Rewriting immigration rules
The Department of Justice is considering a plan to change the asylum policy of the United States, according to a recent report by Vox.
Clearly frustrated by the fact that many of the southern border immigrants were not crossing illegally if they sought asylum, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is now steering a new policy that will effectively bar people from receiving asylum if they entered the country between ports of entry.
The amended regulation also would codify an opinion written by Sessions in June that sought to restrict asylum for victims of domestic and gang violence.
As a source described it to Vox, the regulations would be "the most severe restrictions on asylum since at least 1965."
Asylum in the U.S. has been under attack since the Trump administration began remaking the country's immigration policies by executive order - from the southern border to a de facto Muslim ban.
Already, under the Trump administration's new "zero-tolerance" policy, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have begun staking out international bridges to tell Central American asylum seekers they cannot proceed to the designated ports of entry because they are "at capacity." Immigrants arriving at these asylum ports of entry are being repeatedly turned away and asked to come back at a later date.
This, in essence, forces many of them who are traveling with hungry and tired children to enter the country "the wrong way" - illegally - rather than the right way, which they had tried to do.
Discriminating against asylum seekers at the border for "illegal entry" could potentially violate a multilateral treaty from 1951 that defines who is a refugee and who can be granted asylum.
But Sessions seems not to care. He'll just rewrite some more rules.
It's the economy, stupid
Larry Kudlow talking on Fox Business should be a giveaway that fact-checking will soon provide a new headline.
That's exactly what happened Friday morning after Kudlow, Trump's director of the National Economic Council, told Fox host Maria Bartiromo that the deficit is "coming down rapidly."
"As the economy gears up, more people working, better jobs and careers, those revenues come rolling in and the deficit, which was one of the other criticisms, is coming down," Kudlow said. "It's coming down rapidly. Growth solves a lot of problems."
But the problem for President Trump's top economic adviser is that the deficit is actually rising, and is projected to do so well into the future.
The Congressional Budget Office projected as of April 2018 that the fiscal 2018 deficit is $804 billion. Fiscal 2017's deficit was $666 billion, increasing from $586 billion in fiscal 2016.
Earlier this week, the Congressional Budget Office noted that this leads to an even worse projection for the federal debt: "At 78 percent of gross domestic product, federal debt held by the public is now at its highest level since shortly after World War II."
And the primary driver of this is, you guessed it, the Republican tax cut bill, which is now six months old.
In fact, the tax cut's anniversary was the occasion for Kudlow's interview on Fox Business.
But maybe Kudlow wasn't deliberately lying. ThinkProgress, a progressive-leaning news site, posits that perhaps Kudlow was just following the same bad stars he's always followed in making economic prognostications.
He recommended buying stocks in September 2008, denied the existence of the housing bubble in 2005, lauded the "Bush Boom" on the eve of the Great Recession, and said the war in Iraq would be a huge boon to the American economy.
But hey, he's a former TV money guru. That makes him Trump's kind of guy.
Speaking of watching the stars
You might have missed it, but over the weekend, the sun orbits of Mars and Earth came especially close together - giving us a fine view (in between clouds) of the red planet named for the fiery Roman god of war.
According to EarthSky.org, the beginning of July marks a time when Mars will shine about eight times brighter than Saturn. And by the month's end, Mars will exceed the brilliance of Saturn by some 15 times, making it the brightest Mars we've seen since 2003.
But that's not all. Per EarthSky: "It's not often that Mars outshines Jupiter, which is also visible in the evening sky. Jupiter is normally the fourth-brightest celestial object to light up the sky, after the sun, moon and Venus. But, indeed, Mars will outshine Jupiter from about July 7 to Sept. 7, 2018."
Aside from all the space maps and algebra needed to explain this, the reason for all the Martian shininess is the fact that Mars is also reaching its closest point to the sun at about the same time our orbit of the sun comes close. Our orbit takes one year and Mars' orbit takes two. Are you confused yet? I am.
Let's just hope science and astronomy, not mythology and astrology, win the day.
Better to enjoy the view of a bright, reddish "star" near the moon than to experience Martian aggression.
Besides, we have enough Mars-like aggression in Washington, D.C.