Chris Hedges's Blog, page 205

The U.S. Women’s Team Takes Its Fight for Gender Equality Global

Champagne corks were popping in lower Manhattan on Wednesday — not only for the victorious United States Women’s National Soccer Team as they were feted with a ticker tape parade up New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes” on Broadway, passing Wall Street, where the S&P 500 stock index crested 3000 for the first time in history. The 23 women of the soccer team had just returned from winning the World Cup in France. Back in the United States, they will continue another, more difficult battle, for pay and working conditions equal to those of their male counterparts in the U.S. Soccer Federation. A sign held during the parade by team member Crystal Dunn, an African American player from Rockville Centre on Long Island, read, “Parades are cool — Equal Pay is cooler.” The crowd echoed the sentiment. As Carlos Cordeiro, the head of the U.S. Soccer Federation, spoke at the rally that followed the parade, the crowd chanted, “Equal pay! Equal pay!” It was the same chorus that reverberated throughout the Lyon stadium when the women became world champions last Sunday. 

The success of Wall Street, juxtaposed with the pay inequality imposed on these remarkable women, recalled the statement made by one of New York City’s most famous mayors, Fiorella La Guardia, in 1946: “Ticker tape ain’t spaghetti.” La Guardia had just taken the reins of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, providing aid to refugees and others struggling to survive in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Paper ticker tape was ubiquitous in those pre-digital days as the means by which real-time stock prices were distributed. Hence, vast quantities of used ticker tape in New York’s financial district was repurposed as confetti to rain on returning soldiers, astronauts and victorious athletic teams since the first ticker tape parade in 1886, celebrating the new Statue of Liberty. La Guardia’s point was simple: While the postwar economy may have been booming and those invested in the stock market were doing great, it didn’t translate into food security for war refugees. Likewise, today, a parade celebrating women athletes is an honor, but it doesn’t make up for a lifetime of unequal pay.

The women’s team filed a lawsuit last March, accusing the U.S. Soccer Federation of “paying them less than members of the MNT [men’s national team] for substantially equal work and by denying them at least equal playing, training, and travel conditions; equal promotion of their games; equal support and development for their games.” The U.S. women’s team has won four World Cup titles, four Olympic gold medals, has won many other tournaments and is ranked by FIFA as the No. 1 team in its Women’s World Rankings. Compare that with the dismal record of the U.S. Men’s National Team, which didn’t even qualify for the most recent World Cup. Despite their lackluster performance, the men earn far more, on average, than the women. 

This disparity is common throughout the U.S. economy. Testifying before Congress last February in support of the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R. 7): Equal Pay for Equal Work, Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, laid out the disturbing details: “Women working full time, year-round, typically are paid only 80 cents for every dollar paid to men working full time, year-round. The wage gap is even worse when looking specifically at women of color: For every dollar paid to white, non-Hispanic men, black women are paid only 61 cents, Native women 58 cents and Latinas 53 cents.” She added, “Women, and especially women of color, face overt discrimination and unconscious biases in the workplace which impact pay.”

The U.S. women’s soccer players now have a global platform to highlight the struggle for women’s pay equality and justice. As co-captain Megan Rapinoe said Wednesday: “Yes we play sports. Yes we play soccer. Yes we’re female athletes, but we’re so much more than that.” Rapinoe, the World Cup’s top scorer and best player, is an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights, and in 2016 became one of the first major white athletes to take a knee during the national anthem. Throughout the World Cup, she refused to place her hand over her heart or to sing the words of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

“We have pink hair and purple hair; we have tattoos and dreadlocks. We got white girls and black girls and everything in between. Straight girls and gay girls,” Rapinoe said at the City Hall rally Wednesday, where the mayor presented the team with the keys to the city. Issuing a call to action to the crowd, Rapinoe went on, “We have to love more, hate less. … It’s our responsibility to make this world a better place.”

Nancy Pelosi Is Not on Your Side

Do as I say, not as I do, never publicly criticize the so-called “Blue Dogs” in the Democratic caucus, no matter how egregious their positions, and if you have a problem, take it up with Maureen Dowd. Increasingly that appears to be the ethos of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., whose attitude toward her party’s progressives has devolved from one of weary tolerance to outright disdain, political and generational.

On Wednesday, Politico’s Heather Caygle and Sarah Ferris report, the California congresswoman and ranking House Democrat held a closed-door meeting in which she delivered a “stern” message to her colleagues on the left. “So, again, you got a complaint? You come and talk to me about it,” she said, according to an anonymous source. “But do not tweet about our members and expect us to think that that is just ok.”

While she declined to call anybody out by name, Democratic officials believe the object of her scorn was co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Mark Pocan, D-Wis., who has accused moderate Democrats of enabling child abuse by voting for a Senate emergency aid package that provides $4.6 billion in supplemental border funding without imposing clear health and safety standards at migrant detention centers. Pelosi also appeared to take a veiled swipe at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s, D-N.Y., Chief of Staff Saikat Chakrabarti, who has been outspoken about the House Speaker’s inaction in the face of Donald Trump’s mounting corruption and criminality.

Chakrabarti’s criticism, which he leveled on Twitter over the weekend, was not unprovoked. Last week, Nancy Pelosi sat down with the New York Times to air her grievances regarding the Democratic base’s calls for impeachment, which she dismissed as a “primal urge,” as well as the party’s youthful “Squad” of Reps. Ocasio-Cortez, Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., each of whom backed her bid for House speaker in 2018. “All these people have their public whatever and their Twitter world,” she told Dowd. “But they didn’t have any following. They’re four people and that’s how many votes they got.”

Asked by reporters Wednesday whether she regretted calling out her colleagues, Pelosi was defiant. “I have no regrets about anything,” she said. “Regrets is not what I do.”

Clearly not. While Pelosi answers to a Democratic majority that remains broadly conservative, it’s nonetheless telling that she appears more eager to challenge progressive women of color within her caucus than the president and his cabinet. Since Robert Mueller released the findings of his investigation, she has all but dismissed the notion of opening an inquiry into obstruction of justice or investigating journalist E. Jean Carroll’s claims that Trump raped her in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room in the mid-90s. (In one of the more gobsmacking quotes from her interview with Dowd, the House Speaker notes that he “practically self-impeaches by obstructing justice and ignoring the subpoenas.”)

Even this week, amid public outrage that Secretary of Labor Alex Acosta cut alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a sweetheart deal while serving as Florida’s top federal prosecutor a decade ago, she has been loathe to exercise Congressional oversight, instead using the scandal as a cynical fundraising ploy. As Mehdi Hasan writes in The Intercept, “Nancy Pelosi has chosen her war, and it’s with her own party’s future.”

“[Forget the ‘you-go-girl memes for literally clapping back at Trump’ that Dowd fawns over in her interview with the speaker,” Hasan concludes. “It is time for liberals and leftists who lambast Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to admit to themselves that the hippie-punching Pelosi has become a Trump enabler too.”

Read more at The Intercept here.

Amazon, Microsoft Battle Over Pentagon’s ‘War Cloud’

Amazon and Microsoft are battling it out over a $10 billion opportunity to build the U.S. military its first “war cloud” computing system. But Amazon’s early hopes of a shock-and-awe victory may be slipping away.

Formally called the Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure plan, or JEDI, the military’s computing project would store and process vast amounts of classified data, allowing the Pentagon to use artificial intelligence to speed up its war planning and fighting capabilities. The Defense Department hopes to award the winner-take-all contract as soon as August. Oracle and IBM were eliminated at an earlier round of the contract competition.

But that’s only if the project isn’t derailed first. It faces a legal challenge by Oracle and growing congressional concerns about alleged Pentagon favoritism toward Amazon. Military officials hope to get started soon on what will be a decade-long business partnership they describe as vital to national security.

“This is not your grandfather’s internet,” said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank. “You’re talking about a cloud where you can go from the Pentagon literally to the soldier on the battlefield carrying classified information.”

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Amazon was considered an early favorite when the Pentagon began detailing its cloud needs in 2017, but its candidacy has been marred by an Oracle allegation that Amazon executives and the Pentagon have been overly cozy. Oracle has a final chance to make its case against Amazon — and the integrity of the government’s bidding process — in a court hearing Wednesday.

“This is really the cloud sweepstakes, which is why there are such fierce lawsuits,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.

Ives said an opportunity that was a “no brainer” for Amazon a year ago now seems just as likely to go to Microsoft, which has spent the past year burnishing its credentials to meet the government’s security requirements.

For years, Amazon Web Services has been the industry leader in moving businesses and other institutions onto its cloud — a term used to describe banks of servers in remote data centers that can be accessed from almost anywhere. But Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has been steadily catching up, as have other providers such as Google, in both corporate and government settings.

With an acronym evoking Star Wars and a price tag of up to $10 billion over the next decade, JEDI has attracted more attention than most cloud deals. A cloud strategy document unveiled by the Defense Department last year calls for replacing the military’s “disjointed and stove-piped information systems” with a commercial cloud service “that will empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage.”

In a court filing last month, Lt. Gen. Bradford Shwedo said further delays in the Oracle case will “hamper our critical efforts in AI” as the U.S. tries to maintain its advantage over adversaries who are “weaponizing their use of data.” Shwedo said JEDI’s computing capabilities could help the U.S. analyze data collected from surveillance aircraft, predict when equipment needs maintenance and speed up communications if fiber and satellite connections go down.

Amazon was considered an early front-runner for the project in part because of its existing high-security cloud contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. It beat out IBM for that deal in 2013.

Worried that the Pentagon’s bid seemed tailor-made for Amazon, rivals Oracle and IBM lodged formal protests last year arguing against the decision to award it to a single vendor.

In an October blog post , IBM executive Sam Gordy wrote that a single-cloud approach went against industry trends and “would give bad actors just one target to focus on should they want to undermine the military’s IT backbone.”

The Government Accountability Office later dismissed those protests, but Oracle persisted by taking its case to the Court of Federal Claims, where it has pointed to emails and other documents that it says show conflicts of interest between Amazon and the government. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for Wednesday. The case has delayed the procurement process, though the Pentagon says it hopes to award the contract as early as Aug. 23.

Oracle’s argument is centered on the activities of a Defense Department official who later went to work for Amazon. Amazon says Oracle has exaggerated that employee’s role in the procurement using “tabloid sensationalism.”

Some defense-contracting experts say the conflict allegations are troubling.

“No one seems to deny that these were actual conflicts and the players affirmatively attempted to conceal them,” said Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University. “That simply cannot be tolerated.”

But Goure, whose think tank gets funding from Amazon but not from its cloud rivals Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, said the criticism is “coming from the also-rans.” He says rivals like Oracle “missed the boat” in cloud technology and are trying to make up lost ground through legal maneuvers.

The Pentagon has repeatedly defended its bidding process, though the concerns have trickled into Congress and onto prime-time TV. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted a segment last month to the cloud contract that questioned an Amazon executive’s 2017 meeting with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Carlson also aired concerns by Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who said “the allegations are incredible” and should be investigated.

A Wall Street Journal report on Sunday further detailed government emails about that meeting and another one between Mattis and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos later that year. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in an emailed statement Tuesday that there are so many questions that the Pentagon should “restart the whole process” and wait until its inspector general can thoroughly review for potential conflicts.

Amazon said in a statement Tuesday the meetings “had nothing to do with the JEDI procurement” and blamed “misinformed or disappointed competitors” for trying to imply otherwise.

Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said while military leaders are expected to engage with industry, no one in the defense secretary’s “front office” participated in drafting the contract requirements or soliciting bids.

Ives said it remains to be seen how much the conflict allegations will hurt Amazon or help Microsoft. Microsoft has largely stayed quiet during the dispute. In a statement, it focused on highlighting its 40-year partnership supplying the military with services such as email.

But that’s only if the project isn’t derailed first. It faces a legal challenge by Oracle and growing congressional concerns about alleged Pentagon favoritism toward Amazon. Military officials hope to get started soon on what will be a decade-long business partnership they describe as vital to national security.

“This is not your grandfather’s internet,” said Daniel Goure, vice president of the Lexington Institute, a defense-oriented think tank. “You’re talking about a cloud where you can go from the Pentagon literally to the soldier on the battlefield carrying classified information.”

Amazon was considered an early favorite when the Pentagon began detailing its cloud needs in 2017, but its candidacy has been marred by an Oracle allegation that Amazon executives and the Pentagon have been overly cozy. Oracle has a final chance to make its case against Amazon — and the integrity of the government’s bidding process — in a court hearing Wednesday.

“This is really the cloud sweepstakes, which is why there are such fierce lawsuits,” said Wedbush Securities analyst Daniel Ives.

Ives said an opportunity that was a “no brainer” for Amazon a year ago now seems just as likely to go to Microsoft, which has spent the past year burnishing its credentials to meet the government’s security requirements.

For years, Amazon Web Services has been the industry leader in moving businesses and other institutions onto its cloud — a term used to describe banks of servers in remote data centers that can be accessed from almost anywhere. But Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform has been steadily catching up, as have other providers such as Google, in both corporate and government settings.

With an acronym evoking Star Wars and a price tag of up to $10 billion over the next decade, JEDI has attracted more attention than most cloud deals. A cloud strategy document unveiled by the Defense Department last year calls for replacing the military’s “disjointed and stove-piped information systems” with a commercial cloud service “that will empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage.”

In a court filing last month, Lt. Gen. Bradford Shwedo said further delays in the Oracle case will “hamper our critical efforts in AI” as the U.S. tries to maintain its advantage over adversaries who are “weaponizing their use of data.” Shwedo said JEDI’s computing capabilities could help the U.S. analyze data collected from surveillance aircraft, predict when equipment needs maintenance and speed up communications if fiber and satellite connections go down.

Amazon was considered an early front-runner for the project in part because of its existing high-security cloud contract with the Central Intelligence Agency. It beat out IBM for that deal in 2013.

Worried that the Pentagon’s bid seemed tailor-made for Amazon, rivals Oracle and IBM lodged formal protests last year arguing against the decision to award it to a single vendor.

In an October blog post , IBM executive Sam Gordy wrote that a single-cloud approach went against industry trends and “would give bad actors just one target to focus on should they want to undermine the military’s IT backbone.”

The Government Accountability Office later dismissed those protests, but Oracle persisted by taking its case to the Court of Federal Claims, where it has pointed to emails and other documents that it says show conflicts of interest between Amazon and the government. Oral arguments in that case are scheduled for Wednesday. The case has delayed the procurement process, though the Pentagon says it hopes to award the contract as early as Aug. 23.

Oracle’s argument is centered on the activities of a Defense Department official who later went to work for Amazon. Amazon says Oracle has exaggerated that employee’s role in the procurement using “tabloid sensationalism.”

Some defense-contracting experts say the conflict allegations are troubling.

“No one seems to deny that these were actual conflicts and the players affirmatively attempted to conceal them,” said Steven Schooner, a professor of government procurement law at George Washington University. “That simply cannot be tolerated.”

But Goure, whose think tank gets funding from Amazon but not from its cloud rivals Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, said the criticism is “coming from the also-rans.” He says rivals like Oracle “missed the boat” in cloud technology and are trying to make up lost ground through legal maneuvers.

The Pentagon has repeatedly defended its bidding process, though the concerns have trickled into Congress and onto prime-time TV. Fox News host Tucker Carlson devoted a segment last month to the cloud contract that questioned an Amazon executive’s 2017 meeting with then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Carlson also aired concerns by Republican Rep. Mark Meadows, who said “the allegations are incredible” and should be investigated.

A Wall Street Journal report on Sunday further detailed government emails about that meeting and another one between Mattis and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos later that year. Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, said in an emailed statement Tuesday that there are so many questions that the Pentagon should “restart the whole process” and wait until its inspector general can thoroughly review for potential conflicts.

Amazon said in a statement Tuesday the meetings “had nothing to do with the JEDI procurement” and blamed “misinformed or disappointed competitors” for trying to imply otherwise.

Pentagon spokeswoman Elissa Smith said while military leaders are expected to engage with industry, no one in the defense secretary’s “front office” participated in drafting the contract requirements or soliciting bids.

Ives said it remains to be seen how much the conflict allegations will hurt Amazon or help Microsoft. Microsoft has largely stayed quiet during the dispute. In a statement, it focused on highlighting its 40-year partnership supplying the military with services such as email.

U.S. Opens New Holding Center for Migrant Children

CARRIZO SPRINGS, Texas—A former oilfield worker camp off a dirt road in rural Texas has become the U.S. government’s newest holding center for detaining migrant children after they leave Border Patrol stations, where complaints of overcrowding and filthy conditions have sparked a worldwide outcry.

Inside the wire fence that encircles the site are soccer fields, a giant air-conditioned tent that serves as a dining hall, and trailers set up for use as classrooms and as places where children can call their families.

The long trailers once used to house workers in two-bedroom suites have been converted into 12-person dorms, with two pairs of bunk beds in each bedroom and the living room.

The Department of Health and Human Services said about 225 children are being held at the site in Carrizo Springs, with plans to expand to as many as 1,300, making it one of the biggest camps in the U.S. government system.

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The government said the holding center will give it much-needed capacity to take in more children from the Border Patrol and prevent their detention in stations like the one in Clint, Texas, where lawyers last month reported some 250 youngsters were being held in cells with inadequate food, water and sanitation.

HHS said the Carrizo Springs location is a comfortable environment for children while they wait to be placed with family members or sponsors in the U.S.

But immigrant advocates and others liken such places to child prison camps and worry that the isolated location 110 miles (180 kilometers) from San Antonio, the nearest major city, will make it more difficult to find lawyers to help the teenagers with their immigration cases.

Advocates have complained that HHS’ largest holding centers — a facility in Homestead, Florida, a converted Walmart in Brownsville, Texas, and a now-closed tent camp at Tornillo, Texas — have traumatized children through overcrowding and inadequate staffing.

“All of this is part of a morally bankrupt system,” said Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat.

There’s also the huge cost: an average of $775 per day for each child. HHS plans to pay the nonprofit Baptist Child and Family Services up to $300 million through January to run the Carrizo Springs site.

The government allowed The Associated Press to visit on Tuesday and distribute photos and video, though the AP could not show children’s faces because of privacy restrictions.

Boys and girls are kept in separate buildings and follow separate schedules. They have decorated their rooms with drawings of superheroes and the flags of their home countries, including Guatemala and El Salvador. Many children smiled and greeted visitors as they walked by. Several girls knitted yarn hats and armbands.

A series of tents serves as the infirmary, with nurses on hand treating a few children for lice and flu-like symptoms.

Breakfast is at 7 a.m., followed by soccer, then six hours of classes in reading, writing, social studies, science and math.

In reading class on Tuesday, the students were asked to practice reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in English. Many did so haltingly before the teachers called one student to the front to help lead them. After he finished, the whole class applauded.

HHS said the goal is to move the children through the holding center and others like it as quickly as possible. The department said it has sped up placing children with sponsors to an average of 45 days, down from 93 days last November. One key, HHS said, was lifting a requirement that all adult relatives be fingerprinted before they can take a child out of custody.

“This facility is all about unification,” said Mark Weber, an HHS spokesman.

The holding center is opening amid record numbers of family members apprehended at the border and thousands of children traveling without their parents as they flee violence and poverty in Central America.

Baptist Child and Family Services also ran the Tornillo camp, which opened last summer as thousands of children were separated from their parents by Trump administration policy. Tornillo reached as many as 2,800 children until it was closed in January.

BCFS CEO Kevin Dinnin said he had refused in December to take more children at Tornillo because the camp was holding them for so long, a decision that led to its closing. Dinnin said he resolved never to open another emergency center like it, but the conditions reported in Border Patrol custody changed his mind. He said he also believes HHS is doing more to process children more quickly.

“At the end of the day, our philosophy has been … to keep kids out of CBP jail cells,” Dinnin said.

Jonathan Ryan, executive director of the legal group RAICES, said his organization is ready to send lawyers to Carrizo Springs but is waiting for the OK from the government.

“We just want to get inside and work with those kids,” Ryan said. “Children who have been detained, who have gone through deprivation and cages in Border Patrol custody, are potentially being released without ever having had access to legal advice and screening.”

Hong Kong Protesters to Continue Despite ‘Dead’ Extradition Bill

HONG KONG—Hong Kong protest leaders opposed to the administration of Chief Executive Carrie Lam said Tuesday that they will continue their demonstrations, even after Lam declared the effort to amend a highly contentious extradition bill “dead.”

Protesters are persisting in their demands for the bill to be formally withdrawn and an investigation opened into heavy-handed tactics used by police against demonstrators. Hundreds of thousands have joined the monthlong protests, expressing growing concerns about the steady erosion of civil rights in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory.

“We cannot find the word ‘dead’ in any of the laws in Hong Kong or in any legal proceedings in the Legislative Council,” protest leaders Jimmy Sham and Bonnie Leung said in statements in English and Cantonese.

“So how can the government tell us that we should preserve our rule of law, when (Lam) herself does not use the principle of the rule of law,” the two said.

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The protest leaders also said Lam was being hypocritical in claiming to have met demonstrators’ demands without actually speaking to them directly.

“Instead, she should really stand out and talk to the young protesters,” Leung said. “The young protesters have been out in the street outside her house, outside government headquarters, for weeks, roaring to be heard.”

Details about future protest actions will be announced at a later time, Leung said.

Lam acknowledged at a news conference earlier Tuesday that there were “lingering doubts about the government’s sincerity or worries about whether it would seek to bring the legislation back for a vote.” But she said: “I reiterate here, there is no such plan. The bill is dead.”

The protests against the proposed extradition legislation have given voice to fears that Hong Kong is losing the freedoms guaranteed to it when the former British colony was returned to China in 1997.

The legislation would allow criminal suspects to be extradited to mainland China. Critics fear suspects would face unfair and politicized trials, and that opponents of China’s ruling Communist Party would be targeted.

In the most recent protest on Sunday, tens of thousands of people, chanting “Free Hong Kong” and some carrying British colonial-era flags, marched toward a high-speed railway station that connects Hong Kong to the Chinese mainland. They said they wanted to carry their protest message to those on the mainland, where state-run media have not covered the protests widely but have focused instead on clashes with police and property damage.

On July 1, the 22nd anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from Britain back to China, a peaceful march drew hundreds of thousands of people but was overshadowed by an assault on the territory’s legislative building. A few hundred demonstrators shattered thick glass panels to enter the building and wreaked havoc for three hours, spray-painting slogans on the chamber walls, overturning furniture and damaging electronic voting and fire prevention systems.

Protesters are demanding an independent investigation into alleged police abuse of force against demonstrators on June 12, when officers used tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse crowds blocking major streets.

Lam said Tuesday that the Department of Justice would decide whether to prosecute any protesters for the June 12 demonstration “in accordance with the evidence, the law and also the prosecution code.”

___

Bodeen reported from Beijing.

Appeals Court Sides With Trump in Hotel Lawsuit

RICHMOND, Va.—A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel, handing Trump a significant legal victory on Wednesday.

A three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously overturned the ruling of a federal judge in Maryland who said the lawsuit could move forward.

The state of Maryland and the District of Columbia sued in 2017, claiming Trump has violated the emoluments clause of the Constitution by accepting profits through foreign and domestic officials who stay at his Washington hotel. The provision prohibits federal officials from accepting benefits from foreign or state governments without congressional approval.

The 4th Circuit found the two jurisdictions lack standing to pursue their claims against the president, and granted a petition for a rare writ of mandamus, directing U.S. District Court Judge Peter Messitte to dismiss the lawsuit.

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Trump heralded the decision in a tweet, saying, “Word just out that I won a big part of the Deep State and Democrat induced Witch Hunt.” Trump tweeted that he doesn’t make money but loses “a fortune” by serving as president.

Trump’s personal attorney, Jay Sekulow, called the decision “a complete victory.”

“We are pleased that the Fourth Circuit unanimously decided to dismiss this extraordinarily flawed case,” Department of Justice spokeswoman Kelly Laco said in a statement.

During oral arguments before the panel in March, lawyers for Maryland and the District said Trump’s status as president is a driving factor for foreign and domestic government officials to stay at his hotel.

Just blocks from the White House, the iconic Old Post Office quickly became a hot spot for lobbyists and foreign officials after it reopened in October 2016 as the Trump International Hotel. A public relations firm working for Saudi Arabia spent nearly $270,000 on food and rooms. The Philippine and Kuwaiti embassies have also had parties there.

Maryland and the District claim they have suffered harm because more people would stay at hotels in their jurisdictions if they weren’t eager to curry favor with the president by staying at his hotel.

Trump’s legal team argued that Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine — both Democrats — lack authority to sue the president in his official capacity.

Trump’s lawyers also argued that the emoluments clause only bars compensation made in connection with services provided in his official capacity or in “an employment-type relationship” with a foreign or domestic government.

The 4th Circuit’s decision to hear the unusual mid-case appeal put the lawsuit on hold before deadlines to respond to subpoenas issued in December seeking tax returns, receipts and other records from more than 30 entities, including 13 Trump businesses and the federal agency that oversees the lease for Trump’s hotel.

Racine and Frosh said in a joint statement that they would not abandon their efforts.

“Although the court described a litany of ways in which this case is unique, it failed to acknowledge the most extraordinary circumstance of all: President Trump is brazenly profiting from the Office of the President in ways that no other President in history ever imagined and that the founders expressly sought — in the Constitution — to prohibit,” the attorneys general said.

Racine has previously said that if the panel ruled against Maryland and the District, the legal team would seriously consider asking for a rehearing before the full 4th Circuit. He also said it wouldn’t surprise him if the case ended up in the U.S. Supreme Court.

All three judges on the panel were nominated by Republican presidents: Paul Niemeyer, by George H.W. Bush; Dennis Shedd, by George W. Bush, and Judge A. Marvin Quattlebaum, by Trump.

Two other lawsuits accusing the president of violating the emoluments clause have been filed in other federal courts.

One of those cases, brought by nearly 200 congressional Democrats in the District of Columbia’s federal court, also deals with the idea that Trump is using the presidency for his personal profit, but that case is uniquely different in that the Congress is specifically mentioned in the emoluments clause itself. On Monday, the Justice Department petitioned for a writ of mandamus in the D.C. appeals court and asked for a stay on the 37 subpoenas issued in that case.

___

Associated Press writers Tami Abdollah in Washington and Sarah Rankin in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.

Robert Reich: America Faces a Crisis of Democracy

I keep hearing that the Democratic party has moved “left” and that some Democratic candidates may be “too far left”.

But in this era of unprecedented concentration of wealth and political power at the top, I can’t help wondering what it means to be “left”.

A half-century ago, when America had a large and growing middle class, those on the “left” sought stronger social safety nets and more public investment in schools, roads and research. Those on the “right” sought greater reliance on the free market.

But as wealth and power have concentrated at the top, everyone else – whether on the old right or the old left – has become disempowered and less secure.

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Safety nets have unraveled, public investments have waned and the free market has been taken over by crony capitalism and corporate welfare cheats. Washington and state capitals are overwhelmed by money coming from the super-rich, Wall Street and big corporations.

So why do we continue to hear and use the same old “right” and “left” labels?

I suspect it’s because the emerging oligarchy feels safer if Americans are split along the old political battle lines. That way, Americans won’t notice they’re being shafted.

In reality, the biggest divide in America today runs between oligarchy and democracy. When oligarchs fill the coffers of political candidates, they neuter democracy.

The oligarchs know politicians won’t bite the hands that feed them. So as long as they control the money, they can be confident there will be no meaningful response to stagnant pay, climate change, military bloat or the soaring costs of health insurance, pharmaceuticals, college and housing.

There will be no substantial tax increases on the wealthy. There will be no antitrust enforcement to puncture the power of giant corporations. No meaningful regulation of Wall Street’s addiction to gambling with other peoples’ money. No end to corporate subsides. CEO pay will continue to skyrocket. Wall Street hedge fund and private equity managers will continue to make off like bandits.

So long as the oligarchy divides Americans – split off people of color from working-class whites, stoke racial resentments, describe human beings as illegal aliens, launch wars on crime and immigrants, stoke fears of communists and socialists – it doesn’t have to worry that a majority will stop them from looting the nation.

Divide-and-conquer allows the oligarchy free rein. It makes the rest of us puppets, fighting each other on a made-up stage.

Trump is the puppet master.

He has been at it for years, long before he ran for president. He knows how to pit native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, whites against blacks and Latinos.

He is well-versed in getting evangelicals and secularists steamed up about abortion, equal marriage rights, out-of-wedlock births, access to contraception, transgender bathrooms.

He knows how to stir up fears of brown-skinned people from “shitholes” streaming across the border to murder and rape, and stoke anger about black athletes who don’t stand for the national anthem.

He’s a master at fueling anxieties about so-called communists, socialists and the left taking over America.

He can make the white working class believe they’ve been losing good jobs and wages because of a cabal of Democrats, “deep state” bureaucrats and Hillary Clinton.

From the start, Trump’s deal with the oligarchy has been simple: he’ll stoke tribalism so most Americans won’t see CEOs getting exorbitant pay while they’re slicing the pay of average workers, won’t pay attention to Wall Street demanding short-term results over long-term jobs, and won’t notice a boardroom culture that tolerates financial conflicts of interest, insider trading and the outright bribery of public officials through unlimited campaign “donations”.

The only way to overcome the oligarchy and Trump’s divide-and-conquer strategy is for the rest of us to join together and win America back.

That means creating a multi-racial, multi-ethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans who will fight for democracy and oppose oligarchy.

White, black and Latino; union and non-union; evangelical and secular; immigrant and native-born – all focused on ending big money in politics, stopping corporate welfare and crony capitalism, busting up monopolies and stopping voter suppression.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything else America must do.

U.K. Ambassador to U.S. Quits Days After Leaked Cables on Trump

LONDON — Britain’s ambassador to the United States resigned Wednesday after being made a diplomatic nobody by President Donald Trump following the leak of the envoy’s unflattering opinions about the U.S. administration.

Veteran diplomat Kim Darroch said he could no longer do his job in Washington after Trump branded him a fool and cut off all contact with the representative of one of the U.S.’s closest allies.

The break in relations followed a British newspaper’s publication Sunday of leaked documents that revealed the ambassador’s dim view of Trump’s administration, which Darroch described as dysfunctional, inept and chaotic.

“The current situation is making it impossible for me to carry out my role as I would like,” Darroch said in his resignation letter.

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In the leaked documents, he called the Trump administration’s policy toward Iran “incoherent,” said the president might be indebted to “dodgy Russians” and raised doubts about whether the White House “will ever look competent.”

“We don’t really believe this administration is going to become substantially more normal; less dysfunctional; less unpredictable; less faction riven; less diplomatically clumsy and inept,” one missive said.

Prime Minister Theresa May and other British politicians have praised Darroch and condemned the leak in recent days. Some also accused Boris Johnson, who is likely to be picked as Britain’s next prime minister later this month, of failing to stand up for the U.K.’s envoy in Washington because he wanted to curry favor with Trump.

“The fact that Sir Kim has been bullied out of his job, because of Donald Trump’s tantrums and Boris Johnson’s pathetic lick-spittle response, is something that shames our country,” said Emily Thornberry, the spokeswoman on foreign affairs issues for the main opposition Labour Party.

Darroch had been set to retire at the end of the year. It’s unclear whether May will have time to name a replacement before she leaves office later this month.

Appointing ambassadors usually involves a formal civil service process with advertisements, applications and interviews, though Simon McDonald, head of Britain’s diplomatic service, said the post of ambassador to the U.S. wasn’t always chosen that way.

“History shows that there are often bespoke procedures for filling the embassy in Washington, DC,” he said.

Darroch announced his decision the morning after a debate between the two contenders to replace May as party leader and prime minister, Johnson and Jeremy Hunt.

Hunt, who is Britain’s foreign secretary, vowed to keep Darroch in the post, but Johnson pointedly did not.

“I think it’s very important we should have a close partnership, a close friendship with the United States,” Johnson said.

Darroch’s forthright, unfiltered views on the U.S. administration — meant for a limited audience and discreet review — appeared in the leaked documents published by Britain’s Mail on Sunday newspaper.

Darroch had served as Britain’s envoy to Washington since 2016; the leaked cables covered a period from 2017 to recent weeks.

British officials are hunting for the culprit behind the leak, which was both an embarrassment to May’s government and a major breach of diplomatic security.

“We will pursue the culprit with all the means at our disposal,” Foreign Office chief Simon McDonald told a committee of lawmakers.

McDonald said it was “vitally important” that ambassadors were able to speak candidly in private and that it was the first time in his career that a head of state has dismissed working with a British ambassador.

He told the Foreign Affairs Committee that even hostile states had not taken such action in his nearly 37 years in the department.

“This is not the first time a British ambassador has left post or resigned because of actions against the host government, but usually they are governments with whom we have problematic relations rather than friendly relations,” McDonald said.

But he said the trans-Atlantic relationship was “so deep and so wide that it will withstand any individual squall.”

He also said he feared there might be more leaks of sensitive government documents.

Like his predecessors, Darroch was a prominent figure in Washington, meeting frequently with high-level U.S. officials and hosting parties at the stately British Embassy.

Gatherings were frequently bipartisan, drawing guests from the Trump and Obama administrations, who mingled with journalists and members of prominent think tanks.

Darroch often addressed the attendees at such gatherings, making sure to single out high-level administration officials.

Trump’s tweets created fury among many British politicians and officials, who found themselves insulted by the president’s decision to have the administration cut off contact with their ambassador.

It underscored that the close relationship between the two countries has become increasingly lopsided — a severe problem as the U.K. prepares to set a new path with its departure from the European Union.

“It is shameful that Kim Darroch has effectively been forced out for doing the job that diplomats are appointed to do,” Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon tweeted. “Boris Johnson’s failure last night to stand up for him — and stand up to the behavior of Donald Trump — spoke volumes.”

Foreign Office minister Alan Duncan went further, accusing Johnson of having “thrown our top diplomat under a bus” for his own personal interests.

But Trump supporter and Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage described the resignation as, “the right decision.”

He tweeted: “Time (to) put in a non-Remainer who wants a trade deal with America.”

__

Julie Pace contributed from Washington.

Ilhan Omar Issues Powerful Rebuke to Tucker Carlson

After Fox News host Tucker Carlson Tuesday night launched a xenophobic tirade accusing Rep. Ilhan Omar of showing “undisguised contempt for the United States and for its people” by criticizing the nation’s systemic injustices, Omar mocked Carlson as a “racist fool” and said he will “just have to get used to calling me congresswoman.”

“Not gonna lie, it’s kinda fun watching a racist fool like this weeping about my presence in Congress,” wrote Omar, a Somali refugee and one of two Muslim women ever elected to Congress.

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“No lies will stamp out my love for this country,” added the congresswoman from Minnesota, “or my resolve to make our union more perfect.”

Not gonna lie, it’s kinda fun watching a racist fool like this weeping about my presence in Congress

Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez Unveil Climate Emergency Declaration

After Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Tuesday introduced a resolution declaring the climate crisis a national emergency, grassroots environmental groups pressured members of Congress to back the declaration and heed its call for transformative action.

“Instead of remaining complicit in worsening the effects of climate change, members of Congress in both the House and Senate must respond to this resolution with the urgency and support that this moment demands,” said climate group Extinction Rebellion, which is holding a rally in Washington, D.C. Tuesday evening to urge lawmakers to sign on to the emergency declaration.

“Today we stand in solidarity with tens of millions of people from around the world in calling for a mass mobilization of our social and economic resources,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement. “Working to solve the climate crisis will create tens of millions of union jobs, empower communities, and improve the quality of life for people across the globe.”

The resolution, also sponsored by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.), states “there is a climate emergency which demands a massive-scale mobilization to halt, reverse, and address its consequences and causes.”

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Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, told reporters during a press call Tuesday that while there are “many, many challenges” facing the United States, “at the top of the list must be the existential threat to our planet in terms of the damage that climate change is doing.”

“What we need now,” Sanders said in a later statement, “is congressional leadership to stand up to the fossil fuel industry and tell them that their short term profits are not more important than the future of the planet. Climate change is a national emergency, and I am proud to be introducing this resolution with my House and Senate colleagues.”

Varshini Prakash, founder of the youth-led climate group Sunrise Movement, said during Tuesday’s press call that everything in the climate emergency resolution must become “the governing mandate for a generation” if the worst of the planetary emergency is to be averted.

“Nothing in here is controversial,” said Prakash. “It is a simple declaration of the truth of this moment and what is needed to confront it. It should be a consensus position for all of our politicians to recognize the emergency for what it is.”

Read the full resolution:

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), a contender for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, expressed her support for the emergency declaration in a tweet on Tuesday.

“We should call our climate crisis what it is: an emergency,” Warren wrote. “That’s why I support a climate emergency resolution, a Green New Deal, protecting our public lands and coasts from drilling, and other big, bold actions to tackle it.”

We should call our climate crisis what it is: an emergency. That’s why I support a climate emergency resolution, a #GreenNewDeal, protecting our public lands and coasts from drilling, and other big, bold actions to tackle it.

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) July 9, 2019

In addition to Warren, Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), and 19 members of the House co-sponsored the climate emergency declaration, according to Sanders’s office.

The resolution comes just hours after President Donald Trump delivered a speech touting his “environmental leadership,” which critics said was full of distortions and “outright lies.” The president did not once mention the climate crisis in his address.

Bill Snape, senior counsel at the Center for Biological Diversity, said in a statement Tuesday that, “With an unhinged climate denier in the White House, it’s on Congress to steer us away from climate suicide.”

“Mounting a World War II-style mobilization against the climate emergency will have lifesaving and economic benefits that far exceed its costs,” Snape said. “Responding to the climate crisis with any less urgency would spell disaster for current and future Americans, and for the planet.”

As of this writing, over 740 local governments and four nations have declared a climate emergency.

Mitch Jones, Climate and Energy Program director at Food & Water Watch, applauded Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and Blumenauer for leading the push for a climate emergency declaration and said it is “past time” for the government to treat the crisis with the urgency it deserves.

“We need bold, comprehensive legislation to move us off fossil fuels and onto a clean energy revolution,” Jones said. “This resolution lays out the scope of what we need to do. It’s time to act for the future of our planet.”