Judge issues blow against Trump's sanctuary city order - CNN Politics

Judge issues blow against Trump's sanctuary city order

Jeremy Diamond 2017

By Jeremy Diamond and Euan McKirdy, CNN

Donald Trump White House DACA sot_00002004.jpg

Reporter asks Trump if DREAMers should worry

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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 14: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agents detain an immigrant on October 14, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. ICE agents said the immigrant, a legal resident with a Green Card, was a convicted criminal and member of the Alabama Street Gang in the Canoga Park area. ICE builds deportation cases against thousands of immigrants living in the United States. Green Card holders are also vulnerable to deportation if convicted of certain crimes. The number of ICE detentions and deportations from California has dropped since the state passed the Trust Act in October 2013, which set limits on California state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

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First Lady Melania Trump honors International Women of Courage during a ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC, March 29, 2017.

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CHICAGO, IL - OCTOBER 16: A mural voicing support for immigrants is painted along a retail strip in the predominately Hispanic Pilsen neighborhood on October 16, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. The U.S. Justice Department has accused four cities including Chicago, New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia of violating the law with their "sanctuary city" policies.

Judge blocks Trump's sanctuary cities order

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WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 28: Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke pauses while briefing reporters following a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, September 28, 2017 in Washington, DC.

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Young immigrants and supporters gather for a rally in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in Los Angeles, California on September 1, 2017.

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Donald Trump White House DACA sot_00002004.jpg

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US President Donald Trump participates in a tax reform kickoff event at the Loren Cook Company in Springfield, MO, on August 30, 2017. (JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

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LOS ANGELES, CA - OCTOBER 14: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), agents detain an immigrant on October 14, 2015 in Los Angeles, California. ICE agents said the immigrant, a legal resident with a Green Card, was a convicted criminal and member of the Alabama Street Gang in the Canoga Park area. ICE builds deportation cases against thousands of immigrants living in the United States. Green Card holders are also vulnerable to deportation if convicted of certain crimes. The number of ICE detentions and deportations from California has dropped since the state passed the Trust Act in October 2013, which set limits on California state law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities.

Who is a target for deportation?

Paul Ryan tells undocumented mom not to worry

First Lady Melania Trump honors International Women of Courage during a ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC, March 29, 2017.

Ioffe: Melania is the 'right kind of immigrant'

President Donald Trump arrives at a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2017, in Phoenix. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

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Mexican lawmaker says he scaled border fence

Olympic Stadium is shelter for asylum seekers

CHICAGO, IL - OCTOBER 16: A mural voicing support for immigrants is painted along a retail strip in the predominately Hispanic Pilsen neighborhood on October 16, 2017 in Chicago, Illinois. The U.S. Justice Department has accused four cities including Chicago, New York, New Orleans and Philadelphia of violating the law with their "sanctuary city" policies. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)

Judge blocks Trump's sanctuary cities order

Refugees line up for food distributions by the UN in a refuge camp that opened after the 7.0 earthquake rocked Haiti in Port au Prince on January 29, 2010. (Photo by Nadav Neuhaus/Corbis via Getty Images)

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WASHINGTON, DC - SEPTEMBER 28: Acting U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Elaine Duke pauses while briefing reporters following a meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House, September 28, 2017 in Washington, DC.

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Ivanka calls on Congress to act on immigration

Young immigrants and supporters gather for a rally in support of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) in Los Angeles, California on September 1, 2017.

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About 20 protesters demonstrate to demand immigration reform in front of the White House August 30, 2017 in Washington, DC.

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Senator Bernie Sanders Labor Day breakfast 1

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The order blocks a key executive order

Trump signed the order soon after taking office

(CNN)President Donald Trump's latest executive order aimed at implementing the hardline immigration policies he championed during his campaign has been blocked by a federal court.

US District Court Judge William Orrick issued a permanent injunction Monday blocking Trump's executive order seeking to strip so-called sanctuary cities of federal funding.

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The ruling represents a major setback to the administration's attempts to clamp down on cities, counties and states that seek to protect undocumented immigrants who come in contact with local law enforcement from deportation by federal authorities.

The ruling was also the latest instance in which a federal judge has stood in the way of Trump's effort to implement his hardline policies immigration, joining rulings that have blocked different portions of Trump's travel ban and preliminary injunctions on the sanctuary cities order.

DACA deal state of play

Monday's ruling, which followed lawsuits from two California counties, nullifies Trump's January executive order on the matter, barring the administration from setting new conditions on spending approved by Congress.

The January order sought to crack down on jurisdictions such as Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco that do not comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) requests for assistance with identifying and deporting undocumented immigrants.

It was not immediately clear whether the Trump administration was preparing to appeal the ruling, but the Justice Department said it plans to "vindicate the President's lawful authority to direct the executive branch."

"The District Court exceeded its authority today when it barred the President from instructing his cabinet members to enforce existing law," Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley said in the statement.

Attorney: Ruling a victory for rule of law

A mural voicing support for immigrants is painted along a retail strip in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

A mural voicing support for immigrants is painted along a retail strip in the Pilsen neighborhood of Chicago.

Those fighting the executive order celebrated the decision Monday.

"This is a victory for the American people and the rule of law," San Francisco city attorney Dennis Herrera said in a statement. "This executive order was unconstitutional before the ink on it was even dry.

"We live in a democracy. No one is above the law, including the president."

The statement added that he was "grateful that we've been able to protect billions of dollars that help some of the most vulnerable Americans."

What is a sanctuary city?

These states have banned sanctuary cities

These states have banned sanctuary cities

The term "sanctuary city" is a broad term applied to jurisdictions that have policies in place designed to limit cooperation with or involvement in federal immigration enforcement actions.

Cities, counties and some states have a range of informal policies as well as actual laws that qualify as "sanctuary" positions.

Most of the policies center around not cooperating with federal law enforcement on immigration policies. Many of the largest cities in the country have forms of such policies.

In 2015, more than 200 state and local jurisdictions did not honor requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain individuals, ICE Director Sarah Saldaña testified before Congress, and a subset of that group refused to give access to their jails and prisons to ICE.

What are sanctuary cities, and can they be defunded?

What are sanctuary cities, and can they be defunded?

According to tracking by the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that advocates for restricting immigration and opposes sanctuary policies, roughly 300 sanctuary jurisdictions rejected more than 17,000 detention requests, between January 1, 2014 and September 30, 2015.

The idea for sanctuary cities appears to have sprung out of churches in the 1980s that provide sanctuary to Central Americans fleeing violence at home amid reluctance by the federal government to grant them refugee status.

They became popular in more diverse locales to counter what officials there saw as overzealous federal immigration policies, particularly against those arrested for minor, non-violent crimes.

"San Francisco is a sanctuary city and will not waiver in its commitment to protect the rights of all its residents," San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee said in January, upon announcing an expansion to a city fund to provide legal services to the immigrant community, documented or otherwise.

Chicago has set up a similar fund, as has Los Angeles.

"Chicago has in the past been a sanctuary city," Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in November, according to the Sun-Times. "It always will be a sanctuary city."

Case that sparked immigration debate

Trial for central case to sanctuary city debate 01:58

The murder trial of an undocumented immigrant has drawn national attention -- in part because he had been deported from the United States five times.

Jose Ines Garcia Zarate's trial for the shooting of Kate Steinle, on a San Francisco pier in July 2015, stirred the already heated debate over immigration.

The case became a rallying cry for Trump and GOP politicians, who have invoked Steinle's name in decrying sanctuary cities and promoting the construction of a border wall.

Before the shooting, officials in San Francisco had released Garcia Zarate from custody instead of turning him over to immigration authorities.

CNN's Tal Kopan, Dan Simon and Darran Simon contributed to this report.

The highly sensitive Israeli intelligence on Isis that Donald Trump gave away to Russia Mission deep into Syria revealed after Israeli operatives - Independent

Revealed: The highly sensitive Israeli intelligence on Isis that Donald Trump gave away to Russia

Mission deep into Syria revealed after Israeli operatives say President's leak 'confirmed our worst fears'

Jon Sharman

Details have emerged of the highly-classified Israeli intelligence revealed by Donald Trump to Russian officials earlier this year.

The US President’s decision to spill the information during a meeting with foreign minister Sergei Lavrov was described as having brought Israeli spies’ “worst fears” to life.

Israel and the US have a close intelligence-sharing relationship but spies from the Middle Eastern nation had previously been warned not to share sensitive details with the Trump White House, according to reports in Israeli media.

Trump arrives at golf course after tweeting he'd be 'having meetings'

During his meeting with Mr Lavrov and the Russian ambassador Sergei Kislyak, Mr Trump is now said to have revealed the details of a the covert Israeli operation that exposed Isis’ plans to create new laptop bombs and smuggle them aboard commercial airliners.

US reporters were barred from the meeting and the only images that documented it were taken by Russia’s TASS news agency.

Two experts on Israeli intelligence told Vanity Fair the anti-Isis mission took place last winter, the magazine claimed.

Two helicopters flew a team of commandos and Mossad operatives deep into Syria to gain information on a reported new Isis weapon.

They landed some miles from their target and proceeded in vehicles with Syrian Army markings before bugging the Isis cell and getting back out, Vanity Fair reported.

Donald Trump plans total repeal of net neutrality law that keeps the internet free

Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence corps, monitored the broadcasts from the bugs for several days before striking gold – an Isis soldier explaining how to create a bomb from a laptop that would fool airport security.

Israel quickly shared the details with the US, Vanity Fair said. A widespread ban on carrying laptops on plans was announced to travellers in March this year.

Mr Trump also told his Russian guests the specific city in northern Syria that had been targeted, though not the nation that carried out the mission, the magazine reported.

Israel was later named as the source of the intelligence in US media reports.

At the time, US National Security Adviser H R McMaster said the President “wasn’t even aware where this information came from” and “wasn’t briefed on the sources and methods”.

“At no time were intelligence sources or methods discussed,” he said. “The President did not disclose any military operations that were not already publicly known... I was in the room. It didn’t happen.”

Mr Trump later said he had the “absolute right” to share the intelligence.

One Israeli official, however, told Buzzfeed News: ”We have an arrangement with America which is unique to the world of intelligence sharing. We do not have this relationship with any other country.

“To know that this intelligence is shared with others, without our prior knowledge? That is, for us, our worst fears confirmed.”

Double-barreled Bannon: He targets both Mississippi GOP senators - NBC News

NOV 25 2017

Double-barreled Bannon: He targets both Mississippi GOP senators

by JONATHAN ALLEN and KERI GEIGER

JACKSON, Miss. — One Senate seat here may not be enough for Steve Bannon.

If the former White House strategist gets his way, Mississippi's two long-serving establishment Republican senators won't be in office by the start of the next Congress.

In regular phone calls over the past several months, Bannon has urged state Sen. Chris McDaniel to challenge Sen. Roger Wicker in a primary next year, and he also wants Gov. Phil Bryant to send himself to Washington if Sen. Thad Cochran, who is 79 and in poor health, retires before his term ends in 2020, according to people familiar with Bannon's plans.

"We conservatives in the state, we're going to go after both of those seats — one way or the other," McDaniel told NBC News.

Steve Bannon: Mitch McConnell has to go 3:49

The prospect of both Senate seats changing hands — and moving from establishment side of the GOP to the Tea Party column — makes Mississippi a key battlefield in the intensifying Republican civil war.

For Bannon, who is recruiting a small army of "populist nationalist" congressional candidates, it's a chance to strike one or two blows against Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and the Republican elites in Washington, whom he sees as an impediment to President Donald Trump's agenda.

It will also be a crucial test of Bannon's strength, along with that of allied conservative groups, in the shadow of the Alabama Senate race. Roy Moore, Bannon's preferred candidate in Alabama, defeated appointed Sen. Luther Strange in a primary, only to find himself in a surprisingly competitive general election next month against Democrat Doug Jones because of allegations of sexual misconduct with teenage girls several decades ago.

In the short run, Bannon, the Breitbart News chief and CEO of Trump's 2016 campaign, is focused on defeating incumbent Republicans as part of an effort to oust McConnell. The idea is that new senators will vote against McConnell for leader and then incumbent senators, fearful of primary challenges, will follow suit.

"Mitch McConnell is a literal anchor tied to the hips of folks like Roger Wicker and Thad Cochran," said Andy Surabian, a top adviser to Bannon. "We expect the anti-establishment wave we are seeing across the country today to hit Mississippi like a tsunami in 2018 and beyond."

Over the longer haul, Bannon is hoping to take over the GOP with conservative candidates who can carry the torch of Trumpism long after the president is out of office.

Trump, however, has promised Wicker that he'll be with the incumbent in Mississippi, according to a person familiar with their conversation, just as Trump has given similar assurances to GOP Sens. Deb Fischer of Nebraska and John Barrasso of Wyoming, who also are on Bannon's target list.

A Republican rift

Mississippi has shown that it's ripe for the kind of warfare Bannon likes to wage.

In 2014, McDaniel, a hero of the Tea Party movement, outran Cochran, the godfather of the state GOP, in a three-way primary before losing to him in a run-off election. The race grew so ugly — establishment Republicans accused McDaniel of race-baiting, and McDaniel claimed the election had been "stolen" by the establishment — that it left both sides scarred and looking for retribution.

Two lawsuits filed since that election underscore the degree to which there's still bad blood in Mississippi's political circles.

In 2014, McDaniel filed suit in an unsuccessful effort to overturn the election result, and conservative activists developed a hashtag — #RememberMississippi — as a shorthand for their frustrations with the party establishment in Jackson and Washington. In June, three years after McDaniel supporter Mark Mayfield committed suicide amid charges stemming from the publication of images of Cochran's wife in a nursing home, Mayfield's wife and sons filed a wrongful death suit against several Mississippi officials described as part of the Cochran "political machine."

Mayfield had been charged with conspiracy to exploit a vulnerable adult after a blogger captured video of Rose Cochran, who suffered from dementia, as part of an effort to cast the senator, who later married a longtime aide, as disloyal to his ailing wife. Mayfield was accused of helping the blogger locate Rose Cochran; Thad Cochran denied having an affair with the aide who became his wife in 2015 after Rose Cochran died.

The Wicker Seat

McDaniel said he's made a decision about whether to run against Wicker but probably won't announce it until after the Alabama race on Dec. 12.

The core of McDaniel's argument would be that Wicker, who has represented Mississippi in Congress since 1995, is one of the institutional insiders who aligns with McConnell and a Washington "swamp" culture that maintains the status quo.

Lawmakers Don Seersucker Attire For National Seersucker Day

(L-R) U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-GA), and Sen. Thad Cochran (R-MS) arrive for a National Seersucker Day group photo at the U.S. Capitol on June 11, 2015 in Washington, DC. Alex Wong / Getty Images file

A Republican electorate that was upset with the establishment in 2014 has only grown more disenchanted as Trump's agenda has stalled in Congress, McDaniel said. McConnell has taken the brunt of that frustration.

"We sensed a lot of anger (in 2014) but it pales in comparison to what we're seeing now," McDaniel said. "Mitch McConnell hasn't led in a conservative fashion. … He is a part of the problem. He's not standing and being articulate in defense of our principles."

Tea Party candidates like McDaniel have become adept at harnessing the increasing lack of trust among Republicans toward Washington, which in part fueled Trump's election.

"To the extent that trust is eroding, it creates this notion that people want the outsider," said Julie Wronski, a political science professor at the University of Mississippi.

Wicker, who ran the Senate Republican campaign committee in the 2016 election cycle, has a lot of friends in national politics. But McDaniel has some big guns, too. In addition to Bannon, he has support from Robert Mercer, a hedge-fund titan and investor in Bannon's Breitbart News, who put $50,000 into a super PAC called Remember Mississippi earlier this year.

And while Wicker has almost always supported Trump's agenda — deviating only to vote for sanctions on Iran, North Korea and Russia that the White House opposed, according to FiveThirtyEight.com — McDaniel's allies point out that his six-year voting score from the Conservative Review is just 30 percent. That figure reflects Wicker's support for spending bills and debt-limit increases that kept the government operating and prevented it from defaulting, positions that were at odds with hard-line conservatives.

Regardless of Wicker's record in Washington, McDaniel is ready to make the case that he's lost touch with Mississippi Republicans' values.

In 2015, after a race-fueled mass shooting in a Charleston, S.C., church, Wicker said the Mississippi state flag should be put in a museum because it features a Confederate emblem in its upper left-hand corner that is offensive to the state's African-American population.

Attitudes toward the flag have been slowly changing over the years, with support for it dipping below 50 percent for the first time in an October poll that had 49 percent of Mississippians in favor of keeping it and 41 percent supporting a change. But most whites, most Republicans and most Trump supporters in the state want to preserve the flag.

McDaniel said it will "absolutely" be a big issue if he runs against Wicker. "The people of the state believe in the protection of history, and that includes the flag and it includes statues," he said.

Justin Brasell, Wicker's campaign manager, said his candidate isn’t going to get caught flat-footed. He's got $3.5 million in the bank, and he's ready to match his record against McDaniel's in the state Senate, Brasell said.

For Wicker, that means touting his senior positions on the Armed Services Committee and the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee in the Senate, his efforts to build the Navy — important to shipbuilders on Mississippi's Gulf Coast — and his support for farm and highway bills that help the state economy, Brasell said.

He played down the importance of the flag debate, noting that Wicker offered a "personal opinion" without trying to overturn the will of Mississippians. "I don't think that's what primary voters are ultimately going to make their decision about in a U.S. Senate race," he said.

McDaniel hasn't been able to move legislation in the Mississippi Senate since his race against Cochran, which one person familiar with the dynamics of the state Capitol attributes to the power wielded by Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves, a Cochran ally who presides over the state Senate.

The Cochran Seat

Cochran's seat isn't up until 2020. If he resigned before then, Bryant would appoint a successor to the Senate and the state would hold a special election for the remainder of Cochran's term.

Cochran's health problems have led to serious maneuvering around the state capital of Jackson. McDaniel, who said Cochran ought to be allowed to "retire in dignity," would like an appointment. His supporters have pushed Bryant to pick him, but Bannon wants Bryant himself to take the seat.

The governor, however, doesn't want to name either McDaniel or himself, according to a person close to him.

His short list would likely include Reeves, the lieutenant governor, a political rival whose appeal is in his ability to defend the seat in a special election, and Rep. Gregg Harper, who is well-liked but untested at the statewide level. Either would surely face a challenge from the Tea Party ranks. But Bryant could also tap state Sen. Michael Watson, a Tea Party favorite and close McDaniel ally, who might scare off establishment challengers.

From Bryant's perspective, it's not clear whether he's better off choosing from the ranks of the establishment or the Tea Party because both appear to be at nearly equal strength in the state and he doesn't want to pick someone who would go on to lose in a special election.

McDaniel, who said he's also looking at a possible race for lieutenant governor as well as potentially running against Bryant's pick to fill the seat if Cochran resigns, casts himself as the vehicle for what he calls a "great awakening" among conservatives.

"I'm very much an advocate of this whole drain-the-swamp idea," he said. "Washington has to be cleansed."

For Bannon, Mississippi may offer a rare opportunity to do that, two seats at a time.