As you know, President Trump made opposition to "free" trade a central part of his platform -- but given his appointment of "free" trade-loving banksters to his cabinet, his own refusal to scuttle the "investor-state tribunal" in NAFTA, and his Commerce Secretary's odd compulsion with remaking NAFTA into something more like the hated Trans-Pacific "Partnership," you have every reason to believe Mr. Trump is playing us. I mean, if you get us out of the TPP but make all your trade deals like the TPP, what have you accomplished? Besides the appeasement of Our Glorious Elites, I mean? Of course, what he wants matters far less than what we want, so the Sierra Club helps you tell Congress to make any future trade deals work for people, not for polluters and corporatists. And you can take heart that even a conservative's sense of balance between government regulation and pollution isn't the same as yours, that a conservative would still hate having our rule of law upended in courts not created by our Constitution.
Meanwhile, actual conservative Radley Balko at the Washington Post thoroughly demolishes Attorney General Sessions's decision to ramp up asset forfeiture. Long story short: some state laws forbid asset forfeiture except in case of conviction, but our federal government helps local law enforcement entities turn local cases into federal ones, and thus evade those state laws -- while still getting the lion's share of any assets seized by the feds! This effort, in other words, exists solely to let localities unconstitutionally seize money and property of folks accused, not convicted of a crime -- and the Obama Administration was winding it down in states with laws against asset forfeiture, but naturally the "states' rights" "law-and-order" Trump Administration has scrapped that. But you can do something about it, by letting the Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell Congress to pass H.R. 1555/S. 642, the FAIR Act, which would reform asset forfeiture at the federal level.
Finally, as you know, the House has passed three amendments to its defense authorization bill that would restrict our government's ability to help the Saudis fight their war against Yemen, so Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell the Senate to vote the same way the House did. As you know, the Senate gets to write its own defense authorization bill, and they'll no doubt puff up their chests and talk about how they're the Greatest Deliberative Body in the History of the Universe and they'll castigate the House for being so irresponsible as to hamstring the President's ability to "protect the country." But, frankly, helping the Saudis (oh, and al-Qaeda, by the way -- yes, they're also on the Saudis' side here) fight a war against Yemen that has caused a cholera outbreak and nearly caused a famine is itself irresponsible. And can you figure out how helping the Saudi war against Yemen "protects America"? I can figure out one way it doesn't -- the Houthi rebels, a Saudi target, have proven to be pretty good ISIS killers.
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