Here's a sign that an idea is starting to gain steam: Democrats are already compromising on it. I'm talking about the renewed interest in a federal job guarantee -- the idea that if you want and are able to work, the federal government will figure out a way to put you to work. A handful of senators have gotten behind it, but only Cory Booker has yet to introduce an actual bill (and it is only for a pilot program).
Over in the House, we'll soon have the first, this one by Rep. Ro Khanna (a loyal Bad News reader). It's an attempt to grapple with some of the political and policy objections that have been raised against a more robust approach. I think it has its flaws, but I love that the left is hashing these things out in case Democrats ever do manage to take power again.
Khanna shared a draft copy of the bill with us, and here's Kate Aronoff's summary and analysis of it.
Brave New Films is out with the second installment of its new series, Sentencing Reform: Drug Addiction, looking at alternatives to punishment, relying instead on a treatment model. They look at Seattle Post-Prison Education Program (PPEP), and it's worth a watch. You can find it here on Facebook or on YouTube.
Child migrant crisis: I covered the 2014 migrant crisis closely, and I was not at all soft on the Obama administration at the time, but I can say that what the Trump administration is doing here, purposely separating children from their parents who are seeking asylum from political violence at home, is on an entire different level. All of it is almost too painful to even contemplate -- for toddlers, parents are gods to them, they're everything, they're the center of the world. To have that person ripped away...it's just vicious and cowardly and shameful. Meanwhile, the story of the 1,500 "lost" kids isn't correct -- those are kids who came across the border unaccompanied and have been released to parents or other relatives, which is a good thing. They're not lost. I did a Q&A explaining some of this for The Young Turks.
Debbie Nathan at The Intercept, meanwhile, takes you inside one of the courtrooms in Texas where this barbarism is being executed. The whole story is worth a read, but here's one scene:
A very small, very young woman with chiseled features and disheveled hair spoke. She had been apprehended two days earlier after rafting across the Rio Grande near a county park with big trees and picnic tables that abuts the international line. She wept as she told Judge Morgan, "I'd like to apologize, but the circumstances in my country made me do it." She said she'd been almost raped and killed there, and she had come to the U.S. for protection and to see if she could help her sisters escape the danger.
"You are going to be sent to one of the immigration camps," Morgan said. "You can try and request asylum."
By May 10, Morgan was starting to get rattled by the increasingly disturbing content of the allocutions. By then, the government had begun systematically separating mothers and fathers from their children, including children who are preschoolers. A week later, the government announced plans to house the children on military bases.
One woman who spoke about her children in open court was from Honduras. "Is my little girl going to go with me when I get deported?" she asked Morgan.
"Your Honor," interjected Jeff Wilde, director of the Federal Public Defender's office in Brownsville, "both she and the man next to her have their children with them. They had a credible fear claim [for asylum]. … Their children have been separated from them, and I've been unable to figure out where their children are at this point."
A young father then said he'd been separated from his 6-year-old and was very worried.
The judge tried to assume his crisp air. But he seemed overwhelmed, with the parents' worry and with suspicion that the government was misrepresenting to him what was really happening to the children.
"The way it's supposed to work," he told the parents, "you're going to be sent to a camp where your child will be allowed to join you. That's my understanding of how it's supposed to work."
"They told me they were going to take her away," a mother interjected about her young daughter.
"Well, let's hope they don't," said Morgan. "You and your daughter, you should be joined together."
And then, for many seconds, he was silent.
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