Chris Hedges's Blog, page 196

Facility for Migrant Children Closing Weeks After Opening

HOUSTON—The U.S. government’s new holding facility for migrant youth will close as early as this week, less than one month after it was opened in response to the squalid conditions in which children were being detained by the Border Patrol, according to the nonprofit operating the facility.

The last children at the camp at Carrizo Springs, Texas, are on track to leave by Thursday, said Kevin Dinnin, the CEO of the nonprofit BCFS.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services opened the facility in late June. An HHS spokeswoman declined to comment Tuesday.

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Migrant Children Waiting for Reunification Were Held in Vans Up to 39 Hours



by Ilana Novick

Dinnin, whose nonprofit was contracted by HHS to operate Carrizo Springs, said his staff was to leave by the end of the week. It’s still unclear whether some of the trailers and supplies brought to the camp will remain on site so that it can be quickly re-opened if it’s needed in the future.

Roughly 400 children were detained at Carrizo Springs in total, Dinnin said. BCFS had a contract that could have run through January and paid $300 million, according to U.S. government public notices. But Dinnin said it made little sense for staff and resources to be tied to a site where they were not needed. Holding children at emergency facilities like Carrizo Springs comes at a huge cost — an estimated $750 to $800 a day.

Making Carrizo Springs ready for children required clearing mold and repairing air conditioning systems at the camp, which formerly housed oilfield workers. BCFS also brought in an infirmary built in a tent and its own ambulances.

Vice News first reported the development.

Reports earlier this year of the squalid conditions in which children were held in some Border Patrol cells — with no beds, inadequate food, and teens caring for younger children among themselves — sparked wide outrage. But by the time HHS opened Carrizo Springs, the huge numbers of children crossing the U.S.-Mexico border had fallen as they normally do during the summer due to heat.

HHS is also processing children more quickly after rolling back guidelines on fingerprinting and background checks.

Border crossings tend to rise in the fall. Dinnin said he hadn’t been told yet what HHS wanted to do with the site, which the agency leased for three years.

“I do think it’s prudent that they have a plan they can pull off the shelf and effectively and timely execute,” Dinnin said. “That’s just logical for what we’ve seen the last six or seven years.”

Boris Johnson to Be Britain’s Next Prime Minister

LONDON—Boris Johnson, Britain’s blustering Brexit campaigner, was chosen as the U.K.’s next prime minister on Tuesday, with a resounding mandate from the Conservative Party but conflicting demands from a politically divided country.

Johnson is set to become prime minister on Wednesday after winning an election to lead the governing Conservatives. He will have just over three months to make good on his promise to lead the U.K. out of the European Union by Oct. 31.

Famed for his bravado, quips in Latin and blond mop of hair, Johnson easily defeated Conservative rival Jeremy Hunt, winning two-thirds of the votes of about 160,000 party members across the U.K. He will become prime minister once Queen Elizabeth II formally asks him to form a government, replacing Theresa May.

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A Progressive American in London: My Thoughts on Brexit and the Revolt Against Jeremy Corbyn



by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

















Brexit Is Hell, but It’s Not Politicians Who Will Suffer Most



by Natasha Hakimi Zapata

The embattled May announced her resignation last month after Parliament repeatedly rejected the withdrawal agreement she struck with the 28-nation bloc, leaving Britain stranded in Brexit limbo. The U.K.’s departure from the EU was delayed from its long scheduled exit in March.

Johnson radiated optimism in a brief victory speech to hundreds of party members and lawmakers, pledging to “deliver Brexit, unite the country and defeat Jeremy Corbyn,” leader of the opposition Labour Party.

“I say to all the doubters: ‘Dude, we are going to energize the country, we are going to get Brexit done,'” said Johnson, a former London mayor and British foreign secretary.

Hunt, a stolid politician compared to the flamboyant Johnson, said he was sure his rival would “do a great job.”

“He’s got optimism, enthusiasm, he puts a smile on people’s face and he has total, unshakable confidence in our amazing country,” said Hunt, who is likely to be removed as foreign secretary by the new prime minister.

Johnson wooed Conservatives by promising to succeed where May had failed and lead the U.K. out of the EU — with or without a divorce deal.

Johnson insists he can get the EU to renegotiate, something the bloc insists it won’t do. If not, he says Britain must leave the EU by the Oct. 31 deadline, “come what may.”

The EU is adamant that the deal with May will stand, saying Britain has to take it or leave it.

Michel Barnier, the bloc’s chief Brexit negotiator, said he looked forward “to working constructively” with the new Conservative leader “to facilitate the ratification of the Withdrawal Agreement.”

Economists warn that a no-deal Brexit would disrupt trade and plunge the U.K. into recession. Fears that Britain is inching closer to crashing out of the bloc weighed on the pound once again Tuesday. The currency was down another 0.3 percent at $1.2450, nearly a two-year low.

Carolyn Fairbairn, director of the Confederation of British Industry, said businesses needed a withdrawal agreement with the EU to restore confidence that has been badly shaken by uncertainty about the terms of Brexit.

“On Brexit, the new prime minister must not underestimate the benefits of a good deal,” she said.

Johnson faces a host of other challenges, from dealing with Iran’s seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker to forging a relationship with U.S. President Donald Trump, but Brexit is his overriding problem.

Trump was scathing about May’s inability to achieve a Brexit deal and has said Johnson will do a better job.

On Tuesday he said Johnson “is going to do a good job” and “will get it done.”

“We have a really good man is going to be prime minister of the U.K. now, Boris Johnson,” Trump told a youth conference. “Good man. He’s tough and he’s smart. They say ‘Britain Trump,’ they call him Britain Trump, and people say that’s a good thing.”

White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow described Johnson as “a breath of fresh air. I think he’ll complete the Brexit process.”

More than three years after Britain narrowly voted to leave the EU, the country remains divided over whether to leave, and on what terms.

Johnson won the leadership contest by persuading Conservative members, who are strongly pro-Brexit, that Britain will leave the bloc “do or die.”

Opponents say Johnson is reckless on Brexit and unrepentant about offensive and racist comments, such as calling Papua New Guineans cannibals and comparing Muslim women who wear face-covering veils to “letter boxes.”

Opposition Liberal Democrat lawmaker Chuka Umunna tweeted: “I cannot think of a Tory leadership candidate more unfit to become the Prime Minister of this country than Boris Johnson,” adding that his election was “a dark and depressing time for the U.K.”

Tony Travers, professor of government at the London School of Economics, said Johnson might moderate his Brexit stance now that he has secured the premiership.

“I would expect once he’s in government to begin to nuance his position somewhat, because he’ll now be appealing to a different set of voters: that’s the U.K. electorate as a whole, not just the Conservative members, who are much more pro-Brexit.”

The first clues to Johnson’s plans are likely to come when he begins appointing his Cabinet on Wednesday and Thursday.

British lawmakers are due to start a six-week summer break on Friday. When they return in September, Johnson looks set for a fight with Parliament, where most members oppose leaving the EU without a deal, and where the Conservative Party lacks an overall majority.

Several government ministers have already announced they will quit so they can resist any push for a no-deal Brexit.

“We’ll have to see what Boris can muster,” said Conservative lawmaker Margot James, who resigned last week as digital minister. “The default position is leaving without a deal, and there is a significant majority in Parliament who will work very hard to be sure that doesn’t happen. And I will be among that number.”

Outside the London conference center where the Conservative result was announced, pro-Brexit and pro-EU demonstrators waved rival Union Jacks and EU flags — and both sides had their doubts about Johnson.

“In the referendum, we were told that our vote would be honored, and (politicians) have spent three years trying to thwart Brexit,” said retiree Sally Wright, who was not confident Johnson would deliver where others had failed.

Anti-Brexit demonstrator Kasia Verissimo was equally skeptical.

“I think Boris Johnson is a person who will always say whatever gives him better career choices,” she said. “He tells you what you want to hear.”

___

Associated Press writers Renata Brito in London and Raf Casert in Brussels contributed.

___

Follow AP’s full coverage of Brexit and the Conservative Party leadership race at: https://www.apnews.com/Brexit

Senate Confirms Army Veteran Mark Esper for Defense Secretary

WASHINGTON—It took seven months, but President Donald Trump finally has a Senate-confirmed secretary of defense.

Mark Esper, an Army veteran and former defense industry lobbyist, won Senate confirmation Tuesday by a vote of 90-8. He was to be officially sworn in by the end of the day, ending the longest period the Pentagon has gone without a confirmed leader in its history.

The turmoil atop the Pentagon began when Trump’s first defense secretary, Jim Mattis, stepped down last New Year’s Eve after a series of policy disputes with Trump. He offered to stay another two months to get a successor in place, but Trump said no.

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Donald Trump and the Art of the Arms Deal



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Even with Esper now in charge, the problem of leadership instability at the Pentagon is not fully resolved. There still is no Senate-confirmed deputy secretary of defense, although David Norquist on Tuesday was nominated for the post and is scheduled to have a confirmation hearing Wednesday.

The senior leadership vacancies increased again last week with the departure of David Trachtenberg, the Pentagon’s second-ranking civilian policy official.

Beyond that, the No. 2-ranking military officer, Gen. Paul Selva, is retiring Friday as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. No Senate confirmation hearing has been set for the man picked by Trump to replace Selva: Gen. John Hyten, who has been commander of U.S. nuclear forces as head of U.S. Strategic Command.

A military officer has accused Hyten of sexual misconduct. An investigation found insufficient evidence to charge Hyten, but some members of Congress have raised questions about that process. It’s unclear when or whether Hyten’s nomination will proceed.

At his confirmation hearing on July 16, Esper promised that one of his first priorities would be to fix the problem of leadership vacancies.

“I need to staff up the top tier of the Pentagon soonest,” he said.

Carl Tobias, a professor of law at the University of Richmond, said he believes that in the months since Mattis left, the Pentagon’s sway within the administration has weakened.

“This seems to be the primary challenge that Esper confronts: regaining the power to set the Defense Department agenda and defend it by doing what is best for the nation and the world, not what advances the president’s political agenda,” Tobias said by email.

Esper had been the Army secretary when Mattis resigned in December. On Jan. 1, the deputy defense secretary, Patrick Shanahan, became the acting secretary. But after nearly six months as the fill-in, the former Boeing executive abruptly quit.

Esper then became the acting defense secretary, but once he was nominated last week he had to step aside until after a Senate vote. So, for the past week the Pentagon had been run by yet another fill-in: Navy Secretary Richard V. Spencer.

Esper, who has a wide range of experience in defense matters, including time on Capitol Hill as a congressional staff member, has said he intends to continue the Trump administration’s focus on improving the combat preparedness of the military, nurturing security alliances around the world and reforming Pentagon business practices.

All eight senators who voted against Esper’s nomination are Democrats. They include Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, who has sharply criticized Esper for declining to recuse himself from all matters involving his former employer, Raytheon Co., for the duration of his time as defense secretary.

Esper was a lobbyist for Raytheon, a major defense contractor, for several years before becoming Army secretary. He told Warren that Defense Department ethics officials recommended he not make the recusal commitment she asked about, but he pledged to abide by all ethics rules and regulations.

An American Tragedy: Empire at Home and Abroad

Empires in decline tend to behave badly. Indeed, whether British, French or Russian, the twilight years of imperialism often brought brutal repression of subjects abroad, the suppression of civil liberties at home and general varieties of brutality toward foreigners, be they refugees or migrants. The British built concentration camps and killed tens of thousands in Kenya during the 1950s Mau Mau rebellion. The French tortured and killed subjects in Algeria and nearly lost their own democracy in the process. The Russians slaughtered Afghans and then Chechens as the Soviet empire crumbled and transitioned to a truncated federation. As with these once-vast European empires, so it is with the United States in the 21st century.

The 18 or so years of war following the 9/11 attacks have seen this ostensible republic sink to new lows of behavior. Aggressive wars of choice have ushered in rampant torture, atrocities in Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison, indefinite detention at Guantanamo Bay, extraordinary rendition, drone assassinations, warrantless wiretapping, mass surveillance of the citizenry, militarization of local police and now, migrant children in cages. As a child myself, educated in public schools that peddled the dangerous myth of American exceptionalism, I never imagined a day when my government would separate refugee children from their parents and then argue, straight-faced, in court, that the detained kids aren’t entitled to soap or toothbrushes. Yet here we are.

Too often, the debates surrounding immigration and border policy are artificially separated from U.S. foreign policy and American empire abroad. On this count, Democrats are as guilty as anyone. Uninterested—and often ill-informed—regarding foreign policy, most Dems lump immigration policy in with health care and the minimum wage as a purely domestic issue. But it’s not. Most current asylum-seeking migrants hail from Central American countries that have long been victims of coups, military interventions and the general meddling of the U.S. empire. In that sense, Uncle Sam helped create the travesties from which these many refugees now flee, and then, in a final insult, denies them asylum and detains them in substandard, prisonlike facilities.

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America Has a Lot to Learn From the Roman Empire's Fall



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The U.S. Military’s Empire of Secrecy



by Maj. Danny Sjursen

It’s all connected. The empire—all empires—eventually come home. Small-town police decked out in camouflage fatigues, carrying assault rifles and riding around in armored vehicles; border patrol agents treating desperate migrants as enemies and posting racist comments in a secret Facebook group; the U.S. government unapologetically trying to imprison an authentic humanitarian simply because he gave water and food to those same migrants (who die by the thousands crossing America’s southern desert border ); and U.S. military intervention and bombing in countries from West Africa to Central Asia. These embarrassments, these tragedies, are nothing less than the standard outgrowth of venal imperialism. In that sense, America in 2019 has more in common with those British, French, Russian and other empires of the last century than most citizens are willing to admit.

Aggressive wars abroad pollute the domestic political discourse and breed hypernationalism, racism and xenophobia. The military men who once carried water for the empire all too often return home and seek out jobs in law enforcement or the border patrol. They then apply the skills they honed patrolling foreign streets, guarding foreign prisoners and killing foreign adversaries to new victims—usually immigrants and/or urban people of color—back home in the US of A. It is a vicious cycle of cruelty in which even the perpetrators become victims, their souls tarnished and damaged irreparably by the application of violence and cruelty to brown faces, both at home and abroad.

A few weeks back, the American citizenry was treated to two nights of debate by 20 Democratic Party presidential primary candidates. I sort of like a few of them (Liz, Bernie, Tulsi), but none demonstrated the confidence and candor to relate imperial war abroad to oppression and inhumanity at home. Aggressive policing, mass incarceration, inhumane migrant detention facilities and the war on the press in general and whistleblowers specifically—these are all products of overseas empire, imperial chickens come home to roost. A true opposition party, an authentic progressive movement, must recognize this, identify it, publicize it and offer a holistic alternative to American foreign policy as usual.

It may already be too late, of course, but I cling to a desperate sort of hope. Sure, both Dems (Obama) and Republicans (Bush II, Trump) have offered one foreign policy emperor after another for the presidency. And sure, the people’s supposed representatives in Congress have shirked their duties and let those emperors run wild. Nonetheless, the absurd and unhinged Trump administration might just (let’s hope) provide the opportunity for a mass citizens movement in opposition to empire at home and abroad. Just recently, after all, Americans were informed that some two-thirds of military veterans now think the Iraq and Afghan wars weren’t worth fighting. When even martially inclined, traditionally conservative former soldiers turn on the empire, the stage might just be set for a revolt to save this republic. At least, one can dream.

Copyright 2019 Danny Sjursen

Acid Oceans May Trigger Mass Extinction

Catastrophically widespread die-offs of many creatures could be inevitable if human activities continue to lead to more acid oceans, a new study suggests.

Mass extinction may not be an enduring mystery. Instead, it may be an intrinsic property of the carbon cycle. Once levels of dissolved carbon dioxide in the oceans reach a certain threshold, life undergoes dramatic and catastrophic change.

If a US mathematician is right – and his argument is based on statistical reasoning and the evidence in the marine sediments – then once the seas become too acidic for marine organisms to form carbonate shells, a cascade of extinction begins.

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Are We Falling Off the Climate Precipice?



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And, he warns, the “unusually strong but geologically brief duration” of manmade carbon dioxide increase in the oceans can be matched with slow but devastating extinctions in the past.

In short, human combustion of fossil fuels, combined with the destruction of the forests, could be building up to extinctions on a scale so colossal that they will be visible in the fossil record hundreds of millions of years from now.

After a certain point, the carbon cycle will take over and decide life’s direction. It happened many times long before the emergence of the human species, and it could happen again, according to a new study in the  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“Once we are over the threshold, how we got there may not matter,” said Daniel Rothman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Once you get over it, you’re dealing with how the Earth works, and it goes on its own ride.”

Professor Rothman developed his hypothesis in 2017, in the journal Science Advances, after he analysed 31 changes in the makeup of carbonate sediments laid down over the last 542 million years, and connected five great extinctions not just with carbon dioxide levels but with the rate at which these increased.

He may be for the moment a lone voice in linking four of the five major extinctions with critical levels of oceanic acidification as a consequence of a carbon dioxide threshold. But climate scientists and palaeontologists have been looking at possible links between carbon and extinction for decades.

They have also repeatedly warned that humans are about to precipitate a sixth mass extinction, chiefly on the basis that we are destroying natural habitat and erasing the conditions in which millions of species – many of them still not identified – were once able to flourish.

The Carbon Factor

But climate change driven by ever-increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels – powered in turn by ever-increasing combustion of fossil fuels – has also been a factor.

Whatever the risk to species or ecosystems, biologists and conservationists have warned that climate change driven by global heating can only make things worse.

And the more carefully researchers have looked at evidence of earlier catastrophic extinctions, the more bygone climate change has revealed itself. What caused the most dramatic and unequivocal of these – the “great dying” at the close of the Permian – is still hotly debated, but atmospheric conditions in one form or anotherhave been repeatedly invoked and researchers have repeatedly drawn lessons for today.

But arguments so far have settled on whether such extinctions are a consequence of slow but inexorable episodes of volcanic discharge or some other geological shift.

Forget the Trigger

Professor Rothman’s point is that the trigger itself may not be the important thing: what decides the fate of life on Earth is the level of carbon in the oceans and the rate at which it increases.

Once levels of acidification in the upper ocean reach a certain critical threshold, life is in for major disruption. If marine creatures cannot form shells, they are at risk. But even more dangerously, shells sink to the ocean floor, effectively removing carbon from circulation.

If there are fewer calcifying organisms, then less carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere and oceans become even more acidic. A vicious cycle has begun.

“It’s a positive feedback,” Professor Rothman said. “More carbon dioxide leads to more carbon dioxide. The question, from a mathematical point of view is, is such a feedback enough to render the system unstable?”

Balance Restored

In his mathematical model, once carbon levels reached a critical threshold, a cascade of positive feedbacks amplified the effect. Severe ocean acidification set in.

The effect was not permanent. After tens of thousands of years, the carbon cycle did slip back to equilibrium and life could evolve and adapt again.

Carbon is now entering the oceans at an unprecedented rate, over what – in geological terms – is a very brief timespan. If human-triggered greenhouse gas emissions cross a critical threshold, the consequences could be as severe as any of the previous mass extinctions.

“It’s difficult to know how things will end up, given what is happening today,” he said. “But we are probably close to a critical threshold. Any spike would reach its maximum after about 10,000 years. Hopefully, that would give us time to find a solution.”

Trump Expands Fast-Track Deportation Authority Across U.S.

SAN DIEGO — The Trump administration announced Monday that it will vastly expand the authority of immigration officers to deport migrants without allowing them to appear before judges, its second major policy shift on immigration in eight days.

Starting Tuesday, fast-track deportations can apply to anyone in the country illegally for less than two years. Previously, those deportations were largely limited to people arrested almost immediately after crossing the Mexican border.

Kevin McAleenan, the acting Homeland Security secretary, portrayed the nationwide extension of “expedited removal” authority as another Trump administration effort to address an “ongoing crisis on the southern border” by freeing up beds in detention facilities and reducing a backlog of more than 900,000 cases in immigration courts.

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Thousands of U.S. Citizens Have Been Mistakenly Detained or Deported



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Trump’s Cruel Deportation Machine Set to Begin Raids



by Ilana Novick

U.S. authorities do not have space to detain “the vast majority” of people arrested on the Mexican border, leading to the release of hundreds of thousands with notices to appear in court, McAleenan said in the policy directive to be published Tuesday in the Federal Register. He said Homeland Security officials with the new deportation power will deport migrants in the country illegally more quickly than the Justice Department’s immigration courts, where cases can take years to resolve.

The agency “expects that the full use of expedited removal statutory authority will strengthen national security, diminish the number of illegal entries, and otherwise ensure the prompt removal of aliens apprehended in the United States,” McAleenan said.

The American Civil Liberties Union and American Immigration Council said they would sue to block the policy.

“Under this unlawful plan, immigrants who have lived here for years would be deported with less due process than people get in traffic court,” said Omar Jawdat, director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.

“Expedited removal” gives enforcement agencies broad authority to deport people without allowing them to appear before an immigration judge with limited exceptions, including if they express fear of returning home and pass an initial screening interview for asylum.

The powers were created under a 1996 law but went largely unnoticed until 2004, when Homeland Security said it would be enforced for people who are arrested within two weeks of entering the U.S. by land and caught within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the border.

The fast-track deportations have become a major piece of U.S. immigration enforcement over the last decade. Critics have said it grants too much power to immigration agents and U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials.

The potential impact of the new measure is difficult to predict. McAleenan said 20,570 people arrested in the nation’s interior from October 2017 through September 2018 year had been in the U.S. less than two years, which would make them eligible for fast-track deportation under the new rule. Critics said the new measure’s impact could be more far-reaching because many in the U.S for longer than two years may be unable to prove they have been in the country for so long.

“Expanding the fast-track procedure to apply anywhere in the U.S. is a recipe for ripping thousands more families apart and devastating communities,” said Grace Meng, Human Rights Watch’s acting deputy U.S. director. “This is a massive and dangerous change.”

The administration said the expanded authority will likely mean less time for migrants in detention while cases wind their way through immigration court. The average stay in immigration detention for people in fast-track removal was 11.4 days from October 2017 through September 2018, compared to 51.5 days for people arrested in the nation’s interior.

The announcement was the second major policy shift in eight days following an unprecedented surge of families from Central America’s Northern Triangle of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

Last week, the administration said it will deny asylum to anyone who passes through other countries en route to the U.S. without seeking protection in at least one of those countries. Two lawsuits were filed challenging the move. A judge in Washington, D.C., heard arguments Monday on whether to block the policy. Judge Timothy Kelly said he would “endeavor to rule on this as quickly as I can.”

A judge in San Francisco set a hearing for Wednesday in a similar lawsuit.

___

Associated Press Writer Colleen Long contributed to this report from Washington.

Deal Sealed on Federal Budget, Ensuring No Shutdown, Default

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump and congressional leaders announced late Monday they had struck a critical debt and budget agreement. The deal amounts to an against-the-odds victory for Washington pragmatists seeking to avoid politically dangerous tumult over the possibility of a government shutdown or first-ever federal default.

The deal, announced by Trump on Twitter and in a statement by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, will restore the government’s ability to borrow to pay its bills past next year’s elections and build upon recent large budget gains for both the Pentagon and domestic agencies.

“I am pleased to announce that a deal has been struck,” Trump tweeted, saying there will be no “poison pills” added to follow-up legislation. “This was a real compromise in order to give another big victory to our Great Military and Vets!”

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Robert Reich: The GOP Is Lying Through Its Teeth About the Deficit



by Robert Reich

















Congress Is Funding the Destruction of Kids' Lives



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Pelosi and Schumer said the deal “will enhance our national security and invest in middle class priorities that advance the health, financial security and well-being of the American people.”

They claimed credit for winning more than $100 billion worth of spending increases for domestic priorities since Trump took office.

The agreement is on a broad outline for $1.37 trillion in agency spending next year and slightly more in fiscal 2021. It would mean a win for lawmakers eager to return Washington to a more predictable path amid political turmoil and polarization, defense hawks determined to cement big military increases and Democrats seeking to protect domestic programs.

Nobody can claim a big win — though they did — but both sides view it as better than a protracted battle this fall that probably wouldn’t end up much differently.

However, it also comes as budget deficits are rising to $1 trillion levels — requiring the government to borrow a quarter for every dollar the government spends — despite the thriving economy and three rounds of annual Trump budget proposals promising to crack down on the domestic programs that Pelosi is successfully defending now. It ignores warnings from deficit and debt scolds who say the nation’s fiscal future is unsustainable and will eventually drag down the economy.

“This agreement is a total abdication of fiscal responsibility by Congress and the president,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, a Washington advocacy group. “It may end up being the worst budget agreement in our nation’s history, proposed at a time when our fiscal conditions are already precarious.”

The aides who spoke Monday about the emerging deal did so on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record before a deal was final.

A push by the White House and House GOP forces for new offsetting spending cuts was largely jettisoned, though Pelosi, D-Calif., gave assurances about not seeking to use the follow-up spending bills as vehicles for aggressively liberal policy initiatives.

Fights over Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border wall, other immigration-related issues and spending priorities will be rejoined on follow-up spending bills that are likely to produce much the same result as current law. The House has passed most of its bills, using far higher levels for domestic spending. Senate measures will follow this fall, with levels reflecting the accord.

At issue are two separate but pressing items on Washington’s must-do agenda: increasing the debt limit to avert a first-ever default on U.S. payments and acting to set overall spending limits and prevent automatic spending cuts from hitting the Pentagon and domestic agencies in January.

The threat of the automatic cuts represents the last gasp of a failed 2011 budget and debt pact between former President Barack Obama and then-Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, that promised future spending and deficit cuts to cover a $2 trillion increase in the debt. But a bipartisan deficit “supercommittee” failed to deliver, and lawmakers were unwilling to live with the follow-up cuts to defense and domestic accounts. This is the fourth deal since 2013 to reverse those cuts.

Prospects for an agreement, a months-long priority of top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., became far brighter when Pelosi returned to Washington this month and aggressively pursued the pact with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who was anointed lead negotiator instead of more conservative options like acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney or hardline Budget Director Russell Vought.

Mnuchin was eager to avert a crisis over the government’s debt limit. There’s some risk of a first-ever U.S. default in September, and that has added urgency to the negotiations.

The pact would defuse the debt limit issue for two years, meaning that Trump or his Democratic successor would not have to confront the politically difficult issue until well into 2021.

Details on spending levels have been kept under wraps so far, but the complicated accounting under Washington’s arcane budget rules gives each side a way to paint the numbers favorably. Generally speaking, the deal would lock in place big increases won by both sides in a 2018 pact driven by the demands of GOP defense hawks and award future increases consistent with low inflation.

Pelosi was positioned to claim rough parity between increases for defense and nondefense programs, but the veteran negotiator retreated on her push for a special carve-out for a newly reauthorized program for veterans utilizing private sector health care providers.

In the end, domestic programs would on average receive 4% increases in the first year of the pact, with much of those gains eaten up by veterans increases and an unavoidable surge for the U.S. Census. Defense would jump to $738 billion next year, a 3% hike.

Trump retains flexibility to transfer money between accounts, which raises the possibility of attempted transfers for building border barriers.

The results are likely to displease many on both sides, especially Washington’s weakening deficit hawks and liberals demanding greater spending for progressive priorities. But Pelosi and McConnell have longtime histories with the Capitol’s appropriations process and have forged a powerful alliance to deliver prior spending and debt deals.

The measure would first advance through the House this week and win the Senate’s endorsement next week before Congress takes its annual August recess.

Groundbreaking Protests in Puerto Rico Take Aim Beyond Governor

Puerto Ricans stormed the capital of San Juan on Monday, with hundreds of thousands of protesters marching down a major highway, chanting “Ricky Renuncia”—a call for the governor, Ricardo Rosselló, a member of the island’s New Progressive Party, to resign. NBC calls it “The island’s largest protest in recent history.” The Washington Post suggests the island-wide strike “could represent the largest mobilization in the history of Puerto Rico,” since it became a U.S. colony in 1898.

The massive action is the 12th day of protests against Rosselló, which CNN explains were set off by a series of almost 900 leaked chat transcripts between Gov. Rosselló and close associates that featured misogynistic, homophobic, language. The chat logs, as Angel Rosa, a political science professor at the University of Puerto Rico, explained to CNN, “offended almost every group on the island.”

Although the chat logs scandal and the arrest of Rosselló’s former secretary of education for corruption were key catalysts for the protests, participants say deeper problems have plagued Puerto Rico’s government for years. The most pressing problem is the island’s economy, including a lack of opportunity for young people and a debt crisis, the slow recovery from Hurricane Maria and complaints over an unelected oversight board dedicated to managing the island’s finances, which protesters feel is too sympathetic to Rosselló.

“I am fed up with the thieving government,” Maristella Gross, a protester in San Juan, told CNN. “I have never participated in a protest before,” Ramos Grateroles, 71, a retired defense attorney, told the Post, adding, “But enough is enough. Rosselló has disrespected the people of Puerto Rico, and if we don’t come together and demand it, he won’t leave.”

Rosselló posted Sunday on Facebook that he would not run for reelection in 2020, but he refused to heed calls to step down. He’s also not speaking much to the press. As reporter Claudia Irizzary Aponte tweeted Monday:

Gov. Rosselló hasn’t addressed local reporters or hosted a press conference since last Tuesday. His message last night was broadcast live on his Facebook page. But here he is about to go live on Fox News… https://t.co/a0ODX1K1KB

— claudia irizarry aponte (@clauirizarry) July 22, 2019

NBC reports that the president of Puerto Rico’s House of Representatives, Carlos Méndez Núñez, who is from the same party as Rosselló, “was expected to receive a report from three appointed lawyers in the coming days, outlining whether an impeachment process can be initiated.” They’re investigating whether any of the information in the chats reveals conflicts of interest or law violations.

Celebrities and U.S. politicians have joined the chorus demanding Roselló’s resignation. Singer Ricky Martin, one target of the chats, participated in Monday’s march. NBC reports that additional celebrities, including former MLB baseball player Carlos Delgado and the musicians Bad Bunny, Tommy Torres, Kany García and Olga Tañón, plan to join.

So @ricky_martin and @residente have arrived. This just went from protest, to the official goodbye party for @RicardoRossello #rickyrenuncia #PuertoRico pic.twitter.com/dtVFDf8Rdh

— Nancy Santiago (@nancysnegron) July 22, 2019

Melissa Mark-Viverito, former New York City Council speaker and interim president of Latino Victory, which promotes Latinos for higher office, said in an interview with Telemundo Puerto Rico (as translated from Spanish to English by NBC) that the current political situation is “not sustainable,” and, “I can’t imagine a scenario where the governor can go knock on Washington’s door and effectively move any agenda for Puerto Rico forward.”

Trump’s Mendacity Is a Threat to Public Safety

On Monday, July 15, the day after President Donald Trump threatened about 2,000 undocumented immigrants with arrest and deportation, his mendacity was exposed for all to see at the Los Angeles federal building downtown. What soon became clear was that the so-called arrests were just another con to frighten immigrants and their families.

I had gone to the federal building to report on the immigrants who expected to be swept up in the administration’s announced raids. Instead, I found courtrooms and hallways that were all but empty—remarkable considering that up to 1 million immigrants are presently awaiting hearings. If there were government vans carrying prisoners to jail, I did not see them.

From Los Angeles and the other nine cities targeted for ICE raids, the reports were generally the same. “Large-scale raids or any uptick has not happened,” said Judy London, the directing attorney of the immigrants’ rights project at Public Counsel, a Los Angeles-based public interest law firm. “So it was about spreading fear/pleasing the base.”

Shortly before 2 p.m., CNN reported that a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement official had announced there had been no mass arrests. That Wednesday, I checked with American Civil Liberties Union offices in Los Angeles and New York, and officials said they had received no reports of increases in arrests. “From what I have seen from the 10 target cities is that nothing really came out of his announcement of all the raids,” said Victor Narro, a project director of the UCLA Labor Center and a national immigrant rights advocate. “The important thing for us is to remain vigilant and continue to be prepared.”

After announcing his roundup of undocumented immigrants, Trump launched a racist Twitter assault against Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, urging each to go back to where they came from—this despite the fact that all are U.S. citizens and three of the four were born in this country. “Our Country is Free, Beautiful and Very Successful,” he tweeted. “If you hate our country or you are not happy here, you can leave.”  In another tweet, he wrote, “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.”

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Taken together, the president’s tweets pose a threat to public safety if not American democracy. I couldn’t help but be reminded of the HBO mini-series “Chernobyl,” which examines the consequences of a government built on lies. Estimations of casualties vary widely, but it is believed that several thousand people perished as a result of a nuclear plant explosion in Ukraine on April 26, 1986. Soviet officials maintained that just 31 died in the accident.

As the five-part television series explains, the old Soviet Union’s culture of lying was instrumental in causing those deaths. Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum, who reported from Chernobyl, wrote that the problems at the nuclear plant were deeper than the explosion itself. “Layer upon layer of lies and falsehoods surrounded the accident from the beginning,” she said. “First, the reactor’s leadership, then the Soviet leadership, covered up the explosion. Later they tried to cover up the human errors that led to the disaster. That was why measurements were not made, assessments were not completed, victims were not informed.”

When I’m told that American institutions could never buckle like this, I point to the little-understood but immensely powerful immigration courts on which I have been reporting for years. Not only are their judges appointed by the attorney general and answer to a given administration, but these officials end up shaping much of our immigration policy from their respective benches. And with its long waiting lists and secretive arrests, the system is being used as a tool to whip up hysteria against the immigrants.

For four days, Trump terrorized the Central American and Mexican communities with the mere threat of mass arrests. And in the process, he incited fear and hatred among supporters who chanted “send her back” during his most recent rally in North Carolina. All of this adds up to an assault on immigrants, people of color and our constitutional rights.

Israeli Probes Into Deaths of Palestinians Often Go Nowhere

JALAZON REFUGEE CAMP, West Bank — Hamedo Fakhouri clearly remembers the moment when the young Palestinian who worked at his neighborhood coffee shop was shot dead.

Israeli troops were lingering after an overnight arrest raid in the northern West Bank city of Tulkarem when he noticed the mentally disabled Mohammed Habali limp up the street with his wooden walking stick. Seconds later, he heard gunshots and spun around to see Habali collapse.

“I cannot forget and will not forget how this poor man was killed,” said Fakhouri.

Surveillance videos of the shooting drew outrage from Palestinians and human rights groups. Soon after, the Israeli military launched an investigation.

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Fighting Intensifies Between Israel, Palestinians; Death Toll Rises on Both Sides



by

Witnesses say Habali was killed by Israeli troops. The military has acknowledged its forces opened fire and has not disputed the cause of his death. But cillustrating what critics say is a disturbing pattern.

The Israeli military has opened investigations into 24 potentially criminal shootings of Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and the Gaza Strip over the past year, The Associated Press has found. Yet none of the cases have yielded convictions or even indictments. In most instances, the army hasn’t interviewed key witnesses or retrieved evidence from the field.

B’Tselem, Israel’s leading human rights group, grew so frustrated with the system that in 2016 it halted its decades-long practice of assisting military investigations.

“We came to the conclusion as a human rights organization, we’re actually creating more harm than good by cooperating with the system because it is in fact a whitewash mechanism,” said the group’s spokesman, Amit Galutz. The system’s success, he said, “is measured not by its ability to protect victims, but perpetrators.”

In the last eight years, nearly 200 criminal investigations into the shootings of Palestinians have secured just two convictions, according to B’Tselem. One of them, a high-profile case in which a soldier was caught on video fatally shooting a wounded Palestinian attacker who was lying on the ground, resulted in a reduced sentence of nine months.

Israel says it must regularly carry out military operations in the West Bank to prevent Palestinian attacks and protect Jewish settlements. While acknowledging investigations could be faster and better staffed, Israeli officials say the system is effective, especially in light of the challenging environment in which it operates.

“We didn’t build a robust legal system, one of the best in the world, just to help soldiers escape accountability,” said Maurice Hirsch, a former chief military prosecutor in the West Bank who is now director of legal strategies for Palestinian Media Watch, a group that monitors anti-Israel rhetoric by Palestinians.

The debate could have serious implications. The Palestinians have appealed to the International Criminal Court in The Hague to press war crimes charges against Israel. Although Israel does not recognize the court’s authority, the court can pursue cases if it finds Israel unwilling or unable to carry out justice.

A week after 22-year-old Habali was shot, Palestinian teenager Mahmoud Nakhleh sat chatting with friends outside the hardscrabble West Bank refugee camp of Jalazon. Suddenly, soldiers descended from a hilltop, provoked by a different group of youths slinging stones further down the highway.

Witnesses say Nakhleh and his friends panicked and bolted at the sight of advancing army jeeps. Troops chased them into the camp and opened fire, killing the 18-year-old Nakhleh.

Omar Hameedat, 21, watched the episode unfold from his balcony. “They started shooting spontaneously,” he said, pointing to video he captured on his cellphone. “No clashes, nothing.”

In the months since the killings of Habali and Nakhleh, Israeli authorities have neither interviewed witnesses nor requested footage from them. Various witnesses, including Hameedat, said they are prepared to cooperate.

In both cases, the army released similar statements, saying troops had responded to “disturbances” in which “dozens of Palestinians hurled stones”— a situation that automatically loosens the rules of engagement.

Deaths in such contexts are typically explained as regrettable accidents, and “usually not the consequence of any criminal decision,” said Eli Baron, Israel’s former deputy military advocate general.

Proving criminal intent is an especially high standard in Gaza, where some 200 Palestinians, most of them unarmed, have been killed in the past year during demonstrations along the border.

Israel, which withdrew its troops from the territory in 2005, says the ruling Hamas militant group uses the protests as a cover to stage attacks and notes that many protesters have tried to break through a separation fence to enter Israel. In response, the military applies the law of armed conflict, giving soldiers more leeway to open fire. This interpretation has been challenged by rights groups and the U.N.

In a dim living room in Gaza’s Jabaliya refugee camp, Ibrahim Ayyoub recalled the afternoon his 14-year-old son Mohammed was shot through the head by an Israeli sniper.

“Someone who executes a child will never confess to it,” Ayyoub said. “But we have to raise our voice.”

The family filed a complaint to the military through the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, which said that in May, over a year after the event, two witnesses were asked to provide basic details to investigators over Skype. They have not heard back since.

Al Mezan Center for Human Rights said the army has not asked for testimony or evidence in more than 50 cases it represents.

The government is obligated under international law to investigate reports of human rights abuses “promptly, thoroughly and in good faith,” said Annyssa Bellal, an expert in international humanitarian law at the Geneva Academy.

A failure to do so could give the International Criminal Court jurisdiction, she said. The court opened a “preliminary investigation” into Israeli practices in 2015, but has not said when it will complete the probe.

Responding to a request for updates on the ongoing investigations, the army said it has launched seven criminal probes in Gaza and 16 in the West Bank over the past year.

Three of the cases were closed following a military police investigation. Another two cases were treated as an internal disciplinary matter and closed at the outset, including the shooting of a 16-year-old who was wounded in the West Bank while handcuffed and blindfolded.

The military also launched an investigation — but not a criminal probe — into the shooting of an AP cameraman who was struck in the leg while wearing a vest marked “PRESS” several hundred meters (yards) from the Gaza fence.

In the case of the AP journalist, neither the cameraman, who spent weeks recovering in an Israeli hospital, nor his supervisors were asked to testify. The army also never asked to see video of the shooting.

In its conclusion, the army said “no fire was directed” at the cameraman. It encouraged journalists to “exercise caution” when covering protests.

All of the remaining Gaza investigations, and several in the West Bank, including the deaths of Habali and Nakhleh, remain in the initial stage of military police review. Just two West Bank cases, including a medic killed in clashes at a refugee camp, are in the final stage of review before a recommendation is made on whether to press charges.

In a statement, the army stressed that its investigations are conducted in an “independent and effective manner.” It also said it often faces access and security challenges on the ground, making investigations “complicated and often lengthy.”

“We debrief every bullet,” Maj. Gen. Herzl Halevi, the head of Israel’s southern command, which is responsible for the Gaza border, told a conference last spring. “But we don’t always have results because of the tough conditions we’re working in.”

Hamas-ruled Gaza is off limits to Israeli investigators. Collecting evidence in Palestinian-administered parts of the West Bank can involve risky late-night operations, or relying on intermediaries who sometimes refuse to cooperate. Investigators can also struggle to get autopsy results due to the Islamic custom of quick burials.

Critics, however, say these obstacles can be overcome with technology like video conferencing, better cooperation with Palestinian security forces and improved training for investigators based on past cases going back to Israel’s 1967 seizure of the West Bank and Gaza.

They say the army has instead created a system that relies almost entirely on one-sided testimony from soldiers in which insufficient evidence becomes a common justification for closed cases.

“The army tends to give the benefit of the doubt to its own soldiers,” said Yuval Shany, a Hebrew University expert on military law.

___

Associated Press writer Fares Akram in Gaza City, Gaza Strip, contributed to this report.