Scott Martelle at the Los Angeles Times writes—No, asylum seekers are not exploiting a 'loophole,' they're exercising a legal right:
It is only in an administration as dysfunctional and truth-averse as this one that people from other countries exercising their statutorily defined right to seek asylum in the U.S. can be viewed as taking advantage of a “loophole” in immigration laws.
On Monday, the government released statistics showing that the number of people seeking asylum at the border with Mexico has skyrocketed from 55,584 in 2017 to 92,959 in 2018, most of them unaccompanied minors or families with minor children. But asylum seekers still make up only a thin slice of the total number apprehended at the border — 18%, up from 13%.
And two-thirds of asylum-seekers are denied, a percentage that has risen dramatically under Trump policies narrowing the conditions that meet the asylum standard. The vast majority of asylum-seekers are fleeing violence and poverty in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador — conditions that have been influenced by U.S. policies, particularly those of the Reagan and first Bush administrations. Whether those were good or bad policies is a topic for another discussion, but the U.S. decision to support anti-leftist actors during insurrections and civil wars added to the violence and destabilization of the region. Those actions helped lay the foundation for other problems too, from corrupt governments to powerful street gangs, some of which came together here in Los Angeles.
The Editorial Board of The Washington Post concludes—The Trump administration won’t stand for Khashoggi. It could at least stand for jailed Saudi women.:
Even if they judge it necessary to maintain close relations with Mohammed bin Salman — a dubious proposition — Mr. Trump and his advisers ought to be demanding tangible concessions in exchange. These should not concern arms purchases or the price of oil — the latter of which the Saudis last week moved to raise in contravention of Mr. Trump’s demands. They should center on free expression and human rights, which is what the Khashoggi case is about.
One matter in particular cries out for U.S. attention: the Saudi women jailed and reportedly tortured for advocating civil rights, including permission to drive. The regime allowed women to drive earlier this year, but then arrested the activists who had peacefully advocated for reform. [...] Eleven women remain in custody, according to Reuters.
Several women arrested in May were held incommunicado and in solitary confinement for three months, Amnesty International reported, and they remain detained without charge or legal representation. More disturbingly, The Post, Amnesty and Reuters have separately reported that several of the women have been subjected to torture and sexual abuse. According to accounts provided to The Post by four people, the women were beaten or subjected to electric shocks, and when visited had difficulty standing. The Reuters account says a top aide to Mohammed bin Salman, Saud al-Qahtani, was present when one of the women was subjected to forced kissing, groping and electric shock, and threatened her with rape and murder.
The Trump administration seemingly cannot bring itself to seek justice for Mr. Khashoggi. But it could, at least, intervene on behalf of the living and demand that Mohammed bin Salman release the female activists. If the crown prince cannot meet this simple test, surely he cannot be rehabilitated as a reliable U.S. partner.
Jeremy Brecher and Joe Uehlein at In These Times write 12 Reasons Labor Should Demand a Green New Deal:
American workers, like most Americans, are dissatisfied with the status quo and want change. Organized labor is in a position to help lead that change. But all too rarely is labor’s program directed to a vision of what we want for the future.
The Green New Deal provides a visionary program for labor and can provide a role for unions in defining and leading a new vision for America.
At the same time, the Green New Deal projects a program that is not far-fetched. It includes plans for a public works programs, the expansion of human rights and new entitlement programs. Americans have made such goals a reality before in U.S. history—with organized labor playing a leading role.
Why a Green New Deal? Only protecting humanity from climate catastrophe can unify the political forces needed to meet labor’s demands for jobs, union rights, economic security, full employment, and worker empowerment.
There are 12 key reasons why labor should get on board with a Green New Deal [...]
Nancy Le Tourneau at The Washington Monthly writes—Demographic Changes Pose an Issue for Republicans, Not Democrats:
Discussions about the demographic changes we’re undergoing in this country usually focus on the predictions that, by mid-century, white people will no longer represent a majority in this country. There is also the fact that the gender gap continues to widen in the Trump era, especially among white suburban women. But Ron Brownstein points to another demographic shift that hasn’t gotten as much attention.
In [Public Religion Research Institute] surveys, [Chief Executive Officer Robert P. Jones] notes, evangelical Christians have declined from about 21% of the total population in 2008 to 15% this year. That erosion, Jones says, has been “asymmetrical,” with younger and better-educated members becoming the most likely to leave the faith. That’s left behind a group that is older and more uniformly conservative.
What is becoming increasingly clear is that the shrinking group of older white evangelical Christians is Trump’s base of support.
Mike Podhorzer, AFL-CIO’s political director, suggests that if we want to have a better understanding of white, non-college educated voters, we need to stop lumping them into one, catch-all category. What really distinguishes a Trump-supporting white voter from one who doesn’t isn’t education or even gender, it’s whether or not that voter is evangelical.
But it’s not just Trump. Brownstein uses exit data from the 2018 midterm elections to demonstrate that, when it comes to the much-discussed “white working class,” it is actually white evangelical Christians who are the Republican base.
David M. Uhlmann at The New York Times writes—Trump Wants to Weaken Clean-Water Rules:
On Tuesday, in the Trump administration’s latest assault on the environment, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed rolling backClean Water Act protections that have helped make America’s rivers and streams fishable and swimmable, in the process threatening drinking-water supplies across the country.
Once again, the E.P.A. is disregarding basic science. This latest proposal obscures its harmful effects with legalese that draws dubious distinctions between certain streams even though pollution flows downstream regardless of the legal terminology the agency deploys. This is a thinly veiled effort to slash water pollution protections that have long been embraced by both Republican and Democratic administrations.
President Trump is once more playing to his base, this time to rural communities fearing greater regulation of the agricultural runoff that each year creates worsening dead zones in the Great Lakes and the Gulf of Mexico. Farmers do face significant challenges complying with environmental requirements. But in purporting to address their concerns, the E.P.A. would place at risk one of the greatest American environmental success stories: the transformation of our rivers and streams from open sewers in the 1960s and 1970s to far healthier waters today.
Jamil Smith at Rolling Stone writes—We Need a Disunity Ticket. No, a Biden-Romney union would not bring this country together:
Politico Magazine didn’t disclose until the end of corporate consultant Juleanna Glover’s Tuesday op-ed that she is a veteran adviser of Republican politicians, including one president and two former Oval Office candidates. She is also a current member of the Biden Institute Policy Advisory Board. Putting such information at the top also would have indicated why Glover might suggest such an awful idea: running a “unity ticket” with former Vice President Joe Biden at the top and someone like newly elected Utah Senator Mitt Romney as his running mate.
She also puts forth two similarly strange alternatives: outgoing Ohio governor and abortion opponent John Kasich and Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, who is happy to sell books decrying political polarization while he stands by the charlatan in the Oval Office, voting with Trump 87.5 percent of the time. These men, argues the former adviser to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, would be better options than a Democrat on the ticket. [...]
I could spend the next several hundred words detailing how absurd this all is. There are more salient points to make about the possibility of a so-called unity ticket, though. Overcoming barriers to the ballot, American voters sent the biggest blue wave since Watergate to Congress. It was a definitive message to both parties: that the government should be more representative of American identity, both in person and in policy. Yet Glover argues that a “nonpartisan agenda” is what America needs. Imagine a Democrat feeling as though she or he needs a Republican on the ticket to beat Trump. It would inevitably tip the center further to the right. I would call Glover’s suggestion comically obtuse, but none of this is funny.
Meagan Day at Jacobin writes—The Fund for Needy Millionaires:
Many people imagine the state as a kind of referee — a transcendent mediator enforcing theoretically neutral rules, arbitrating as fairly as possible between different interest groups in society. This faith in the state’s basic neutrality leads even people who care about inequality to miss the big picture, which is that the capitalist minority is absolutely pummeling the working majority and has enlisted the referee to assist their victory.
From the Supreme Court’s assault on unions, to cities shamelessly prostrating themselves before corporations, to big companies taking gobs of public money and then instituting mass layoffs, to bank bailouts to regulatory capture to deadly austerity, we’re not looking at a series of bad calls. This is a deliberate program of class domination being administered through the state itself.
One place we can look to gauge the extent of the capitalist class’s triumph in the state is the tax code. While government programs in the US are commonly viewed as the province of the poor, the US tax code is actually riddled with giveaways to the rich. In 2014, the average household in the top 0.1 percent — people with more than $100 million in assets — received more in tax breaks than the average household in the bottom 50 percent.
Make no mistake, this is public spending. It’s just that the rich and powerful, through control and manipulation of politics, are spending on themselves. This money might otherwise be spent on improving the material conditions of the people whose hard work creates that wealth: keeping public schools open and making universities tuition-free, replacing private insurance with a Medicare for All program, building high-quality social housing, improving public transit and infrastructure, providing universal childcare, or investing in a Green New Deal.
Tom Engelhardt at TomDispatch writes—News From the Far Side of Nowhere. In a Crippled World, All the News That’s Fit to Splint:
Breaking News! — as NBC Nightly News anchor Lester Holt often puts it when beginning his evening broadcast. Here, in summary, is my view of the news that’s breaking in the United States on just about any day of the week:
Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump. Trump.
Or rather (in the president’s style):
Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!!!!!!!!
Or here’s another way of thinking about the news unmediated — a word that’s gained new resonance in the age of The Donald — by anyone but him: below you’ll find a set of run-on tweets from you-know-who to his base — and by that I mean not just his American fans but “the Fake News Media” that treats such messages as the catnip of their twenty-first-century lives. [...]
Now, for a little breaking news of another sort! Unbelievably enough, despite all evidence to the contrary, there’s still an actual world out there somewhere, even if Donald Trump’s shambling 72-year-old figure has thrown so much of it into shadow. I’m talking about a world — or parts of it, anyway — that doesn’t test well in focus groups and isn’t guaranteed, like this American president, to keep eyes eternally (or even faintly) glued to screens, a world that, in the age of Donald Trump, goes surprisingly unnoted and unnoticed.
Emily Atkin at The New Republic writes—Have the Democrats Hit a Tipping Point on Climate Change?
When President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address nearly a year ago, he didn’t talk about climate change. But he didn’t get criticized nearly as much as the Democratic Party did for failing to mention the topic in its official response to Trump’s speech. The omission led the Sierra Club to declare that Democrats had “a climate change problem,” while the far-right website Breitbart announced that global warming had “officially ceased being an important issue in U.S. politics. #Winning!”
But the political climate in Washington has changed since then, especially after Democrats won back the House of Representatives in last month’s blue wave. Environmental protestors have flooded the Capitol twice in high-profile demonstrations, demanding senior Democratic leaders support a “Green New Deal.” Recent polling shows that Democratic voters are prioritizing climate change as an issue for the next Congress. And Democratic presidential hopefuls for 2020 arefacing pressure to support aggressive climate policies.
That last development is particularly surprising given that most Democratic candidates didn’t talk about global warming at all during their midterm campaigns. So what happened? Who is responsible for this newfound climate enthusiasm, and is it sustainable? Will it lead to meaningful action over the next two years, or peter out by 2020?
Michelle Chen at The Nation writes—The Poland Climate Conference Is Awash in Corporate Meddling:
The United Nations conference on climate change is supposed to be civil society’s last best hope for developing a global plan to cope with the global crisis. But this year’s conference in Katowice, Poland has disintegrated into part-diplomatic soiree, part-energy industry trade show. And it remains hostile terrain for the environmentalists and community advocates agitating on the sidelines.
While the summit is designed to take stock of global progress on core provisions of the Paris Agreement—the policy blueprint hammered out by about 200 member states in 2015—this year’s gathering is marked by two major differences: first, there’s been a monumental worsening of the climate crisis, with emission rates accelerating far more rapidly than anticipated; second, right-wing and nationalist movements have swept across the United States and other ecologically critical regions, from the Brazilian Amazon to Central Europe. So while more extreme mitigation measures are needed to stay on pace with the 1.5C target for global warming, political momentum is rapidly evaporating. In response to the flagging political motivation for international cooperation, grassroots groups are advancing a list of “People’s Demands” to counter the corporate capture of the UN process and call for a transparent, democratic, and community-focused vision for a decarbonized future.
The six-point program for climate justice—developed by a coalition that includes Friends of the Earth, Indigenous Environmental Network, and the watchdog group Corporate Accountability—calls for a comprehensive, “people first” transition to renewable energy sources by 2030, led by front-line communities, starting with an immediate halt to fracking projects and coal extraction and a moratorium on new fossil-fuel developments. The goals align with the UN climate-science panel’s recommendations for a 50 percent reduction in emissions by 2030—and run counter to the agenda of Trump and other anti-science, hard-right nationalists.
Gary Yohe and Michael E. Mann at HuffPost write—People Are Already Dying By The Thousands Because We Ignored Earlier Climate Change Warnings:
Now we have a president who asserted on national television that he knows the climate scientists’ reports are wrong, based on his “gut” and that “something is changing and it will change back.” Nothing could be further from the truth. The climate does not just change back. Because of our historical emissions, many changes are locked in — and others that have occurred are permanent. If the climate were to change back, we would be talking about a time frame of tens of thousands of years. This is a time scale that is, for human society, completely irrelevant. And we already face observed risks that will only increase in intensity, frequency, duration and extent in the near term, no matter what we do. Why? Because the carbon dioxide that we have pumped into the climate system has already committed us to twice the warming that has already occurred.
Andrew Gawthorpe at The Guardian writes—How Republicans are turning US states into labs of anti-democracy:
Throughout history, the power invested in the states has allowed all sorts of anti-democratic abuses to flourish. The most famous example is the Jim Crow system, which denied African Americans their rights and stained the ideals of American democracy for decades. In extreme cases, such as Governor Huey Long’s Louisiana in the 1930s, near-dictatorships have been established by ambitious local politicians.
Over the past few years, the Republican party has begun some experiments of its own. After losing governor’s races in North Carolina in 2016, and now in Wisconsin and Michigan in 2018, Republicans have looked to use lame-duck sessions of the state legislature to strip power away from the next governor and make it impossible for them to deliver the policies that the people of the state just voted for. And they’ve been remarkably brazen about doing it. [...]
While so much outrage is rightly directed at Donald Trump’s daily attacks on democratic norms, the growing detachment of establishment Republicans from them is arguably an even greater concern in the long run. [...]
There is little indication that the next generation of Republican leaders will have any more scruples, and plenty of reasons to fear they will have fewer. As the incentives increase for Republicans to ignore the will of the voters, the threat to American democracy today goes much deeper than Donald Trump – and consequently will be all the harder to tackle.