June, 2018 | Chris Aldrich

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Cracking Down on Leaks | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Cracking Down on Leaks by Michael Barbaro from New York Times

For a year and a half, President Trump has threatened to crack down on leaks and leakers.

The seizure of emails and phone records from a reporter at The New York Times tells a great deal about what that might look like.

On today’s episode:

• Matt Apuzzo, a reporter for The Times in Washington who had his records subpoenaed during the Obama administration.

Background reading:

• Federal prosecutors seized years of email and phone records from Ali Watkins, a New York Times reporter.

• President Trump wants better press, and he’s blaming leaks for not getting it.

• From 2012: The Obama administration used the Espionage Act to pursue leak cases.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: How Separating Migrant Families Became U.S. Policy | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: How Separating Migrant Families Became U.S. Policy by Michael Barbaro, Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Michael D. Shear from nytimes.com

President Trump has blamed Democrats for his administration’s practice of taking children from their parents at the border. Why is one of his top aides, Stephen Miller, claiming credit?

On June 7, Julie Hirschfeld Davis and I interviewed Stephen Miller, President Trump’s senior policy adviser, in his West Wing office about the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy at the border, which has led to heartbreaking images of children being forcibly separated from their families. Here are some key points from that interview.

1. The zero-tolerance policy grew out of a desire to end what Mr. Miller calls “crippling loopholes” that attract illegal immigrants into the United States.

From where Mr. Miller sits, illegal immigration is driven by a belief among people outside the United States that those who make it across the border will be allowed to stay indefinitely. “The success rate is the predominant factor that drives illegal migration,” he told us. By instituting a zero-tolerance policy, Mr. Miller said, the administration is sending a message that should reduce the flow of illegal immigration into the country. He conceded that the policy has not reduced the immigration numbers, but said, “It’ll take a few months of sustained effort.”

2. Anything less than zero tolerance at the border creates what Mr. Miller calls “perverse” incentives for lawbreakers.

Mr. Miller used the example of speeding laws in the United States. Imagine, he said, if the police decided that speeding laws didn’t apply to people who have a child in the back seat. “Could you imagine what the consequences of that would be? Well, one thing, a lot more child endangerment,” he said, comparing the situation to the lack of enforcement of illegal border crossings under prior administrations.

3. Continuing policies in place during the Obama administration would cause what Mr. Miller called a “vicious cycle” that would increase illegal immigration.

Mr. Miller said a “giant hemispheric shift in migration patterns” was driving people toward the United States, which he said must respond with tighter borders. He said Obama-era policies would allow the number of immigrants to “spiral upward endlessly.” Using a favorite phrase, Mr. Miller said: “So you have to turn the ship. And so again, it’s a whole-of-government approach.”

4. Zero tolerance at the border will keep out dangerous illegal immigrants who would otherwise “grievously harm innocent Americans,” Mr. Miller said.

Reading from a list of arrests in Philadelphia in May 2017, Mr. Miller recounted the crimes committed by illegal immigrants: murder, child neglect, negligent manslaughter, car theft, prostitution, racketeering, rape. “It is impossible to take moral lectures from people like the mayor of Philadelphia, who dance in jubilant celebration over ‘sanctuary cities,’ when you had innocent Americans, U.S.-born and foreign, who are victimized on a daily basis because of illegal immigration,” Mr. Miller said.

5. Trump administration officials believe Americans will support their zero-tolerance policies over what Mr. Miller calls the “nihilism” of the Democratic agenda.

Mr. Miller said he believed the issue of border security, even with the controversy over family separations, was a “90-10” issue for Mr. Trump and his Republican allies. He predicted that voters in November would reject “the Democrats’ open-borders extremism,” adding that Democrats had adopted “a point of view so radical that it can really only be described as absolute nihilism.”

On today’s episode:

Julie Hirschfeld Davis, who covers the White House and immigration for The New York Times.

Background coverage:

President Trump is facing a growing outcry against his administration’s “zero tolerance” border policy, which requires all migrants who enter the United States without authorization to be taken into federal criminal custody, at which point they are separated from their children.

Stephen Miller, a top aide to the president, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — two immigration hard-liners who are shaping Mr. Trump’s approach to immigration — have defended the policy.

As a result of “zero tolerance,” 1,995 children have been separated from adults accompanying them at the border in six weeks.

This episode of “The Daily” includes excerpts from an audio recording from inside a United States Customs and Border Protection facility, where children are heard crying after being separated from their parents. Listen to the full recording on ProPublica.org.

🎧 ‘The Daily’: Father and Son, Forced Apart at the Border | New York Times

Listened to ‘The Daily’: Father and Son, Forced Apart at the Border by Michael Barbaro from New York Times

A 5-year-old boy named José and his father fled the violence in Honduras and headed to the United States. They were separated at the border. What has happened to them in the weeks since?

On today’s episode:

• Miriam Jordan, who covers immigration for The New York Times.

Background reading:

• Many children who have been taken from their parents as a result of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy end up in shelters or foster homes.
• Federal criminal prosecutions of migrants have skyrocketed, and the volume of cases has prompted rapid-fire hearings in which multiple defendants — in one instance, 40 people — are brought into the courtroom at once.
• Republicans in the House and the Senate voiced their intention to halt the practice of separating families at the border — but clashed over how to proceed.

Webrings have come back to the web! I’ve proudly joined Marty McGuire’s new IndieWebring which you’ll find in the sidebar of my front page. ⚜

Read The New York Times Develops a WordPress Collaboration Plugin for Editors (WPMU DEV Blog)

Earlier this year, the New York Times released a WordPress plugin that will help sites that use editors to proofread and edit others’ posts or sites where writers collaborate on the same post. The plugin, called Integrated Content Editor (or ICE), allows changes to a post to be tracked and then accepted or rejected, much like the Track Changes feature in Microsoft Word. Here’s a glimpse of the plugin in action: In an interview with Poynter.org, Chief Technology Officer Marc Frons from the Times explained why the paper first had the tool developed for their own use.

Looks like development on this has died though…

Replied to Sharing brief @IndieWebSummit notes as they come to mind. by

Tantek Çelik (tantek.com)

Sharing brief @IndieWebSummit notes as they come to mind.

This was the first year people pre-wrote proposals before the #BarCamp organizing session. As facilitator I decided to have people who never proposed before go first.

Coincidentally, @Christi3k just announced the same thing @OSBridge unconference organizing session.

This may be worth codifing as a normal practice. Let first-timers propose sessions first before anyone who has done this before, especially at an @IndieWebCamp before.

The other thing I did was, after the the first-timers finished explaining and scheduling their BarCamp session proposals, I had people *other than* the remaining session proposers choose from the remaining session proposals posted on the side of the grid, and advocate for them. I think that worked quite well for selecting for the sessions that were more compelling for more people.

I was just thinking about how this might be codified a bit better as well, particularly for folks who are attending their first BarCamp-style event.

While there is some implication in the event pages, I don’t know if some people were expecting the sessions and planning to play out the way they did (or if they knew what to expect on that front at all, particularly in chatting with people in the early morning registration/breakfast part of the day).

It was certainly more productive for me to think about and post some of the things I wanted to accomplish pre-camp. (It also helped to have your reminder a month or more ago about what I might build before even going to the summit.)

Having additional time to know what the scheduling process looks like, if nothing else, gives people a bit more time to think about what they want to get out of the conference and propose some additional ideas without being under the short time crunch. This is particularly apropos when the morning presentations may have run long and the conference is already a few minutes off track and we’re eating into valuable session time otherwise. I would suspect that helping to get the session ideas flowing sooner than later may also help the idea and creative processes, and even more so for participants who may need a bit more time to organize their thoughts and communicate them as they’d like.

I definitely liked the process of having beginners go first and then letting people advocate for particular ideas thereafter. This worked particularly well for an established event and one with so many people. It might be helpful to pre-select one potentially popular proposal from an older hand to go first though, to provide an example of the process for those who are new to it, and in particular those who might be quiet, shy, or not be the type to raise their hands and advocate in front of such a large group. In fact, given this, another option is to allow people to propose sessions and then allow advocation across the board, but for beginners first followed by everyone thereafter. This may also encourage better thought out initial proposals as well.

Thanks again for all your hard work and preparation Tantek!