraid to fight back

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

Hiroko Tabuchi / New York Times:

How the Koch Brothers Are Killing Public Transit Projects Around the Country — NASHVILLE, Tenn. — A team of political activists huddled at a Hardee's one rainy Saturday, wolfing down a breakfast of biscuits and gravy. Then they descended on Antioch, a quiet Nashville suburb, armed with iPads full of voter data and a fiery script.

Discussion: New Republic

Lia Eustachewich / New York Post:

New Yorker fact-checker under fire after mistaking ICE worker's tattoo for Nazi symbol — A Harvard-educated fact-checker for the New Yorker is being excoriated by the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency for “baselessly slandering” a Marine veteran — by falsely accusing him of having a Nazi tattoo, according to reports.

Discussion: Fox News, Law & Crime, Hot Air and The Right Scoop

Willa Frej / HuffPost:

Laura Ingraham Compares Child Immigrant Detention Centers To Summer Camps — The Fox News host also quoted an article that likens the centers, some of which keep children in cage-like structures, to boarding school. — Fox News host Laura Ingraham criticized the backlash …

Discussion: sandiegouniontribune.com, The Ring of Fire Network, Louder With Crowder and IJR

Avery Anapol / The Hill:
Laura Ingraham: Migrant child detention centers ‘essentially summer camps’

Discussion: ThinkProgress, Gizmodo, Breitbart, VICE, Mashable and Washington Post

George Takei / Foreign Policy:

‘At Least During the Internment ...’ Are Words I Thought I'd Never Utter — I was sent to a camp at just five years old — but even then, they didn't separate children from families — Imagine this scene: Tens of thousands of people, mostly families with children, are labeled by the government …

Discussion: CNN, Vox, ThinkProgress, The Atlantic, Deadline and KTLA

Bill D'Agostino / NewsBusters:
Cable News: 22 Comparisons of Immigration Policy to the Holocaust, Slavery

Discussion: Washington Free Beacon, The Daily Caller, National Review, Breitbart, CNN and Mediaite

Associated Press:

'Don't leave me, Mom': Detainee tells of separation from son — SEATTLE (AP) — The call came at mealtime — an anonymous threat demanding $5,000 or her son's life. — So Blanca Orantes-Lopez, her 8-year-old boy and his father packed up and left the Pacific surfing town of Puerto La Libertad …

Erik Wasson / Bloomberg:

House GOP Unveils Budget to Fast-Track Tax Cuts, End Obamacare — Republicans aim to energize base with $8 trillion spending cut — Democrats see Obamacare defense as key to winning back House — House Republicans unveiled a 2019 budget proposal Tuesday to send a message …

Gabriel Malor / The Federalist:

Democrats' Border Separation Bill Would Let Nearly All Parents Who Commit Federal Crimes Get Off Scot-Free — Every Senate Democrat has signed on to cosponsor a bill written so carelessly that it does not distinguish between foreign children at the border and U.S. citizen children.

Discussion: Townhall, USA Today, Washington Free Beacon, Axios and HuffPost

Will Sommer / The Daily Beast:

QAnon, the Crazy Pro-Trump Conspiracy, Melts Down Over OIG Report … A man armed with a rifle and a handgun drove an armored truck to the Hoover Dam last Friday and started blocking traffic. He brought a homemade sign with him that said, “Release the OIG report.” — Except the report was already out.

Isaac Chotiner / Slate:

“Just Me. The President of the United States, Facing a Mob of Accusers” — “It's a role like any other, a coat she puts on when necessary and sheds as soon as she's done, but she can see it's working: the men trying for eye contact, checking the cleavage she's made sure to reveal …

USA Today:

Donald Trump is wrong. My client Peter Strzok is a patriot, not a ‘sick loser.’ — Donald Trump is attacking Peter Strzok, the FBI and the Justice Department in order to pre-emptively discredit the results of Robert Mueller's Russia investigation. — CONNECT

Discussion: ACS Blog, CNN and Fox News Insider

Brett Samuels / The Hill:

Sessions responds to Nazi comparisons: ‘They were keeping the Jews from leaving’ — on Monday defended the Trump administration's practice of separating parents and children who cross the border illegally from comparisons to the concentration camps of Nazi Germany, saying the Nazis “were keeping the Jews from leaving.”

Discussion: HuffPost, Mother Jones and Townhall

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: Political Wire, Washington Post, Daily Kos, CNN, Talking Points Memo and New Republic

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: Shakesville and Politico

Associated Press:

Army officially splits with West Point ‘commie cadet’ — WATERTOWN, N.Y. — The images Spenser Rapone posted on Twitter from his West Point graduation were intentionally shocking: In one, the smirking cadet opens his dress uniform to expose a T-shirt with a blood-red image of socialist icon Che Guevara.

Discussion: IJR, Daily Wire, The Daily Caller and Task & Purpose

Joseph Cox / Motherboard:

FOIA: DHS Did Not Investigate Hundreds of Civil Rights Abuse Complaints — DHS's Office of the Inspector General says it has ‘limited resources’ to investigate hundreds of civil liberties and detainee abuse complaints, but one expert said the figures “demand a closer look.”

Discussion: Axios