The Timeline of Family Separation

If you, like me, feel like you're barely treading water in the ocean of human horrors created by the Trump administration, it can feel like the zero tolerance immigration policy almost came out of nowhere. One day I was bemoaning the inaction on DACA, the next we have concentration camps full of innocent children. Given that I only started hearing about this in the month of June, I'd assumed this cruel and inhumane policy was announced very recently. But as I did some research, I realized that I'd become so overwhelmed with all the human rights abuses of the Trump administration that I'd missed the early days of this policy.

Back in March of 2017, John Kelly who was then the Secretary of Homeland Security discussed the idea of a policy to separate children from their parents when family crossed the border. Secretary Kelly specifically said he was considering this policy to deter people from crossing the border illegally. In April, the New York Times reported that around 700 children had been taken from their families, though at that point it wasn't clear that this was a formal policy. Then this May, Attorney General Jeff Sessions (human Confederate flag) announced a policy that said anyone crossing the border illegally would be prosecuted, and children would be separated from their parents.

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Unhappy Families

As others have observed, keeping up with political commentary in the Age of Trump is a challenge. I work on blog posts, only to have their relevance wiped out before I finish my edits. Some weeks, nuanced political happenings are overshadowed by tweets that carry no actual policy directives. Sometimes, the President brings us to the brink of a possible nuclear war. It's hard to figure out what line to walk.

But I started this blog primarily to explain Congress, and that's what I will continue to do, even if this may be our last week on earth. Since the healthcare bill failed spectacularly only several weeks ago, President Trump has expressed frustration with Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and the Majority Leader's inability to bring key legislation to his desk.

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The Room Where it Happens

This Tuesday, I came as close as I probably ever will to being on the Donald Trump List of Insults, even if I wasn't referenced by name. In 2011, Stephen Bannon, the current Trump campaign CEO, said on a radio show that progressive women do not like conservative women because "the women that would lead this country would be pro family, they would have husbands, they would love their children. They wouldn't be a bunch of dykes that came from the Seven Sisters schools up in New England. That drives the left insane and that's why they hate these women." 

First off, thanks to Bannon for the stellar recruiting quote. I can already feel applications to women's colleges rising. I'll come back to his use of a slur at the end of the post, but I wanted to first address his claim that the women running this country would not be people who went to women's colleges.

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Hard Pass

In the 2008 Superbowl, David Tyree caught a ball on his helmet, gaining 32 yards, and setting the Giants up for their game winning touchdown. It was the Hail Mary pass to end all Hail Mary passes, it was named the Play of the Decade, and it meant the Giants won the Superbowl over the Patriots.

This is all to say that sometimes, Hail Mary passes are very successful. That's why people keep throwing them. But for every Helmet Catch, there are dozens, nay, hundreds, of failed Hail Mary tosses. The Stop Trump movement within the Republican party, is one such failure.

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Poll-er Opposites

We all knew this day would come. The day when I had to talk about polls. Believe me, I was dreading it as much as you were.

Before I go into everything that's wrong with election polling, and which polls you should and shouldn't trust, I'll say a few words about what's good about public opinion polls. In three recent major elections (2008, 2010 and 2012) the polls predicted election results fairly accurately. In this election season, public opinion polls were showing the rise of Trump before anyone in the mainstream thought of his candidacy as legitimate. The polls did something that even light of my life Nate Silver didn't do, and predicted that Donald Trump would win the Republican nomination.

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Contested Contest

No one, not even me, thought Trump would last this long. I was sure that he would have dropped out of the race by now due to boredom, or lost a fair amount of states. But that has yet to happen, and I, like most of the country, am freaking out about the possibility of Trump actually winning the Republican nomination, which is why I, along with the rest of America, am hoping and praying for a contested convention.

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Who Will Win the Nomination: Republican Edition

The Answer May Surprise You!

Fears over Trump-O-Mania are, in my opinion, unfounded. Is the Donald doing well in the polls? Sure, though he is slipping, as evidenced by a recent poll that put Ted Cruz ahead of him in Iowa. A poll that was interestingly followed by one of the most outlandish statements yet from Mr. Golden Hair, putting him back in the news, and likely, back at the top of the polls. But these polls, based on name recognition, are not everything. 

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