Finally, unions have a voice in the White House! Sadly, it's the right-wing border cop unions ...
by digby
This story is astonishing, not just because it shows that the the president is now ignoring the WH counsel, Department of Homeland Security and Chief of staff and listening to the far right border cop unions and his psychopath immigration adviser. Then when the courts back the legal and practical advice of his cabinet, he will rail against them as partisan hacks who want to destroy the country.
President Donald Trump this week presided over an explosive meeting on a new Cabinet order granting the troops deployed at the southern border the right to use lethal force to defend border patrol agents.
Several White House aides and external advisers who have supported the president’s hawkish immigration agenda attended the Monday meeting, which devolved into a melee pitting two of Trump’s embattled aides, White House chief of staff John Kelly and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, against other attendees, according to three people briefed on the exchange.
Kelly and Nielsen initially argued against signing the declaration, which granted the military broad authority at the border, telling the president that the move was beyond his constitutional powers. They were vocally opposed by, among others, senior policy adviser Stephen Miller; Chris Crane, president of the National Immigration and Customs Enforcement Council; and Brandon Judd, president of the border patrol union. Also present was Vice President Mike Pence, who did not take a stand on the issue, according to one of the people briefed on the debate.
Kelly and Nielsen eventually came around to the president’s position, and the bitter dispute ended Tuesday evening when Kelly, on Trump’s orders, signed a Cabinet declaration granting the military the disputed authority. The move ran afoul of the guidance offered by the White House counsel, Emmet Flood, who cautioned that it was likely to run into constitutional roadblocks, according to a second source familiar with the conversations.
The debate took place in the context of a discussion about how the White House could stem the rising number of apprehensions at the Southern border, a subject that has obsessed and enraged the president.
Nielsen and Kelly folded and went along with orders for the military to shoot people on the American border. And they did it because organizations representing uniformed cops at the border appealed directly to the President, who commonly treats them as his personal paramilitary force.
Think about that.
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