U.S. Citizens of Latinx heritage are having their passports taken from them, throwing their citizenship into question

The Washington Post reported on Wednesday that "hundreds, possible thousands" of Latinx U.S. citizens who live along the Texas/Mexico border are being denied passports, or even having their passports taken away and being sent to immigration detention facilities under the Trump administration.  The claim is that these individuals are using fraudulent birth certificates and are therefore not actually U.S. citizens.  The claim stems from a 4-year investigation in the mid-'90's when at least 15 midwives in the Brownsville area of Texas (right on the Texas/Mexico border) were found to have provided U.S. birth certificates to babies actually born in Mexico, in exchange for a fee that ranged from the hundreds to the thousands of dollars.  At the time, investigators were able to locate up to 900 fraudulent birth certificates, but as the same midwives also delivered babies who were actually born in the U.S., determining which was real and which was fake was at times difficult.  It was because of this situation that passports were regularly denied under both the George W. Bush and Obama administrations to people born in this region who were delivered by midwives.  However a 2009 ACLU legal case stopped the practice.  It has begun again, however, as President Trump seeks to crack down on all immigration into the U.S. by those coming from south of the border.

What should the federal government do to decide whether or not to issue a passport when there is a question about the validity of the birth certificate? Do you think this should be an issue?

Manafort declared guilty and Cohen plead guilty - two more of President Trump's circle go to jail.

Tuesday was a watershed day for those following the Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. elections. In Alexandria, VA Donald Trump's former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was convicted of 8 out of the 18 counts of financial fraud for which he was on trial while in Manhattan, NY Michael Cohen, Donald Trump's personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to eight felony counts of campaign finance violations.  Both cases involve men very close to President Trump.  If there was collusion with Russia, Paul Manafort is someone with the connections in Russia to have made that happen.  Michael Cohen's guilty plea contradicts everything the President has hitherto said about his own involvement in paying hush money to the two women who have claimed to have had affairs with him.  Why was Michael Cohen's paying money to these two women a crime?  According to The Atlantic, "Federal law limits donations to campaigns to $2,700 per election.  Cohen's payments to the women qualify as in-kind donations, and far exceed those limits." These two courtroom events bring the investigation closer to President Trump.  However, as it is long-standing Justice Department policy to not indict a sitting president, it will take a Senate impeachment and removal from office, or else the end of Trump's term for us to know just how close.

Supreme Court Nominee Brett Kavanaugh has written that he does not believe that sitting presidents should be investigated, that the investigation should wait until the president is no longer in office so that the president is not distracted from the business of governing.  The jail sentences of Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort would not have happened without the Mueller investigation.  Think beyond our current president, do you think that presidents should be investigated while in office?  How are  the American people benefitted by your position?

Non-discloure Agreements in the White House

Another former employee of the White House wrote a book.  Not exactly news.  Nor is the revelation that the Trump White House requires all employees to sign a nondisclosure agreement (NDA) that is not considered enforceable by the legal community - that was reported by the Washington Post in the spring of 2017.  So why is the fact that Donald Trump's team had Omarose Manigault-Newman sign a nondisclosure agreement all over the news?  First of all, after months of White House officials neither confirming nor denying that employees are required to sign NDAs, Pres. Trump confirmed the existence of the NDAs by tweeting "Wacky Omarosa already has a fully signed Non-Disclosure Agreement!" This is a huge deal.  According to legal experts interviewed by the Washington Post, once Ms. Manigault-Newman began working for the federal government her NDA became unconstitutional as it violated the Constitution's protection of freedom of speech.  Past Supreme Court cases have stated that the government cannot censor speech in advance (with the exception being classified information).  The last part of the story is that Sarah Huckabee Sanders, White House Press Secretary, in a press conference with reporters, insisted that the private sector non-disclosure agreements were standard federal policy, conflating the NDAs with Classified Nondisclosure Agreements [form 312] that anyone with a classified security clearance has to sign.   Classified Nondisclosure Agreements only apply to the classified information which the signee has viewed, whereas private sector nondisclosure agreements apply to all aspects of the signee's interactions with the subject of the NDA.

The question is, while NDAs are not considered enforceable once you are a federal employee, should they even be allowed on the campaign trail?  Should someone who is working on a campaign for federal office be obliged to sign a non-disclosure agreement?  Should what happens on the campaign trail be kept secret from voters?