SUNDAY READ: Aikido-like strategy thwarts Trump's anti-immigrant agenda

BY USING a technique or strategy employed in Asian martial arts, the Democrats have twisted Donald Trump into a position he doesn't like, but is forced to accept.

The battle over immigration, which includes DACA and a radical overhaul of America's immigration policies, is also a battle of fighting philosophies by pitting traditional western values of having a winner and a loser in every confrontation; versus the eastern philosophy of winning by having your opponent think they've just scored a win, also.

By leaving DACA off the table in the wheeling and dealing preceding this budget bill, Democrats essentially removed Trump's biggest bargaining chip in order to get all that he wants in the immigration policies he proposes, which includes cutting immigration in half, removing family reunification (maligned by Trump as "chain migration") as the key priority for immigrants and allowing immigrants with "special skills" to remain in America and bring their families to the U.S.

REACTION: Trump signs bill even though his wall didn't get fully funded

Democrats are hoping that the court ruling that mandates DACA to remain in effect will buy them time to work out a simple up-and-down vote on DACA without all the rigamarole that would be involved if linked with Trump's harmful immigration policies.

Aikido, perhaps provides the best example of what is happening on the budget bill. Faced with a clash of views over immigration/DACA, instead of having a physical confrontation, by using only the gnetlest of movements, rechannel the opponent's (Trump) energy to send him hurtling past his objective, neutralised without his chief weapon (DACA) to use against the Democrats' unwillingness to vote for his immigration plan meant to slow people coming from Asia, Africa and Latin America, thus putting off for decades the inevitable colorization of America.

In Aikido and other Asian-originated martial arts, conflict is seen as unavoidable, but in the the cut-throat arena of western capitalism where the Trumps of the world operate, we're too quick to assume that any given conflict is also a contest – a zero-sum game, in which one side wins by making the other lose. 

Treat a friendship, job or marriage like a contest, and you've already determined how you'll respond: by trying to score points until someone admits defeat. (Often, that'll be you. And even if you "win" a battle with a partner or friend, the damage to the relationship may feel like a loss.) 

"You know why on some days it seems as if everybody's winning but you?" the authors of Aikido In Everyday Life ask. "Because you've bought into an imaginary, arbitrary system where everything's a contest and there are no ties – just sudden-death playoffs." You can only lose a contest once you've agreed to play by its rules.

The point of Aikido isn't to pretend that conflict doesn't exist, or that you should claim the moral high ground and refuse to fight. It's that there are other ways to fight. You could use the tactic they call "doing nothing": pause, temporarily offering no response while your opponent exhausts his arguments, or even starts to argue himself round to your side. 

Or you could choose "aiki", the highest principle of aikido, which translates roughly as "blending" with the attacker, then turning his or her energies away from confrontation to resolution. How? First, seek "confluence" with your opponent, for example by conceding that his feelings are understandable, or that she might have a point. Then, use the surprised pause that follows to take the lead, reframing the problem as a shared one. 

Instead of fighting Trump's anti-immigrant views by attempting to block all his proposals, the Democrats have given him some money for border security, but not enough for the Damned Wall,  give additional money for ICE, but not enough for the full-fledged Gestapo and not enough for the thousands of new detention beds for would-be deportees.

By not including DACA in the budget, the Democrats have removed Trump's hostage, that he wants to exchange for his lamely disguised racist immigration policies.

When faced with such hardline opposing philsophies, ask yourself: is this conflict a contest? It probably needn't be. Every thrust needn't have a parry or riposte.

Trump's aggressiveness was turned against him and he still doesn't know what happened.
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Trump signs budget even though his wall didn't get fully funded

SEN. RAND PAUL

Sen. Rand Paul , who urged a veto, doubts if anyone has read the 2,232 page budget bill before voting on it.

DONALD TRUMP said today (March 23) he has signed the 2,232-page, $1.3 trillion spending bill that the House and Senate approved Wednesday (March 21), funding the government through September and preventing a government shutdown.

The announcement came hours after the president threatened to veto the bill because it did not provide enough funding for the Damn Wall on the Mexican border or a final resolution for immigrants brought to the country as children under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

Let's get this straight: Trump doesn't care about the DACA immigrants. First, he was the one who rescinded DACA simply because it was initiated by President Obama and set up an artificial deadline for a Congressional fix. Trump was only using DACA as a bargaining chip to pass his harsh, radical reform of immigration policies and to build his Damn Wall.

“While this agreement includes funding for many important programs for Hawaii and the country, I am deeply disappointed that it does not protect the 1.8 million Dreamers Donald Trump unnecessarily put at risk when he canceled DACA," said Hawaii's Sen. Mazie Hirono.

"The president created this crisis, and he has sabotaged every effort we’ve made to protect Dreamers," she said.

The fate of 130,000 Asian Dreamers out of the 700,000 to 800,000 young people in the DACA program, are still in a holding pattern after a federal judge ruled that the program must continue to operate until Congress can come up with a bill to resolve their uncertain status. Besides the Dreamers, hundreds of thousands would-be DACA participants who didn't join the program, await the legislation that would settle their status.

RELATED: 

• What did Congress just pass for immigrants?
• Dreamers still in limbo

“DACA recipients have been treated extremely badly by the Democrats. We wanted to include DACA, we wanted to have them in this bill,” Trump said. “The Democrats would not do it." He neglected to say that he was the one to set an artificial deadline for the program's end and that he nexed bipartisan proposals that included relief for the DACA participants..

Trump was clearly irked by the reduced level of border security funding. While Republicans and Trump have said the bill funds Trump's "wall," it was far short of the $25 billion they initially wanted. Instead only $1.6 billion will go to the wall. After displaying the temperment of a spoiiled child that didn't get what he wanted during the bill's signing, by Wednesday night, Trump tweeted that he “Got $1.6 Billion to start Wall on Southern Border, rest will be forthcoming.”

Democrats and some Republicans sought to extend the DACA program but Trump reportedly did not want to give the undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship as part of that deal, as Democrats wanted.

At least one Democrat preferred a Trump veto. "I agree with Rep @Jim_Jordan. Republican leadership didn't just drop a 2300 page spending bill at night. They also forced a rule waiver that made rank & file Members of Congress vote for the $1.3 trillion bill in less than 24 hours. That is outrageous," said Rep. Ted Lieu, D-CA, who has opposed Trump in almost all other matters.

“This bill reflects priorities that are very different from the president’s. In many ways—and particularly on education, affordable housing, healthcare, and clean energy—it is a strong repudiation of Donald Trump’s misplaced priorities," said Hirono. "I hope this bill connotes a sustained Congressional commitment to stand up for our families and communities."

Among the other items included in the bill:

Gun violence prevention: Modest steps to address gun violence by strengthening the background check system to prevent dangerous individuals from owning a gun -- and explicit language that says that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention can conduct gun violence research.

Health care: A $3 billion increase in funding for medical research -- while not defunding Planned Parenthood.

Child care and education: A $610 million increase for Head Start, a program that helps educate kids whose families live below the poverty level.

Climate, environment: A rejection of this White House's plan to cut the EPA by 30%. This bill will increase funding by $763 million, including $300 million each for Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Funds.

2020 Census: A funding increase of $1.4 billion -- more than double what the flawed administration plan requested -- to make sure we accurately count our population, and don't leave anyone behind.

Opioids epidemic: A $3.2 billion increase in funding to fight the latest scourge.

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Federal budget battle over immigration

Border wall prototypes get no funding.

REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS neared agreement on a $1.3 trillion spending bill today (March 21) that undercuts Donald Trump’s $25 billion request for a wall along the Mexican border and turned down his administration’s request for increased funding for immigrant detention facilities and additional border patrol agents.

At the center of the debate is the huge increase sought by the Donald Trump administration for the Department of Homeland Security to build Trump's Damn Wall, expand the number of beds for immigrant detainees and to hire more federal agents to patrol U.S. borders and the increasing the ICE raids in the nation's interior.

Unfortunately, efforts to protect young immigrants known as “Dreamers” have fallen to the wayside, according to several reports, but Democrats appeared likely to sign off on $1.6 billion in border wall funding, albeit with certain conditions, The Washington Post reported, citing anonymous sources.

Congress has until Friday, March 23, to work out how to fund the government for the next six months or face another government shutdown.

Democrats, whose votes in the Republican-controlled Congress are needed to pass the spending bill, are pushing back against the $25-billion Damn Wall that they see as a waste of money.

Interestingly, there is no resolution for the DACA program in the budget debate. Trump blames the Democrats for opposing a legislative solution to the fate of 700,000 to 800,000 Dreamers.

Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, called Trump a liar said it's not true that Democrats are not helping to end the standoff over the fate of Deferred Action on Childhood Arrivals program recipients — undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children.

“The President constantly accuses the Democrats for not supporting DACA when he's the one who created the crisis to begin with and he's the one who defeated the bipartisan bill that would have protected 1.8 million Dreamers,” said Hirono. “But you know, we all know that he lies every single day, so that's that.”

More than likely, court orders to maintain the DACA program until Congress could come up with a bipartisan solution, have reduced the urgency for legislative action. especially when its fate is linked Trump's immigration reform proposals, Trump bogged down the efforts for a DACA resolution when he linked the program's fate with his radical immigration reform proposals.

Although during the election campaign candidate Trump claimed that the wall would cost only $12 billion, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) internal report in February put the cost at $21.6 billion, but even that may be a major underestimate if you factor in the legal costs of lawsuits by civil rights groups and private landowners along the border.

A coalition of 83 Latino, African/American and Asian/American members of the House of Representatives also wrote this week to congressional leaders urging them to “reduce funding to DHS’s detention and deportation machine.”

Republicans need to weigh the cost of Trump's border war vs. the massive increases to the national debt, the latter of which most GOP congressional representatives campaign against.

Republican leaders need Democratic votes in both chambers to pass the bill so Democrats have some leverage. They have rejected calls for increased funding for detention facilities and 850 more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent.

According to Roll Call sources, there wouild be a $1.6 down payment for a border barrier but it would be for “fencing” only, not a concrete wall, and would provide for just 33 miles of new barriers, not the prototypes inspected by Trump last week amidst fanfare and protests at the California-Mexico border.

Trump lost out on his bid for more money to house 10,000 more undocumented immigrants in detention facilities and to hire 850 more Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents. The measure also would not cut off federal funds for so-called sanctuary cities that do not cooperate with federal authorities on immigration law.

Additionally, the budget measure, as of Wednesday, would not cut federal funding for sanctuary cities and states, jurisdictions that limit cooperation with ICE officials despite Trump's heated rhetoric against California's status as a "sanctuary" state.

There are other major items in the budget, which is beginning to look like a bipartisan bill.  That's something Trump needs to realize, in business, the art of the deal is a  win-lose situation all the time. In politics, the art of the deal via compromise, is to reach a position where it is win-win.
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