Page 6 - Florida Sentinel 7-10-18

White House and Political News
Trump Weighs Top Picks For Supreme Court
President Trump said he was “close” to choosing a Supreme Court nominee Sunday after a weekend at his New Jersey golf club evaluat- ing four leading candidates and mulling the likely re- sponse of key senators and his core supporters to each prospect, according to White House officials and Trump advisers involved in the dis-
cussions.
Over rounds of golf with
friends, meals with family, and a flurry of phone calls and meetings with aides, Trump remained coy about his final decision, which is ex- pected to be announced Monday evening from among the four federal judges atop his shortlist: Brett M. Ka- vanaugh, Thomas Hardi-
man, Raymond Keth- ledge and Amy Coney Barrett.
“I’m very close to making a decision,” Trump told re- porters Sunday afternoon. “Have not made it official yet. Have not made it final.”
He added: “It’s still — let’s say it’s the four people. But they’re excellent. Every one. You can’t go wrong.”
Patricia Okoumou Knows She Could Have Died During Her Statue Of Liberty Protest
On July 4, 2018, amid the cursory cookouts, cheap beer and sunburns, Patricia Ok- oumou climbed the Statue of Liberty on Liberty Island, N. Y., to protest the treatment of immigrant children by the Trump administration.
The 44-year-old personal trainer, herself an immigrant from the Congo, had taken part in a protest earlier that day with Rise and Resist at the base of the statue. But as Okoumou told the Guardian in an exclusive in- terview, she had other plans. 00:00
“I had thought, ‘It’s the Statue of Liberty, it’s the Fourth of July and there are children in cages, we are doing a protest, but I want to send an even stronger mes- sage and this is the perfect day for it,” Okoumou said.
She never told the rest of her group her plan, she says, but brought her passport with her to use as ID in preparation for her arrest. As she scaled
Patricia Okoumou is joined by her attorney Rhiya Trivedi as she speaks to reporters outside Fed- eral court, Thursday, July 5, 2018, in New York. Photo: Mary Altaffer (AP Photo)
Okoumou said, referring to the U. S. policy of separating children from their families at the southern border and lock- ing them in separate, chil- dren-only detention camps.
While the Trump admin- istration reversed its policy of family separation, they’re now faced with the task of reunit- ing more than 2,000 children with their families. A judge on Friday turned down the ad- ministration’s request for a blanket deadline extension on family reunification.
After her powerful protest on July 4, Okoumou was charged in a federal court Thursday with three misde- meanors.
That night in federal cus- tody, Okoumou says she couldn’t sleep. But while rest eluded her, she felt at peace with what she had done.
“I felt peaceful, that I was with those children in spirit. I could feel their isolation and their cries being answered only by four walls,” she said.
the world-renowned statue and settled into the folds of its robes, sparking a stand-off with police attempting to get her down, Okoumou re- members thinking, “Are they going to shoot me?’”
And Okoumou had rea-
son to fear. She knew all too well how disposable the lives of immigrants were to Ameri- can authorities and told police so as they beckoned her to come down.
According to the
Guardian, Okoumou
“feared she would be shot or tranquilized,” but neverthe- less told the officers that her life “doesn’t matter to me now.”
“What matters to me is that in a democracy we are holding children in cages,”
PAGE 6 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, JULY 10, 2018