Schumer the Art of the Deal With President Was a Good Moment
examines the dismal record of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer--and concludes he can't be trusted to defend DACA recipients or anyone else.
WITH A March 5 deadline looming, each day of negotiation between Republicans and Democrats on a solution for immigrant youth with Deferred Activity for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) status before the plan ends is harrowing.
With his Twitter rants to taunt Democrats and echo his bribe demands for extremist anti-immigrant measures, including a "cracking" wall on the border, Donald Trump is the most obvious villain in this story.
Trump regularly claims that he'southward the simply ane standing upwardly to Democrats who are supposedly trying to accomplish "amnesty" for all the undocumented. The facts tell a different story.
If you lot've been listening to the main negotiator for the Democrats, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, you know he wants no such thing.
And you lot'll know from his capitulation to Trump that ended the government shutdown final calendar month with no more than a vague "promise" from Republicans on DACA that Schumer is set up to surrender on a lot more than.
In a oral communication on the Senate floor during the second day of federal shutdown, Schumer spelled out his position on immigration policy.
Information technology couldn't exist described as a weak-kneed defense force of immigrants. Information technology couldn't be described equally a defense at all.
"Nosotros're all for tough edge security," Schumer lectured, "but every skillful volition tell you lot that drones and sensory devices and roads and personnel are far more effective than the wall. But considering the president campaigned on the wall, even though he said it would be paid for by Mexico, and demands the wall, for the sake of compromise, for the sake of coming together, I offered it."
Just in example anyone notwithstanding might mistakenly recall that he hadn't offered to fund Trump's edge wall, he repeated himself: "Despite what some people are saying on Television...that is exactly what happened."
SCHUMER'Due south Offering to fund the wall was meant every bit a bargaining scrap in exchange for saving the DACA program. But the Democrats folded on that, besides, inside 24 hours of Schumer's speech.
This give up is piece of cake to read as the latest case of the Democrats' utter incompetence at playing the role of opposition political party.
Incompetent, they surely are. But Schumer's willingness to cede the lives of migrants facing an fifty-fifty tighter border in supposed defense of DACA recipients--and to so back downwardly from even defending them--is about more poor negotiating skills.
It is proof of his willingness to collaborate with Trump on central features of the president's agenda, from militarizing the border to trade policy--something evident throughout his career.
But terminal September, Schumer emerged from the White House with a grin on his face, alongside House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi after a negotiating session with Trump. Along with the fate of DACA recipients and other immigrants, Chinese food was on the tabular array--since Schumer and Trump share peculiarly close views nearly trade with Mainland china.
The next day on the Senate floor, Schumer couldn't comprise his excitement at being validated by the president who--at least in his heed--takes him seriously. "He likes u.s.a.. He likes me, anyway," Schumer was heard to say over a Senate flooring mic he didn't know was on.
If information technology wasn't clear that "the art of the deal" is merely as much of a contemptuous game for Schumer every bit it is for Trump, the senator fabricated it undeniable. "Here'south what I told him," Schumer added. "I said, 'Mr. President, you're much better off if yous can sometimes step right and sometimes step left. If you have to step just in i direction, you're boxed.'"
These days, Trump mocks Schumer as "Cryin' Chuck" on Twitter and Schumer paints Trump equally an unreasonable negotiator who "won't take yes for an answer." Just the two have had a close working relationship over years that belies whatsoever harsh words they exchange today.
One example: Schumer has received more donations from Trump across his career than any other sitting member of Congress.
Trump was nevertheless singing Schumer's praises not and so very long ago. In Jan 2016, while running for the Republican presidential nomination, Trump told MSNBC'southward Joe Scarborough: "Hey wait, I think I'll be able to get along well with Chuck Schumer. I was always very adept with Schumer. I was close to Schumer in many ways."
BUT IF Schumer is quick to fold on DACA and Trump's wall, it'due south not because of his rapport with the president solitary. One of the cornerstones of his career is so-called "border security"--which, for Schumer, goes together with Islamophobia under the banner of "fighting terrorism."
After the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building--which was carried out by U.S.-born white supremacist Timothy McVeigh--Schumer seized the opportunity to pass legislation...targeting immigrants.
Equally a member of Congress from New York, he sponsored the Jitney Counterterrorism Act of 1995 in the House later on information technology had been pushed by President Bill Clinton and sponsored by Joe Biden in the Senate.
The legislation was opposed past civil liberties groups for allowing the government to refuse to reveal prove used against terrorism suspects who are non-citizens, and for criminalizing donations to charities deemed by the regime to exist associated with terrorist activity. Such provisions were precursors to the mail service-ix/xi USA PATRIOT Act.
In 2006, Schumer chosen national attention to the sale of six U.S. ports to the United Arab Emirates-based company Dubai Ports Earth. The ports were already operated by a foreign company, the British Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Visitor. Just that didn't stop Schumer from whipping upwardly Islamophobia in a bid to stop the sale, including a press briefing involving victims of the 9/11 attacks.
As function of this effort, Schumer collaborated with curvation-Islamophobe Peter T. Male monarch, the New York Republican member of Congress who would declare a year later that there are "too many mosques in this country."
Later in 2006, Schumer supported Male monarch's Secure Fence Human activity, which funded the construction of 700 miles of fencing on the U.S.-United mexican states border--a predecessor to Trump's current vision for a more than extensive wall.
While many politicians stoke anti-immigrant fear past calling for heavier security at the U.S.'s Southern border, Schumer has distinguished himself by demanding the militarization of the Northern border, too.
"For as well long, Northern border security has received as well picayune support when it comes to federal resources," Schumer declared when he announced that $8.8 million would be spent on upgrading security at a border crossing in the small hamlet of Alexandria Bay, New York.
Schumer has also worked to militarize U.S. cities far from the border--particularly his hometown of New York City.
In 2009, Schumer secured $200 one thousand thousand to add to the surveillance and policing apparatus in New York's public transit and ports systems.
He alleged that one reason for the funds was to install equipment to observe portable weapons of mass devastation. "It is probably our last line of defense against a nuclear weapon beingness smuggled into the five boroughs and that is our greatest nightmare," he said with a paranoia that typically accompanies Schumer's efforts to "secure the homeland."
SCHUMER HAS spent decades making the U.S. state more repressive and racist--and the fact that he has ascended to his current position as political party leader in the Senate speaks volumes about the Democratic Party.
Despite the fact that Trump'due south border wall fantasy is unpopular and the DACA plan is very popular, the Democrats have entrusted the fate of immigrants to a human being who built his career by targeting them.
And Schumer is certainly not the merely Democratic leader who is on board with more restrictive borders and greater surveillance. Subsequently all, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also supported building the border fence in 2006 when they were Schumer'due south colleagues in the Senate.
As a political party, the Democrats may disagree with Trump on the details, but their practices betray their shared commitment to the goal of restricting migration.
Building a resistance based on the struggles of immigrants and their supporters has never been more urgent. An honest look at Schumer'due south deportment today and in the past testify that he and his party are no friends of that resistance.
Source: https://socialistworker.org/2018/02/05/chuck-schumer-and-the-art-of-the-sellout
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