Chris Hedges's Blog, page 177

Medical Examiner Confirms Epstein Death a Suicide by Hanging

NEW YORK — Jeffrey Epstein’s prison death has been confirmed a suicide by hanging, the medical examiner’s office said Friday.

Epstein, 66, was found dead in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City on Aug. 10, touching off outrage and disbelief over how such a high-profile prisoner, known for socializing with powerful people including presidents Donald Trump and Bill Clinton, could have gone unwatched.

The Bureau of Prisons said Epstein had apparently killed himself, but that didn’t squelch conspiracy theories about his death.

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The Jeffrey Epstein Scandal Is Much Bigger Than Jeffrey Epstein



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Jeffrey Epstein Reportedly Taken Off Suicide Watch Before Death



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Messages seeking comment were left for Epstein’s lawyers. An office telephone number for Dr. Michael Baden, the pathologist hired by Epstein’s representatives to observe the autopsy, rang unanswered.

Epstein, who was charged with sexually abusing numerous underage girls over several years, had been placed on suicide watch last month after he was found on his cell floor on July 23 with bruising on his neck.

But multiple people familiar with operations at the jail say he was taken off the watch after about a week and put back in a high-security housing unit where he was less closely monitored, but still supposed to be checked on every 30 minutes.

Attorney General William Barr says officials have uncovered “serious irregularities” at the jail. The FBI and the Justice Department’s inspector general are both investigating Epstein’s death.

Jail guards on duty the night of Epstein’s death are suspected of falsifying log entries to show they were checking on inmates every half-hour as required, according to several people familiar with the matter.

A guard in Epstein’s unit was working a fifth straight day of overtime and another guard was working mandatory overtime, the people said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the lacked authorization to publicly discuss the investigation.

U.S. District Judge Richard Berman, who is in charge of the criminal case against Epstein, asked the jail’s warden this week for answers about the earlier episode, writing in a letter Monday that it had “never been definitively explained.”

The warden replied that an internal investigation was completed but that he couldn’t provide information because the findings were being incorporated into investigations into Epstein’s death.

The Associated Press often does not report details of suicide methods, but has made an exception because Epstein’s cause of death is pertinent to the ongoing investigations.

The Washington Post and The New York Times reported Thursday that the autopsy revealed that several bones in Epstein’s neck had been broken, leading to speculation his death was a homicide.

Chief Medical Examiner Barbara Sampson issued a statement Thursday in response to those articles, saying: “In all forensic investigations, all information must be synthesized to determine the cause and manner of death. Everything must be consistent; no single finding can be evaluated in a vacuum.”

Epstein, 66, was a hedge fund manager who hobnobbed with the rich, famous and influential, including presidents and a prince.

He owned a private island in the Caribbean, homes in Paris and New York City, a New Mexico ranch, and a fleet of high-price cars. His friends had once included Britain’s Prince Andrew, Clinton and Trump. Clinton and Trump both said they hadn’t seen Epstein in years and knew nothing of his alleged misconduct when new charges were brought against him last month.

The medical examiner’s ruling came a day after two more women sued Jeffrey Epstein’s estate, saying he sexually abused them.

The suit, filed Thursday in a federal court in New York, claims the women were working as hostesses at a popular Manhattan restaurant in 2004 when they were recruited to give Epstein massages.

One was 18 at the time. The other was 20.

The lawsuit says an unidentified female recruiter offered the hostesses hundreds of dollars to provide massages to Epstein, saying he “liked young, pretty girls to massage him,” and wouldn’t engage in any unwanted touching. The women say Epstein groped them anyway.

One plaintiff now lives in Japan, the other in Baltimore. They seek $100 million in damages, citing depression, anxiety, anger and flashbacks.

Other lawsuits, filed over many years by other women, accused him of hiring girls as young as 14 or 15 to give him massages, then subjecting them to sex acts.

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Balsamo reported from Washington.

A Career of Hate in Border Patrol

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for ProPublica’s Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox as soon as they are published.

It was late November 2017, and Matthew Bowen, a veteran Border Patrol agent, was seething. A fellow Border Patrol agent in Texas had just been found dead in the field, and Bowen was certain someone who’d been crossing the border illegally was responsible for murdering him.

“Snuffed out by some dirtbag,” Bowen, stationed in Nogales, Arizona, said in a text later obtained by federal authorities.

Bowen, if lacking in evidence, wasn’t alone in his anger and suspicion. President Donald Trump, nearing the end of his first year in office and already frustrated in his bid to construct a wall on the southern border, had promised to “seek out and bring to justice those responsible” for the Texas agent’s death. Brandon Judd, the head of the union that represents Border Patrol agents, declared to Fox News and other media outlets that the Texas agent had been “ambushed.”

Bowen’s work record suggested his distaste for the mix of migrants and drug traffickers crossing the border illegally could be dangerous. He’d been the subject of multiple internal investigations over excessive force during his 10-year career, court records show. In one, he’d been accused of giving a handcuffed suspect what agents called a “rough ride,” slamming the brakes on his all-terrain vehicle in a way that flung the suspect into the ground.

Bowen, though, had stayed on the job. And with the news of the Texas agent’s death, his disgust for illegal border-crossers seemed only to have deepened.

“Mindless murdering savages,” he texted to another agent that November.

Two weeks later, Bowen climbed behind the wheel of a Border Patrol pickup truck and used it to strike a Guatemalan migrant in a dusty parking lot in southern Arizona. Bowen eventually was arrested by federal authorities in May 2018 and charged with using his Ford F-150 pickup, a 4,000-pound vehicle, to menace the man as he tried to flee Bowen and other agents on foot. The truck, according to an affidavit filed by prosecutors in court, hit the man twice and came within inches of running him over. Prosecutors accused Bowen of using “deadly force against a person who was running away from him and posed no threat.”

On Monday, after months of legal wrangling and on the eve of trial, Bowen pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor civil rights charge, an offense that carries a potential term of up to a year in jail. In his plea deal, Bowen admitted to hitting the man with his truck and promised to resign from the Border Patrol. Sentencing has been set for October.

Bowen’s arrest and a variety of his ugly texts concerning migrants and others crossing the border illegally have been widely reported in recent months. But court documents and interviews suggest that his checkered career speaks to a much broader problem in the Border Patrol: its inability or unwillingness to identify and discipline problem agents.

The case against Bowen comes amid increasing scrutiny of an agency that critics and insiders say is permeated by a culture of contempt for migrants. This year, ProPublica exposed the existence of a secret Facebook group in which agents engaged in cruel and dehumanizing discussions about people coming into the U.S. unlawfully. ProPublica has also detailed the failures by the agency to fully reform what critics inside and outside the Border Patrol have deemed a failed system of discipline for troubled agents.

Bowen’s attack on the Guatemalan migrant was at least the sixth time he had been accused of using excessive force during his decade with the agency.

None of the previous episodes resulted in any discipline beyond an “oral admonishment.” Unlike many police departments, the Border Patrol has no early intervention program for troubled agents, measures that would have triggered additional training or a deeper inquiry into Bowen’s behavior and mindset even if his conduct did not warrant formal discipline. At least two supervisors with direct knowledge of Bowen’s work history said they regarded him as a danger but were resigned to the fact that the agency was unlikely to ever punish or even fire him.

“Other law enforcement agencies would’ve weeded him out,” said one of those who supervised Bowen. “Other law enforcement agencies have much higher standards than we do.”

Bowen’s attorney, Sean Chapman, had sought to keep his record of complaints from being introduced at trial. The lawyer had also asked a judge to bar all or most of his text messages from being made known to any eventual jury. Faced with having to explain the texts, Chapman had said in court filings that the conversations were not unusual, but instead “commonplace” in the part of Arizona where Bowen worked. The texts, the lawyer argued in one filing last spring, are “part of the agency’s culture.”

If true, it’s a remarkable claim, for the messages Bowen traded over the years with colleagues are openly hateful. In one, he said the men, women and children attempting to cross into the U.S. were “disgusting subhuman shit unworthy of being kindling in a fire.” In another, he joked about how tasty Guatemalan migrants can be if they are properly “fried” through the use of Tasers. In yet another, Bowen trained his anger on his own agency, calling it a “fucking failed agency” where he and other agents “are treated like shit, prosecuted for doing what it takes to arrest these savages, and not given appropriate resources to fully do our job.”

In texts Bowen sent after he assaulted the migrant, he referred to the victim as a “guat” and dismissed the incident as all but a nonevent, suggesting the only reason it had resulted in any action was because it was caught on a camera belonging to the patrol’s parent organization, Customs and Border Protection.

With Bowen still awaiting sentencing, Chapman declined to speak in detail about the case or his client. However, the attorney insisted that the offensive messages “were in reference to specific events where Border Patrol agents were assaulted or killed. The texts therefore were not intended to be a general comment about illegal immigrants — only about individuals that attacked or injured agents.”)

Officials with the Border Patrol and Customs and Border Protection would not respond to questions about Bowen’s case and what it might say about wider problems with the patrol.

In November 2017, enraged about the death of the agent in Texas, Bowen lamented that the border-crossers he suspected of killing the agent might spend years eluding the authorities.

“It will probably take them eight years to find the fucking beaners responsible,” he wrote in a text.

Months later, the FBI completed an exhaustive investigation into the Texas agent’s death. There was no evidence he’d been murdered. The local Texas sheriff said it appeared the agent, 36-year-old Rogelio Martinez, had fallen into a deep concrete culvert and suffered fatal head trauma.

“To date none of the more than 650 interviews completed, locations searched, or evidence collected and analyzed have produced evidence that would support the existence of a scuffle, altercation, or attack,” the bureau’s El Paso office said in a statement.

By then, Bowen had already committed the crime for which he’d pay with his career.

“I’ve Seen Egregious Incidents Get Swept Under the Rug”

Bowen — 6-foot-2, 185 pounds — joined the Border Patrol in 2008 just as it was undergoing the most substantial transformation in its history. With Congress boosting the Border Patrol’s funding, the agency underwent a massive hiring push, a surge that roughly doubled the number of agents in the span of just six years. Former officials now say the speed of the Border Patrol’s expansion made it likely there would be bad hires, perhaps a significant number of them.

Bowen, who had lived in South Carolina before joining the agency, was assigned to the Border Patrol station in Nogales, an outpost in the hill country of southern Arizona, where scrubby mesquite and paloverde trees stud the rugged landscape. The station, a fortresslike compound, stands about 2 miles from the U.S.-Mexico border, which is marked here by a rusty, 20-foot-tall steel fence encrusted with coils of razor wire. On one side of the barrier is the small town of Nogales, Arizona. On the other is the larger city of Nogales, in the state of Sonora, a major Mexican manufacturing hub that is home to more than 200,000 people.

The world of the Border Patrol is broken up into 20 geographic regions called sectors. The Nogales station is located in the Tucson sector, which covers about two-thirds of Arizona. While migration patterns and contraband routes are always evolving, the Tucson sector tends to be one of the busiest areas for Border Patrol agents. Agents in the sector made more than 52,000 arrests during the last fiscal year. Only the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas had more apprehensions.

Over the years, the Tucson sector has also been known as a trouble spot within the patrol. In 2017, there were 701 disciplinary cases involving sector agents, more than anywhere else in the country.

In interviews, several people who worked with or supervised Bowen said he grew to have a reputation as a bully, a man with a bilious disdain for those seeking asylum or illegal entry into the U.S. In texts, Bowen referred to migrants and other border-crossers as “beaners” or “tonks,” a pejorative term referring to the sound made when agents banged their flashlights on the heads of those being taken into custody.

In later texts, he discussed his frustrations with the job and pondered quitting the patrol. A co-worker sent back a message reminding Bowen of the fun aspects of the job, like “running down shitbags who thought they had you fooled.”

From 2012 to 2015, five different people detained by Bowen accused him of needless violence, according to court records.

In January 2012, according to prosecutors, Bowen searched a young man’s car at a security checkpoint without probable cause. Bowen pulled the man from the car, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him. In March 2015, a fellow agent expressed concern after Bowen tackled a migrant and busted the man’s lip. A month later, an undocumented man said that Bowen had dragged him around by his handcuffs, causing painful abrasions to his wrists. In September 2015, Bowen was again reported by a colleague, this time for taking down a juvenile in a particularly violent fashion.

Later that fall, Bowen was accused of the “rough ride” incident. After apprehending an undocumented migrant in the desert, Bowen handcuffed him and threw him on the front of his ATV, according to court records and interviews. Then Bowen made the ride as unpleasant as possible, said a Border Patrol employee with direct knowledge of the incident. At one point, the employee said, Bowen purposely stomped on the brakes, causing the man, still handcuffed, to fly off the vehicle and slam into the dirt.

In these cases, Bowen was investigated by either Customs and Border Protection’s internal affairs bureau or by the Office of Inspector General with the Department of Homeland Security. Neither the internal affairs unit nor the Inspector General’s office responded to requests for comment.

Prosecutors sought permission to bring evidence of Bowen’s allegedly abusive behavior into the expected trial, arguing that the complaints helped to provide broader context for the truck attack. The defense attorney, Chapman, countered, saying in court briefs that the only relevant incident was the ATV episode, since it involved the use of a vehicle as a weapon.

Chapman, in court papers, maintained that Bowen had only been censured for two of the incidents, saying he’d received an “oral admonishment” after the episodes in March and April 2015. According to the attorney, Bowen was cleared of misconduct in the other three cases.

A current Border Patrol manager who worked with Bowen for many years said “oral admonishments are a joke” that do little to deter bad behavior.

The Border Patrol’s system for investigating and disciplining its agents has long been suspect, and in 2016, a blue-ribbon panel of experts named by then-President Barack Obama declared it nothing short of “broken.” Investigations dragged on for years, in part because there were too few investigators. Victims who accused agents of misconduct were largely kept in the dark, barred from knowing whether the accused agents had been found culpable and disciplined in any way. Scores of agents were arrested every year and charged with a wide variety of crimes, but many managed to hang onto their jobs.

One former Customs and Border Protection manager with extensive knowledge of the Border Patrol’s disciplinary process said the quality of casework was lacking and the end results of investigations inconsistent. The former official said the authority to discipline agents for on-the-job misconduct and policy violations generally rests with commanders in each of the agency’s 20 geographic sectors. Of the more than 700 discipline cases in the Tucson sector in 2017, more than 500 led to “informal discipline” or no punishment at all.

“I’ve seen egregious incidents get swept under the rug,” said the former Customs and Border Protection official, citing cases involving domestic violence and assault, embezzlement and lying to superiors.

Bowen’s lack of regard for any oversight at the agency comes through in the texts obtained by prosecutors. The discipline process, he suggested, is little more than a system for supervising officials to cover their rear ends. Customs and Border Protection employees who reported their co-workers for excessive force or other wrongs were “fags.”

“BP is just meant to destroy guys that want to catch people,” Bowen wrote in one text about his frustration with the agency.

One of the supervisors who managed Bowen said the Border Patrol’s disciplinary system is largely punitive and only responds, when it does at all, to one incident at a time. Many big city police departments, noted the supervisor, have created early intervention systems, which can track everything from uses of force to tardiness to public complaints in order to identify troubled officers and help them change course before something tragic occurs. Under such a system, the supervisor said, the pattern of complaints against Bowen could have prompted mandatory retraining or some kind of counseling. Either he would have improved or been squarely on the agency’s radar as a potential menace.

“It absolutely works,” the supervisor said of such early intervention systems.

“He Did Not Deserve to Be Executed”

At some point, records and interviews show, Bowen found another agent in Nogales with whom he felt a sense of kinship, Lonnie Swartz. They would come in the years ahead to share their perspectives on migrants and their dim view of their agency’s stomach for the hard work of ending illegal immigration. While joking darkly about their jobs, the two, records show, once had shared a three-minute video of a Border Patrol agent pummeling an undocumented man, repeatedly smashing his skull against the steel beams of a border fence.

“Please let us take the gloves off trump,” Bowen once wrote to Swartz in a text.

Bowen’s Border Patrol buddy, it turns out, probably never should have been hired. In 1995, he had enlisted in the U.S. Army and was stationed at Fort Knox, Kentucky. But, within weeks, he had gone AWOL and fled the base. Facing criminal charges under military law, Swartz lived on the lam for nearly two years before he was captured in Las Vegas by a joint task force of local police officers and FBI agents, federal court records indicate. He was eventually ousted from the Army with an “other than honorable” discharge.

Somehow, however, he made it through the agency’s background check process and was hired by the Border Patrol in 2009, a year after Bowen. Court records indicate that Swartz misled the background investigators about his violations of military law during the hiring process in 2009 and again during a second background check in 2014. The former Customs and Border Protection official said that the Army discharge issue should have kept Swartz out of the patrol.

“That’s just shoddy,” the person said. “That should be an automatic disqualification. Whoever did the background investigation didn’t do their job properly.”

Chapman, who specializes in cases involving Border Patrol agents, represented Swartz during his trials. In an email, the attorney said Swartz “didn’t attempt to mislead anyone” about his history with the Army.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection would not comment on the circumstances surrounding Swartz’s hiring.

In 2012, about two years after graduating from the Border Patrol academy, Swartz was the one facing federal criminal charges. Swartz had shot and killed a 16-year-old boy, José Antonio Elena Rodríguez, during what he and other agents said was a dangerous encounter with rock-throwing Mexican nationals along the border fence. Charging Swartz with murder, federal prosecutors told a very different story. They said that in reality Swartz was in no danger of being struck by a stone when he opened fire and shot the teen 10 times — two bullets hit the youth in the head, the others in the back. Rather, the prosecutors argued, Swartz killed the boy because he was “fed up” after a series of clashes with migrants and other border-crossers.

Whether or not the boy was throwing rocks that night, prosecutors said, “it wasn’t a capital offense. He did not deserve to be executed.”

The shooting prompted a long and unusual series of events. For three years, the Border Patrol would not make public the name of the agent who had shot the boy, including to the boy’s family. It was only after the family filed suit against the agency that the federal authorities brought criminal charges against Swartz. His first trial ended with a jury acquitting him of murder charges but deadlocking on the lesser offense of manslaughter. The second, coming near the end of 2018, resulted in Swartz’s acquittal on all charges. The second jury had repeatedly told the judge it was unable to reach a unanimous verdict, and it only wound up acquitting when the judge ordered the jurors to keep trying.

Swartz’s lawyer argued at the trials that Swartz had followed proper procedure in firing his weapon.

“You can employ deadly force against a rock thrower if he poses a risk of serious bodily harm. That’s the law,” said Chapman during the second trial. “And that’s what he did. He followed his training and he followed the law.”

But a high-ranking Border Patrol agent who served in Nogales said that Swartz was a management challenge from the start of his tenure with the patrol. “He was too aggressive” and was constantly looking to escalate encounters with smugglers or migrants at the border fence, the agent said. Supervisors, said the agent, tried unsuccessfully “to reel him in.”

Disturbed by the teen’s killing — and a raft of other cross-border shootings — Customs and Border Protection leaders in 2013 brought in a team of outside law enforcement experts to examine the Border Patrol’s guidelines regarding the use of firearms. “Frustration is a factor motivating agents to shoot at rock throwers,” found the analysts, who studied 67 shooting incidents and 10 key policy directives. “While rock throwing can result in injuries or death, there must be clear justification to warrant the use of deadly force.”

The report, produced by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based consultancy, was followed by a four-page update to the use-of-force policies. Under the new rules, agents who were attacked with rocks or other projectiles were supposed to seek cover and “distance themselves from the immediate area of danger.”

The change left many agents grumbling that the Border Patrol had gone soft.

The Border Patrol would not say if Swartz still works for the agency in any capacity.

“It Just Seems to Keep Getting Worse”

Around 7:30 one morning in December 2017, a 23-year-old Guatemalan national named Antolín López-Aguilar slipped over the border fence in Nogales and tried to hide underneath a parked semi-trailer.

Bowen, who was driving a green-and-white patrol-issued truck, was sent to apprehend the migrant. He was accompanied by two other agents who had been dispatched in separate vehicles.

When López-Aguilar tried to run, Bowen, still in his truck, gave chase. According to prosecutors, Bowen then made the conscious decision to drive his F-150 pickup into the migrant, striking the man twice from behind and pushing him to the ground. The attack, which prosecutors said left López-Aguilar mildly injured and traumatized, was captured by video cameras at a nearby port of entry.

In the days and weeks after the assault, texts obtained by the government show, Bowen appeared both proud of his conduct and confident that little would come of it. In a text to Swartz, Bowen boasted of having performed what he called “a human pit maneuver.” PIT stands for pursuit intervention tactic. In simple terms it involves a police officer or law enforcement agent driving his or her car into the rear of a fleeing vehicle. There is no such thing in American policing as a “human pit maneuver.”

“The tonk was totally fine,” Bowen wrote, using the crude term again. “Just a little bump with a ford bumper.”

“If I had to tackle the tonk,” he said in another message, “I would still be doing memos and shit.”

In his text conversations, Bowen complained that he was only being investigated because the incident had been captured by the video cameras. He acknowledged that he’s been on the “radar” of the internal affairs bureau and seemed to have wearied of the agency’s efforts, however modest, to police its own.

“I’ve decided after this is cleared up, I’m resigning,” he wrote.

It did not get cleared up, and Bowen’s texts reveal his growing anxiety. He noted that he could be charged with assault with a deadly weapon. He feared being sent away from his family. For comfort, he reached out to Swartz, who at the time was still in the midst of his prosecution for the boy’s shooting.

“Guys are being made to think any use of force results in you being investigated,” Bowen wrote to Swartz. “And so they are letting tonks get away with way too much.”

The array of texts obtained by the government, whatever significance they have for Bowen’s crime or the Border Patrol’s oversight of him, do offer a very personal and specific window into the mindset and apparent morale problems that current and former agents say plague the agency.

Bowen derided the “liberal” media and Obama appointees, and he thought in the current political environment, prosecutors were determined to make criminal prosecutions out of virtually any use-of-force case that gets referred to them. He was bitter, he said, about how the system was “rigged” just as Trump claimed, although it’s unclear what system he was talking about. Swartz seemed sympathetic. In one text to Bowen, he complained about how the agency was under-funded, and its equipment was unreliable, even its weapons.

Bowen made clear in his texts that he no longer believed in his own agency, and that he had been contemplating bailing from the Border Patrol for a long time. He’d explored taking classes that might help him get into the real estate business — his wife was a real estate agent — or starting a trucking company. He’s done with his “mindless” job.

“I just have to transition away from BP,” wrote Bowen. “I think it will be like coming out of a 10-year depression.”

He continued, “There were lots of good days. But the past few years the bad has far outweighed the good and it just seems to keep getting worse.”

In a text from Dec. 8, 2017, just days after the incident with the truck, Bowen wrote without irony: “This shit is the kicker I needed to make the decision,” he said of resigning. “I feel like one day I would have to make a decision that would cost me my life or my freedom.”

What’s Really Behind Trump’s Israel Tweets

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump’s encouragement and support of Israel’s decision to ban two Democratic lawmakers may play well to his political base, but it could endanger the foundations of the U.S.-Israel relationship in the longer term.

The move on Thursday to bar Reps. Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota from Israel fueled a partisan fire over the Jewish state that has been raging in the United States, with Trump eagerly fanning the flames.

On Friday, though, Israel’s interior minister, Aryeh Deri, said he had received and granted a request by Tlaib to enter the Israeli-occupied West Bank on humanitarian grounds, to visit her 90-year-old grandmother. Tlaib’s letter said she would respect any restrictions and would “not promote boycotts” during her visit, according to Deri’s office. But Tlaib announced later Friday she would not make the trip, saying “oppressive conditions meant to humiliate me would break my grandmother’s heart.”

Trump had celebrated Israel’s Thursday decision on Twitter and framed the issue in decidedly political terms: “Representatives Omar and Tlaib are the face of the Democrat Party, and they HATE Israel!”

President Donald Trump is defending Israel’s decision to bar two Democratic members of Congress from visiting the country, even as he claims he didn’t “encourage or discourage” the move. (August 15)

Shortly before that decision was announced, Trump offered a not-so-subtle nudge to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, tweeting that “it would show great weakness” if Israel allowed the women to visit.

Bipartisan support from Congress has been a bedrock of the U.S.-Israel relationship since Israel’s founding, and critics of Thursday’s decision said they worried that Trump and Netanyahu were exploiting the situation for short-term political gain.

Netanyahu faces an election next month, and Trump faces the voters next year.

Tlaib and Omar, two newly elected Muslim members of Congress, are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. They had planned to visit Jerusalem and the West Bank on a tour organized by a Palestinian organization aimed at highlighting the plight of the Palestinians.

Israel on Thursday cited their support for the so-called “boycott, divestment, sanctions” movement, or BDS, in support of the Palestinians. Israel, and many pro-Israel U.S. politicians, believe BDS is anti-Semitic and seeks the destruction of the Jewish state, something its proponents deny.

But even some of Israel’s strongest supporters denounced Thursday’s move, saying it would deepen existing divides in the U.S. over support for Israel.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, the highest-ranking elected Jew in the country and one of Israel’s staunchest defenders, said the move would “only hurt the U.S.-Israeli relationship and support for Israel in America.”

“Denying entry to members of the United States Congress is a sign of weakness, not strength,” he added.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which has sought to stay above the partisan fray over Israel, weighed in against Thursday’s decision.

“We disagree with Reps. Omar and Tlaib’s support for the anti-Israel and anti-peace BDS movement, along with Rep. Tlaib’s calls for a one-state solution,” AIPAC said in a tweeted statement. “We also believe every member of Congress should be able to visit and experience our democratic ally Israel firsthand.”

Although there has been partisan friction between the U.S. and Israel in the past, Trump has sought to exploit it unlike any of his predecessors. The seeds were planted during the contentious debate and negotiations over President Barack Obama’s 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu vociferously opposed.

Netanyahu spoke at length against the deal at every opportunity he had, including on numerous occasions in the United States while at the White House, before a joint session of Congress and at the United Nations.

Republican lawmakers overwhelmingly opposed the deal, agreeing with Netanyahu’s argument that it opened, rather than closed, Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon because many of its most onerous restrictions expired over time. Then-candidate Trump seized on the issue, campaigning on an unabashedly pro-Israel platform that had withdrawing from the nuclear deal as a top goal.

As president, Trump decided against the advice of former top aides and over the objections of Democrats to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, move the embassy there from Tel Aviv, recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights and slash assistance to the Palestinians.

Trump has tried to silence his critics and opponents of his decisions by accusing them of anti-Semitism and of being insufficiently pro-Israel.

In recent months, Trump has tried to elevate the two Democratic women of color to the fore of the nation’s political debate, believing they will repel Democratic voters, according to Trump allies.

It is part of a Trump strategy that has placed racial animus at the forefront of his reelection campaign in an effort that his aides say is designed to activate his base of conservative voters and those who fear cultural changes across America. The aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss campaign strategy, also say Trump is banking that his loud support for Israel will attract more Jewish and evangelical Christian supporters.

His latest exhortation to Netanyahu to bar Omar and Tlaib from Israel may play well with his base, including the evangelical community he will need to win reelection, but it complicates matters for other parts of the administration, notably the State Department.

Although the U.S. ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, tweeted support for the ban, his embassy’s primary responsibility is ensuring the safety and security of Americans overseas.

For Israel, the West Bank and Gaza, that has long meant, and still does, a call for all Americans, including those of Palestinian descent or with pro-Palestinian views, to be treated fairly and equally by Israeli authorities.

“The U.S. government seeks equal treatment and freedom to travel for all U.S. citizens regardless of national origin or ethnicity,” the department says in its latest travel advisory for Israel.

The advisory notes that some Arab Americans, including Palestinian Americans, “have experienced significant difficulties and unequal and hostile treatment at Israel’s borders and checkpoints.”

The department urges those who have faced such treatment to immediately report it to the American Citizen Services unit at the embassy in Jerusalem.

To Defeat Fascism, We Must Dismantle Capitalism

“The Terror of the Unforeseen”

A book by Henry A. Giroux

Henry A. Giroux’s book “The Terror of the Unforeseen” analyzes the conditions that have enabled and led to Donald Trump’s rule and the consequences of that rule, which have ushered in an authoritarian version of capitalism. Giroux provides a realistic analysis that holds out the hope that, through collective efforts, change is possible and democracy can be saved.

There is an intellectual debate on whether or not the power wielded by the likes of Trump, Nigel Farage, Marine Le Pen, Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini, Geert Wilders, Heinz-Christian Strache, or Jörg Meuthen and Alexander Gauland constitutes fascism. Some analysts — such as Noam Chomsky, Neil Faulkner, John Bellamy Foster, Robert Kagan, Gáspar Miklós Tamás, and Enzo Traverso — speak of creeping fascism, new fascism, or post-fascism. They find both continuities and discontinuities between the classical forms of fascism in Italy and Germany and these contemporary right-wing politicians. Representatives of this position hold that Trump is not Hitler, but stress certain similarities between the two.

Others — including Wendy Brown, Nancy Fraser, Roger Griffin, Chantal Mouffe, Cas Mudde, Robert Paxton, David Renton, and Slavoj Žižek — argue that it is an exaggeration to characterize Trump and other contemporary demagogues as fascists. They prefer terms such as the new authoritarianism, libertarian authoritarianism, reactionary neoliberalism, right-wing populism, the populist radical right, or demagoguery on behalf of oligarchy. They see Trump as dangerous, but stress that his authoritarianism is quite different from classical fascism and Hitler.

Giroux takes the first position. He speaks of “the new form of fascism updated under the Trump administration” and “an updated American version of fascism of which Trump is both symptom and endpoint.” He argues that Trump does not use storm troopers and gas chambers, but divisive language, language that is itself a form of violent action. Fascism is not uniform, but dynamic and therefore takes on variegated forms in different historical and societal contexts. For Giroux, Trump constitutes the rise of neoliberal fascism and the culmination of a long history of authoritarianism that includes historical moments such as the oppression of Native Americans, slavery, US imperialism, torture, and extrajudicial detention and imprisonment (Guantánamo). One of the backgrounds to Trump’s rise is the culture of fear since 9/11, but another is neoliberalism’s dismantling of public education, critical reason, and radical imagination that represents a “full-scale attack on thoughtful reasoning.”

Fascism can exist at the level of individual character, ideology, institutions, or society as a whole, but fascism on one of these levels is a necessary foundation but not a sufficient condition for fascism on the next. Erich Fromm and Theodor W. Adorno argued that the authoritarian, sadomasochistic, necrophilic personality was the psychological foundation of fascism. But the existence of political leaders with fascist characters, even if they communicate fascist ideology, does not automatically imply the existence of a fascist society. For a fascist society to come into existence, these leaders need to call forth collective political practices that result in the full institutionalization of authoritarianism.

In his essay “Anxiety and Politics,” Frankfurt School critical theorist Franz Neumann specifies conditions necessary for the emergence of a fascist society. They include political crises, the alienation of labor, destructive competition, social alienation that threatens certain social groups, political alienation, and the institutionalization of fascist practices, such as collective political anxiety, propaganda and terror, persecutory nationalism, political scapegoating, and xenophobia. A condition that needs to be added to Neumann’s list is the weakness of the political left, beset by rivalries, internal trench wars, factions, splintering, isolation, and orthodoxy, and its frequent miscalculation of the actual dangers of the political situation it is facing — in the Weimar Republic, the Communist Party of Germany did not consider the Nazis, but the Social Democrats as their main enemy. Stalinist Communists characterized the Social Democratic Party of Germany as “social fascism” and believed German capitalism would automatically collapse after Hitler’s rise to power.

Many observers agree that today we find leaders with an authoritarian personality and ideology in a significant number of countries and that there are conditions in these places that can lead to fascist regimes. But the claim that countries such as the United States have become fascist societies goes too far. In a fully fascist society, there is no rule of law and the political opposition and other identified enemies are imprisoned or killed by the exercise of terror. A fascist society is a political Behemoth. Trumpism poses a very negative development, and perhaps has the potential to fully develop into a fascist political economic system — especially if the opposition cannot establish an alternative — but there is still a difference between Trump’s character structure and policies and the total character of US society.

A key contribution of Giroux’s book is the creation of the notion of neoliberal fascism for characterizing the contemporary negativity of politics. But he also uses terms such as populist authoritarianism, American authoritarianism, authoritarian populism, right-wing populism, and inverted totalitarianism. These terms are vague and create more confusion than elucidation. Both totalitarianism and populism can be used for arguing against both socialism and the far right; both, some argue, are threats to democratic societies. For example, Jan-Werner Müller writes in his book “What Is Populism?” that populism is “a danger to democracy” and that Trump and Sanders are “both populists, with one on the right and the other on the left.” Such theorizations often end up in the legitimation of what Tariq Ali calls the “extreme center” of neoliberal ideology, which in action has the material effect of managing the state solely for the benefit of the wealthy.

¤

In “The Road to Serfdom,” the leading neoliberal theorist and ideologue Friedrich A. Hayek claims that socialism and fascism are “inseparable manifestations of what in theory we call collectivism.” He claims that both do not “recognize autonomous spheres in which the ends of the individuals are supreme.” As a consequence, Hayek rejects the notions of the “common good” and the “general interest.” He argues that only a neoliberal society, where society and its institutions are organized as markets and are based on the commodity form and capital accumulation, can secure democracy and freedom. Augusto Pinochet’s neoliberal, military, fascist regime in Chile already showed in the 1970s how mistaken it was to assume that capitalism spontaneously brings about and provides the foundation for democracy. And in the more than 45 years since Pinochet’s coup d’état in 1973, the rise of new authoritarian forms of capitalism have shown repeatedly that Hayek was wrong.

Trump’s plan to build a wall at the US-Mexican border and the resulting government shutdowns aimed at forcing through this project, the travel ban for citizens from majority-Muslim countries, the separation of children from families at the border, his racist attacks on socialist congresswomen, his attempt to dismantle the legal protection of Dreamers from deportation — these are all examples of the ideologically motivated cruelties of the Trump regime and what Giroux (following Rob Nixon) terms slow violence. Over time, an accumulation of such cruelties can reach a tipping point where the current system is devastated and democracy abolished.

Neoliberal fascism, Giroux writes, is a formation “in which the principles and practices of a fascist past and neoliberal present have merged,” and which connects “the worst dimensions and excesses of gangster capitalism with the fascist ideals of white nationalism and racial supremacy associated with the horrors of the [fascist] past.” Giroux reminds us of Horkheimer and Adorno’s insights that liberalism and capitalism have inherent fascist potential, that fascism is a terroristic version of capitalism, that fascist potential has not ceased to exist after the end of World War II, and that “whoever is not willing to talk about capitalism should also keep quiet about fascism” (Horkheimer).

Trumpist policies favor the rich and US corporations, advance an economic version of Social Darwinism, with all-out competition ensuring that only the most powerful survive and the rest face precarity, debt, and ruin. Trumpism tries to compensate for the social void created by this neoliberal individualism by fostering what we can call repressive collectivism, and which, as the present author suggests, can be analyzed at three levels — economic, political, and ideological.

On the level of political economy, repressive collectivism is organized as an antagonism between austerity and precarity, which is used to advance protectionist policies that favor the interests of US capital.

At the level of politics and the state, deregulation, privatization, and commodification give wide freedoms to corporations while policing the poor, promoting law-and-order politics, and instituting progressively more draconian racist immigration policies.

At the level of ideology and culture, we find a combination of hyper-consumerist, narcissistic individualism, the cult of leadership, and nationalism. Under repressive collectivism, nationalism promotes the idea of the unity of US capital and US labor and advances the racist and xenophobic scapegoating of immigrants, refugees, people of color, Muslims, and foreigners.

¤

The conjuncture of neoliberalism and right-wing authoritarianism has brought to the fore an emotional, ideological anti-intellectualism, which impedes any discussion of socialist ideas and ideologically justifies and cements capitalism. Thus, the billionaire capitalist Donald Trump can successfully pretend to be a working-class hero. Right-wing authoritarians often appeal to the working class by displaying crude manners, showing a proletarian habitus, and using simple, dichotomous language. But in reality, of course, these ideologues oppose the interests of the working class. When in power, they often implement laws that give tax breaks to corporations and the rich and harm the working class by dismantling the redistributive effects of the welfare state and public services. Trump signifies the rise of the one percent’s direct rule of the state.

Giroux writes that “fascism begins not with violence, police assaults, or mass killings, but with language.” One of Trump’s infamous, but typical tweets reads: “The FAKE NEWS Media […] is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American People!” Dismissing all criticism as “fake news,” he identifies his person with the American people, and labels any criticism of him as anti-American. Trump’s political anger and authoritarian character replace reason by ideology, facts by fiction, rationality by emotionality, truth by lies, complexity by simplicity, objectivity by prejudice and hate. His combination of anti-socialism, nationalism, and racism were evident recently when he tweeted that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley, and Rashida Tlaib are “a bunch of communists” who “are Anti-America” and should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” Such political communication is not best characterized as post-truth politics, but as propaganda that tries to create false consciousness by simplification, dissimulation, manipulation, diversion, and outright lies. In this context, Giroux argues that we do not live in a post-truth world but in a “pre-truth world where the truth has yet to arrive.”

The Cambridge Analytica scandal has shown how the far right uses data breaches, online data collection, and targeted ads for trying to manipulate elections. “Alt-right” platforms such as Breitbart, InfoWars, Daily Caller, Philosophia Perennis, Unzensuriert, Westmonster, and the rest are projects that spread distortion, false news, and far-right conspiracies. Bots have partly automated the creation of political online attention, and it has become difficult to discern whether humans or machines are creating online content and attention. The culture of false news is one of the factors of Trump’s political success.

As I argued in “Digital Demagogue: Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Trump and Twitter,” Twitter and Trump are a match made in heaven. Trump uses first-person singular pronouns much more frequently than first-person plural pronouns, which is an indication of the narcissistic character structure that Erich Fromm argues is prone to engage in destruction for the sake of destruction. Twitter’s me-centered, narcissistic medium invites the authoritarian political communication Giroux characterizes as a show of evil banality: “Trump’s infantile production of Twitter storms transforms politics into spectacularized theater” — Twitter spectacles that are part of a culture of spectacle deeply ingrained in the capitalist tabloid culture that has turned political debate into superficial, personalized, high-speed events that lack the time and depth needed for exploring the complexities of antagonistic societies. In political television debates, candidates are asked to give answers in less than 30 seconds. The capitalist culture of speed, superficiality, tabloidization, and personalization is part of the apparatus that has enabled Trump the spectacle.

The liberal media and Trump have a love/hate relationship. Although these media are some of Trump’s fiercest critics, they helped create him. The Tyndall Report found that in 2015, Donald Trump received 23.4 times as much coverage in evening television newscasts as Bernie Sanders. The capitalist mainstream media are in a symbiotic and symmetrical relation to the political spectacle Trump. The capitalist media require Trump just like Trump requires the capitalist media.

When Trump took to Twitter to call Kim Darroch “a very stupid guy” and the “wacky Ambassador that the UK foisted upon the United States,” The New York Times immediately ran a story titled “UK Envoy’s Leaked Views Inspire More Insults in Trump Tweets.” No matter how silly or insulting, Trump’s tweets are what the mainstream media talk about. The liberal media thereby do not deconstruct Trump but help construct him, giving him the constant public attention that he instrumentalizes for his own political aims.

¤

Henry Giroux’s book takes inspiration from teachers who strike against terrible working conditions and young people who protest against racism, police violence, student debt, and sexual violence and stand up for gun control, peace, environmental protection, social security, equality, and prison abolition. He argues for a broad protest movement that forms a “united front” against neoliberal fascism, brings together the multiple interrelated issues, interests, and struggles, and “connects the dots among diverse forms of oppression.”

Giroux also stresses the importance of critical pedagogy as a central intellectual weapon in the struggle against neoliberal fascism. Developing “critical consciousness” helps form “knowledgeable citizens who have a passion for public affairs”:

Revitalizing a progressive agenda should be addressed as part of broader social movement capable of reimagining a radical democracy in which public values matter, the ethical imagination flourishes, and justice is viewed as an ongoing struggle. In a time of dystopian nightmares, an alternative future is only possible if we can imagine the unimaginable and think otherwise in order to act otherwise.

Giroux argues that driving back authoritarianism requires informed citizens, critical thinking, deliberative inquiry, a culture of questioning, dialogue, debate, and thoughtful action, cultural production, and at a minimum requires that we provide secure jobs for teachers.

A revival of the public sphere depends on the creation of new debate and news formats run on public service internet platforms and platform cooperatives, new formats that challenge the dominance of Fox News, CNN, YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook in the organization of political communication. In order to save democracy, we need to reinvent communication so that digital tabloids and digital capitalism are replaced by digital public exchange and the digital commons. Challenging authoritarianism today requires the remaking of political culture and a radical reconstruction of the political economy of the media and the internet. Arguing for such change in this decisive moment for the future of US democracy, Henry Giroux’s book is an important contribution to the development of the intellectual tools needed in the anti-fascist struggle for 21st-century democratic socialism.

This review was originally published by the Los Angeles Review of Books .

The Washington Post’s Anti-Sanders Bias Is Irrefutable

Bernie Sanders has taken to calling out corporate media for their anti-progressive bias, and their feathers have gotten quite ruffled.

In a campaign event Monday in New Hampshire, Sanders told the crowd:

We have pointed out over and over again that Amazon made $10 billion in profits last year. You know how much they paid in taxes? You got it, zero! Any wonder why the Washington Post is not one of my great supporters, I wonder why? New York Times not much better.

The next day, he returned to the same point:

And then I wonder why the Washington Post, which is owned by Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon, doesn’t write particularly good articles about me. I don’t know why.

The Post’s executive editor, Martin Baron, immediately retorted (CNN, 8/12/19) that Sanders was spouting a “conspiracy theory,” insisting that “Jeff Bezos allows our newsroom to operate with full independence, as our reporters and editors can attest.”

Many others in corporate media were incensed as well. NPR’s All Things Considered (8/13/19) accused Sanders of “echoing the president’s language,” and CNN (8/13/19) ran a segment that likewise accused him of using Trump’s “playbook”; CNN’s Poppy Harlow warned ominously, “This seems like a dangerous line, continuous accusations against the media with no basis in fact or evidence provided.”

FAIR has been following this issue for quite some time, so we’re happy to offer the evidence CNN and the Post protest is lacking.

We could start with the 16 negative stories the Post ran in 16 hours (FAIR.org, 3/8/16), and follow that up with the four different Sanders-bashing pieces the paper put out in seven hours based on a single think tank study (FAIR.org, 5/11/16).

Or you could take the many occasions on which the Post’s factchecking team performed impressive contortions to interpret Sander’s fact-based statements as meriting multiple “Pinocchios” (e.g., FAIR.org, 1/25/17, 3/20/17). In particular, we might observe the time the Post “factchecked” Sanders’ claim that the world’s six wealthiest people are worth as much as half the global population (FAIR.org, 10/3/17). It just so happens that one of those six multi-billionaires is Bezos, which would make an ethical journalist extra careful not to show favoritism.

Instead, after acknowledging that Sanders was, in fact, correct, the paper’s Nicole Lewis awarded him “three Pinocchios”—a rating that indicates “significant factual error and/or obvious contradictions.” This is because, the paper explained, even though the number comes from a reputable nonpartisan source, Oxfam, which got its data from Credit Suisse, “It’s hard to make heads or tails of what wealth actually means, with respect to people’s daily lives around the globe.”

Post factcheckers returned to defend their owner against the charge that he is extremely wealthy after Sanders pointed out in a Democratic debate (6/27/19) that “three people in this country own more wealth than the bottom half of America.” “The numbers add up,” the Post fact squad (6/28/19) acknowledged, but it’s “apples to oranges”:

People in the bottom half have essentially no wealth, as debts cancel out whatever assets they might have. So the comparison is not especially meaningful.

But even in the occasional straight news reporting that manages to acknowledge Sanders’ success, the paper’s reporters still slip in digs at the candidate, such as a news report by Karen Tumulty charting Sanders’ strong caucus showing in Iowa in 2016 that told readers that his showing indicated “Republicans are not the only voters looking for qualities beyond experience and electability.” (With eight years as Burlington mayor, 16 years in the House and a Senate tenure that began in 2007, Sanders has more political experience than most presidential candidates, whether in 2016 or 2020, and electability, rather obviously, ought to be determined by voters, not journalists—FAIR.org, 2/2/16.)The Post editorial page makes no secret of its anti-Sanders position (FAIR.org, 1/28/16, 5/11/16), nor do some of its prominent opinion columnists, like Dana Milbank (FAIR.org, 2/11/16) and Fareed Zakaria (FAIR.org, 9/6/16).

And sometimes the digs are clearly deliberate, as when a Post political correspondent essentially admitted to trolling the Sanders camp by intentionally choosing a “provocative” headline—”Bernie Sanders Keeps Saying His Average Donation Is $27, but His Own Numbers Contradict That”—over a piece that revealed the scandalous deception that the actual number was $27.89 (FAIR.org, 4/24/16).

There’s an underlying dismissal of Sanders as a serious candidate, in both the Post’s editorializing and its nominally straight reporting, that results in pieces like the ones saying the large crowds Sanders drew to his 2016 campaign rallies “don’t matter much” (FAIR.org, 8/20/15), or the ones accusing him of lacking political “realism” (FAIR.org, 1/30/16). And there’s a clear antipathy at the paper to many of Sanders’ signature policy plans, like Medicare for All (FAIR.org, 3/20/19, 6/25/19).

In her CNN segment about Sanders’ critique, Harlow insisted to one of her guests, Britney Shepard of Yahoo News, “It’s important to note, the Washington Post has done really critical reporting of Amazon, too.” Shepard’s response:

Absolutely, and I really want to underscore something that Kristen said, something you said, too, Poppy, is that Bernie Sanders and his campaign have not really put forth any facts or evidence when they’re pressed about what the Washington Post is doing, and I do think that there’s a concern, and especially a concern as we’re gearing up in this primary, that Bernie Sanders is going to be compared to Donald Trump again and again and again and again.

Curiously, the same journalists so incensed about Sanders’ lack of evidence about the Post’s bias failed to offer any of their own about the paper’s “critical reporting” of Amazon. They’d be hard-pressed to find any. In 2017 FAIR’s Adam Johnson reviewed a year’s coverage of Amazon in the Post, the Times and the Wall Street Journal, and found that across 190 stories, only 6% leaned negative, and none were investigative exposes (FAIR.org, 7/28/17).

Nearly half (48%) of the Post’s coverage was uncritical—meaning it didn’t even adopt the standard journalistic practice of seeking out critical or contrary third-party voices, instead reading like an Amazon press release. (My favorite: “An Exclusive Look at Jeff Bezos’ Plan to Set Up an Amazon-Like Delivery for ‘Future Human Settlement’ of the Moon,” with a picture looking up at a Bezos in shades gazing off proudly into the distance.)

But note the Post wasn’t alone in its fawning coverage. That’s why Sanders called out the Times as well, and why NPR, CNN and their ilk are so upset. It’s not a conspiracy theory, because Bezos doesn’t have to tell the Post how to report to get the kind of coverage he wants. It’s baked into a system in which journalists with a working-class perspective or critical of the corporate status quo get weeded out.

As Hill TV (and former MSNBC) journalist Krystal Ball (8/14/19) trenchantly responded to the media pushback against Sanders’ critique, reporters know which stories will endanger their access to the establishment sources  so valued by their employer, and which will earn them praise and access. Those inclined to pursue those establishment-friendly stories rise up in the ranks, while most of those with more critical perspectives eventually move on. So, no, they don’t need Bezos to tell them what to do—their worldview is neatly aligned with his already.

Court: U.S. Can Reject Asylum Along Parts of Mexico Border

HOUSTON — A federal appeals court’s ruling Friday will allow the Trump administration to begin rejecting asylum at some parts of the U.S.-Mexico border for migrants who arrive after passing through a third country.

The ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals allows President Donald Trump to enforce the policy in New Mexico and Texas, rejecting asylum seekers who cross from Mexico into either state. Under Friday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar’s July 24 order stopping the policy would only apply in California and Arizona, which are covered by the 9th Circuit.

The two busiest areas for unauthorized border crossings are in South Texas’ Rio Grande Valley and the region around El Paso, Texas, which includes New Mexico. Nearly 50,000 people in July crossed the U.S. border without permission in those two regions, according to the U.S. Border Patrol.

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The policy would deny asylum to anyone who passes through another country on the way to the U.S. without seeking protection there. Most crossing the southern border are Central Americans fleeing violence and poverty, who would largely be ineligible. The policy would also apply to people from Africa, Asia, and South America who come to the southern border to request asylum.

If the policy is implemented, ineligible migrants who cross in New Mexico and Texas could be detained and more quickly deported. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.

Under American law, people can request asylum when they arrive in the U.S. regardless of how they enter. The law makes an exception for those who have come through a country considered to be “safe” pursuant to an agreement between the U.S. and that country.

Canada and the U.S. have a “safe third country” agreement. But the U.S. doesn’t have one with Mexico or countries in Central America. The Trump administration has tried to sign one with Guatemala, but the country’s incoming president said this week that Guatemala would not be able to uphold a tentative deal reached by his predecessor.

The U.S. government is already turning away many asylum seekers at the southern border.

About 30,000 people have been returned to Mexico to await asylum hearings under the government’s Migrant Protection Protocols program. Tens of thousands of others are waiting in shelters and camps to present themselves to U.S. border agents at official ports of entry that have strict daily limits on asylum seekers.

Mexico’s asylum system is itself overwhelmed, and there are widespread reports of migrants being attacked and extorted . Border cities across from New Mexico and Texas include Juarez, Nuevo Laredo, and Reynosa, all of which are well-known for their violence and gang presence.

Tigar had ruled the policy could expose migrants to violence and abuse, deny their rights under international law, and return them to countries they were fleeing.

The appeals court ruled that Tigar’s order hadn’t considered whether a nationwide order was necessary and that there wasn’t enough evidence presented yet to conclude that it was. The court instructed Tigar to “further develop the record in support of a preliminary injunction” extending nationwide.

Judges Mark Bennett and Milan Smith voted to limit Tigar’s order. Judge A. Wallace Tashima dissented.

Tigar is a nominee of former President Barack Obama. Trump previously derided Tigar as an “Obama judge” after Tigar ruled against another set of asylum restrictions last year. That comment led to an unusual rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said the judiciary did not have “Obama judges or Clinton judges.”

Trump nominated Bennett, while Smith was nominated by former President George W. Bush. Tashima was nominated by former President Bill Clinton.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other legal groups had sued the Trump administration after it announced the restrictions last month.

“We will continue fighting to end the ban entirely and permanently,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the ACLU.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment.

Just How Secure Are the 2020 Elections?

The Las Vegas strip may be the foremost place in America to escape from everyday life. But this past weekend’s Def Con 27 conference—for hackers, programmers, technologists, security experts, and anyone else on the frontlines of cyberspace—was a sobering reckoning with America’s fraught voting systems.

In virtually every corner—in presentations, a “Voting Village” where college students took apart and reprogrammed currently used voting machines, hallway discussions with top government officials and cybersecurity experts—what emerged was a stark, layered sense that the efforts to make America’s election results more trustworthy for 2020 were, at best, barely playing offense against a spectrum of vulnerabilities and threats.

Focusing on the current state of voting systems at Def Con is like visiting a futuristic museum and finding oneself in a gallery of mechanical dinosaurs. When one hears about the latest trends in using and abusing data that flow online or over cell phone signal paths, one realizes that the best efforts to prevent disrupting the 2020 voting process or corrupting its reported results are akin to a cat-and-mouse game, where the best that defenders are doing is putting up spyware and walls to protect porous ancient systems.

Here are five takeaways that illustrate the landscape surrounding voting systems as 2020’s elections approach.

Voting machine hardware and software are vulnerable.

The Voting Village exhibition room was filled with college computer science students who had little difficulty taking apart a half-dozen precinct-level voting machines and reprogramming the electronics, such as making cute videos appear on the screens. They could do that, not surprisingly, because the parts of many voting systems are commercially available, off-the-shelf elements. But scrutiny by the more seasoned computer programmers and voting system experts in the room came up with a list of security or programming flaws that was posted a few hours after Def Con closed.

What does this mean? The bottom line with today’s digital devices and data landscape, whether or not the tools in one’s hands are new or built from old parts—as many voting systems are—is that there is nothing that can fully safeguard against bad actors targeting any electronic machine. The best that can be done is redesigning the voting around hand-marked paper ballots, and then creating the processes that can independently double-check results.

The 2020 offense for 2020 is a porous defense.

There were many high-ranking state and federal employees, cybersecurity experts and members of Congress present, who, in open and in closed sessions, discussed what’s being done to try to prevent meddling in 2020 with the various election computer systems. The most widely discussed federal effort was a new scanning system used by many states where any online attack targeting hardware or data processing in their elections system would be detected in real time—and then alerts would be sent out.

When top state election and Department of Homeland Security officials were asked if hackers—whether domestic or foreign—could get around these detection systems, they replied possibly. That’s because the internet and cell phone-based data systems have evolved to the point where basically everything—text, voice, even encrypted data—can be tracked, captured and manipulated without the person staring at the screen even knowing that is going on. Thus, digital defenses have become like a game of cat and mouse in cyberspace. This technological landscape has big implications for political disinformation, not just voting systems where many local officials report their election night results by cellular modems—so the media has fast results to report.

Finish-line protections are not well-positioned.

The finish line in elections is counting votes and verifying the results in a way the public can trust. But as the country heads into 2020, there are very few new developments that will be in place to double-check the results in the closest high-stakes contests. States, of course, have post-election night procedures and recount laws. But these were mostly written in an era when ballots were shorter and simpler—meaning there might not be enough time for verifying votes (and that’s before political lawyers come in to impede the process, if that helps their clients win). Last November’s three simultaneous statewide recounts in Florida were an example where some big counties couldn’t finish recounting in time.

At Def Con, there was a remedy that was pushed by some of the computer scientists and election advocates who don’t trust any use of electronics in vote counts. That process, called a risk-limiting audit (RLA), which some states have begun to require, uses drawings of random ballots to estimate whether the vote counting is likely to be 95 percent accurate. In close elections, the sample size blows up and becomes a full manual hand recount. RLAs have many pluses, but one big downside is they won’t lead to quickly resolving close disputed results—and will conflict with pre-existing legal recount laws (which are already deficient). The bottom line is they will not expeditiously help resolve who won, should they be in the middle of 2020’s post-Election Day battles.

The newest voting systems aren’t that much better.

In one of the most high-profile Voting Village speeches, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, made an impassioned plea for the audience to pressure Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to pass legislation providing multimillions to states to upgrade their voting machinery. Wyden said this must occur in the next few weeks, while there is time left to acquire and install new systems this fall, as 2020’s nominating contests begin next February. The problem, however, is that the newest voting systems pushed by the few vendors dominating the industry have some of the same flaws as the systems they are to replace. Of course, their software and hardware look more modern. But the industry, responding to many local election officials who don’t want to spend time after election night interpreting sloppy ink marks on paper ballots, are pushing voting systems that mark all ballots electronically. The problem with that approach, as anyone roaming the halls at Def Con will soon realize, is that anything that is electronic can be preyed upon from behind the screens of the clients or the users (and very few people will know this has happened).

Moreover, the best new voting systems that are being designed now to get around these vulnerabilities are years away, at best, from being piloted, let alone deployed on a larger scale. That means, yet again, American elections are not well-positioned heading into 2020. That assessment has nothing to do with the dedicated efforts by many people and government agencies to harden computers and protect the vote. It’s just that the basic technical architecture of legacy and new voting remains porous, especially as the nation’s leading vendors are pushing computer-marked paper ballots (as opposed to hand-marked paper).

Voting will be targeted amid 2020’s disinformation wars.

Many Def Con presentations discussed the evolution of electronic communications—online and cell phones. Private electronic data and transmissions mostly have vanished today, even though most consumers don’t know it. What this means for 2020’s elections is not very encouraging for public confidence.

Just as the Department of Homeland Security will be helping states and counties to scan for any live attacks on their election computer systems, the most sophisticated political campaigners will be using much the same scanning tools to send countermeasure content to anyone who is targeted by dubious political ads and posts. Voters, who may not realize that they have been targeted from behind the screens of their devices, will end up in a partisan crossfire. Many voters will be left not knowing what’s true—a dynamic that will likely further erode public trust of election outcomes if the biggest 2020 races are not dominated by landslide turnout and wins.

What was missing from many of the voting-centered discussions at Def Con’s forums were assessments of the relative strengths and weaknesses of the varying analog and digital technologies used in different stages of the voting process, and how to combine their virtues. Instead, there’s narrower thinking in different silos:

The electronics cannot be trusted;
The most aggressive new defenses are far from perfect;
The finish-line voter verification tools will likely falter under existing state recount law;
Even if Congress appropriates millions for new machinery, the vendors and many local election officials are pushing systems to make their lives easier—not the process more secure;
And today’s data and disinformation landscape is poised to prey on the public, undermining the political process writ large.

Las Vegas, where Def Con 27 was held, is usually a place where people escape from the harsher realities of their lives. But when it comes to the current state of America’s election infrastructure, it was hard to be optimistic about 2020 when considering what was showcased at Def Con.

This article was produced by Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute.

Steven Rosenfeld is the editor and chief correspondent of Voting Booth, a project of the Independent Media Institute. He has reported for National Public Radio, Marketplace, and Christian Science Monitor Radio, as well as a wide range of progressive publications including Salon, AlterNet, the American Prospect, and many others.

Bernie Sanders Fires Back at Netanyahu and Israel

Sen. Bernie Sanders told MSNBC Thursday night that perhaps Israel should not be receiving billions of dollars in U.S. military aid after the right-wing government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu barred Reps. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib from entering the country.

“I wish I could tell you…that I am shocked. I am not,” Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said of President Donald Trump’s support for Israel’s decision. “We have a president who, tragically, is a racist, is a xenophobe, and who is a religious bigot.”

On Friday morning, the New York Times reported that Israel will allow Tlaib to visit her 90-year-old grandmother who lives in the occupied West Bank. Israel did not change its position on Omar.

Sanders said Thursday that “the idea that a member of the United States Congress cannot visit a nation which, by the way, we support to the tune of billions and billions of dollars is clearly an outrage.”

“And if Israel doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country to get a firsthand look at what’s going on—and I’ve been there many, many times—but if he doesn’t want members to visit, maybe [Netanyahu] can respectfully decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel,” Sanders added.

Watch:

WATCH: Bernie Sanders on Israel’s decision to deny entrance to two elected U.S. officials: “If Israel doesn’t want members of the United States Congress to visit their country…maybe they can respectfully decline the billions of dollars that we give to Israel.” #inners pic.twitter.com/m48djEhZjU

— All In w/Chris Hayes (@allinwithchris) August 16, 2019

Progressives applauded Sanders’ remarks, noting that the senator’s willingness to challenge U.S. military aid to Israel makes him unique in the 2020 Democratic presidential field.

“People have been asking how Bernie can distinguish himself from rivals who at least profess agreement on domestic issues,” tweeted HuffPost reporter Daniel Marans. “This is one area where the distinction is clear.”

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) called the Vermont senator’s statement “a big deal.”

“One thing that is completely undeniable about Bernie Sanders is the enormous political courage he consistently wields on behalf of others,” tweeted Ocasio-Cortez. “He’s not just standing up for two members—he’s standing for the integrity of the entire U.S. Congress.”

In addition to his comments on MSNBC, Sanders, who is Jewish, released an online video to push back against the specific claim made by President Trump and many others that to criticize the policies of the Israeli government is to be anti-Semitic—a charge he said is “disgusting.”

Anti-Semitism is not some abstract idea to me. It is very personal. It destroyed a good part of my family. I absolutely reject Trump’s disgusting efforts to exploit fear of anti-Semitism to attack my colleagues. pic.twitter.com/IwpSmxcnHF

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) August 15, 2019

Sanders’ appearance on MSNBC Thursday night was not the first time the senator has called out U.S. military aid to Israel as the Netanyahu government enacts racist policies and commits atrocities against Palestinians.

Speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations last month, Sanders said, if elected president in 2020, he would “be willing to bring real pressure to bear on both sides, including conditioning military aid, to create consequences for moves that undermine the chances for peace.”

Panel Rejects U.S. Attempt to Limit Soap, Sleep for Migrant Kids

Immigrant children detained by the U.S. government should get edible food, clean water, soap and toothpaste under a longstanding agreement over detention conditions, a federal appeals panel ruled Thursday in dismissing a Trump administration bid to limit what must be provided.

A three-judge panel for the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco tossed out the U.S. government’s challenge to a lower court’s findings that authorities had failed to provide safe and sanitary conditions for the children in line with a 1997 settlement agreement.

The government argued that authorities weren’t required to provide specific accommodations, such as soap, under the settlement’s requirement that facilities be “safe and sanitary” and asked the panel to weigh in. The appellate judges disagreed.

“Assuring that children eat enough edible food, drink clean water, are housed in hygienic facilities with sanitary bathrooms, have soap and toothpaste, and are not sleep-deprived are without doubt essential to the children’s safety,” the panel wrote.

The ruling followed a June hearing in which a U.S. government lawyer said the agreement was vague and might not require that a toothbrush and soap be provided to children during brief stays in custody. Requiring these items, the government said, would be a change in the agreement.

Leecia Welch, senior director of legal advocacy and child welfare at the National Center for Youth Law, said the panel’s ruling wasn’t surprising. “It should shock the conscience of all Americans to know that our government argued children do not need these bare essentials,” she said.

A message seeking comment was sent to the Department of Justice.

U.S. District Court Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles ruled in 2017 that authorities had breached the agreement — widely known as the Flores settlement — after young immigrants caught on the border said they had to sleep in cold, overcrowded cells and were given inadequate food and dirty water.

Since then, problems in the facilities have persisted. Gee has appointed an independent monitor to evaluate conditions.

The issues date back years. They have drawn increased attention amid a rise in the number of children and families, mostly from Central America, arriving on the southwest border.

The Flores settlement between advocates for young immigrants and the U.S. government says children should be held in facilities that meet certain standards and released as soon as is reasonably possible, which has been considered to be about 20 days.

Trump’s Ignorance Touches Off a New Crisis in Kashmir

South Asia is again in crisis and could be on the brink of war. For the second time in six months, the world is on tenterhooks, waiting to see what turn events will take. Because the two antagonists are armed with nuclear weapons, the possibility of a confrontation is taken seriously. And as has happened before, Kashmir is at the center of the dispute that has kept India and Pakistan at loggerheads for over 70 years.

The simmering cauldron came to a boil about 10 days ago, when Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, flush after a landslide electoral victory, revoked Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which established special status of the disputed territory. As expected, public reaction has been strong. In a bid to control the situation, the government has imposed a curfew and a clampdown on communications, cutting off the Kashmiris from the outside world.

A war of words has begun. In his Independence Day message, while expressing solidarity with the people of Indian-occupied Kashmir, Pakistan’s army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa promised to stand by them to counter India’s “hegemonic ambitions.” “There can never be a compromise on Kashmir,” he affirmed.

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The civilian leadership in Pakistan has joined in, and public opinion is united behind the Kashmiris. But it is Bajwa’s voice that will carry the most weight, as he alone will decide between war and peace.

How did matters reach a head? Observers believe that Donald Trump’s ham-handedness has provoked Modi—or rather, provided him the opening he was looking for. American presidents from Eisenhower to Obama have followed a rule of thumb in their dealings with South Asia that has paid off: They have maintained a steady balance in their relationship with India and Pakistan. The superpower has intervened in the affairs of the region only when invited by both countries to mediate or in times of crisis, when war appeared imminent.

Another rule the U.S. has observed is to resort to diplomacy on the quiet when needed. This has enabled Washington to operate on its own terms in the region without upsetting the apple cart and retain a measure of influence on the two regional powers.

Last month, these rules were thrown to the wind. Trump, with his “big ego, a mouth to match and oblivious to history,” decided that he knew best. He believes he has tamed Pakistan, the devious ally in the region on whose cooperation America’s troop pull-out from Afghanistan depends. By cutting off aid to Islamabad last year and getting the International Monetary Fund to dillydally on a much-needed bailout to Pakistan, Trump managed to have his way. The Pakistan army came on board to persuade the Taliban to enter into talks with Zalmay Khalilzad, the special U.S. representative on Afghanistan. That was how the Doha trade talks were launched and have reached their critical eighth round.

These developments no doubt convinced Trump that his strategy will work. He told the media, “The problem was [that] Pakistan wasn’t doing anything for us. They were subversive. To be honest, I think we have a better relationship with Pakistan right now than when we were paying that money. That money can come back.”

Earlier, an India-Pakistan crisis in February had brought the two countries to blows. The crisis was defused when Pakistan returned a captured Indian pilot as a “peace gesture” after the U.S., along with Russia and the U.K., intervened, calling for restraint. Confident of diplomatic success, Trump, it seems, was primed for a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan in July.

But what went wrong this time? It was smooth sailing with Khan at the Oval Office. He received an aid package of $1 billion, as well as a bonus at the press conference the next day—a positive response to Khan’s request for mediation on Kashmir. Without realizing it, Trump had touched India’s raw nerve. Khan, of course, was delighted, because that is what Islamabad has been demanding for ages. For India even to suggest such a move amounts to a slap on its face, as it is the pro-status quo party. The Simla Agreement it signed with Pakistan in 1972 after their third war clearly stated that the two countries would settle their differences by peaceful means through bilateral negotiations or by any other peaceful means mutually agreed upon between them. Being the smaller state and unable to badger its bigger adversary, Pakistan’s policy has been to internationalize the dispute.

Given his aversion to history, Trump would not have known about these sensitivities or, for that matter, the fact that Kashmir is a historical legacy of the hasty and clumsy partition of India by the British in 1947. It has been on the U.N. Assembly’s list of unresolved disputes since 1949. A Muslim-majority princely state, it was ruled by a Hindu Maharaja who invited the Indian Army to facilitate his accession to New Delhi in 1947. Initially both parties agreed to the UN Security Council’s resolution suggesting that a plebiscite be held in the state to allow the Kashmiris to decide their future. This never took place. For the last 20 years, an insurgency in the Kashmir Valley has become a major security headache for New Delhi, which has accused Islamabad of infiltrating militant groups into the territory under Indian control in order to destabilize it. Pakistan is known to have used nonstate actors as strategic assets, but this does not detract from the fact that the Kashmiris—even many who once accepted Indian suzerainty over them—are now angry and in revolt. As a result, they have suffered brutality and human rights violations at the hands of the Kashmiri police and the Indian army.

What is surprising is that Trump claimed that Modi requested him to be a mediator/arbitrator in Kashmir. India denied this, immediately and categorically.

But not to be deterred, 10 days later, on Aug. 2, Trump repeated his mediation offer. This was another insult to Modi. His message to the American president had to be driven home fast. Trump had to be told, in no uncertain terms, to keep his hands off the disputed territory that India has been claiming as its own. A Hindu nationalist who shrugged off a massacre that took over 2,000 lives in the Indian state of Gujarat in 2002 under his stewardship, Modi could not be expected to care for Kashmiri lives.

One can assume that, to Modi’s mind, what could create a better impact than a scheme he had been planning for years but never got down to implementing? Get rid of Article 370 and integrate Kashmir fully into India.

This actually worked. On Monday, a week later, the Indian ambassador in Washington announced that Trump had declared that mediation offer was no longer on the table and that he had reverted to the longstanding policy of treating Kashmir as a bilateral issue between India and Pakistan.

In the aftermath, we are left with an ugly situation in South Asia. On the one hand, Pakistan, which is emotionally and strategically tied to Kashmir, has once again demonstrated its helplessness in winning justice for the Kashmiris, whose cause it has championed for long. Although it has asked for an emergency session of the UN Security Council, it may not succeed in getting one convened. Prime Minister Khan’s statement “questioning once again the international community’s silence on Indian-occupied Kashmir” reflects his frustration. Modi, on the other hand, is gloating about his move and has described it as an act that  “would restore the region to its past glory” and said “Kashmir will play an “important role” in India’s development.” In tit-for-tat firing across the line of control in Kashmir, eight soldiers — three Pakistani and five Indian — have been killed in a day.

With all attention focused on Kashmir, the Qatar talks on Afghanistan have slipped from public memory. The eighth round of the Doha trade talks has been adjourned without any clear-cut announcement being made. The reports are conflicting. Some say the interlocuters are consulting their bosses. Others say they are deadlocked on the two ticklish items on the agenda: the ceasefire and withdrawal schedule and the intra-Afghan talks that will determine the future political structure of the country. So far, the Taliban have been adamant in their refusal to meet Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani, dubbing him an American stooge. Without an agreement on these issues, Afghanistan’s future is uncertain, as the Taliban would likely seize control as soon as U.S. forces withdraw. The 2,400 American lives lost in 18 years of fighting and the $900 billion spent would all be in vain.

Can’t Pakistan help any more? One cannot say. With Kashmir in such a mess, would Pakistan want to push the Taliban any further? Does Pakistan’s Inter-Service Intelligence agency really have a hold on the Taliban anymore? Remember that the Frankensteins created by such agencies often go out of control. In that case, will Trump win the election next year?

This and all the other questions about world peace can well be asked, just because Trump didn’t know.