First Asian American sheriff in California vows to protect immigrants from Trump policies

SAN FRANCISCO — The first Asian American sheriff in California history walks over to a closet inside his City Hall office to stow some equipment, then takes a seat behind a large desk. He extends his arms, fingers interlaced.

“So,” Sheriff Paul Miyamoto says casually as if to imply that he isn’t sure what all the fuss is about. “What would you like to know?”

On the one hand, as the son of a Japanese American father and a Chinese American mother and the husband of a Filipino American wife, Miyamoto is well aware his election represents an inspirational milestone for a new generation of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, a broad group often referred to by the acronym AAPI.

On the other, as a 23-year department veteran who was sworn in last month as San Francisco County’s 37th sheriff in 150 years, Miyamoto sees his rise up through the ranks simply as a result of hard work in his beloved profession.

“Being the first sheriff of my heritage is humbling, and it gives me a sense of responsibility to be a role model,” he says. “But what I’d really like is for us to never have any more firsts. I’d like us to be on an equal footing. Hopefully, I’m a step on that path.”

The election of a new sheriff with a familiar immigrant backstory has particular resonance these days.

President Donald Trump and his administration have not only taken a hard stance toward immigration broadly but also have clashed with so-called sanctuary cities such as San Francisco, where lawmakers and advocates have pledged to resist the sweeps of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on the grounds that they are unconstitutional.

Miyamoto says he is foremost a law enforcement officer duty-bound to deliver on the civic promise of public safety. But he says he is also a proud product of a city that has a long history of helping immigrants and people of color, and is eager to balance both.

"San Francisco is very forward-thinking in terms of social justice issues, including the clashes with the federal government these days," he says. "My predecessors have set the foundation in this office, which means reflecting the values we have here. Supporting sanctuary cities and the like, and ensuring people are equal in terms of how they're treated."

Miyamoto says when considering "who we hand over to the federal government," he won't hesitate to take a hard look at anyone with a violent history. But he refuses to let his deputies act in a manner that demonizes people because of their ethnicity.

“I don’t want to see anything happen in line with what happened to my own family and my cultural group,” he says, referring to the internment during World War II of 120,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry largely out west. “I don’t want to see citizens of our community behind barbed wire simply because of who they are.”

That attitude is bound to be a boon to San Francisco's immigrant community, says Bill Ong Hing, professor at the University of San Francisco School of Law and director of the Immigration and Deportation Defense Clinic, which represents unaccompanied immigrant children as well as families who are in removal proceedings.

Read more https://www.yahoo.com/news/first-asian-american-sheriff-california-191245176.html

Trump Is Already Making Stuff Up About Voter Fraud

Bloomberg Opinion) – While candidates jostle for advantage in the Democratic presidential primary, and the news media play the odds, President Donald Trump already knows the identity of his opponent. Indeed, his campaign, with the full support of the Republican Party, is already waging a vigorous crusade to destroy his opposition. No, it’s not Joe Biden, who inspired Trump’s shakedown of Ukraine. Trump’s gunning for bigger game: democracy itself.

The Democratic Party is not prepared for this war. The news media is still struggling, and often failing, to adapt to demagogy. And the electorate, at least the non-MAGA majority invested in preserving rule of law, has limited tools for fighting back. As election law expert Richard Hasen notes in “Election Meltdown,” his alarming new book about the threats to U.S. elections, mitigating risk is “especially challenging when one of the greatest risks to the integrity of the process comes from the sitting president of the United States.”

The assault will have multiple fronts. Trump’s disinformation campaign is, obviously, under way, to the extent that there is any meaningful distinction between the words “Trump” and “disinformation.” The news media, like many Americans, have become acculturated to Trump’s lies and to the lies of his accomplices and defenders. The Washington Post keeps a running tab, now well above 16,000, of the president’s public falsehoods. Does anyone notice anymore?

Democracy takes place largely in public communication; it can’t function without reasonably honest discourse. Trump’s daily dose of propaganda and smears badly corrodes an already weakened democratic faith, rendering it less resistant to his subsequent assaults.

As November approaches, Trump plans to complement corrosive rhetoric with concrete action. In the words of one Trump campaign official, the GOP will be playing “offense” on Election Day. This will entail something more than Trump’s efforts in 2016. Then, Trump closed out his campaign with sinister threats about voter fraud. In an October, 2016 rally in Pennsylvania, he told his MAGA followers: “So important that you watch other communities, because we don’t want this election stolen from us.” In Akron, Ohio, he told a MAGA crowd that they needed to “watch” the vote.

“And when I say ‘watch,’ you know what I’m talking about,” Trump continued. “Right? You know what I’m talking about.” His white followers knew.

Trump made preposterous claims of fraud after his 2016 victory. Just this week, Trump was in New Hampshire falsely claiming that he lost the state in 2016 due to fraud. He is sure to yell “fraud” if he loses in November. Then what?

Hasen considers other potential nightmare scenarios, including an Election Day power outage in a Democratic city in a swing state, sabotaging the Democratic vote. “As much as Democrats worry that Trump won’t concede a close election if he can raise unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud,” Hasen wrote, “what will Democrats do if they are on the losing side of a close election that they can credibly claim was marked by efforts of voter suppression?”

The choice in that case is to accept that the election was stolen, and accept Trump’s ensuing assault on democracy and rule of law, or plunge the nation into an electoral civil war with no clear endgame. The terminus of any legal process is a very Trumpy Supreme Court.

Despite Republican obstruction of election-security legislation, U.S. election administrators can take steps to protect the 2020 election from foreign hacking; many have done so. Social media companies, if they accept their responsibility to the democratic culture that helped nurture them, could curb Russian bots and curtail propaganda.

To protect American democracy from Trump himself, however, is a more demanding task. It will require an unflinching news media meeting an authoritarian challenge that it has thus far largely failed to acknowledge. It will require a vigilant electorate, mindful of its own democratic imagination, prepared to take public action not just on the day of the vote but after. And it may well require a hefty helping of luck. America used to have an abundant supply. Let’s hope it hasn’t run out.

Read more https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-already-making-stuff-voter-130014515.html