The Vince Coglianese Show

INTERVIEW - Ken Cuccinelli - acting Director of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services

CATCH AND RELEASE: Department of Homeland Security’s announcement that it will end “catch and release” for Central American families arriving at the border. TUCSON — Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced on Monday the end of the practice his department refers to as "catch and release," with changes coming as early as next week.  The term refers to the process in which the federal government must release migrant families, mostly from Central America, apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border into the interior of the United States to begin the process of seeking asylum. That process can take years, given the massive backlogs in the country's immigration courts.  McAleenan made the announcement during prepared remarks before the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington, D.C. "(The Department of Homeland Security) will no longer be releasing family units from Border Patrol Stations into the interior," McAleenan said. "This means that for family units, the largest demographic by volume arriving at the border this year, the court-mandated practice of 'catch and release' due to the inability of DHS to complete immigration proceedings with families detained together in custody--will have been mitigated."

HONDURAS AGREEMENT:  U.S. signed an agreement with Honduras to expand bilateral initiatives to confront irregular migration through Central America. This is part of the Trump Administration’s whole-of-government approach to address the Southwest border crisis. The Trump administration announced a migration deal Wednesday that will give U.S. immigration authorities the ability to send asylum seekers from the border to Honduras, one of the most violent and unstable nations in the world. Department of Homeland Security officials reached the accord with the government of President Juan Orlando Hernández, who is embroiled in allegations of government corruption and charges that he and others have been operating the nation as a criminal enterprise — Hernández has been named as a co-conspirator in a major U.S. drug trafficking case.

REFUGEE ADMISSIONS:  Refugee Admissions Part of Overall Humanitarian Relief Efforts says USCIS Acting Director Cuccinelli.  WASHINGTON—U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Acting Director Ken Cuccinelli today issued the following statement on the Trump Administration’s proposed refugee ceiling for Fiscal Year (FY) 2020. “The United States is the most generous country in the world when it comes to humanitarian relief efforts, and we are committed to maintaining that leadership position. In keeping with that goal, the President has proposed that we resettle 18,000 refugees from around the world, which will be in addition to the hundreds of thousands of asylum applicants we will process. This domestic support of refugees and asylum seekers is in addition to our commitment of billions of dollars to support refugees and other displaced people around the world in accordance with the President’s 2017 National Security Strategy.

Trump administration sets lowest cap on refugee admissions in four decades. Again. The State Department said it was slashing the number of refugees allowed into the U.S. from 30,000 ⁠— already a historic low ⁠— to 18,000. (NBC News) - President Donald Trump's administration has once again set the lowest cap on refugee admissions in the program's almost 40 year history, allowing fewer than 20,000 resettlements. The administration will only propose resettlements for 18,000 of the 368,000 asylum and refugee applications it expects to field in the upcoming fiscal year, the Department of State said in a press release Thursday. The proposed number is a fraction of the 85,000 cap proposed by former president Barack Obama in 2016.

INTERVIEW - Dan Bongino - author of new book “Exonerated: The Failed Takedown of President Donald Trump by the Swamp”

ABOUT BOOK: "Exonerated: The Failed Takedown of President Donald Trump by the Swamp": An explosive, whistle-blowing exposé, Exonerated: The Failed Takedown of Donald Trump by the Swamp reveals how Deep State actors relied on a cynical plug-and-play template to manufacture the now-discredited Russiagate scandal. With the cutting analysis and insight he exhibited in his blockbuster bestseller Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump, Fox News contributor Bongino exposes who masterminded the dangerous playbook to take down Trump, their motives, and how a plan filled with faked allegations backfired—forcing investigators to up the ante and hide their missteps and half-truths in a desperate effort to prove a collusion case that never happened. The result? The misguided multimillion Mueller investigation that tore the nation apart, tried to destabilize the presidency and led, as the world now knows, to nowhere!

LINK TO BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Exonerated-Failed-Takedown-President-Donald/dp/1642933414

INTERVIEW - Dr. Chris Rodriguez- Director of the DC Homeland Security and Emergency Management (HSEMA)

Climate protesters plan to shut down DC streets again Friday: Here's where, when, and why. WASHINGTON (WJLA) — After jamming key intersections in DC on Monday, a coalition of groups plans to shut down streets again for two hours on Friday morning, demanding action on climate change. The protests are timed as part a week of international actions including strikes on six continents last Friday and the United Nations Climate Action Summit in New York. Shutdown DC said 22 different groups blocked 22 intersections in Washington on Monday “as part of the global youth climate strike week of action.” Shutdown DC posted a map on Facebook showing where they plan to protest and block intersections. Shutdown DC is calling for protesters to meet at 7 a.m. Friday at McPherson Square Park in downtown. The demonstrations are planned to last until 9 a.m. The groups are also demanding climate justice, noting that climate change disproportionately hurts vulnerable communities, ethnic groups, and nations more than wealthier ones. After Monday’s street blockages, Black Lives Matter DC released a statement alleging that police treated their demonstrators more harshly than they did other groups in other locations. DC Police and U.S. Capitol Police arrested 32 people in the demonstrations Monday.

INTERVIEW - Lori Graf, CEO, Maryland Building Industry Association

A solar panel for every house? Md. suburb to consider California-style mandate.   (Washington Post) - Solar panel mandates, a dramatic and hotly debated environmental policy with roots on the West Coast, could be coming to a suburb of the nation’s capital. Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) plans to introduce legislation requiring all new single-family houses — and possibly apartments and commercial buildings — to include rooftop solar panels that convert sunlight into electricity, starting in 2022. If Elrich’s measure is approved by the all-Democratic county council, the wealthy suburb of 1 million would be the first major jurisdiction outside California to adopt such a mandate, experts say. While the proposal has plenty of supporters in the liberal county, there are critics, too. They argue that a house-based mandate is an inefficient way to boost renewable energy, could detract from more significant energy-saving policies and may slow construction as well as raise costs in a jurisdiction already gripped by a severe affordable housing shortage. Elrich, a self-described “old-fashioned progressive,” was elected last year over opposition from business groups. They considered him anti-development, in part because of his opposition to high-density projects in areas of the county including downtown Silver Spring. He told environmentalists about the solar-panel requirement at a “climate emergency” town hall on Sept. 14. In a phone interview Wednesday from New York City, where he was attending an international climate conference connected to the United Nations General Assembly session, Elrich said he intends to introduce the law in 2020 and have it take effect two years after that. “If you’re not going to do stuff like this, you’re not going to reach any climate goals,” Elrich said, referring to the county’s resolution to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2027, and 100 percent by 2035. “At some point, you’ve got to act. You can’t just say you’re going to do something.” The head of the Maryland Building Industry Association said the mandate would drive up construction costs and provide only minimal savings on utility bills, given that Montgomery already has stringent building codes in place to ensure that new homes are energy efficient. “If it passes, it’s just going to make things more expensive,” said Lori Graf, chief executive of the association. She said California, deep in the throes of its own housing crisis, should not set the example for Montgomery.

Mornings on the Mall Podcast - 2019-9-27

[00:00:00] 4:59 am - Mornings on the Mall

[01:00:16] 6:00 am - Mornings on the Mall

[02:00:28] 7:00 am - Mornings on the Mall

[03:00:39] 8:00 am - Mornings on the Mall

INTERVIEW – Bob Barr – former Congressman and Impeachment Manager during the Clinton Admin – shared his thoughts on the push for impeachment.

BIO: Bob Barr served as a federal prosecutor and as a Congressman. He represented Georgia’s 7th congressional district as a Republican from 1995 to 2003. Barr attained national prominence as one of the leaders of the impeachment of President Bill Clinton. Barr is also a former presidential candidate for the Libertarian Party in 2008.

BARR: “Pelosi is trying to have it both ways, with one foot in and the other out of the water. Calling for an impeachment inquiry but not taking the formal steps that precedent requires, not taking a vote of the members. She says it, but doesn’t follow through. In both the Nixon and the Clinton impeachments, the House voted on a formal inquiry of impeachment. Even though the rules of the house don’t say that you have to have this vote, it has been done in the past. The Democrats continue to fiddle around, they don’t want to proceed down the formal path to pursue impeachment, they only want citizens to think that they are.”

INTERVIEW – TYLER MCFADDEN – NORML spokesperson for NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws)

DC leaders consider 2 bills aimed at dropping workplace marijuana testing. (WTOP) – D.C. council members are considering two bills that would do away with marijuana testing of employees at work. Possession of marijuana and its recreational use is legal in D.C., and many District residents have a prescription for medical marijuana. But as the law stands, employees can be penalized at work if they test positive for the drug. “Our thinking on marijuana from a criminal justice perspective has evolved. But our thinking on marijuana from an employment perspective is stuck in the last century,” said At-Large Council member David Grosso. The two bills under discussion by the Committee on Labor and Workforce Development involve drug testing at work: The Prohibition of Marijuana Testing Act of 2019 proposes to eliminate marijuana testing in the workplace. This bill passed as emergency legislation but now must transition through the legal process for adoption as a permanent law. The second, the Medical Marijuana Program Patient Protection Amendment Act of 2019, would do away with marijuana testing on employees enrolled in the city’s medical marijuana program who have a prescription. “Employers should treat medical marijuana employees as they would with other medical issues,” Queen Adesuyi, with the Drug Policy Alliance, testified to the committee. Jim Greer, with the National Drug and Alcohol Screening Association, presented to council members information in favor of keeping workplace drug testing in place.

INTERVIEW – SEAN DAVIS – co-founder of The Federalist – analyzed the impeachment push and the misleading news coverage of the transcript.

SEAN DAVIS: Like Russian Collusion, Ukraine Hysteria Is Pure Projection By Media And Democrats. The only 2016 campaign that colluded with Russia was Hillary Clinton’s, and the only 2020 candidate who bragged about threatening Ukraine to fire a prosecutor investigating corruption is Joe Biden.

The Federalist: CNN Just Yadda-Yadda-Yadda’d 540 Words To Frame Trump For ‘Favor’ He Never Requested. By Tristan Justice // In the media’s efforts to tie President Donald Trump with its latest conspiracy theory, CNN skipped an entire section of the released and unredacted transcript of a phone call to charge Trump with requesting a favor he never asked for…The transcript that CNN read on air, however, connects the word “favor” in this section with Trump 540 words later asking the Ukrainian leader to look into former vice president Joe Biden and his son Hunter’s questionable business dealings with a Ukrainian energy company. Hunter sat on the board of the company for $50,000 a month while, as Joe Biden bragged in 2018 on camera, his dad put pressure on the Ukrainian government to end a corruption probe into the company.

INTERVIEW – HANS VON SPAKOVSKY – senior legal fellow at The Heritage Foundation and the coauthor of “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk” and “Obama’s Enforcer: Eric Holder’s Justice Department.” He served as a commissioner on the Federal Election Commission from 2006 to 2007.

Hans von Spakovsky: Trump impeachment effort will be historic political battle – Here’s how process works (By Hans A. von Spakovsky | Fox News) — The announcement Tuesday by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that the House “is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry” against President Trump because she believes his actions “have seriously violated the Constitution” kicks off a complex and enormously consequential process. But what exactly is impeachment? And how hard would it be to impeach the president and actually remove him from office? The average American understandably isn’t an expert on impeachment. Only two presidents have been impeached by the House – Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1999. But neither man lost his job. Impeachment is complicated and takes time. Parliamentary democracies can quickly remove a prime minister when a majority of lawmakers cast a vote of no-confidence in the leader. But in the U.S., the impeachment process is a much tougher task to accomplish.” https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/hans-von-spakovsky-trump-impeachment-effort-will-be-historic-political-battle-heres-how-process-works

INTERVIEW – CAL THOMAS – Syndicated columnist - discussed the impeachment push and the politics behind it.