Spare me the make believe indignation from Republicans about the Afghanistan evacuation.
1/ Here's the story of the relentless Republican effort (led by President Trump) to undermine and destroy the programs that help bring Afghan refugees to the U.S.
2/ Over the last decade, Republicans have pushed to intentionally create a massive backlog in the Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) program - the one we use to bring Afghan partners to America, by putting onerous conditions on the applications.
3/ In 2016, Obama asked to increase the cap for the SIV program. Senate Republicans objected.
Then, the Trump Admin started slowing down SIV processing. When Biden took over, there were 10,000 unfilled visas, despite 17,000 applications in the pipeline.
4/ This dovetailed with the assault by Trump and Republicans to destroy other refugee programs that bring Afghans to the U.S..
Obama admitted over 2,700 Afghan refugees. Trump admitted 400, bc he had dismantled the refugee system. Biden had to rebuild it.
5/ And today Trump Republicans are making it clear they will oppose bringing more Afghan refugees to the U.S..
Steven Miller: "Resettling [Afghans] in America is not about solving a humanitarian crisis; it’s about accomplishing an ideological objective to change America,”
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5 years ago today, our Capitol was attacked. A year ago, Trump pardoned the worst attackers as a reward for their violence.
You should know them.
1/ Let's start with David Dempsey - he was out for blood: pepper sprayed officers, stomped on their heads, beat them with poles.
2/ This is DJ Rodriguez. He posted: "There will be blood. Welcome to the revolution". He beat officers with a wooden pole, tasered an officer in the neck causing a heart attack.
3/ Here is Thomas Webster. He led the charge to break into the Capitol. He beat officers with a metal pole, held one down so rioters could brutally kick him.
2/ In a classified briefing to Senators this week (that contained scant secret info), Sec. Rubio and Sec. Hegseth told us that the military strikes in the Caribbean were a counter-drug mission, NOT designed to overthrow the Venezuelan government. thehill.com/homenews/senat…
3/ That made no sense. The drug killing Americans is fentanyl. There's NO fentanyl coming from Venezuela. Venezuela exports cocaine and 90% of it goes to Europe, not the U.S.!
2/ We funded Pennsylvania's student-led Project 26. They just hosted a day of action and food drive at 6 college campuses encouraging students to contact their members of Congress to ask them to lower their costs and revive Trump's dead economy.
3/ This year @DownHome_NC - a group we funded to organize rural voters in North Carolina against Trump's cost increases - reached 52,676 (WOW!) voters no one else was able to reach across North Carolina, mainly by knocking on people's doors. downhomenc.org
2/ First, let's remember how this started. Trump rolls into office proclaiming that China is stealing U.S. manufacturing jobs and he's going to put tariffs on Chinese goods in order to force China to play by trade rules and bring jobs back to the U.S..
3/ So where were are we at going into the Trump-Xi meeting? The U.S. put tariffs on Chinese goods. The cost to an Americans family of Trump's tariffs have been about $3800 so far this year. Just devastating.
Trump's supporters say we call his policies "racist" too casually.
But let me tell the story of a new policy - about to be unveiled - that is racist on its face.
1/ A short thread on Trump's reported new "whites only" refugee policy. It's truly vile. nytimes.com/2025/10/15/us/…
2/ We began formally accepting refugees in the aftermath of WWII. Since then, we’ve provided lifesaving shelter for millions displaced by persecution and war, many targeted for their faith.
In modern times, President Reagan saved the most refugees, admitting around 210,000.
3/ Trump plans to drastically slash the numbers of refugees admitted.
But it gets worse. The new policy reportedly will effectively allow only white foreigners to qualify. If you're not white, you get turned away.