Update, November 1, 2:04 pm:

Political science professor Thomas Pepinski writes in October 31 POLITICO Magazine that the fight over Trump's impeachment is really a battle over "Regime Cleavage", i.e. whether America should remain a democracy or not.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/10/31/regime-cleavage-229895

The same could be said about the battle over Trump's authoritarian, white nationalist, immigration agenda

Update, October 31, 8:57 pm:

One thing that might be said about Donald Trump is that he is helping to revive an interest in the classic languages that were commonly taught in America's school system when I studied Latin (and a smattering of Greek) in high school more years ago than I care to reveal. The headlines are now screaming at Trump in Latin because of his dealings with Ukraine: Quid Pro Quo! Quid Pro Quo!

My high school Latin teacher,"Porky" Benton, would no doubt be proud. But I would like to suggest that if we turn our attention away from Ukraine to Trump's bigoted immigration agenda, aimed at taking immigration back to the days beginning almost 100 years ago when US legal immigration was in fact limited to people from Trump's preferred "Countries like Norway", then there are three other Latin words that would be even more appropriate for America's 45th president:

iusque datum sceleri ("infamy made into law") - see below.

These words are from an epic by the young poet Lucan (Marcus Annaeus Lucanus) writing in the 1st century AD, about the Roman Republic's civil wars of the previous century which ultimately let to the destruction of the Republic and establishment of autocracy and tyranny, just as America is threatened with today in the Trump, Miller-Barr-Cuccinelli Europe-only immigration era.

There could be no better description than Lucan's of the Trump-Miller regime's attempt to make racism and bigotry against non-European immigrants into the supreme law of the land in America. The attempt to ban immigrants who do not have or cannot afford expensive private health insurance, described below, together with the openly racist Public Charge rule, are only the latest two examples of iusque datum sceleri under Donald Trump.

Lucan did not live past his youth. He was ordered to commit suicide by the emperor Nero st the age of 26.

My earlier comments follow below:

Two October 30 news items provide further evidence that the Democratic leaders may be barking up the wrong tree by focusing their impeachment investigations on Trump's dealings with the government of a country that most Americans would be hard put to find on a map, in an alleged effort to make it harder for an arguably weak and flawed candidate such as Joe Biden to be nominated to run against him, so that Trump might have to run against some other, stronger opponent next year.

However, since this not a political forecasting comment, I will go right to the main point, which is that no matter how the Democrats' Ukraine investigations turn out, there are far more compelling and urgent grounds for impeaching Donald Trump that the Democrats are ignoring. These grounds are Trump's ongoing and egregious attempts to skirt or defy the law in an effort to establish white nationalist anti-immigrant bigotry as America's official policy.

Trump's latest attempts to give a false veneer of legality to a lawless, bigoted immigration agenda (or as the Roman poet Lucan wrote 2,000 years ago: iusque datum sceleri - "infamy made into law") are shown in two recent actions. The first is is recently announced executive order barring applicants from receiving immigrant (permanent resident) visas unless they can show that they have expensive private medical insurance coverage or can afford to pay unspecified, vaguely defined and highly speculative future medical expenses after entering the United States.

As shown in a lawsuit against this proclamation filed in an Oregon federal district court on October 30 by AILA and other public interest groups, this proclamation is obviously targeted against family-based and diversity based immigrants, most of whom come form nonwhite parts of the world.

The Hill quotes from the complaint in the lawsuit as follows:

"Suspending the entry of potentially two thirds of all legal immigrants to the United States, the Proclamation represents an unprecedented abuse of power...

The Proclamation like the recent Public Charge rule, attempts to radically rewrite Congressional decision about which immigrants may enter the country based on wealth considerations."

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/468205/lawsuit-challenges-white-house-policy-requiring-migrant-health-insurance

Trump's proclamation, which was issued under INA Section 212(f), the same broad section which he used as the bases for his Muslim Ban orders, does more than discriminate on the basis of wealth. It is obviously intended as a racially motivated measure to eliminate most legal family and diversity immigration, which Trump has repeatedly attacked, and which have key factors in the admission of tens of millions of legal immigrants from nonwhite parts of the world.

Along with Trump's Public Charge rule also reportedly authored by his chief anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller, and which has now been temporarily blocked by the federal courts, Trumps' medical insurance proclamation amounts to the most drastic attempt yer to undo a half century of racial equality in immigration admissions mandated by the 1965 immigration reform law and to take America back to the whites only immigration act of 1924, almost 100 hears ago - again without the permission of Congress.

If allegedly forcing a foreign government to help him did up dirt on Joe Biden is grounds for impeachment, isn't trying to bar hundreds of thousands of legal immigrants from around the world from coming to the US because of their race, and doing so without asking Congress as required by our Constitution, far more compelling grounds for impeaching Donald Trump ad removing him from office?

But this may be only one of Trump's two latest abuses of power in support of a white only immigration agenda. POLITICO also reports on October 30, that Trump is considering using a strategy to run abound a succession law which makes him ineligible in order to appoint Ken Cuccinelli, current USCIS chief and one of Trump's most vocal anti-immigrant cheerleaders, to as DHS chief.

The possibility that Trump may attempt to evade this law by appointing Cuccinelli reportedly has some Congressional leaders in Trump's own party worried.

https://www.politico.com/news/2019/10/30/grassley-cuccinelli-homeland-security-department-061665

The danger to America's immigration system, and our democracy, is underscored by the fact that Cuccinelli, like Trump, is on record as wanting to abolish birthright US citizenship.

Under Trump's (and Miller's) two latest power grabs without Congressional consent, hundreds of thousand of legal immigrants could be barred from America because of their race.

If Trump is not impeached and removed from office, and wins a second term, millions of American could lose their citizenship, also because of their race, with Cuccinelli's active support and intervention. This could happen if Trump is allowed to circumvent the succession law referred to in the POLITICO report and appoint Cuccinelli as acting DHS director.

When will the Democratic leadership wake up to the acute and urgent danger to America and its democracy posed by Trump's racially motivated anti-immigrant agenda, and do everything in their power to put a stop to this through the Constitutional power of impeachment?


Roger Algase
Attorney at Law