Politico
By Ted Hesson
October 05, 2017
PAXTON ON DACA: Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sat down with Morning Shift on Wednesday to discuss his state’s role in the demise of the DACA, among other topics. Paxton and his counterparts from nine other states sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in late June that threatened to sue to end DACA if the administration didn’t pull the plug.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Were you in touch with the Trump administration about ending DACA before you sent the letter?
Yeah, we had some back-and-forth conversations. We didn’t know for sure what they were going to do. I don’t think they knew for sure what they were going to do. But we felt [since] Trump campaigned saying it was unconstitutional, we thought ultimately they would do the right thing and put it back in the hands of Congress, which is where it’s supposed to be. That was our argument the whole time. If that’s what the people want and that’s what the representatives want to put together, that’s fine. We’re not policy-driven, we’re driven by the law.
Did you contact the Justice Department about ending DACA?
We talked to them some. We knew that they were considering it. I never knew for sure what they were going to do, exactly how they were going to resolve it. But I felt like we were always moving in the right direction. … We just helped put this one at the front of the line, that’s really what we did. I think that ultimately they would have dealt with it somehow, but we just helped move the timeline a little bit.
You always, in an administration, you have differences of opinion. And I’m sure that there were debates about how to resolve it, whether to resolve it. I always felt like Sessions was all in for resolving it. … I never really knew exactly what was going on behind the scenes. I talked to Secretary Kelly when he was at Homeland Security, but we never brought the issue up.
Did the Trump administration prod you to end the program?
I wouldn’t say [that]. We were motivated by our desire to see that the Constitution was followed. Literally, that was our fight, my entire two years with Obama, this constant battle with him and his administration over these changing laws. And so we were very focused on doing what we [could] to stop that until we hopefully [got] a president and a Supreme Court that would honor the Constitution.
How do you feel about the idea that DACA could be legalized?
My views don’t matter. I don’t get to decide anything at all. My job is to enforce state law and enforce the Constitution. I end up in my state having to enforce things that I don’t like. I just do it, because that’s my job. … I just want Congress to do it the right way. Immigration, we’ve been a nation of immigrants since the beginning. That’s good, just do it in a way that benefits America.
DINING HALL WORKERS STRIKE: “More than 300 dining hall workers at Northeastern University voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to authorize a strike if a contract agreement isn’t reached in coming days, their labor union announced,” Danny McDonald writes in the Boston Globe. “Members of Unite Here Local 26 voted 316-2 to strike if a contract agreement with the school’s food service vendor, Chartwells, isn’t reached by the end of the day on Oct. 10, said Tiffany Ten Eyck, a spokeswoman for the union. The workers would start the strike the following day if no agreement is reached, said Ten Eyck.”
TODAY:
CISSNA CONFIRMATION VOTE: The Senate is expected to vote on the nomination of Lee Francis Cissna to become director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. At 10 a.m., the Senate will consider Randal Quarles to be a member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. After that, they’ll move to a cloture vote on Cissna.
GUTIERREZ, WARREN RALLY: A rally to support Dreamers will take place at 10 a.m. outside the Capitol Building in Area 9. Speakers include Rep. Luis Gutierrez (D-Ill.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and Mary Kay Henry, SEIU international president.
DACA LAWSUIT: The non-profit organization CASA plans to announce a lawsuit today against the Trump administration over the end of the DACA program. The announcement takes place at 10:30 a.m. at the CASA Multicultural Center, 8151 15th Ave., Hyattsville, Md.
TILLIS, HURD TALK IMMIGRATION: An event organized by the non-profit National Immigration Forum will gather conservatives and centrists today to discuss DACA and immigration reform. The speakers include Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), Bryan Wright, former head of the Southern Baptist Convention, Kathleen McLaughlin, president of the Walmart Foundation, and Tim Brown, president of Chobani, among others. Read about it here .
CURBELO: DURBIN ‘DEPORTED’ ME: “A Latino House Republican complained Wednesday on Twitter that he was ‘deported’ from a bipartisan Capitol Hill rally for so-called Dreamers in the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program,” POLITICO’s Ted Hesson reported.
“The rally, at which Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) stood alongside more than 100 undocumented young people, was sponsored by the Mark Zuckerberg-backed advocacy group FWD.us,” wrote Hesson. “At the event, Durbin and Graham spoke in support of the DREAM Act, S. 1615 (115), which they co-sponsored. The bill would create a pathway to legal status and eventual citizenship for Dreamers.”
“Rep. Carlos Curbelo (R-Fla.), a Cuban-American whose parents fled Fidel Castro’s regime in the 1960s, has introduced a more restrictive alternative to the Dream Act,” Hesson wrote. “Curbelo tweeted Wednesday morning that ‘.@SenatorDurbin demanded I be deported from the @FWD_us press conference for #Dreamers later today, but I’ll stop by anyway to support them.’ … Speaking to reporters at the event, Durbin denied demanding Curbelo’s exclusion.” More here.
LAT REPORTERS SEEK UNION: “Journalists at the Los Angeles Times are seeking to form a union,” reports POLITICO’s Ian Kullgren. “A letter left on the desks of employees this morning said more than 50 percent of the staff had filled out union election cards, enough to trigger an election by the National Labor Relations Board.”
“The paper is owned by Tronc, Inc., which also owns the Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun and several other large metro dailies,” Kullgren writes. “It has experienced both success and turmoil in recent years, including a Pulitzer Prize in 2016 for its coverage of the terrorist attack in San Bernadino, Calif., and the ouster of four top editors this past August.”
The Los Angeles Times has resisted unionization throughout its 135-year history, at least in part because of something that happened 107 years ago. “On the morning of Oct. 1, 1910, shortly after 1 a.m., a series of explosions rocked the Los Angeles Times building,” Howard Blum explained to L.A. Times readers in 2008. “About 100 people had been at work, and now they were all trapped in flames, smoke and debris. Escape was a battle. Twenty-one people died.”
J.J. McNamara, an official of an Indianapolis-based ironworkers union, and his younger brother, J.B. McNamara, were tried and found guilty of planting the bombs as part of an attack on nonunion sites around the country. Samuel Gompers, president of the American Federation of Labor, hired Clarence Darrow to defend the McNamara brothers, who insisted they were framed, but eventually they pleaded guilty.
Darrow, meanwhile, was accused of attempting to bribe two prospective jurors. He was tried twice but never convicted. “Darrow would not return to the public spotlight until 1924,” Blum wrote, “when he rescued his reputation as the defender of thrill-killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb and as the hero of the Scopes ‘monkey trial’ the next year.” More on the unionization bid here and the bombing here.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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