Chris Hedges's Blog, page 287

For American Jews, Trump Is Key Figure in Israeli Election

NEW YORK—Donald Trump isn’t on the ballot for Israel’s national election, yet he’s a dominant factor for many American Jews as they assess the high stakes of Tuesday’s balloting.

At its core, the election is a judgment on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has won the post four times but now faces corruption charges. In his battle for political survival, Netanyahu has aligned closely with Trump — a troubling tactic for the roughly 75% of American Jewish voters who lean Democratic.

“The world has come to understand that Netanyahu is essentially the political twin of Donald Trump,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the liberal pro-Israel group J Street. “Unlike his previous elections, there is a much deeper antagonism toward Netanyahu because of that close affiliation between him and Trump and the Republican Party.”

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Netanyahu featured Trump in a recent campaign video, while Trump has made a series of policy moves viewed as strengthening Netanyahu in the eyes of Israeli voters, including relocating the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and officially recognizing the Golan Heights as Israeli territory.

“It’s troubling,” said Halie Soifer, executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. “The U.S.-Israel relationship should not be about any two leaders or any two parties. The American Jewish community wants the relationship to remain on a bipartisan basis.”

Though it leans Democratic overall, the American Jewish community — numbering 5.5 million to 6 million — is not monolithic. Most older Jews remain supportive of Israel’s current Middle East policies, as does the roughly 10% of the Jewish population that is Orthodox. Jewish billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has been a staunch financial supporter of Trump and the GOP.

Divisions among U.S. Jews have been exacerbated by recent allegations of anti-Semitism directed at the Democrats’ two Muslim American congresswomen — Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Seizing on the controversy, Trump tweeted his support for a purported “Jexodus” movement that would encourage Jews to leave the Democratic Party.

“Republicans are waiting with open arms,” Trump tweeted on March 15.

Morton Klein, president of the conservative Zionist Organization of America, predicts such an exodus will take place because of the Democrats’ decision to avoid explicit condemnation of the congresswomen.

Ben-Ami scoffed at the notion, suggesting that Jexodus was a fantasy of pro-Trump operatives.

“I’ve yet to meet an actual Obama/Clinton voter who’s said publicly they’re switching to vote for Donald Trump,” he said. “This is not real. It’s completely made up.”

New York-based journalist Jane Eisner, former editor of The Forward, a Jewish newspaper, said many American Jews have “Netanyahu fatigue” — even some who supported him in past.

Among liberal Jews, Eisner said, there are strong worries that Netanyahu will push Israel’s government even further to the right if he wins, perhaps moving to annex some land in the occupied West Bank with confidence that the Trump administration will not object.

Morton Klein conceded that some Jews have grown weary of Netanyahu, but predicted he would prevail.

“People would be nervous if he’s not there,” Klein said.

Jack Rosen, president of the American Jewish Congress, said any surge in Netanyahu fatigue should not be interpreted as a weakening of American Jews’ support for Israeli.

“There is a sense of fatigue having one leader for 10 years,” Rosen said. “Just as we’ve had Clinton fatigue and Bush fatigue.”

Among liberal and centrist American Jews, dismay with Netanyahu extends beyond his alliance with Trump. Some say he’s been too harsh in his treatment of migrants, and they bemoan his backtracking on a promise to allow mixed-gender prayer at the Western Wall. Perhaps most disturbing has been Netanyahu’s alliance with an ultranationalist political party linked to a movement previously banned for anti-Arab racism and incitement.

That political alliance was assailed as “repugnant” by Eric Yoffie, a rabbi from Westfield, New Jersey, in a March 27 op-ed in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz. Yoffie also decried Netanyahu’s “excessive enthusiasm” for Trump.

“Cordial relations are essential,” wrote Yoffie, president emeritus of the Union for Reform Judaism. “But the sycophantic buddy movie that Bibi has produced with America’s unbalanced and unpredictable president is something else altogether … Bibi’s egregious and unnecessary embrace of everything Trump will cost Israel dearly.”

In Israel, a prevalent view, at least in pro-Netanyahu ranks, is that the prime minister’s friendship with Trump is paying unprecedented dividends. There is widespread sentiment that liberal American Jews, as a constituency, are dissipating due to intermarriage, and that the evangelical Christian community in the U.S. is a more dependable ally for Israel.

At last year’s ceremony in Jerusalem celebrating the relocation of the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv, evangelical Christian pastors allied with Trump delivered the opening and closing blessings.

Netanyahu’s main challenger in the election is Benny Gantz, a former military chief popular in Israel but with a relatively low profile in the United States. American Jews who dislike Netanyahu view Gantz as preferable, due in part to a less combative personality, but liberals note with frustration that the platform of Gantz’s Blue and White party makes no mention of Palestinian statehood, and says that Israel will maintain control of parts of the West Bank.

Emily Mayer of IfNotNow, a group of youthful American Jewish activists opposed to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians, is dismayed at how that issue has been marginalized in the Israeli election campaign.

“Regardless of the winner, the utter erasure of Palestinian humanity from this election cycle and the normalization of an undemocratic and immoral military occupation should alarm any Jew who cares about freedom and dignity of Israelis and Palestinians,” Mayer said in an email.

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Associated Press writer Josef Federman in Jerusalem contributed to this report.

Sanders’ ‘Berners’ Still Smoldering Over 2016

IOWA CITY, Iowa—It was hard to miss Cheri Pichone’s excitement about Bernie Sanders’ second presidential run. She showed up to a recent Iowa rally decked out in Sanders gear, complete with a figurine of the Vermont senator and progressive icon.

But underneath her exuberance, the 36-year-old was still mad about the last Democratic primary, when Sanders’ bid for the presidency fell short to Hillary Clinton.

“They cheated,” she said, directing much of her anger at the Democratic National Committee. The party establishment, she lamented, was “actively working against us.”

Pichone voted for Green Party candidate Jill Stein in 2016 and said she may vote for a third party again if Sanders doesn’t clinch the nomination.

She’s emblematic of a persistent group of Sanders supporters who won’t let go of the slights — real and perceived — from the last campaign. The frustration is notable now that Sanders is a 2020 front-runner, raking in $18.2 million in the first quarter, downplaying concerns about DNC bias and highlighting his success in bringing the party around on liberal policies it once resisted.

Some establishment-aligned Democrats worry the party could lose in 2020 if lingering concerns about the last primary aren’t put to bed.

“It has the potential to escalate, and it has the potential to help re-elect Donald Trump,” said Mo Elleithee, a former spokesman for Clinton and the DNC.

The acrimony stems from a fiercely fought campaign and a sense among Sanders loyalists that party leaders privately favored Clinton. DNC leaders at the time scheduled fewer debates than Republicans and sometimes slated them for nights with low television viewership. Often opaque delegate allocation rules also contributed to a belief among some Sanders supporters that the primary was essentially rigged.

According to data from the Pew Research Center, the tension took a toll. About 81% of people who consistently supported Sanders during the primary season and were confirmed to have voted in the general election said they ultimately voted for Clinton, while 11% said they supported Stein or Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson, and 3% supported Trump.

In a closely contested election, those moves away from Clinton may have factored into the results.

Since the election, party leaders have sought to smooth things over with Sanders and his supporters. DNC Chairman Tom Perez is planning a robust debate schedule. The rules governing superdelegates — party insiders who overwhelmingly backed Clinton — have changed.

Sanders has publicly expressed confidence in the process this time around, but in terms that suggest he won’t soon forget 2016.

“In 2016, I think I will not shock anybody to suggest that the DNC was not quite evenhanded,” he said during a CNN town hall in February. “I think we have come a long way since then, and I fully expect to be treated quite as well as anybody else.”

In an interview Friday, Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir echoed that optimism.

“If you’re talking to anyone at the Democratic National Committee who’s there now, I’m sure they will tell you that their relationship with the Bernie Sanders campaign is great and that we are operating in good faith and we are talking to each other on an almost daily basis,” he said. “Anyone suggesting that there’s any kind of friction there is living in the past. They are living with some grudges that they are holding onto from a bygone time.”

Still, the campaign has made some moves that raise questions about whether resentments from 2016 will linger. Briahna Joy Gray, formerly a liberal journalist who voted for Stein, is Sanders’ national press secretary. Nina Turner, who called the DNC “dictatorial and pompous” in 2017, is one of his national campaign chairs.

And some of Sanders’ most loyal supporters in the crucial early voting states say they’re not ready to fully move on.

Nicholas Shaw, a 39-year-old from Concord, New Hampshire, spent his recent birthday watching Sanders speak. Like Pichone, he said he wouldn’t support the Democratic nominee if it’s anyone other than Sanders.

“If they steal it from him again, I’ll go independent or something other than that,” he said. “The Democratic Party’s on their last edge of me if they kind of try to screw him again.”

Even in South Carolina, where Sanders lost momentum after a 47-point drubbing from Clinton, some supporters are still smarting over a process they believe was rigged.

“Lost might be a stretch,” said Tom Amon, of Summerville, when asked how he felt about Sanders’ ability to perform better in South Carolina than he did in the 2016 primary. “It was stolen from him.”

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Woodall reported from Manchester, New Hampshire, and Kinnard reported from North Charleston, South Carolina. Associated Press writer Juana Summers in Davenport, Iowa, contributed to this report.

Libya Crisis: Rival Forces Say They Control Tripoli Airport

BENGHAZI, Libya—Forces loyal to rival Libyan army commander Khalifa Hifter said Saturday they seized control of the main airport in Libya’s capital Tripoli, two days after Hifter ordered his forces to seize the seat of Libya’s U.N.-backed government.

Hifter’s media office said in a post online that they took full control of the Tripoli international airport and were working to secure the facility. They posted photos of troops apparently inside the airport, saying “we are standing at the heart of the Tripoli international airport.”

Hifter’s offensive on Tripoli could plunge the oil-rich country into another spasm of violence, possibly the worst since the 2011 civil war that toppled and later killed longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi. The country is governed by rival authorities: The internationally backed government in Tripoli and the government in the east, which Hifter is aligned with. Each are backed by an array of militias.

Fayez Sarraj, chairman of the Presidential Council of Libya, said his government had offered concessions to Hifter “to avoid bloodshed and to end divisions” and was surprised by Hifter’s order to take the capital.

“We were stabbed in the back,” he said Saturday in televised comments, adding that his forces would confront Hifter’s troops with “force and determination.”

The Tripoli airport has not been functional since fighting in 2014 destroyed much of the facility.

The media office said that troops also captured the area of Wadi el-Rabeia, south of Tripoli, amid clashed with militias loyal to Sarraj.

Ahmed al-Mesmari, spokesman for the self-styled Libyan National Army led by Hifter, said 14 troops were killed since Hifter declared the offensive. He said rival militias launched four airstrikes Saturday targeting Hifter’s position in the town of al-Aziziya. He said no causalities reported from the airstrikes.

Al-Mesmari said Hifter’s forces declared Tripoli a no-fly zone for warplanes.

Hifter, leader of the self-styled Libyan National Army, announced Thursday he was deploying his forces toward Tripoli, sparking fears that the tensions could be escalating out of control as militias from the western cities of Zawiya and Misarata said that they have mobilized to confront Hifter.

He also put at risk upcoming peace talks between Libyan rivals brokered by the United Nations aimed at drawing a roadmap for new elections.

The U.N. Security Council on Saturday called on Hifter forces to halt all military movements and urged all forces in Libya “to de-escalate and halt military activity.”

The U.N. envoy for Libya, Ghassan Salame, said the U.N. is determined to hold a national conference planned for later this month to set a time for possible elections.

Speaking at a news conference in Tripoli, he said he was striving to prevent the new crisis from getting out of control. “We have worked for one year for this national conference, we won’t give up this political work quickly,” he said.

Former South Carolina Sen. Ernest ‘Fritz’ Hollings Dies at 97

COLUMBIA, S.C.—Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings, the silver-haired Democrat who helped shepherd South Carolina through desegregation as governor and went on to serve six terms in the U.S. Senate, died early Saturday. He was 97.

Hollings, whose long and colorful political career included an unsuccessful bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, retired from the Senate in 2005, one of the last of the larger-than-life Democrats who once dominated politics in the South.

He had served 38 years and two months, making him the eighth longest-serving senator in U.S. history.

Nevertheless, Hollings remained the junior senator from South Carolina for most of his term. The senior senator was Strom Thurmond, first elected in 1954. He retired in January 2003 at age 100 as the longest-serving senator in history.

In his final Senate speech in 2004, Hollings lamented that lawmakers came to spend much of their time raising money for the next election, calling money “the main culprit, the cancer on the body politic.”

“We don’t have time for each other, we don’t have time for constituents except for the givers. … We’re in real, real trouble.”

Hollings was a sharp-tongued orator whose rhetorical flourishes in the deep accent of his home state enlivened many a Washington debate, but his influence in Washington never reached the levels he hoped.

He sometimes blamed that failure on his background, rising to power as he did in the South in the 1950s as the region bubbled with anger over segregation.

However, South Carolina largely avoided the racial violence that afflicted some other Deep South states during the turbulent 1960s.

Hollings campaigned against desegregation when running for governor in 1958. He built a national reputation as a moderate when, in his farewell address as governor, he pleaded with the legislature to peacefully accept integration of public schools and the admission of the first black student to Clemson University.

“This General Assembly must make clear South Carolina’s choice, a government of laws rather than a government of men,” he told lawmakers. Shortly afterward, Clemson was peacefully integrated.

In his 2008 autobiography, “Making Government Work,” Hollings wrote that in the 1950s “no issue dominated South Carolina more than race” and that he worked for a balanced approach.

“I was ‘Mister-In-Between. The governor had to appear to be in charge; yet the realities were not on his side,” he wrote. “I returned to my basic precept … the safety of the people is the supreme law. I was determined to keep the peace and avoid bloodshed.”

In the Senate, Hollings gained a reputation as a skilled insider with keen intellectual powers. He chaired the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee and held seats on the Appropriations and Budget committees.

But his sharp tongue and sharper wit sometimes got him in trouble. He once called Sen. Howard Metzenbaum, D-Ohio, the “senator from the B’nai B’rith” and in 1983 referred to the presidential campaign supporters of former Sen. Alan Cranston, D-California, as “wetbacks.”

Hollings began his quest for the presidency in April 1983 but dropped out the following March after dismal showings in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Early in his Senate career, he built a record as a hawk and lobbied hard for military dollars for South Carolina, one of the poorest states in the union.

Hollings originally supported American involvement in Vietnam, but his views changed over the years as it became clear there would be no American victory.

Hollings, who made three trips to the war zone, said he learned a lesson there.

“It’s a mistake to try to build and destroy a nation at the same time,” he wrote in his autobiography, warning that America is now “repeating the same wrongheaded strategy in Iraq.”

Despite his changed views, Hollings remained a strong supporter of national defense which he saw as the main business of government.

In 1969 he drew national attention when he exposed hunger in his own state by touring several cities, helping lay the groundwork for the Women, Infants and Children, or WIC, feeding program.

A year later, his views drew wider currency with the publication of his first book “The Case Against Hunger.”

In 1982, Hollings proposed an across-the-board federal spending freeze to cut the deficit, a proposal that was a cornerstone of his failed presidential bid.

He helped create the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and write the National Coastal Zone Management Act. Hollings also attached his name to the Gramm-Rudman bill aimed at balancing the federal budget.

Hollings angered many of his constituents in 1991 when he opposed the congressional resolution authorizing President George Bush to use force against Iraq.

In his later years, port security was one of his main concerns.

As he prepared to leave office, he told The Associated Press: “People ask you your legacy or your most embarrassing moment. I never, ever lived that way. … I’m not trying to get remembered.”

He kept busy after the Senate helping the Medical University of South Carolina raise money for the cancer center which bears his name and lecturing at the new Charleston School of Law.

Hollings’ one political defeat came in 1962 when he lost in a primary to Sen. Olin Johnston. After Johnston died, Hollings won a special election in 1966 and went to the Senate at age 44, winning the first of his six full terms two years later.

Ernest Frederick Hollings was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on Jan. 1, 1922. His father was a paper products dealer but the family business went broke during the Depression.

Hollings graduated from The Citadel, the state’s military college in Charleston, in 1942. He immediately entered the Army and was decorated for his service during World War II. Back home, he earned a law degree from the University of South Carolina in 1947.

The next year, he was elected to the state House at age 26. He was elected lieutenant governor six years later and governor in 1958 at age 36.

As governor, he actively lured business, helped balance the budget for the first time since Reconstruction and improved public education.

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Former Associated Press Writer Bruce Smith contributed to this story.

The Madness Driving Climate Catastrophe

“Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption”

A book by Simon Pirani

The Great Acceleration: This is the designation given to the last 70 years during which industrial countries and a handful of newly rich developing countries extracted and consumed fossil fuels at a reckless rate. While accurate, the metaphor might suggest progress rather than the ominous atmospheric, terrestrial and oceanic climate trends ensuing.

The 20 hottest years on record have occurred since 1995, almost in tandem with the impotent U.N. climate negotiations begun in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and followed by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009, Paris in 2015 and Poland in 2018. Yet, even with near global consensus on the necessity of reducing climate-warming emissions radically by 2030 and (nonbinding) national pledges to do so, carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions rose by 2.7 percent in 2018. Moreover, some analysts predict they will rise higherin 2019 due to increasing deforestation, especially in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have risen unremittingly to levels not prevailing since hundreds of thousands (and possibly more than 6 million) years ago.

Historian and energy researcher Simon Pirani likens this collective failure to act on climate change to the “collective madness” of World War I, in which old world imperial loyalties set loose the juggernaut of a mindless, pointless bloodbath of Europe’s boys and young men, ending only from morbid exhaustion on all sides. In “Burning Up: A Global History of Fossil Fuel Consumption,” Pirani sets out to plumb the political, social and economic causes of the “madness that is producing global warming.” His is a critically needed departure from much climate crisis writing (and activism) that focuses solely on technology, individual consumption and population growth as drivers of climate change.

“Burning Up” takes a structural and a muscular evidence-based tack; in doing so, it shows us the dominant axis of evil driving climate change. For example, though individuals are consumers of fossil fuel for electricity, heat, air conditioning, goods and services, the author contends, “they do so in the context of social and economic systems over which they may have little control.”

Corporate wealth-seeking and corporate power over the political elite drive the economy and determine the modes of technology, production and consumption—namely fossil fuels—for electricity, heating, cooling and commercial products (cement, steel, plastics); and as fuel for transportation and road building, construction and military.

The same corporate power grifters promote mass consumption through marketing, with hidden persuaders, and encode fossil fuel dependence through promoting car-oriented development globally.

Although a handful of large rich countries and some wealthier developing nations are included in this book, the United States is the central actor and agent for more reasons than its historical megaconsumption of fossil fuels. The U.S. has functioned as the stimulant and model for social, economic and political systems driving GDP growth in other rich and newly rich countries, resulting in fossil fuel use spiraling “out of control since the mid 20th century.” Not only that, but the U.S. mode of consumption is continually being reproduced across the world.

Pirani’s temporal focus is the 1950s to the present, coinciding with the postwar “great acceleration,” in which the impact of technology and economies on nature has been swift and drastic. Among his most cogent examples of political and economic elite driving climate change is the calculated design of cities for the car, now replicated throughout the world.

Car-centered transport in the United States between WWI and WWII “became a template for the world and shaped fossil fuel consumption patterns internationally.” Industry consolidated from 88 carmakers in 1921 to 10 in 1935, with the big three Ford, GM and Chrysler, encompassing 90 percent of the market and ranking among the most powerful corporate lobbies in the world. In the U.S., they bought up and shut down trolley systems, and helped displace railways with road transport for buses, trucks and cars. This stimulated car-centered urban design and urban renewal (in the case of older cities), and was embedded in the post-50s mushrooming of car-oriented suburbs. Government invested in building fossil fuel-intensive roads and highways through cities; manufacturers designed cars for obsolescence; and industry pioneered the annual style change in cars. All were the result of “corporate strategies to stimulate consumer demand,” even during the Depression.

As for the future, 55 percent of the world’s people now inhabit cities, with a projected increase to 68 percent by 2050. Car-based urbanization drives consumption of fossil fuels, especially because cities are not designed centrally for public transportation. And, as Pirani underscores, governments, developers, and corporate interests, not the individuals who live in them, shape the design of cities and constrain individual choice.

U.S. tax policy and subsidies enabled all early fossil fuel and nuclear energy transitions, whereas government support for emerging renewables pales in comparison. This is, as Pirani’s comparative data substantiates, a global phenomenon. In the United States,opponents of renewable technologies, promoters of fossil fuels and nuclear power, and diehard critics of government subsidies to renewable technologies have branded federal energy subsidies as an unfair handout to the solar and wind sector. In their view, these subsidies are a welfare program, giving an advantage to the renewables industry that would collapse if it had to compete with coal, oil, gas and nuclear.

However, a historical study of government subsidies to all energy technologies, not included in “Burning Up,” easily trounces this myth. Federal incentives for the first 15 years of subsidy life were five times greater for oil and gas and 10 times greater for nuclear power than for emerging renewable technologies. Indirect government support for fossil fuels and nuclear includes land grants for early timber and railroads for coal and other fuels. Early government-supported research and development for these energy industries was significantly greater than for renewables and efficiency. Moreover, there is no counterpart in renewable energy subsidies to the $7.3 trillion spent by the U.S. Department of Defense from 1976 through 2007 patrolling the Persian Gulf to protect U.S. oil shipments.

Finally, as many researchers predating Pirani have attested, the fossil fuel and nuclear power industries are not held financially liable for premature deaths and morbidity from air pollution from fossil fuel combustion, or for the costs of ultimate disposal of nuclear waste. Nor do the fossil fuel industries pay their fair share for their role in the record loss of species and coral reefs, the fivefold increase in natural disasters since 1970, and property damage due to global warming emissions.

Pirani’s closing chapters reinforce his opening message. Corporate capitalism and political elites have led us, by their dominant choice of fossil fuel-based energy and technology, to the point of “burning up.” Given they are leading the human race (and many other species) to extinction, he urges us to take the road less traveled: “… [T]he decisive actor [must be] society—all of it collectively—rather than political elites.”

I am reminded here of the precocious Greta Thunberg, the 15-year-old Swedish climate activist speaking at the U.N. climate conference in 2018 on behalf of the global youth climate movement. Every day the world uses some 100 million barrels of oil, yet “there are no politics to change that, no politics to keep the oil in the ground,” she said. “Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago. There is no time to continue down this road of madness. We have come to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not. The people will rise to the challenge.” Since her speech tens of thousands of young students across the world are following her example, strikingfrom school one day a week to pressure their governments to abide by their commitments to reduce climate change emissions.

Pirani concludes with steps to “breaking the resistance of incumbent interests” that are disappointingly general and, thus, not quickly actionable. In the spirit of his conclusion, I would point to a few recent standouts of taking action and taking back our future: the pragmatic and progressive Green New Deal; the meteoric rise of young political action groups like the Sunrise Movement in the U.S.; and the infectious youth climate action lawsuit Juliana v. U.S., filed by children and young adults against the U.S. government for failing to limit the effects of climate change on human health. May we be spared the time needed—given the rapidity of climate breakdown—to disrupt the hold of corporate wealth and power.

Job Gain Points to a U.S. Economy Slowing but Hardly Stalling

WASHINGTON — A month ago, many economists fretted that the 10-year U.S. expansion looked wobbly. But after the government reported Friday that hiring rebounded in March, the economy suddenly looks sturdy again.

Growth has weakened since last year to something closer to the modest pace that has prevailed for most of the nearly decade-long expansion. The jolt from the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cuts and greater government spending last year has faded. And the global economy has swiveled from a driver of the U.S. economy to a headwind.

Yet last month’s solid job gain of 196,000 may also help undercut any lingering fears that a recession might arrive over the next year or so. The economy’s slow but steady pace of growth is likely to keep inflation low and perhaps sustain the expansion, which is set to become the longest on record in July.

By historical measures, the expansion has fallen short of the sometimes-explosive growth that businesses and workers enjoyed in the past but that often led to financial bubbles or economic excesses — and eventually a recession.

“Lackluster means that you’re not overheating,” Josh Wright, chief economist at recruiting software maker iCIMS, said of the current expansion. “It’s more stable, and we’ll have fewer imbalances. It looks like we’ll be able to prolong this recovery even further.”

In its monthly jobs report Friday, the government also said the unemployment rate remained near a five-decade low of 3.8% in March.

So far this year, job growth has averaged a decent 180,000 a month. That is down, though, from last year’s 223,000 monthly average. And it marks the lowest three-month average gain since November 2017, before the tax cuts took effect.

Wage growth also slipped a bit in March, with average hourly pay increasing 3.2% from a year earlier. That is down from February’s year-over-year gain of 3.4%, the best in a decade.

“Today’s data paint a picture of resilient U.S. demand that has stepped down to a more moderate pace of growth following last year’s robust gains,” said Jonathan Millar, senior economist at Barclays.

Investors took Friday’s jobs data in stride. The stock market was up slightly in afternoon trading, extending a rally that has lifted the financial markets this year.

Given that that hiring and wage growth aren’t growing so fast as to threaten high inflation, the Federal Reserve is likely to stay on the sidelines indefinitely, forgoing interest rate hikes, economists said.

As recently as December, Fed officials had forecast that they would raise rates twice this year. But in March, after financial markets turned volatile, inflation showed signs of slipping, and concerns grew about the global economy, the Fed said it would likely keep rates unchanged in 2019.

Yet the jobs data also provides little reason for the Fed to cut rates, analysts said, despite President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for the Fed to do just that. On Friday, Trump went further, urging the Fed to renew the bond-buying program it had used to lower longer-term borrowing rates earlier this decade after the Great Recession. The program was known as “quantitative easing.”

“Our country’s doing unbelievably well economically,” Trump said. But Fed policymakers “really slowed us down,” and if they dropped rates and resumed buying bonds, “you would see a rocket ship.”

Quantitative easing was an emergency tool that the Fed, under Chairman Ben Bernanke, used to buy trillions in government bonds and other securities. The third and last round was launched in 2012 when the unemployment rate was still 8%.

The Fed’s policies probably contributed to another shortcoming of the current expansion: It has benefited wealthier Americans more than others. That’s because the Fed’s QE program, by holding down rates on Treasury securities, led many investors to put more money into stocks, raising their values.

The stock market has tripled since bottoming a decade ago, benefiting the richest one-tenth of Americans, who own about 80% of the value of U.S. shares. Home equity, a much more vital source of wealth for the middle-class, has recovered much less.

And many households remain gripped by financial insecurity despite the steady pace of hiring. Forty percent of workers earn less than $16 an hour, according to government data analyzed by the Economic Policy institute. In March, hiring did pick up in higher-paying sectors, such as professional and business services, which added 37,000 jobs in engineering, IT services, accounting and other fields.

Manufacturers did not fare as well, cutting 6,000 jobs, the sector’s first decline in a year and a half, mostly because of layoffs by General Motors. Construction firms added 16,000 jobs.

One factor that may weigh on hiring in the coming months is a dwindling supply of workers in the healthiest job markets. Charles Dunlap, who owns an accounting firm in Houston with a partner, has found it much harder to find a new bookkeeper than he did the last time he filled the position, in late 2016.

Back then, advertising mostly by word of mouth turned up unsolicited requests for interviews and candidates with advanced degrees. Now, Dunlap has interviewed only three potential hires this year, despite raising the job’s starting pay about $2 an hour to roughly $15.

“That’s the big challenge these days, just finding staff,” Dunlap said.

Like hiring, growth is also expected to decelerate this year, to about a 2.25% pace, down from 2.9% in 2018, the fastest expansion in three years. In the much more rapid expansion in the 1990s, growth topped 4% for four years.

Consumers have helped drag down growth, with retail sales falling in February and a broader measure of consumer spending slipped in January. Businesses have also reined in their spending on industrial machinery and other equipment and on factories and other buildings.

And in Europe and Asia, weaker economies have reduced demand for U.S. exports. Europe is on the brink of recession, with its factories shrinking in March at the fastest pace in six years, according to a private survey.

Still, most analysts expect the U.S. economy to survive weakness overseas.

“The U.S. is much more isolated from those factors than other countries,” Millar said. “We have a relatively closed economy.”

Corporate profits also appear to be rebounding after stalling out in the first three months of this year.

Analysts expect S&P 500 companies to report a drop of nearly 4 percent in their first-quarter earnings per share from a year earlier, according to FactSet. It would be the first decline in nearly three years.

But Steve Chiavarone, an equity strategist at Federated Investors, pointed to encouraging reports recently on China’s economy and U.S. manufacturing, along with central banks around the world easing up on interest rates.

“Over the last few days, you’ve seen 2019 and 2020 earnings estimates rise for the first time since September,” Chiavarone said.

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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed to this report from New York.

Democrats File Suit Against Border Wall Spending

WASHINGTON — The Latest on President Donald Trump and the border (all times local):

5:30 p.m.

House Democrats have filed a lawsuit aimed at preventing President Donald Trump from spending more money than Congress has approved to erect barriers along the southwestern border.

Democrats say Trump’s attempt to transfer billions of dollars from several programs to wall construction violates the Constitution, which gives Congress control over spending. The 45-page complaint was filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls Trump’s act a “brazen assault” on the Constitution.

Congress approved just under $1.4 billion for work on border barricades. Trump has asserted he can use his powers as chief executive to transfer another $6.7 billion to wall construction.

Attorneys general from 20 states, plus environmental and progressive groups, have filed other lawsuits aimed at blocking the transfers.

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5 p.m.

President Donald Trump is showcasing a section of border wall that separates the United States and Mexico.

Trump visited the section of fencing in Calexico, California, on Friday and declared that “it looks great” and was “better, faster, less expensive” than other barrier options.

The fence Trump is touring is a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) section that was a long-planned replacement for an older barrier, rather than new wall.

The White House says the barrier is marked with a plaque bearing Trump’s name and those of top homeland security officials.

The new 30-foot-tall, 2.25-mile-long barrier replaced fencing that was made of hrlicopter landing mats from the Vietnam War.

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4:15 p.m.

President Donald Trump is downplaying the claims of people seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump says: “I look at some of these asylum people. They’re gang members. They’re not afraid of anything.”

Trump is also comparing some efforts to seek asylum to special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 elections.

Trump says: “It’s a scam, it’s a hoax. I know about hoaxes. I just went through a hoax.”

Trump traveled Friday to Southern California to meet with local law enforcement officials and to tour a section of recently rebuilt fencing along the border with Mexico.

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3:50 p.m.

President Donald Trump says his administration is ensuring the country knows “this is an actual emergency” at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Trump traveled Friday to Southern California to meet with local law enforcement officials and tour a section of recently rebuilt fencing he cites as the answer to a surge of migrant families coming to the U.S. in recent months.

Trump says the administration is making progress in building a border wall and says he expects “close to 400 miles” to be completed within the next two years.

The fence that Trump is touring in Calexico is a two-mile section that was a long-planned replacement for an older barrier, rather than new wall.

Trump says of the border wall, “We’ve done a lot, we’ve renovated a lot.”

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3:20 p.m.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom has denounced President Donald Trump’s comments about getting rid of the asylum system. The governor issued the strong criticism in a statement Friday as the president arrived in California to visit the U.S.-Mexico border.

Newsom says that since its founding, the United States has been a refuge and safe haven for people fleeing tyranny, oppression and violence.

The governor says the president’s rhetoric disregards the Constitution, the justice system “and what it means to be an American.”

In comments at the White House as he left for California, Trump urged Congress “to get rid of the whole asylum system because it doesn’t work.” Trump’s administration has been pushing Congress to pass legislation that would tighten asylum rules.

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2:46 p.m.

President Donald Trump is in California to meet with local law enforcement officials at a border patrol station and to tour a section of recently rebuilt fencing he cites as the answer to stop migrant families coming to the U.S.

The fence that Trump is touring in Calexico is a two-mile section that was a long-planned replacement for an older barrier, rather than new wall.

The White House says the barrier is marked with a plaque bearing Trump’s name and those of top homeland security officials.

The visit comes after Trump sparked confusion with a threat to seal the southern border.

Trump said Thursday he wouldn’t act for a year, and issued a fresh threat to place tariffs on autos manufactured in Mexico.

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8:52 a.m.

President Donald Trump is ramping up his attacks on Democrats as he looks to make border security an issue for the 2020 re-election campaign.

Trump’s campaign released a new video attacking 2020 Democrats for dismissing what Trump calls a “crisis” at the border.

Trump travels Friday to Southern California to meet with local law enforcement officials and to tour a section of recently rebuilt fencing he cites as the answer to stop a surge of migrant families coming to the U.S. in recent months.

The fence that Trump is touring is a two-mile section that was a long-planned replacement for an older barrier, rather than new wall. The White House says the barrier is marked with a plaque bearing Trump’s name and those of top homeland security officials.

Trump Sidelines Immigration Nominee for ‘Tougher Direction’

WASHINGTON — The notice to Congress from the White House was met with confusion: Why would President Donald Trump withdraw his nominee to lead U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement?

Longtime border official Ron Vitiello appeared to be cruising toward confirmation. One Senate committee had endorsed his nomination and a second was likely to follow suit despite opposition from some Democrats and a union representing some agency officers.

No one in the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the immigration agency, had been notified about the intention to remove Vitiello from consideration, according to people familiar with the decision. Officials at Homeland Security and congressional aides thought it must have been a paperwork error made by the White House personnel office that would be resolved quickly.

Turns out, it wasn’t a mistake. It was just another day in the Trump administration.

The president on Friday confirmed he had pulled the nomination, even as he called Vitiello a “good man.”

“But we’re going in a tougher direction. We want to go in a tougher direction,” he said.

Trump did not explain what that meant and did not say whom he had in mind as a replacement. But the decision, first reported by The Associated Press, comes as his administration is struggling to deal with an influx of Central American migrants, which has led to a 12-year high in U.S.-Mexico border crossings, straining the U.S. immigration system.

Trump had threatened to close the border entirely to cope with the flow, before backing off this week.

Six government and congressional officials involved in immigration issues suggested the decision to drop Vitiello could be an impulsive staff shake-up driven by the fact that White House policies intended to stop migrants have not succeeded. Many blamed Stephen Miller, the influential West Wing aide, and saw it as part of a plan to replace longtime immigration officials with hard-liners who appealed more to allies of Trump and Miller. The officials were not authorized to discuss internal deliberations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Vitiello had been scheduled to travel with Trump to the border Friday but was told late Thursday he wasn’t going, one of the people said.

He has been acting head since June of the agency that enforces U.S. immigration law in the interior of the United States. He has more than 30 years of law enforcement experience, starting in 1985 with the U.S. Border Patrol. He was previously Border Patrol chief and deputy commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, which oversees the patrol.

Vitiello took over during a time of heightened scrutiny of the agency. Part of its mission is to arrest immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally, and that has made the agency a symbol of Trump’s policies and a target for Democrats.

Trump has been railing against increasing border crossings, as well as the release of thousands of migrants into the U.S. because of a lack of space to hold them, a move he derides as “catch and release.”

It’s a battle cry on a signature issue for the president, who wants to restrict immigration but whose policies have largely failed to do so.

For many years, families arriving at the border were typically released from U.S. custody immediately and allowed to settle with family or friends in the U.S. while their immigration cases wound their way through the courts, a process that often takes years.

But in recent months, the number of families crossing into the U.S. has climbed to record highs, pushing the system to the breaking point. As a result, ICE was releasing families faster, in greater numbers and farther from the border. Since Dec. 21, the agency set free more than 125,000 people who came into the U.S. as families.

Trump on Friday was touring a recently built portion of replacement fencing that he is holding up as the answer to stop the recent surge of migrant families coming to the U.S.

Though the 2-mile section is only a long-planned replacement for an older barrier, the White House describes it as the first section of his proposed border wall. It’s commemorated with a plaque bearing Trump’s name and those of top immigration and homeland security officials — but not Vitiello’s.

Netanyahu Plays ‘Trump Card’ as Israeli Elections Near

JERUSALEM — In a tight race for re-election, Israel’s prime minister has gotten a welcome lift from his friend in the White House.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s campaign speeches, billboards and social media videos have all heavily featured President Donald Trump’s image, statements and pro-Israel actions as endorsements of the long-seated prime minister.

Drawing inspiration from Trump, Netanyahu has dismissed a corruption case against him as a “witch hunt” and his Likud party has launched a weekly webcast to counter what it claims is “fake news” broadcast by mainstream media.

For Netanyahu, the close ties with Trump are a welcome change after eight frosty years with the Obama administration, which repeatedly clashed with the prime minister over his policies toward the Palestinians and his opposition to the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Upon taking office two years ago, Trump quickly reversed course and established a tight relationship with Netanyahu. This has yielded benefits for Netanyahu on the campaign trail.

In the run-up to Tuesday’s vote, Netanyahu has hosted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, visited Trump in the White House and received American recognition of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, which Israel seized from Syria during the 1967 Mideast war.

Those moves are seen as an unspoken U.S. endorsement of Netanyahu, and in Israel, having close ties with whoever occupies the White House is seen as a major asset.

Trump enjoys strong support among Israelis, 69% of whom expressed confidence in the president’s ability “to do the right thing regarding world affairs,” according to a Pew Research Center poll published in October.

That support largely springs from Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the opening of the U.S. Embassy there. Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his decision to slash U.S. aid to the Palestinians are also popular among Israelis.

A YouTube ad published April 1 strings together Trump statements from recent years extolling Netanyahu’s leadership as a “great prime minister.”

“Benjamin Netanyahu, there’s nobody like him,” Trump says in a clip taken from a 2013 video. Building-sized billboards in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv show the two leaders shaking hands.

A poll conducted by the Israel Democracy Institute found that 63% of Israelis “believe that Netanyahu’s standing in the current election campaign will be strengthened by the U.S. recognition” of the annexation of the Golan Heights. The survey interviewed 603 people and had a margin of error of 4.1 percentage points.

While the gambit has played well domestically, Netanyahu’s close ties with Trump risk undermining bipartisan support for Israel among Americans, and Israel’s relationship with traditionally liberal American Jews.

More than 70 percent of American Jews voted against Trump, and many express unease about U.S.-Israel relations becoming too closely associated with the friendship between two polarizing leaders.

The April 9 election is widely seen as a referendum on Netanyahu’s decade-long rule, and his campaign is using the relationship with Trump to portray him as a respected statesman with personal ties to world leaders.

In an Instagram video posted Wednesday, Netanyahu touts his administration’s “unprecedented diplomatic advancements,” foremost among them “strengthening relations with the United States,” but also closer ties with Russia, China, India, Japan and Brazil.

On Thursday, Netanyahu paid a surprise visit to Russia, where President Vladimir Putin announced his country’s instrumental role in recovering the remains of an Israeli soldier who went missing in action in Lebanon in 1982.

The return of the soldier’s remains, along with a visit this week by Brazil’s president, Jair Bolsonaro, has given Netanyahu another diplomatic victory late in the campaign.

Netanyahu seeks a fourth consecutive term in office as Israel’s leader. If re-elected, he will become the country’s longest serving prime minister, outstripping its founding father, David Ben Gurion. The prime minister’s campaign has steamed ahead despite Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s recommendation last month that Netanyahu be indicted for a series of corruption charges.

With less than a week to go, opinion polls give Netanyahu a slight edge in the race. But he faces major opposition from his former army chief of staff, Benny Gantz.

Sounding much like Trump, Netanyahu has attacked the press, branded Gantz and other opponents as “leftists” and questioned Gantz’s mental health .

A video released by Netanyahu in late March said members of Gantz’s party signed a petition to boycott a 2015 meeting with Trump, “the president who moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the Golan Heights as Israeli territory, and left the nuclear agreement with Iran. Shame!”

Gantz is running along with two other former army chiefs of staff, which gives their Blue and White party security chops to rival those of Netanyahu.

Reuven Hazan, a political scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said the Blue and White party’s unassailable military credentials have forced Netanyahu to stump on his foreign policy accomplishments rather than in his traditional role as “Mr. Security.”

“We are a tiny, tiny country but our leader is on very good terms with the president of the United States, the president of Russia, and the president of Brazil,” Hazan said. “In other words, he’s using his relative advantage to say ‘if you don’t elect me, whoever replaces me will not be able to play in the international league that I have raised Israel to and we will drop significantly,’” Hazan said.

The New York Times Can’t Hide Its Pro-Israel Bias

When the New York Times (3/26/19) reported on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s fait accompli pronouncement that nation-states can now seize territories acquired in defensive wars—after President Donald Trump announced via tweet that the United States asserts Israeli sovereignty over the Syrian Golan Heights—it seriously misled readers on the status of Israel’s illegal settlements on the occupied territories of the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

While the Washington Post’s report (3/26/19) on Netanyahu’s pronouncement made it clear that UN Security Council Resolution 497 in 1981 condemned Israel’s formal takeover of the Golan Heights as “null and void and without international legal effect,” the Times report, by David Halbfinger and Isabel Kershner, obscures the illegality of Israeli settlements by attempting to make “practical and legal distinctions” between the settlements in the West Bank and the Golan Heights.

This is not novel behavior. FAIR (6/26/02) has noted before that despite the lack of direct government interference, as is the case with Israeli media (Jerusalem Post, 7/12/18), the mass media in the United States often offer euphemistic descriptions of Israel’s settlements, pretending that they’re less of a blatant violation of international law than they really are.

The Times report repeats unchallenged assertions contrasting the Golan Heights with the West Bank made by American and Israeli officials (one of them actually living in a West Bank settlement), claiming that while the Golan Heights is occupied territory, the West Bank is only “disputed” territory, because it wasn’t “legally part of any sovereign nation” before it was captured by Israel, along with the Golan Heights, during the 1967 Six-Day War.

It also doesn’t challenge Israel’s practice of bargaining with territories it has no legal claim to in exchange for peace agreements, or explain why Trump and Netanyahu’s fiats cannot serve as a legal precedent for other land disputes, instead choosing to repeat official claims that the Golan proclamation is “an incredible, unique situation.”

Although UN Security Council Resolution 242 is criticized because it doesn’t mention Palestinian rights, its unanimous adoption leaves no room for “dispute” in terms of international law: Israeli settlements on the West Bank, and elsewhere on occupied territory, are in violation of international law, because Resolution 242 explicitly forbids the acquisition of territory by war, in addition to requiring Israel’s withdrawal from all the territories occupied in the 1967 war. Resolution 242 has repeatedly been reaffirmed and added onto, as recently as 2017’s Resolution 2334, which calls for an end to Israeli settlements in Palestinian territories, despite Israel’s quibbling over a missing “the” in Resolution 242 (Al-Jazeera, 11/21/17).

Most notably, neither the Post’s nor the Times’ report question the credibility of the US and Israeli officials used as sources. Political scientist Michael Parenti has pointed out (in Inventing Reality) that one way to spread disinformation and lies is through “face-value transmission,” when reporters convey information known to be false without adequate confirmation or pushback, which FAIR (11/11/15) has already documented concerning the Times’ practice of uncritically spreading deceptive statements made by Netanyahu.

Setting aside the implausibility of Israel’s characterization of the Six-Day War as “defensive” when it began as its own surprise invasion (Real News, 6/4/17), neither paper can square official claims with other official admissions that the 1967 invasion was predicated on lies (Intercept, 6/5/17). Nor do they refer to candid reports in other places (e.g., Wall Street Journal, 2/5/17) admitting that mainstream Israeli political discourse assumes the legitimacy of Israel’s claims to the West Bank, in spite of overwhelming international opposition, and that settlements there are built for the purpose of annexation, in hopes of thwarting the creation of a Palestinian state, instead of for defensive purposes. No questions are raised about the validity of the narrative in which Israel is driven by concerns about security—as opposed to expansion—when Israel in the Syrian Civil War is known to be providing medical treatment to Al Qaeda fighters hostile to Israel’s existence, in an effort to deny a foothold for Hezbollah in the Golan Heights (Jerusalem Post, 3/13/15).

However, the Times failed to report that even if one believes that Israel seized the occupied territories out of self-defense, that still wouldn’t change the illegality of the settlements. Articles 2(4) and 39 of the UN Charter outline the proper procedure for determining and acting on security threats, and they forbid any threat or use of force outside the deliberations and recommendations of the UN Security Council, which were designed to prevent countries from unilaterally deciding to use force (Common Dreams, 6/6/16). Article 51 stipulates that the right to individual and collective self-defense arises when an “armed attack occurs” against a member of the UN, which would make the 1967 war launched by Israel illegal.

To be sure, after the headline (a crucial part of the message of every story) and the first five paragraphs laid out Netanyahu’s claims, the Times article did recognize that “legal experts and leaders of many foreign countries” hold that the prime minister’s assertion of a right to territorial conquest “did not comport with international law.” But the report’s failure to critically examine the conventional media narrative around Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbors, and its face-value transmission of false and irrelevant information given by US and Israeli officials, serve more to downplay the illegality of Israeli settlements under international law than to clarify their legal standing.

Despite what the New York Times would have us believe, there are no relevant “practical and legal distinctions” between Israel’s settlements on the West Bank and the Golan Heights; they are all illegal. Trump and Netanyahu’s argument that occupying territory is justifiable in a “defensive” war is correctly dismissed as absurd by legal experts and the international community.