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Contents contributed and discussions participated by malonema1

malonema1

The Goldman Sachs era in Trump's White House is fading away - 0 views

  • Top economic adviser Gary Cohn is only the latest Goldman figure to head for the White House exits, suggesting the influence of the oh-so-establishment banking powerhouse has been overwhelmed by the more nationalistic voices in the West Wing.
  • Of course, handing big jobs to Goldman alumni is an Oval Office tradition. The influential bank has produced Treasury secretaries, White House chiefs of staff and top economic advisers in both Republican and Democratic administrations. But Trump's reliance on Goldman talent was a surprise to some, given his anti-Wall Street, drain-the-swamp campaign rhetoric.
  • "I think Donald Trump wanted these Goldman people as a way to stroke his own ego. Don't forget that Goldman never wanted to do business with Donald Trump," Cohan said. "It was a way for (Trump) to say 'Ha, ha, now I've got some of your best people working for me.'"
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  • So far, Trump's presidency has been good for Goldman and other major banks. Since taking office, Trump's main legislative achievement was a $1.5 trillion tax cut applauded by Wall Street. Cohn and Mnuchin were deeply involved in that process and Cohn stayed in the administration to work on it, after he was upset by the president's comments about the racial violence in Charlottesville last August.
  • Blankfein weighed in on Twitter saying: "Gary Cohn deserves credit for serving his country in a first class way. I'm sure I join many others who are disappointed to see him leave."
malonema1

Trump unlikely to change policy on violent video games - 0 views

  • Trump on Thursday hosted a White House roundtable with video game company CEOs and representatives, who defended their industry in an ongoing debate about the alleged links between violent games and real-life violence. The advocates were matched by a number of critics, including Republican lawmakers, who have suggested a causal relationship between violent media and behavior.
  • The meeting, according to the White House, was an opportunity "to discuss violent video game exposure and the correlation to aggression and desensitization in children" in the wake of the shooting massacre of 17 students and adults at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Feb. 14.
  • "We discussed the numerous scientific studies establishing that there is no connection between video games and violence, First Amendment protection of video games, and how our industry's rating system effectively helps parents make informed entertainment choices. We appreciate the President's receptive and comprehensive approach to this discussion," the group said.
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  • Five years later, Republicans and Democrats alike forged a link between video games and school shootings. After it was revealed that the two teenagers who killed 13 people at Columbine High School in Colorado were fans of first-person shooting games, President Bill Clinton slammed violent games as tools that "make our children more active participants in simulated violence."
  • The National Rifle Association, in particular, has blamed video games as a major factor in mass shootings. After the December 2012 massacre of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, NRA leader Wayne LaPierre said: "Guns don't kill people. Video games, the media and Obama's budget kill people." Video game industry analysts strongly dispute the connection. "If there was actually a correlation between gun violence and video games then everywhere where violent video games are released you would find a similar level of gun violence, or at least a correlation," said Lewis Ward, research director of gaming at International Data Corporation. Industry analysts sa
malonema1

Trump's tariff plan puts jobs at risk - 0 views

  • President Donald Trump fulfilled a long-running campaign promise Thursday in levying tariffs on imported steel and aluminum products after a week of build-up to the announcement. The reaction to the move was divided, with major steel and aluminum players expressing support for the move, some promising job creation, while critics said the tariffs would lead to job losses in other industries.
  • Employment in the steel industry has been declining for two decades, down some 35 percent from 216,400 workers in 1998 to 139,800 in 2016. Between 2015 and 2016 alone more than 14,000 jobs were lost due to plant closings, bankruptcies and more, according to a January 2018 report from the Commerce Department. U.S. Steel and Century Aluminum have both committed to reinvesting in closed plants and hiring workers, 800 in total, as a result of the tariffs, while other major payers, including Alcoa and ArcelorMittal, have expressed their support for Trump's order.
  • But economists and researchers say that despite gains in steel jobs, losses will be seen in other sectors that will more than cancel out any new job creation. A report from global research firm Trade Partnership Worldwide finds that while some 33,000 jobs will be added within steel and aluminum due to the tariffs, the broader U.S. economy, including manufacturing and energy, will see losses of nearly 180,000 jobs, for a net loss of nearly 146,000 jobs. For every one job created as a result of the tariffs, five will be lost, the report finds. The study does not take into account any retaliation against the tariffs, only the tariffs themselves.
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  • He said the jobs added in the metals industry will likely not be permanent. "As you damage the consumers of metal in the United States — the people in the supply chain who purchased the steel and aluminum — in time they would purchase less metals which would lead then to these new created jobs being temporary," Hardy said.
malonema1

Democrats widen their lead in House midterm elections - 0 views

  • Democrats now hold an estimated 9 percentage point advantage in recent polls that measure whether voters support a generic Republican or generic Democrat, according to FiveThirtyEight, a website dedicated statistical analysis. Republicans cut that deficit to as low as 5 percentage points in early February. show chapters
  • Of course, much can change in the roughly eight months before the congressional elections. In addition, Republicans still have a favorable path to holding or adding to their 51 seats in the Senate, as several Democrats run for re-election in states Trump won in 2016. show chapters
malonema1

Diplomat who made deal with North Korea warns Trump: 'They will cheat' - 0 views

  • The last US diplomat to secure a nuclear deal with North Korea warns: 'They will cheat' President Trump agreed to meet Kim Jong Un, but an earlier deal between the U.S. and North Korea offers sobering lessons about what might happen next. Such a summit would mark a significant breakthrough in a standoff over the North's nuclear weapons. But it's a breakthrough all too familiar to the last American diplomat to successfully secure a deal with North Korea — only to see it fall apart a few years later.
  • On Saturday, the president posted on Twitter that he had spoken with China ahead of the proposed face-to-face, and that Beijing had expressed gratitude with respect to the offer. For his part, Trump has expressed optimism that the meeting could bear fruit, saying on Twitter Friday that an agreement could be "very good for the world."
  • "When the Bush administration came in they also didn't tell the North Koreans we were aware, but ultimately in 2002 they confronted them and said it had to stop," Gallucci said.
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  • "One lesson from this is that you can do a deal with the North Koreans, and you can get substantial value out of a deal, which we did for about a decade," Gallucci said. "But you can also expect, from our perspective at least, that they will cheat on the deal."
malonema1

China minister says trade war with US would be 'disaster' - 0 views

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  • Citing Chinese researchers, Zhong said the U.S. has been overstating its trade deficit with China by about 20 percent every year. He gave no details on how this figure was reached, but the U.S. and Chinese governments generally report widely differing trade figures because Beijing counts only the first port to which goods go instead of their final destination.
  • "We have noticed that some foreign-funded businesses have complained about China's investment environment," Zhong said. "The fact that they have complaints indicates that they are still paying attention to China's development and have confidence in China's market."
malonema1

Trump Barely Has Anyone to Talk to North Korea - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • There is no U.S. ambassador to South Korea. The U.S. diplomat in charge of negotiations with North Korea recently quit—and no replacement has yet been named. The State Department official in charge of East Asian affairs is a career diplomat who is serving in an acting capacity. So if North Korea does end up talking with the U.S., as the South says it’s offered to, whom exactly would they talk with?
  • But the question remains of whether the U.S. has the bench strength needed to negotiate directly with North Korea—should such talks actually begin. Joseph Yun, the senior-most official who was in semiregular meetings with North Korean officials, announced late last month that he was retiring. His departure underscored the shortage of current U.S. officials who have ever met with a North Korean representative. Suzanne DiMaggio, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, told me in an interview on Tuesday that it is uncertain “whether or not the United States has the capacity to engage in a major diplomatic effort with the North Koreans.”
  • Wit said the U.S. has been relying too much on analyses of North Korean press reports and intelligence reports, “but the fact is we have almost no experience anymore of face-to-face meetings with the North Koreans, and that’s going to be absolutely essential in conducting any negotiation.”
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  • “It’s a good idea for everybody to keep some perspective, take a deep breath, keep in mind that we’ve have a long history, about 27 years of history, of talking to the North Koreans, and the results over the 27-year history are of them breaking every agreement that they’ve ever made with the United States and with the international community,” that official said. “So, we are open minded, we look forward to hearing more, but ... the North Koreans have also earned our skepticism, so we’re a bit guarded in our optimism.”
malonema1

Let Trump and Kim Meet - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • On Thursday, Chung Eui Yong, South Korea’s national security advisor, told a stunned group of journalists at the White House that President Donald Trump had accepted an invitation to meet with Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea. Like so many other decisions in this White House, this one felt chaotic. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, for example, seemed to learn of the decision to hold the meeting, which is planned to occur by May, only after it was made. (He and other administration officials have since downplayed its significance, though Trump on Friday night tweeted: “The deal with North Korea is very much in the making.”) And yet: While one may wish that Trump acted less impulsively, a Trump-Kim summit is a good idea, one that may solve the problem of a truculent North Korea.
  • It’s also worth remembering that when it comes to North Korea, nukes are hardly the only danger. Even if Pyongyang relinquished its entire nuclear arsenal, it would still possess a large stockpile of chemical and biological weapons, and could decimate Seoul, South Korea’s capital, with its conventional weaponry. The real problem is not North Korea’s nuclear arms, but its potential willingness to use them, along with the rest of its weapons, in a way that harms U.S. interests.
  • The reasonable best-case scenario for North Korea is that the Kim regime focuses almost exclusively on staying in power and delivering economic growth to its citizens rather than threatening the United States or its neighbors. (Think something like Vietnam after its 1980s economic liberalization—but with nuclear weapons.) Actually pushing for regime change is risky. A coup could replace Kim with a benevolent dictator who prepares the country for elections and reunification with the South under Seoul—or with a general who decides that launching nuclear weapons at the United States, or selling them to a group like the Islamic State, serves Pyongyang’s interests.
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  • Ahead of the proposed Trump-Kim summit, there are some key questions to keep in mind: What really matters here? That Trump cows Kim, cudgeling him and his nation with the threat of American might? That the United States risks war, the decimation of Seoul, a nuclear missile screaming towards Hawaii, and the deaths of millions of North Koreans, just so it doesn’t have to admit that Pyongyang outmaneuvered the Trump administration? Or, instead, that egos are set aside in the pursuit of peace?
malonema1

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke Proposes Shrinking Monuments - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • In April, President Trump ordered Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to review more than two dozen national monuments, arguing that the designation of sites under previous administrations had gotten out of hand. Months later, Zinke’s recommendations, detailed in a leaked memo delivered to the White House, have sparked concern among local officials and environmental groups, prompting some to describe the proposals as “unprecedented.”
  • The contents of the report were made public a week shy of the 111th anniversary of America’s very first national monument designation. On September 24, 1906, Theodore Roosevelt deemed an area known as Devils Tower, Wyoming, worthy of preservation under the Antiquities Act. That act, passed the same year, gives presidents the power to protect “objects of historic and scientific interest.”
  • In his assessment, Zinke proposed shrinking Bears Ears from 1.35 million acres to roughly 160,000, saying changes would “provide a much-needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands.” Still, environmental groups have pledged to fight Trump in court if he follows through on the recommendations.
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  • I spoke with Mark Squillace, a law professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and former assistant to Bruce Babbitt, the interior secretary under President Bill Clinton, about the unprecedented territory the Trump administration has entered into—and the history behind a significant presidential power. Our conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
malonema1

Billy Graham, Dead at 99, Reshaped Evangelicalism - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Billy Graham, the famous preacher who reached millions of people around the world through his Christian ministry, died on Wednesday at 99. Over the course of more than six decades, he reshaped the landscape of evangelism, sharing the gospel from North Carolina to North Korea and developing innovative ways to communicate the message of the Bible. He influenced generations of pastors and developed friendships with presidents, prime ministers, and royalty around the world. His death marks the end of an era for evangelicalism, and poses a fundamental question: Will his legacy of bipartisan, ecumenical outreach be carried forward?
  • Although the term “evangelical” is now commonly used to refer to Christians who focus on personal salvation and outreach about the gospel, it wasn’t always so common. “Billy was sort of the original evangelical,” argued Jack Graham, the pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, who serves with Laurie on President Trump’s unofficial evangelical advisory council. (He’s not related to Billy Graham.) The North Carolina preacher was focused on evangelism, or sharing the good news of the gospel. As he grew more popular, he became the face of the movement to many around the United States and the world.
  • He was also firmly committed to remaining bipartisan, proudly claiming that he provided spiritual counsel to 12 sitting presidents and participated in events surrounding nine inauguration ceremonies. “Billy had great influence on people from every side of the aisle, politically,” said Jack Graham. “To me, he reminds us always that more important than partisan politics, more important than the political divisions that we have today, that Christ can unite us.” Even President Trump met Graham, before he won the White House: Laurie said the now-president sat with the preacher at Graham’s 95th birthday party.
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  • Still, Graham was far more sympathetic towards civil rights than many other white Christian pastors of his generation, and he pushed for non-segregated crusades early in the 1950s. That legacy left him beloved across different groups of American Christians. “Our generation owes this giant of the Christian faith a debt of gratitude for paving the way for sharing the Gospel with the world with humility, graciousness, and integrity,” wrote Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, in a statement on Wednesday.
malonema1

Trump Leaves the Tax-Reform Details to Congress - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Four months ago, the Trump administration released the outlines of a tax-reform plan—a one-page list of ideas and principles that was notable mostly for how many questions it left unanswered.
  • To the delight of Republican leaders, the one lawmaker Trump singled out for pressure was not one of their own; for the first time in weeks, the president picked on a Democrat, Missouri Senator Claire McCaskill, who is up for reelection in a state he won easily in November. If McCaskill doesn’t vote for tax reform—whatever it turns out to be—“you have to vote her out of office,” Trump demanded of the crowd.
  • Yet while Trump talked at length about the need for tax reform, he said little about how Republicans would get it done. And that’s because they still don’t know themselves. GOP leaders haven’t made several crucial decisions. Will the legislation be a revenue-neutral tax reform that fully offsets the reduction in rates by eliminating costly—and popular—exemptions and deductions? Or will it be a more straightforward tax cut, that would likely have to expire within a decade to comply with Senate rules? How low will they try to push down the corporate rate? About all they’ve determined is that 15 percent is too low, but will it be closer to 20 percent or 25 percent? And on, and on.
malonema1

How Trump Is Endangering His Prized Tax Cuts - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • “If there’s anything that unifies Republicans, it’s tax reform,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell assured reporters on Tuesday who were wondering if President Trump’s latest feud with a GOP senator would threaten his top legislative priority.McConnell is undeniably correct. Tax reform, even more than repealing and replacing Obamacare, is the GOP lodestar. But the reason Republicans haven’t unveiled a tax bill, much less held a vote on one, is that they haven’t figured out how to pay for their ambitious economic plan. And on that score, the president isn’t making their jobs any easier.
  • In each case, the president was probably playing good politics, as none of these proposals would be broadly popular. The BAT would have hit retailers who might have passed the cost onto consumers with higher prices. Millions of Americans in states like New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California benefit from deducting their high local taxes off their federal bill. And tens of millions more take advantage of 401(k) plans, which allow employees to accrue investment earnings that won’t be taxed for decades to come.
  • There have been plenty of indications over the last few months that Trump and Republican leaders in Congress would have different answers to that question. For years, Ryan and his allies in the House have talked up the idea of a “once-in-a-generation” reform that would simplify the code, cut rates both for businesses and individuals, and pay for it by eliminating exemptions, deductions, and other loopholes that taxpayers use to their advantage. Implicit in that goal is the need to make difficult political choices; every loophole is someone’s prized and essential tax break, with a team of highly-paid lobbyists fighting to keep it. “We will not wait for a path free of obstacles because it does not exist,” Ryan said in a speech in June. “And we will not cast about for quick fixes and half-measures.”
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  • It’s up for debate whether Trump’s interjections on tax policy will ultimately harm the party or save Republicans from politically dangerous choices they would later come to regret. But the more fundamental question is whether Trump actually shares the party’s desire for a bold and comprehensive tax overhaul, as opposed to a quicker and easier tax cut. If he does, the president may have to start helping Republicans make the case for some tax tradeoffs, instead of just nipping them in the bud.
malonema1

FEMA Will Aid Hurricane-Ravaged Churches - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Tucked among the provisions in the budget bill passed by Congress on Friday are new rules about how FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, works with houses of worship. According to the new law, religious nonprofits can’t be excluded from disaster aid just because of their religious nature, which had been the agency’s policy in certain contexts prior to January.
  • Last summer, when Hurricane Harvey ripped across islands in the Caribbean, Louisiana, and Texas, it left roughly $125 billion in damage, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—second in cost only to Hurricane Katrina. Worse, it was followed almost immediately by Hurricanes Irma and Maria, which further devastated Florida, North Carolina, Puerto Rico, and other areas.
  • While these new guidelines changed the situation for houses of worship, they were ultimately impermanent and vulnerable to revision under a new administration. That’s where Congress’s new budget bill comes in: It revised the text of the Stafford Act itself. Under the new law, which was signed by Trump on Friday, houses of worship can’t be excluded from aid provided to other nonprofits, including schools, hospitals, and elder-care facilities, just because they’re led by people “who share a religious faith or practice.” This includes money for the “repair, restoration, and replacement of damaged facilities.”
malonema1

Trump Unveils a 'Hard Power' Budget - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • If Americans were taken aback by the restrained, highly scripted President Trump that addressed Congress last month, they should recognize a lot more of the blustery, law-and-order candidate they elected in the budget blueprint the White House released on Thursday.
  • Trump is asking Congress for a down payment of more than $4 billion to fund his border wall, part of a $30 billion supplemental appropriations request to bolster national security. The Department of Homeland Security would see a 6 percent boost in the president’s first budget, which would also direct more money toward law enforcement and education programs promoting school choice.
  • Beyond the programs targeted for elimination, the Trump budget puts nearly every domestic Cabinet department on the chopping block. In the Department of Education, dozens of school and teacher grant programs would go, and the popular college work-study program would see significant cuts. In the Department of Commerce, NOAA gets slashed by billions, including the complete elimination of $250 million in grants for coastal and marine management. Funding for the National Institutes of Health—an agency with some of the most bipartisan support in Congress—would drop by nearly $6 billion, a cut 18 percent.
malonema1

Trump Bans Transgender Americans From Serving in the Military - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • President Trump has announced that transgender Americans will not be allowed to serve “in any capacity” in the U.S. military, a move that could affect thousands of people serving in the armed forces and which resulted in almost immediate pushback from influential Republicans.
  • Trump’s announcement is the latest in a set of steps his administration has taken to walk back Obama-era policies on transgender Americans. The biggest shift is the reasoning: Rather than framing his decision in the language of rights or morality, as Obama-era officials did, Trump spoke about the new transgender policy in terms of military efficiency. The decision is likely to trigger major blowback from Democratic legislators and LGBT activists who long pushed for full acceptance of transgender service members. It will also bring gender identity back into the spotlight, reigniting a culture-war debate surrounding a president who has tried to sell himself as a friend of LGBT rights.  
  • While there has not been much research done on this question, according to Rand, policies welcoming lesbian, gay, and bisexual Americans to serve openly in the military did not diminish units’ effectiveness. The Rand researchers expected “little or no impact on unit cohesion, operational effectiveness, or readiness” resulting from Obama’s policy.
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  • John McCain joined in with more explicit criticism. “The president’s tweet this morning … is yet another example of why major policy announcements should not be made via Twitter. The statement was unclear,” the Arizona senator said in a statement. “There is no reason to force service members who are able to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military—regardless of their gender identity.” NBC reported that the Senate Armed Services Committee, headed by McCain, was not briefed in advance of the White House’s announcement.
malonema1

Congress Fights the Military Over a New 'Space Corps' - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • In a bipartisan vote last month, the House of Representatives approved legislation that would direct the Defense Department to build a new “space corps” within the Air Force. Its backers blame the Pentagon for failing to prioritize space security in recent years, a lapse that has allowed rivals like Russia and China the opportunity to catch up to U.S. superiority. The proposal’s fate now rests in the Senate, but its most powerful foe is the military itself, which says Congress should simply send more resources rather than force it to undertake a bureaucratic overhaul during a time of war.
  • The idea for a new service devoted to space is not new, and support for it does not break down along partisan lines. It first gained currency in 2000 as a recommendation from a military-reform commission headed by Donald Rumsfeld, who was then a retired ex-defense secretary and White House chief of staff under President Gerald Ford. A year later, Rumsfeld would be recruited back to government as George W. Bush’s defense secretary and set about to overhaul the bureaucracy of the Pentagon—a reform that might have included the space corps. But the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the launching of long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq sidetracked that effort.
  • In phone interviews, Rogers and Cooper cited the emerging threat from Russia and China as the reason for the newfound political momentum. Rogers said lawmakers had received alarming classified briefings about the two countries’ capabilities and said the Air Force was consistently six to eight years behind in deploying its own new capabilities. Both countries, he said, had recently gained “peer status” with the United States in space. The worry is that either country could neutralize key U.S. satellites. “They recognize they cannot take us on and it be a fair fight,” Rogers told me. “But if they take our eyes and ears out, they actually have a chance to have a fair fight with the United States. We don’t ever want to get into a war where we have a fair fight.”
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  • “People in the Air Force who are in space sometimes view themselves as failed fighter pilots, because the real ethic there has been to be a fighter pilot, and that’s the way to get promoted to general,” he told me. Cooper said the Air Force was even unenthusiastic about drones initially, “because they didn’t like aircraft that were not piloted.”
malonema1

Why We Should Honor the Military with a Parade - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • President Trump asked the Pentagon “to explore a celebration at which all Americans can show their appreciation” for America’s military, so we might be seeing the first national military parade since 1991. Will it cost millions? Probably. Will there be counter-demonstrations? Sure. Is there a risk of terrorist attacks? Of course. Should it happen? Absolutely, and here’s why.
  • What about the cost? Americans love parades—and advertisers do too. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade attracts 3.5 million attendees, and almost 50 million television viewers. The TV advertising revenue alone was worth more than $41 million in 2016. The Rose Bowl parade has a much smaller crowd, but nearly the same number of television viewers. CNBC says that participation in that parade “comes with a hefty price tag, but corporate sponsors say the chance to get their company's message out to millions is worth the expense.”
  • Unfortunately, military service never even occurs to many of America’s best and brightest. Since retiring from the military in 2010, I’ve run across quite a few people—young and old, but especially young—who have never personally seen, let alone spoken with, an active duty member of the armed forces (or even any veterans—who now comprise just 7.3% of the population).   
malonema1

How the Supreme Court is Expanding the Immigrant Detention System - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • A quarter-century ago, in 1994, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, on any given day, was holding somewhere around 5,500 immigrants in “immigration detention.”For fiscal year 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget documents projected an average daily population in detention of roughly 31,000. That increase—nearly six-fold in 25 years—made the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of ICE roughly the 13th largest prison system in the country. On its busiest days in FY 2017, ICE housed a population well above that.  
  • As of 2016, only about 10 percent of detainees were held in federal facilities at all; the remainder were housed in state, county, or city jails (25 percent) or private for-profit prisons (65 percent). Each of the local or private facilities is governed by an agreement with ICE governing inmate conditions, and the agreements aren’t uniform. Some require better conditions than others. Even ICE’s defenders do not seriously contest that ERO detention facilities are rife with poor physical conditions, inadequate medical care, and physical and sexual abuse of the inmates.
  • Justices Samuel Alito, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, and Neil Gorsuch, read the statute as forbidding bail hearings for the immigration inmates, and thus authorizing ERO to detain them for weeks, months, or even years. Two of the five, Thomas and Gorsuch, wrote separately to suggest that the inmates should not be allowed to challenge their detention in court until after their cases are complete and they are facing deportation. The five-justice majority opinion, without quite saying so, also suggested that the constitutional issue is really not of much importance at all. Justice Stephen Breyer wrote a dissent, joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor. (Justice Elena Kagan recused herself, because she had authorized a pleading in the case when she was U.S. Solicitor General.)
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  • So the statutory issue in Jennings was whether these statutes, which do not mention bail, should be read as forbidding bail proceedings—or read against the background of the Constitution, which plainly regards bail as a fundamental right? For criminal proceedings, bail hearings are presumed; should immigration detention—which is civil—be an exception? Six of the circuits have said that bail hearings must be held if detention is “prolonged.” The Ninth Circuit, where Jennings originated, ordered that ICE provide bail hearings for its detainees every six months. The detainees would be entitled to release unless ICE could show by “clear and convincing evidence” that they were dangerous to the community or likely to flee.
  • In dissent, Breyer, joined by Ginsburg and Sotomayor, contended that the constitutional issues in this area are weighty. Though popular discourse increasingly denies this obvious fact, the immigrants immured in the ERO archipelago have constitutional rights. The Fifth Amendment says that “[n]o person shall … be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law”—and from the founding to the present, “person” has included citizen and alien alike. Some of the immigrants in the class, having been halted at the border, are not, as a matter of immigration law, “in” the United States. But that’s a legal fiction for immigration purposes, Breyer noted:
malonema1

George Nader's 1985 Obscenity Indictment - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • A political operative who frequented the White House in the early days of President Trump’s administration, George Nader, was indicted in 1985 on charges of importing to the United States obscene material, including photos of nude boys “engaged in a variety of sexual acts,” according to publicly available court records. Nader pleaded not guilty, and the charges against him were ultimately dismissed several months after evidence seized from Nader’s home was thrown out on procedural grounds. “Mr. Nader vigorously denies the allegations now, as he did then,” a lawyer representing Nader said.
  • Nader often visited the White House in the months after Trump was inaugurated, Axios reported earlier this year. On January 17, he was en route to Trump’s Palm Beach estate, Mar-a-Lago, to celebrate the anniversary of the inauguration when he was served a grand-jury subpoena at Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C.
  • Nader, an influential yet under-the-radar operative who edited a foreign-policy magazine in the 1990s, had “remarkable access to key political and business leaders throughout” the Middle East, former West Virginia Representative Nick Rahall said in 1996, according to a Congressional Record transcript of his remarks. In May 1987, for example, Nader described a meeting he had attended with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, along with “leaders of the Afghan mujahedin, some senior officials of the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah, and some Islamic fundamentalists from Egypt.”
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  • There’s little known about Nader’s recent visits to the White House. The Times reported that Nader has been questioned about his meetings there with Kushner and Stephen Bannon, a former Trump adviser. Bannon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
  • The government argued that the search was justified because Nader, “a suspected pedophile, was likely to seek to contact children.” But, 18 months later, the court ruled that the latter part of the warrant was impermissibly general, and threw out additional evidence that had been seized from his home. The evidence that was discarded included material that was described in the court ruling as obscene.
malonema1

What Trump Means When He Calls Gary Cohn a 'Globalist' - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • The term “globalist” is a bit like the term “thug.” It’s an epithet that is disproportionately directed at a particular minority group. Just as “thug” is often used to invoke the stereotype that African Americans are violent, “globalist” can play on the stereotype that Jews are disloyal. Used that way, it becomes a modern-day vessel for an ancient slur: that Jews—whether loyal to international Judaism or international capitalism or international communism or international Zionism—aren’t loyal to the countries in which they live.
  • It’s possible to use the term “globalist”—even about a Jew—innocently, just like it’s possible to use the term “thug” about an African American with no racist intent. And perhaps that’s what Trump was doing when he applied it to Cohn. The problem is that this requires giving Donald Trump a benefit of the doubt that he forfeited long ago.
  • When Trump uses anti-Semitic language, his defenders often counter that his daughter, son-in-law, and grandchildren are Orthodox Jews. Sure, but even bigots contain multitudes. Trump may feel genuine affection for Jared Kushner, and likely Gary Cohn too. But that doesn’t change the fact that he employs anti-Semitic tropes in ways that make him almost unique among contemporary American politicians. After all, history is filled with politicians who fomented anti-Semitism yet enjoyed warm relationships with individual Jews.
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