MANSON FOLLOWER VAN HOUTEN’S PAROLE MUST BE DENIED AGAIN

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “MANSON FOLLOWER VAN HOUTEN’S PAROLE MUST BE DENIED AGAIN”

          Charles Manson is dead and buried in a location known only to very few, the secrecy intended to prevent that site from becoming a shrine for cult followers who still pore over every move made by the mass murder mastermind and his “family” during their heyday in the late 1960s.

          But the Manson murders, remarkable for their vicious and political quality, remain in the headlines because his gang members seem to come up for parole continuously, some being presented by their lawyers and even parole commissioners as model prisoners deserving release more than 50 years after their crime spree.

          Here’s the bottom line: None of the Manson murderers should ever go free, no matter how many prisoners are released because of the coronavirus. Their crimes, as ex-Gov. Jerry Brown once stated in rejecting a parole board decision, were simply too horrible, no matter how much they may have reformed.

          The current parole applicant is Leslie Van Houten, whose release has repeatedly been approved by the parole board, most recently in late July. Sentenced to seven years to life imprisonment in 1978, her fate now rests with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who rejected parole for her early in his term. Newsom was a mere toddler when the 70-year-old committed her crimes. He is now in a 120-day period before he must veto the latest board decision or let it stand.

          In contrast to Newsom, Brown remembered the Manson crimes well. He lived in the Laurel Canyon area of Los Angeles while the “family” ran wild, cutting off ears, smearing bloody racist messages on victims’ walls and killing anyone they found at their intended victims’ homes. Brown’s quarters were just two canyons east of Benedict Canyon, where the Manson group executed actress Sharon Tate and four others in and around her sprawling mansion in the Santa Monica Mountains above Beverly Hills.

          Van Houten, then a 19-year-old acoloyte of the wild-eyed, mesmerizing Manson, was not along on her friends’ run to the home of Tate, wife of director Roman Polanski. The life of the director, now living in exile in Poland after fleeing the country while awaiting sentencing for statutory rape, might have been very different had Tate lived.

          Van Houten became deeply involved in grisly murder the night after the Tate murders, which terrorized Southern California. She joined fellow killers Charles (Tex) Watson and Patricia Krenwinkle, breaking into the home of grocer Leno LaBianca and his wife Rosemary in the Los Feliz area of the Hollywood Hills.

          Van Houten’s admitted job was to hold down Mrs. LaBianca while Watson and Krenwinkle repeatedly stabbed her. She then added 14 stabs of her own (later saying it was “about 16”). Next, she daubed racist slogans in Mrs. LaBianca’s blood on several interior surfaces of the house. And she carved the word “WAR” into the stomach of Leno LaBianca, murdered with his wife.

          If murderers can eventually go free after behaving as brutally as Van Houten did in 1969, what value does California place on human life? If Van Houten, who now looks like someone’s bespectacled granny, can go free, what would that say to others who might contemplate similar crimes?

          Her lawyer, however, has long claimed she fell under Manson’s evil influence while using drugs after a troubled childhood. Van Houten grew up in an affluent Los Angeles suburb with two adopted siblings and parents who divorced when she was 14. Such circumstances do not often produce bloodthirsty killers.

          There is little doubt Van Houten, like fellow incarcerated Manson followers Watson, Bruce Davis and her late pal Susan Atkins, has been an exemplary prisoner. Some prison chaplains bemoan her continued incarceration because she has become “a deep and noble person.”

          Those folks never saw Atkins, Van Houten and a few other Manson followers repeatedly enter courtrooms with carved X’s on their foreheads to mark their devotion to Manson – even though they had been separated from him for many months by then.

          Which suggests his malignant influence was lasting.

          The bottom line: Freeing Van Houten or any “family” members would send a dangerous message to other murderous individuals: Live long enough and this society will eventually forgive you, no matter how evil your actions.

            
    -30-       
     Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough: The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It," is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, go to www.californiafocus.net

HARRIS VEEP NOD COULD END RULE OF BAY AREA CLIQUE

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2020, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
    “HARRIS VEEP NOD COULD END RULE OF BAY AREA CLIQUE”

          For almost 30 years, a small clique of politicians from the San Francisco Bay area has ruled in California, holding all the state’s ticket-topping offices except when muscleman actor Arnold Schwarzenegger partially jostled them aside for awhile in the early 2000s.

          In fact, Bay area politicians have reigned supreme through most of the last century, even after the state’s population center moved south to the Los Angeles and San Diego regions.

          The bipartisan Bay area dominance brought to power people like Earl Warren, William F. Knowland, both Edmund Browns, Alan Cranston, S.I. Hayakawa, Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Nancy Pelosi, Kamala Harris and current Gov. Gavin Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor. They thoroughly outnumbered Southern California politicians in high office like Ronald Reagan, Pete Wilson, Goodwin Knight and Gray Davis.

          But if the current Democratic Party ticket with Harris joining former Vice President Joseph Biden prevails in November, the modern Bay area grouping that’s included Boxer, Feinstein, Newsom, Pelosi and Harris may see its grip on the state loosened. That will be up to Newsom.

          For if Biden and Harris manage to oust President Trump, as current polling indicates they well might do, Newsom must choose a new California senator to replace his old friend Harris. His top priorities will be to name someone with a pragmatically liberal bent like his own and to make sure that person has a strong chance to hold the seat in the 2022 election, when Harris’ term would end anyway.

          The last time a California governor got to choose a senator, Wilson picked an obscure Republican state legislator from Orange County, John Seymour. Feinstein devastated Seymour in 1992 when the former San Francisco mayor ousted him by a 16 percent margin.

          There’s also the gender question: does Newsom want to keep California’s Senate delegation exclusively female, as it has been since 1992, when Feinstein and Boxer won office in parallel, simultaneous votes? Boxer took a full six-year term and Feinstein filled out the two years left on the other seat. She easily won six more years in office in 1994 and has been there since.

          The statewide electability requirement probably would eliminate folks getting frequent mentions now, like Oakland Congresswoman Barbara Lee, Orange County Congresswoman Katie Porter and Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf. None has run for statewide office and all have low name recognition, which likely would prompt serious opposition in 2022. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis is another possibility, but the Sacramento resident has been very low profile in her current office, leaving her not yet widely known to voters.

          All this could mean the seat goes to a male for the first time in 28 years. Strong male possibilities include statewide officers like Attorney General Xavier Becerra and Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Either would provide Senate representation for the first time to California’s huge Latino populace, now the state’s largest ethnic group with about 39 percent of all Californians. Both are proven vote-getters.

          Becerra, a former East Los Angeles congressman, won big in 2018 in his first statewide run, while Padilla, once the youngest member of the Los Angeles city council, will be termed out in 2022, but will surely seek another office whether he gets the potential Senate appointment or not.

          Other possible male appointees are Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and Pasadena Congressman Adam Schiff. Garcetti was a co-chair of the Biden campaign task force evaluating potential vice presidential candidates, while Schiff, like most others in Congress, has never sought statewide office but gained significant fame through his leadership of efforts to impeach Trump.

          Any of the prominent Southern Californians would make a stronger statewide candidate today than any current Bay area possibility, simply because each has a stronger and larger electoral and popularity base than any Northern California hopeful.

          Of course, a couple of years in the Senate could give anyone getting Newsom’s nod a major opportunity to develop their own large base.

          All of which means that unless Newsom is determined to perpetuate the Bay area hegemony in California if this possible Senate opening becomes real next winter, the seat probably should go to someone from Southern California.

         
     -30-       
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

ETHNIC STUDIES PLAN: CLOSER, BUT STILL NO CIGAR

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 28, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
   “ETHNIC STUDIES PLAN: CLOSER, BUT STILL NO CIGAR”

          The ethnic studies curriculum now entering a public comment period before its scheduled adoption by the state Board of Education next spring is improved from last year’s rejected abomination, but remains a far cry from what it should be.

          In short, closer but still no cigar.

          The major improvement is that the new proposed curriculum this time recommends teaching about more forms of historic prejudice than the prior version, sent back to the drawing board almost exactly a year ago because it omitted so much.

          For example, the world’s oldest form of bigotry, anti-Semitism, didn’t get a mention in the previous version. Now it’s on the list of just over a dozen forms of historic discrimination and persecution.

          Wow! What good news for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust before and during World War II. They are at least recognized, but how many classrooms will see anything about this actually taught? Yes, a few classes are visited each year by Holocaust survivors telling their stories, but since most are in their late 80s and 90s, it’s questionable how long that can go on.

          Here are just a couple of the major weaknesses of the curriculum plan, which would form the background for making ethnic studies a graduation requirement for California public schools, as it recently became a requirement for any California State University diploma:

          The plan instructs teachers to deal mostly with the history of whatever ethnic group makes up the majority of their class. Since most public school students for the foreseeable future will be Latino, that mandates a lot of teaching about Hispanic history.

          Perhaps students will learn how smallpox brought to the New World by Spanish adventurers allowed Hernan Cortez to conquer the powerful Aztec and Maya civilizations in Mexico with a force that began with barely 200 men.  Perhaps they will be taught how some indigenous Mexicans turned against the Aztecs because of their brutality to those they had previously conquered.

          Maybe they’ll be taught about the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, in which Mexico ceded 55 percent of its prior territory to the United States after the Mexican-American War, including most of present-day Arizona, California, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado, Nevada and Utah. Maybe they’ll learn that some Mexican-American activists since the 1970s have pushed the concept of Aztlan, a mythical nation that would take former Mexican territory from America, and never mind who has lived there since the mid-1800s.

          It’s OK to teach about this, if done deftly and not as propaganda making students feel victimized. But it would not educate students about the other ethnic groups they will surely encounter while living in the world’s most diverse society. This state, after all, features native speakers of more than 80 languages.

          Another weakness: the curriculum still divides Californians into four basic groups, as demanded by the Critical Ethnic Studies Association, an academic group focusing on “colonialism and conquest, racial chattel slavery and white supremacist (doctrines).”

          These folks also dominated the design of last year’s rejected ethnic studies plan. It failed because rather than work toward racial harmony, it focused falsehoods, divisive issues and longstanding grudges.

          There was little concentration on achievements of any ethnic group, especially leaving out all positives about European colonists and other white immigrants who designed the country that became the most successful on Earth, both economically and, often, in living up to its democratic ideals.

          Ignore that history and students will get a warped education on what it means to be American, how the nation was shaped and how to get along with others who look different from them. Or as Williamson Evers, a visiting scholar at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said, “They’re leaving out all kinds of ethnic groups…who had to work their way into success, and how they did it. There may be important lessons there.”

          It’s possible the new plan will get more revisions to make it fairer and more accurate, while accomplishing state Schools Supt. Tony Thurmond’s stated goal of promoting a “fairer, more just society.”

          But the plan doesn’t get near that yet, so it should be sent back for a second rewrite unless it’s improved considerably before next spring.       

         
-30-
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

NEWSOM STICKS TO HIS GUNS DESPITE RECALL EFFORT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE:  TUESDAY, AUGUST 25, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS     “NEWSOM STICKS TO HIS GUNS DESPITE RECALL EFFORT”

          Give Gov. Gavin Newsom credit for being gutsy about trying to shepherd almost 40 million Californians through the coronavirus crisis of disease and economic disaster.

          He knows there’s an active drive to recall him; he sees rallies resisting his orders; he’s seen demonstrators chain themselves to his fence, and he knows that out of so many Californians, at least one-eighth, or 5 million, are likely infuriated with his beach closings, school closures and other attempts to spur behavior that might crimp viral contagion.

          This means there are more than enough angry voters to provide the 1.495 million valid voter signatures needed to set up a special recall election sometime next year. The deadline for gathering those signatures is Nov. 17, but it’s not likely to happen because the drive is too poorly funded to put enough petition carriers in the field – even if contact-shy Californians were willing to get close and sign a petition on someone’s clipboard.

          Still, Newsom was a close observer 17 years ago when former Gov. Gray Davis was recalled and replaced by movie muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger. He knows it’s possible.

          Now Newsom confronts data glitches and case undercounts, plus resistance and lawsuits. His most vocal opposition comes from folks who don’t like wearing face masks because they’re inconvenient and from religious congregations feeling they have the right to meet without restrictions or social distancing, indoors or out. Some churches also resent rules curbing public singing, said to be a prime spreader of the virus.

          Several churches have sued, some claiming it’s discriminatory to allow protest rallies and marches but not indoor religious services. Not that protest marches are “allowed;” most don’t bother with permits and many are unplanned despite claims from some conservatives that all are masterminded by the loosely-organized anarchist Antifa movement – even though organized anarchism is an oxymoron.

          “Singing in church is our right, a Biblical mandate,” said Kevin Green, pastor of Calvary Chapel in Fort Bragg, asserting there are higher laws than Newsom’s emergency orders. He blasts what he and others call Newsom’s “inconsistency” in treatment of churchgoers and protesters.

          Pastor Greg Fairrington (cq) of Rocklin in conservative Placer County told online viewers in early July, as the coronavirus rampaged around California, that it was “time to come back” to church, bashing “fake media” for exaggerating the pandemic. Fairrington also has said he intends to run for governor, meaning that if a recall should reach a statewide ballot, he would likely try to replace Newsom.

          A news release from his Destiny Christian Church said it will continue following federal guidelines on “social distancing, masking, taking temperatures, hand-washing and other sanitation,” all while holding services indoors. The release encouraged “at-risk, sick or uncomfortable” individuals to stay home. Of course, with half the virus cases this summer reportedly among people aged 18 to 45, almost all adults are plainly at risk.

          The Newsom recall is also about more than his emergency decrees limiting personal freedom of movement and contacts. One recall donor emailed that “this man is pressing a socialist agenda. This state will be destroyed under the (Democratic) supermajority. His gun control agenda threatens lives and businesses…”

          The actual recall petition says Newsom has “implemented laws…detrimental to our way of life. Laws he endorsed favor foreign nationals in our country illegally over…our own citizens.” It continues with a litany of complaints including alleged Newsom failures on homelessness and “restricting parental rights.”

          Newsom has not commented on this effort against him. He has not rescinded an iota of his priorities or his latest emergency orders, either, even as he admits making mistakes like reopening much of the state too soon in the spring, before most counties had met standards he set.

          Perhaps this seeming confidence comes because Newsom’s overall job approval ratings remain consistently favorable, despite massive unemployment and other problems inflicted on Californians by the pandemic and his responses to it.

          The bottom line: Whether or not you like all he’s done, there is no doubt Newsom is sticking to the mission and the duty he’s said he must carry out: trying to save as many California lives as possible from a very deadly and contagious disease.

        
-30-
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

VIRUS BECOMES A MAJOR FORCE FOR INEQUALITY

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 2020, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
          “VIRUS BECOMES A MAJOR FORCE FOR INEQUALITY”

          Across America, protests and rallies crying “Black Lives Matter” have featured thousands of demonstrators wearing no masks, taking no care to social distance and not bothering to sanitize their hands very often.

          They’re ostensibly pushing for social justice and racial and economic equality, calling for fair treatment and less violence from police and other authorities and in effect demanding more equity in hiring and education.

          But their frequent disregard for the contagion of the ongoing coronavirus plague often accomplishes the opposite: They and others who disregard simple but sometimes inconvenient precautions are very ironically and tragically helping push the greatest force for inequality since Jim Crow.

          That’s the virus, which afflicts low-income minority residents of California in far higher numbers than whites, who are often more affluent.

          Latinos, for the strongest example, make up about 39 percent of California’s population, but account for 56 percent of all COVID-19 diagnoses and 45.7 percent of deaths from the virus. African Americans are 6.5 percent of the populace and about the same percentage of COVID-19 cases, but 8.5 percent of deaths from the virus. Geographic data indicates the virus also strikes disproportionately in lower-income locales, especially those heavily populated by farmworkers.

          So the coronavirus plainly hits minorities with low incomes harder than whites, especially those in the most affluent areas. Which means that the more protesters, partiers, beachgoers and others disregard tactics known to stem viral contagion, the more they promote racial inequality.

          But the inequities encouraged by the pandemic go much deeper than  caseload and death statistics, revealing as those can be.

          It turns out COVID-19’s most lasting effect may be on education, where impacts may affect student performance and achievement for more than a decade. It’s a new form of segregation, based more on economic class than on race – but class lines often coincide with racial ones.

          The reasons for this stem from the vitally necessary decision to keep most public schools closed this fall, the bulk of what used to be classroom teaching now done electronically via services like Zoom and Google Classroom.

          On the surface, this seems to treat rich and poor alike, every public school student seemingly subject to the same pluses and minuses from remote learning. Except that the wealthy can do something about it when their children’s wifi fails, while the poor often cannot. The wealthy are often able to stay home with their children during the pandemic, while a far higher proportion of the poor work in menial jobs now considered essential, from farmworkers to street cleaners.

          So the likelihood of children having adult supervision while they learn via screens is far less among low income minorities than among whites. Whether or not distance learning can be effective, there is no doubt that without adult supervision, children are more likely to wander away from screens or not to sign on at all. Even while they’re online, their attention wanders more if they are not supervised.

          The result inevitably will be that the rich get richer educations while the poor get poorer. Depending on how long this goes on, its effects could be lifelong.

          Other educational advantages are also manifesting from affluence during the pandemic. Besides the large percentage of the wealthy who opt out of public school problems with online schooling by sending their kids to private schools, large numbers of public school parents have already begun setting up “pods” of up to 10 children, with several families combining to hire tutors at $40 per hour or more.

          Newspapers around the state report tutors and former schoolteachers who post notices of their availability are getting multiple calls from groups of parents seeking stable education for their children. Parents also are using social media to find like-minded others, the result being that those who can afford to kick in for better education are buying extra opportunities for their kids.

          That situation led former San Francisco Mayor and ex-state Assembly Speaker Willie Brown to observe the other day that the virus is leading to new forms of segregated education.

          He’s right, and so long as the virus endures, there’s little low-income parents can do about it.

          -30-       
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

HAS CORONAVIRUS KILLED THE MASS TRANSIT BOOM?

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2020, OR THEREAFTER


BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “HAS CORONAVIRUS KILLED THE MASS TRANSIT BOOM?”

          For most of the last 30 years, California saw a mass transit boom stretching from San Diego to Los Angeles to the San Francisco Bay. Both light and heavy rail joined existing bus systems, providing new options for commuters and local residents to get around.

          Mass transit also took off as a planning concept. Cities that approve construction of new apartment and office buildings near rail stops often forego requirements for developers to provide parking. Even when they do demand parking spaces, it’s usually fewer than what was previously ordered.

          The presumption is that new residents and workers using those structures will use mass transit and their feet, that very few will drive cars.

          This has aroused both excitement and fear among many Californians, who envisioned the end of the car culture that has ruled this state for most of the last 100 years.

          But wait. That may not happen after all. The coronavirus pandemic has hit mass transit agencies harder than any government programs besides those directly involving health.

          The reason is clear: fear of contagion. No one who can avoid it wants to ride a crowded bus or train in the day of the virus, even if all aboard are masked.

          Take a look at the latest ridership numbers for the Los Angeles area’s Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), which runs buses and an extensive light rail system. Over the last few years, this system opened several new lines that cost state, local and federal taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. A major new subway project is underway between downtown Los Angeles and the Westwood area near UCLA, now something akin to a ghost town amid its plethora of virus-killed small businesses.

          During June, when COVID-19 cases eased up for about two weeks before their latest onslaught, ridership for the MTA’s buses and trains was 2.01 million, down almost exactly 3 million passengers from the previous June.

          Even with the new lines, rail ridership was off by just over 53 percent, from 281,010 in June 2019 to 132,532 this year.

          In San Diego, the Metropolitan Transit System (MTS) started considering service cuts as early as March, as the pandemic began. There was still pressure to keep things running as usual, because, as the MTS chief executive said, “Our buses and trolleys are taking our most vulnerable residents to critical services, and first responders, grocery store employees, nurses and other healthcare workers to their jobs when we need them the most.”

          Meanwhile, ridership is down so much on the San Francisco area’s Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) that it expects to lose $975 million on operations over the next three years due to ridership drops that at times have reached 92 percent. And CalTrain, the San Francisco Peninsula’s heavy rail commuter line, warned it cannot continue running almost empty unless authorities in San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties subsidize it via a new sales tax or some other device.

          Together, all California’s transit systems are asking $36 billion in aid from the next federal coronavirus aid package. That’s almost half the estimated cost of the entire partially-built bullet train system – and it would not buy one inch more rail. This is for operating expenses only.

          It’s all fueled by workers operating from home and a return to commuting in private cars for those who have them, with trust for the sanitation of ride-share services like Uber and Lyft also low. Californians realize that using their own cars, especially if they ride only with others sheltering with them, is about as safe as staying home. Which leaves public transit to the poor, already most likely to be victimized by the virus.

          The question is whether this new attitude toward mass transit and other forms of sharing rides will be permanent. For sure, it will be years before full trust is restored and folks again board trains and buses without worry.

          Which means no one should spend new money on transit until it all shakes out and we learn whether riders will eventually return or continue to shun buses and trains.

     -30-       
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net

TRUMP’S ‘WAR’ ON CALIFORNIA SPREADS; LEGALITY IN DOUBT

CALIFORNIA FOCUS
FOR RELEASE: FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2020, OR THEREAFTER

BY THOMAS D. ELIAS
     “TRUMP’S ‘WAR’ ON CALIFORNIA SPREADS; LEGALITY IN DOUBT”

          President Trump’s more than three-year administrative war on California has now morphed beyond his many attempts to exact revenge upon this state, which provided the margin by which he lost the popular vote in 2016, when the Electoral College made him America’s second minority president out of the last three.

          Not that Trump’s moves against California are trivial: He’s attempted to stop the Golden State’s long-running battle against smog, he’s tried end runs around clean water laws, he’s attempted to end sanctuary city laws passed by many cities, and much more.

          While most of what he’s done against California has been by unilateral decree in the form of executive orders that a new president could countermand, it has usually looked legal. When courts ordered him to stand down, he did.

          That was before he began feeling desperate in the face of polls showing him far behind as the November election approaches.

 Just last month, the U.S. Supreme Court said Trump cannot simply end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program begun under ex-President Barack Obama. The program allows undocumented immigrants brought here as small children to remain in America, where they grew up.

          But Trump wants them deported quickly to countries they have never known. Never mind that more than 10,000 such folks now work on health care front lines fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

          Upon learning of the court ruling, Trump promised to find another way. He soon did. Ignoring the court, he ordered federal officials to stop issuing DACA documents. So much for court orders, which all American presidents have respected, regardless how they felt about those orders.

          That was only a start. Seeing continued demonstrations against police brutality in cities around the nation, Trump next sent a variety of federal agents working for agencies like the Border Patrol and Customs Enforcement into Portland, Ore., to tear gas some of them and arrest some without specifying why, saying they are “violent anarchists.” His surrogates suggest many belong to the loose, almost mythical Antifa, billed as an anarchist organization – an oxymoron when anarchists by definition resist organization.

          Trump next sent hundreds of agents to Seattle, Chicago and Albuquerque, saying they would act against crime and gang shootings. Every state and local official in those places objected, until Chicago’s mayor relented before the inevitable. Trump also threatened to send forces to Oakland, Philadelphia and New York.

          Of course, the Constitution gives him no such authority short of declaring a national emergency, for which he has no grounds. The 10^th Amendment, part of the Bill of Rights, says the federal government can only deal in specifically authorized fields. Presidents have never had authority to get involved in local law enforcement without local requests. Trump completely disregarded this legality. Maybe that’s why he sent Homeland Security forces rather than the military, which is trained to disobey illegal orders.

          Next, he told the Census Bureau to act illegally in its every-ten-year head count, which determines how many congressional representatives each state will have and often controls federal domestic spending, where states frequently get money in proportion to their population.

          The Constitution charters the Census to count “the whole number of free (meaning non-enslaved) persons” in the land, never mentioning anyone’s legal standing. No other president ever challenged this basic law. But Trump, posing as a “law and order” candidate, has now apparently broken a law he swore to defend.

He did this by ordering the Census, run by the Commerce Department he controls, not to count undocumented immigrants.

          Because an earlier Supreme Court decision forbade placing a citizenship question on the Census questionnaire, no one knows how to identify illegals en masse. That’s unlikely to keep Trump appointees from making a guess, then trying to report it as a fact. This, after all, is the administration that invented the concept of “alternative facts.”

          The timing of the Census means a new president could rescind that order, but first Trump would have to leave office.

          All of which means this president has lately gone far beyond his long-running campaign against California, now warring on fundamental American precepts under the guise of law and order.

         
-30-
    Email Thomas Elias at tdelias@aol.com. His book, "The Burzynski Breakthrough, The Most Promising Cancer Treatment and the Government’s Campaign to Squelch It" is now available in a soft cover fourth edition. For more Elias columns, visit www.californiafocus.net