What are the chances that Chuck Todd will spend spend less time defending this administration, while it actually argues in the courts for it’s concentration camps?
The Trump administration argued in front of a Ninth Circuit panel Tuesday that the government is not required to give soap or toothbrushes to children apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border and can have them sleep on concrete floors in frigid, overcrowded cells, despite a settlement agreement that requires detainees be kept in “safe and sanitary” facilities.
Lawyers for the Trump administration were arguing that in 2017 that federal court Judge Dolly Gee incorrectly interpreted the 1997 Flores Settlement Agreement and they shouldn’t be required to provide children with toothbrushes, soap and beds to sleep on.
You read that correctly. That’s the viciousness we’re dealing with here.
Testimony from plaintiffs in the court document describes detainment conditions where children were not able to bathe or brush their teeth. Despite Flores stipulations that food provided “must be in edible condition (not frozen, expired, or spoiled),” one plaintiff, Karina V., described how “she and her three-year-old were offered a ‘sandwich with frozen ham’ with ‘a kind of ice under the bread’ as the first meal,” in court records.
The 9th Circuit judges couldn’t believe what they were hearing from this administration.
“You’re really going to stand up and tell us that being able to sleep isn’t a question of safe and sanitary conditions?'” U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon asked the Justice Department’s Sarah Fabian Tuesday.
…..
“Are you arguing seriously that you do not read the agreement as requiring you to do anything other than what I just described: cold all night long, lights on all night long, sleeping on concrete and you’ve got an aluminum foil blanket?” Fletcher asked Fabian. “I find that inconceivable that the government would say that that is safe and sanitary.”
I’m so tired of media hacks like Chuck Todd making excuses for Donald Trump’s deplorable actions. Instead of spending time doing the real work of journalism—they make hyperbolic statements to get attention, as this administration argues in the courts that children sleeping on freezing concrete floors, without soap to clean their bodies and toothbrushes to brush their teeth is all perfectly normal. Disgusting.