Jeralyn: "I suspect Trump is trying to stay in the news and making sh*t up to draw big headlines. Otherwise, no one would care enough to write or read about him."

He's no longer some carnival barker. It's therefore in our best interests to pay close attention to what he says and does.

While many of his advisors may well be dimwits and ignoramuses, they also hold positions of real power and authority and can do us an awful lot of harm.

Further, Steve Bannon is no moron. You are making a very grave mistake if you think that, and thus urge everyone to ignore this malevolent force in the highest echelons of the executive branch.

Our country is clearly in harm's way. Please don't turn your back because you find Trump's presence somehow distasteful and nauseating, or further assume that Americans will necessarily turn out in force to repulse his sorry a$$, should he make good on his attempt to federalize the National Guard.

The Sacramento Bee's Marcos Breton warns the state's prominent Latino political leaders that while state residents generally support them on an emotional level, their very best arguments in opposition to Trump's anti-immigrant crusade are actually on economic grounds:

"[CA Attorney General Xavier] Becerra articulated the beginnings of an argument when he told The New York Times: 'Undocumented workers actually pay billions of dollars in taxes, something only flat-earthers try to deny these days. That's why every analysis of a comprehensive reform of our broken immigration system reveals that our nation and our economy would benefit from bringing the undocumented out of the shadows.'

"Who disagrees with this argument? Jeff Sessions, the former U.S. senator who is now Trump's attorney general. Sessions consistently voted against comprehensive immigration reform. He is for issuing fewer green cards to legal residents. He contends immigrants take jobs away from Americans, and suck up a huge share of welfare dollars, when research shows otherwise.

"One could argue that the Trump administration's immigration platform promotes a brand of nationalism that rejects the very multiculturalism that Becerra, de León and others rode to elective office. If this is true, California's leaders not only are taking on a formidable opponent - they are battling a foe that views them as the problem.

"You can't fight that enemy by appealing to sympathy, because the enemy has none."

Speaking as someone whose Mexican-American in-laws were once undocumented for the better part of two decades, it's very difficult to not be emotional on an issue as personal as this one. But that's exactly what we must be in the face of an opponent that shows no heart.

Let emotion fuel our desire to oppose this inhumane policy. But our argument itself must be dispassionate in its appeal to people's pragmatism, reason and common sense.

Any immigration policy underscored by anti-immigrant sentiment and bigotry is both myopic and foolish, because immigrants themselves are of bedrock importance to the socio-economic well being of the United States as a whole.

Carrying out this mean-spirited program will cost this country very dearly, by severely damaging both our economy and our relationships with overseas markets, particularly in Mexico and the rest of Latin America.

I remember seeing a story, I believe on 60 Minutes, where they interviewed an Alabama farmer who could not get his watermelons harvested because the Latinos had left the state. He said the locals were not willing to do the hard work involved in agriculture.

To all those who think losing these workers is a good idea, you are nuts. Unless you are happy paying $20 for that watermelon in the future. Or another $20 for a bunch of grapes or a box of raisins.

Farm work is hard work. Immigrant labor (legal or otherwise) should be admired for what they do for the pay they receive.

Unlike most on here (I'm guessing), I have actually picked grapes. When I 16, I rode a Greyhound bus from Stockton, CA to Madera, CA to pick grapes for a woman who had advertised for help in the local paper. Let me tell you, I was completely unprepared for what I was in for. Picking grapes is a skill. It is very hard work and requires the right kind of cutting tools. Americans are too soft and not hungry enough to perform this back breaking work.

Now, before you explode with invective towards me, remember that I have said I want the borders closed and undocumented people here, assuming they pass a background check, given green cards and a path to citizenship if they want one.

And I don't think I am all that different than many people over this.

A DHS official described the document as a very early draft that was not seriously considered and never brought to Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly for approval.

snip

Almost immediately after the Associated Press published its report, the White House issued a denial. "That is 100% not true. It is false," Press Secretary Sean Spicer told the media pool aboard Air Force