You could be stunned to be taught that the Home Oversight Committee — which grilled Denver Mayor Mike Johnston and three different mayors about their so-called “sanctuary metropolis” insurance policies — shouldn’t be actually fascinated about overseeing something.
However the Republican-controlled committee was fascinated about conducting one thing very very similar to a present trial, which, uh, co-starred Lauren Boebert — who, with no proof, accused Johnston of delivery migrants to Aurora — within the function of one in every of a number of bumbling prosecutors.
One GOP member of the committee, Anna Paulina Luna, R-Florida, did say she would ask Donald Trump’s legal professional common, Pam Bondi, to research Johnston and the three different mayors.
Luna added that she wasn’t attempting to “bully” the mayors, which, on the planet of poker, they name a inform. After all she was attempting to bully and intimidate them.
She stated they need to be investigated for breaking a federal legislation by “harboring unlawful aliens.” It’s an absurd cost on its face, in fact, however when your chief has been convicted of 32 felonies, just about something goes.
In the meantime, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, cited a remark Johnston as soon as made about being ready to go to jail if essential to stop ICE or associated companies from raiding Denver colleges and church buildings, which a Trump govt order now permits.
“One in all you stated you have been prepared to go to jail,” Higgins stated. “We’d provide you with that chance.”
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No surprise Johnston and the opposite mayors discovered it prudent to lawyer up.
But it surely doesn’t require a lot investigation to determine the committee has little interest in overseeing something vital.
All you must know is that the committee has refused, up to now and possibly ceaselessly, to subpoena Elon Musk and his minor-league DOGERS about their chainsaw rampage via the federal authorities — firing employees at will, shedding others, freezing already congressionally accredited funds, hacking into everybody’s Social Safety info and different knowledge meant to be personal, whereas destroying federal departments.
They will’t even get a decision handed for the committee to see the paperwork pertaining to those that have been fired, each willy and nilly, by Musk and his minions.
Let’s be trustworthy: There isn’t a one in America who requires extra oversight than Musk, who, in really massive information, was reined in — a minimum of a little bit — by Trump at a chaotic cupboard assembly Thursday.
When Musk and Secretary of State Marco Rubio engaged in some severe, uh, debate about firing folks. Trump really sided with Rubio and different cupboard members who additionally argued with Musk. In accordance with reviews, Trump stated staffing choices ought to finally be within the fingers of division secretaries and that Musk ought to play an advisory function.
However then — shock! — a couple of hours later, Trump instructed reporters this about Musk and cupboard secretaries: “Elon and the group are going to be watching them. If they’ll reduce, it’s higher. And in the event that they don’t reduce, then Elon will do the reducing.”
Are you confused? After all you’re, until you perceive that chaos is the purpose right here. I imply, across the similar time, Trump was defending Russia’s newest main missile assault on Ukraine, which got here after Trump stopped supplying intelligence and army support to Ukraine. Solely hours earlier, he had threatened Russia with “giant scale sanctions” due to the assault.
In a useless try to determine precisely what Trump and Musk and DOGE are literally as much as, the rating member of the oversight committee, Kweisi Mfume, D-Maryland, has launched two resolutions that will require the Trump administration to show over all data about Musk’s “purge” of non-partisan workers and, in keeping with an accompanying reality sheet, his set up of “political loyalists prepared to show a blind eye to corruption and grift.”
Would corruption and grift enabled by Musk’s workforce be price investigating? How in regards to the many potential conflicts of pursuits by the richest particular person on the planet?
For that matter, how in regards to the DEI-related purge, which might hardly be extra brazenly racist? Simply ask the Black chair of the Joint Chiefs of Employees and the feminine Secretary of the Navy who have been fired for, nicely, you understand.
However overseeing Musk would require offending Trump, so we all know that could be a lifeless letter in present Republican politics. And so the resolutions have gone nowhere.
However grilling mayors about following their cities’ lawfully handed insurance policies regarding immigration is completely high-quality. Not solely was Boebert, who’s a member of the committee, available, however so was each Colorado GOP congressperson, together with those that aren’t on the committee. In equity, it needs to be famous that Rep. Jeff Hurd, who took Boebert’s seat within the third Congressional District, really requested a couple of affordable questions of Johnston. The others, not a lot.
But when the committee had wished to get to the center of the overwhelming numbers of migrants who’ve landed in Denver over the previous few years — which they clearly didn’t — they might have known as on Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott, who, in a transparent provocation, bused most of the practically 42,000 migrants arriving in Denver.
When members requested Johnston, a Democrat, why he hadn’t requested about immigration standing of those that got here to Denver, the identical query may need been requested of Abbott, a Republican, who shipped them from Texas to Denver and different blue cities in blue states.
However, no.
The simple reply for Johnston was that it’s in opposition to metropolis legislation to ask about immigration standing. And it’s in opposition to state legislation for native legislation enforcement to maintain immigrants in jail in order that ICE would have time to choose them up. Denver does, nonetheless, inform ICE in regards to the time of an undocumented migrant’s launch if it has issued a warrant for somebody in custody.
And, as Johnston instructed the committee, it’s really the function of Congress, not cities, to go immigration coverage. However why go laws when Trump can merely rule by fiat and save them the difficulty?
I’d say the listening to most likely helped Johnston — and never his GOP persecutors. Johnston cited scripture about taking in these in want, and he talked particularly about what Denver’s function needs to be when dealing with the query of “what’s going to you do with a mother and two children dropped on the streets of our metropolis with no heat garments, with no meals and no place to remain?”
Denver did what it ought to have accomplished — and what, I’m fairly certain, most Denverites wished the mayor to do. And now the city-funded shelters are closed and Johnston’s dealing with of the disaster — when as many as 10 buses a day have been arriving in the lifeless of winter with youngsters typically sporting sandals — was mainly successful.
Within the listening to, Johnston pointedly remained calm regardless of all of the provocative questioning, whereas saying that Denver has by no means known as itself a sanctuary metropolis. Perhaps not. That’s mainly a matter of semantics. However the semantics are literally vital as a result of Trump is threatening to withhold federal funds from what he considers sanctuary cities.
I’m mainly high-quality with the sanctuary description of a metropolis that Johnston calls “welcoming.” Within the Hebrew Bible, sanctuary means a “sacred place.”
I wouldn’t name Denver precisely sacred. However I’d say that Johnston wished to do the suitable factor in regards to the needy migrants shipped to Denver for Abbott’s political achieve.
And that the Home Oversight Committee was solely in attempting — and, I hope, failing — to intimidate him and the opposite mayors for the nice crime of providing assist, and even sanctuary, to these in determined want.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too a few years to rely. He has lined Dr. J, 4 presidential inaugurations, six nationwide conventions and numerous brain-numbing speeches within the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Join Mike’s e-newsletter.
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