Tag Archives: Jimmy Carter

Newsweek: Iranian woman who has lived in US for four decades detained by ICE

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Mandana Kashanian, a 64-year-old Iranian woman who came to the United States at 17 years old just ahead of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, was arrested by U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Sunday and is being in detention in Louisiana.

Newsweek has confirmed her detention in the ICE detainee database.

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Kashanian came to the U.S. on a student visa on July 24, 1978 and “gained authorization to remain in the U.S. until May 31, 1983 by changing her status to that of a spouse of a nonimmigrant student” according to documents from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit reviewed by Newsweek.

She eventually applied for asylum, but her claim was denied, according to the 2001 court documents. Her family told MSNBC that she applied for asylum and was denied multiple times. Kashanian has appealed several court decisions relating to her status as well as filing a motion to reopen appeals.

She married early on and then divorced. She then married Russ Milne, a U.S. citizen, in 1990 and the couple share a 32-year-old daughter together, who is also a U.S. citizen. Part of the complication of Kashanian’s status is due to her first marriage, which the court reported as “improper” and fraudulent, and subsequently interfered with her green card application once married to Milne.

Her father had worked as an engineer for the Shah in Tehran, according to Nola.com, and she claimed she would “experience extreme hardship if deported,” per court documents.

The local outlet said she was granted a stay of removal on the basis that she comply with immigration requirements, which her family says she has always met. Her husband told MSNBC on Friday that she has no criminal history.

She has lived in the states for almost 50 years, setting down roots in New Orleans. She shares Persian recipes on a YouTube channel, was involved in her daughter’s parent-teacher association, volunteered after Hurricane Katrina, and helps out family and neighbors, her husband told MSNBC.

On June 22, she was arrested by officers in unmarked vehicles, her neighbor Sarah Gerig, told Nola.com, noting that the arrest was less than a minute.

Kashanian is currently held in South Louisiana ICE processing center, according to the ICE database. The GEO Group runs the 1,000-person capacity facility located in Basile, Louisiana.

Iranian woman who has lived in US for four decades detained by ICE
Mandana Kashanian, who came to the U.S. as a teenager on a student visa in 1978, has been arrested by immigration officials and is in an ICE detention facility.

https://www.newsweek.com/iranian-woman-who-has-lived-us-four-decades-detained-ice-2092082

Alternet: ‘Theft and destruction’: Trump’s escalating self-dealing exposed in new report

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The big lie:

During his 2016 campaign, Donald Trump insisted that if he defeated Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, he would maintain a strict separation between his business activities and the White House. And one of MAGA Republicans’ talking points is that Trump cares so deeply about the United States that he was willing to step away from his business, put his son Eric Trump in charge of the Trump Organization, and take a hit financially in order to be president and “make American great again.”

The reality:

But in fact, President Trump’s net worth has increased substantially since 2016 and continues to increase. Trump, according to his critics, is monetizing his presidency in a wide range of ways,

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The Guardian reporter continues, “He incurred numerous accusations of first-term conflicts of interest, as foreign officials from 20 countries descended on his hotels, while Secret Service agents in Trump’s security detail were made to pay premium rates, pouring at least $10m into his bank account. Such unprecedented disregard for time-honored ethical boundaries was shocking at the time. Now, it looks merely quaint.”

During his second term, Pilkington notes, Trump has monetized his presidency with everything from promoting Tesla vehicles to receiving a jet as a gift from the Qatari government.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) told The Guardian that Trump is operating a “pay-for-play presidency.” And Kathleen Clark, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis, laments that Trump and his allies “have mastered the technique of flooding the zone” by “doing so much so fast that they are overwhelming the ability of ethics groups and institutions to respond.”

‘Theft and destruction’: Trump’s escalating self-dealing exposed in new report

https://www.alternet.org/trump-grifter-guardian

MSNBC: Trump’s attacks on Springsteen and Oprah aren’t legally sound. That’s not the point.

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What history can tell us about celebrity campaign endorsements — and their impact.

Nothing seems to incite angry social media posts from President Trump quite like criticism from celebrities. And while celebrities in 2025 seem less interested in feuding with the volatile president, Bruce Springsteen did manage to poke the bear with an unsparing speech delivered before a May 14 concert in Manchester.

The president noticed. On Truth Social, Trump called Springsteen “a pushy, obnoxious JERK” with “atrophied skin.” But the pettiness didn’t stop with dermatological insults. In the early hours of May 19, Trump escalated even further, implying without evidence that Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign paid Springsteen and other stars, including Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé, for their performances at campaign events, which was a “MAJOR AND ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION.” He proclaimed his intention to “call for a major investigation into this matter.” 

Springsteen isn’t backing down in the wake of Trump’s stream of attacks, and musicians like Neil Young and Eddie Vedder have since come to his defense. The doubling and tripling down is so far mostly symbolic. But could Trump really investigate celebrity endorsements?

I don’t think so. Celebrities typically do not get paid for making endorsements. According to the Federal Election Commission, candidates can pay for endorsements as long as they are listed as a campaign expenditure. The Harris campaign has denied paying celebrities directly, claiming that any money sent to Winfrey ($1 million), Beyoncé ($165,000) and others are event production expenses paid out in accordance with federal election law.

“Usually I am reluctant to respond to rumors in general, but these days I realize that if you don’t stop a lie, it gets bigger. I was not paid a dime,” Winfrey said in video response to the Trump post….

Tina Knowles issued a similar denial last year when the same rumors circulated about her daughter: “The lie is that Beyonce was paid 10 million dollars to speak at a rally in Houston for Vice President Kamala Harris. When In Fact: Beyonce did not receive a penny for speaking at a Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harrris’ Rally in Houston.”

Opinion | Trump’s call to “investigate” Bruce Springsteen ignores the reality of celebrity endorsements
What history can tell us about celebrity campaign endorsements — and their impact.

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-truth-social-springsteen-oprah-beyonce-campaign-fraud-rcna208260

Politico Magazine: JD Vance’s Little Brother Tries His Hand at Politics. It’s Not Going So Well.

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Cory Bowman says he wants to be mayor of Cincinnati. He might have other things in mind.

A lonely microphone and an empty chair sat at the end of a long, yellow cloth-draped table where Vice President JD Vance’s half-brother, Cory Bowman, should have been sitting. If Bowman had been there, it would have been one of a handful of key appearances ahead of the first election for potentially the first role of his nascent political career: Cincinnati mayor.

It was a Tuesday night in April inside a community center, where the local NAACP chapter was holding the second and final debate ahead of the May 6 mayoral primary. And Bowman, a local evangelical pastor, coffee shop owner and the first Republican to file to run for mayor here in 16 years, was nowhere to be found.

Dunce and Duncer?

https://archive.is/5yTgC#selection-1041.13-1060.0

Financial Times: Donald Trump’s ‘Marie Antoinette moment’: call for national sacrifice falls flat

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President faces backlash after warning Americans they will have to make do with fewer toys at Christmas

Here was the president acknowledging his trade war might cause real hardship for voters — many of whom elected him to bring down the cost of living and boost growth.

Trump’s enemies could hardly believe their luck. They mocked him on social media as a modern-day “Grinch who stole Christmas” and “Scrooge McTrump”. One television presenter, channelling the Sopranos, called him “Donny 2 Dolls”.

“‘Your family will have less, but it’ll be more expensive’ is definitely a solid economic pitch,” the stand-up comic Mike Drucker wrote on X.

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Isaac Larian, chief executive of MGA Entertainment, the largest toymaker in the US, said the tariffs will be “disastrous”, predicting a “30-40 per cent drop in sales”.

The company gets 65 per cent of its products from Chinese factories, and the tariffs will force them to massively raise prices — from $15 to $29-$30 for a Bratz doll, one of its most popular items.

“If the tariffs are not reduced we’re going to be forced to lay off people, including people in our factory here actually manufacturing toys in the US,” said Larian, who said he voted for Trump last November.

https://archive.is/W4xe1#selection-2295.0-2302.0

Karen Wells: Charles Pierce Writes

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CHARLES PIERCE WRITES: “In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall overcome.”

I saw Richard Nixon resign and Gerald Ford tell the Congress that our long national nightmare was over.

I saw Jimmy Carter talk about malaise and Ronald Reagan talk about a shining city on a hill. I saw George H.W. Bush deliver the eulogy for the Soviet bloc, and Bill Clinton comfort the survivors of Timothy McVeigh’s madness in Oklahoma City.

I saw George W. Bush struggle to make sense of it all on September 11, 2001, and I saw Barack Obama sing ‘Amazing Grace’ in the wounded sanctuary of Mother Emanuel Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

“These were the presidents of my lifetime. These were not perfect men. They were not perfect presidents, god knows. Not one of them was that. But they approached the job, and they took to the podium, with all the gravitas they could muster as appropriate to the job.

They tried, at least, to reach for something in the presidency that was beyond their grasp as ordinary human beings. They were not all ennobled by the attempt, but they tried nonetheless.

“And comes now this hopeless, vicious buffoon, and the audience of equally hopeless and vicious buffoons who laughed and cheered when he made sport of a woman whose lasting memory of the trauma she suffered is the laughter of the perpetrators.

Now he comes, a man swathed in scandal, with no interest beyond what he can put in his pocket and what he can put over on a universe of suckers, and he does something like this while occupying an office that we gave him, and while endowed with a public trust that he dishonors every day he wakes up in the White House.

“The scion of a multigenerational criminal enterprise, the parameters of which we are only now beginning to comprehend. A vessel for all the worst elements of the American condition. And a cheap, soulless bully besides.

We never have had such a cheap counterfeit of a president* as currently occupies the office. We never have had a president* so completely deserving of scorn and yet so small in the office that it almost seems a waste of time and energy to summon up the requisite contempt.

“Watch how a republic dies in the empty eyes of an empty man who feels nothing but his own imaginary greatness, and who cannot find in himself the decency simply to shut up even when it is in his best interest to do so. Presidents don’t have to be heroes to be good presidents.

They just have to realize that their humanity is our common humanity, and that their political commonwealth is our political commonwealth, too.

Watch him behind the seal of the President of the United States. Isn’t he a funny man? Isn’t what happened to that lady hilarious? Watch the assembled morons cheer. This is the only story now.”

Karin Wells
CHARLES PIERCE WRITES: “In my life, I have watched John Kennedy talk on television about missiles in Cuba. I saw Lyndon Johnson look Richard Russell squarely in the eye and and say, “And we shall…

https://www.facebook.com/karin.wells.7/posts/10226527699715625