Chris Hedges's Blog, page 392

The IRS Has Been Weaponized Against the Working Poor

When Natassia Smick, 28, filed her family’s taxes in January, she already had plans for the refund she and her husband expected to receive. Mainly, she wanted to catch up on her credit card debt. And she was pregnant with their second child, so there were plenty of extra expenses ahead.

Since Smick, who is taking classes toward a bachelor’s degree, and her husband, a chef, together earned around $33,000 in 2017, about $2,000 of that refund would come from the earned income tax credit. It’s among the government’s largest anti-poverty programs, sending more than $60 billion every year to families like Smick’s: people who have jobs but are struggling to get by. Last year, 28 million households claimed the EITC.

Smick, who lives outside Los Angeles, thought she’d get her refund in a month or so, as she had the year before. But no refund came. Instead, she got a letter from the IRS saying it was “conducting a thorough review” of her return. She didn’t need to do anything, it said. Smick waited as patiently as she could. She called the IRS and was told to wait some more.

It wasn’t until four months later, in July, that she got her next letter. The IRS informed her that she was being audited. She had 30 days to provide “supporting documentation” for basically everything. As she understood it, she needed to prove that she and her husband had earned what they’d earned and that her child was her child.

By this point, Smick was home with her baby. She set about rounding up W-2s, paycheck stubs, bank statements and birth certificates. Proving that her 4-year-old had lived at the family’s address for most of the year, as the EITC requires, was the hardest thing, but she did her best with medical records, some papers from his day care, and whatever else she could think of.

She sent it all off and hoped for a quick resolution, but the next IRS letter quashed that hope. The IRS said it would review her response by Feb. 16, 2019 — six months away. Collectors were calling about the credit card bills. She didn’t know how she’d make it that long.

Smick couldn’t understand why this was happening. All she had done was answer the questions on TurboTax. Isn’t it rich people who get audited? “We have nothing,” she said, “and it’s just frustrating knowing that we have nothing.”

It seemed there was nothing she could do. And when she called the IRS to ask how it could possibly take so long to review her documents, she remembers being told that there was nothing they could do, either: The IRS was “extremely short staffed,” the person said.

Budget cuts have crippled the IRS over the past eight years. Enforcement staff has dropped by a third. But while the number of audits has fallen across the board, the impact has been different for the rich and poor. For wealthy taxpayers, the story has been rosy: Not only has the audit rate been cut in half, but audits now tend to be less thorough.

It’s a different story for people who receive the EITC: The audit rate has fallen less steeply and the experience of being audited has become more punishing. Because of a 2015 law, EITC recipients are now more likely to have their refund held, something that can be calamitous for someone living month-to-month.

IRS computers choose people to audit, but if those taxpayers respond, a person must review the documents. With fewer employees to do that, delays have mounted in a process that was already arduous, according to several attorneys who represent taxpayers through the Low Income Taxpayer Clinic program. It regularly takes more than a year to get a taxpayer’s refund released, they said, even for those who are represented.

“If the service doesn’t have the personnel to evaluate evidence submitted in a timely manner, then they should not be initiating the exams in the first place,” said Mandi Matlock, an attorney with Texas RioGrande Legal Aid.

Generally, the more money you make, the more likely you are to be audited. EITC recipients, whose typical annual income is under $20,000, have long been the major exception. That’s because many people claim the credit in error, and, under consistent pressure from Republicans in Congress to curtail those overpayments, the IRS has kept the audit rate higher. Meanwhile, there hasn’t been similar pressure to address more costly problem areas, like tax evasion by business owners.

The budget cuts and staff losses have made this distortion starker. The richest taxpayers are still audited at higher rates than the poorest, but the gap is closing.

“What happens is you have people at the very top being prioritized and people at the very bottom being prioritized, and everyone else is sort of squeezed out,” said John Dalrymple, who retired last year as deputy commissioner of the IRS. In 2017, EITC recipients were audited at twice the rate of taxpayers with income between $200,000 and $500,000. Only households with income above $1 million were examined at significantly higher rates.

Put another way, as the IRS has dwindled in size and capability, audits of the poor have accounted for more of what it does. Last year, the IRS audited 381,000 recipients of the EITC. That was 36 percent of all audits the IRS conducted, up from 33 percent in 2011, when the budget cuts began.

“Those struggling to make ends meet are being unfairly audited while the fortunate few dodge taxes without consequence,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, told ProPublica. “The IRS needs more manpower to go after tax cheats of all sizes, and working Americans need a simpler way of obtaining a tax credit they’ve earned.”

The IRS declined to answer questions about its EITC audits.

The EITC has bipartisan roots. Conceived as a “work bonus” for low-income wage earners in the 1970’s and an alternative to welfare, the program has grown over the decades with the support of Republicans and Democrats. These days, the average credit is for about $2,500, but for larger families, the amount can exceed $6,000. The Census Bureau recently estimated that the EITC and the child tax credit together boost millions of children out of poverty every year, more than any other government program.

Unlike Social Security or food stamps, the EITC has no application process. Instead, taxpayers simply claim the credit on their tax returns. Millions of people get it wrong in both directions, according to IRS estimates. About a fifth of eligible taxpayers don’t seek the EITC. And almost a quarter of the $74 billion paid out this year was issued “improperly.”

That estimate of “improper payments,” about $17 billion, is the reason the EITC is such a focus for the IRS. Some tax experts — including the Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent office within the IRS — argue the estimate is way too high. One reason is that it is based on the outcome of audits, and low-income taxpayers are much less likely to have competent representation to dispute the IRS’ conclusions.

Regardless of the precise error rate, the IRS acknowledges the primary cause of the problem is not fraud: It is the law itself. It is too complex, too easy for someone to think themselves eligible when they are not. The same child might be a “dependent,” for example, but not a “qualifying child” under the EITC, and the IRS’ instructions for claiming the credit run to 41 pages.

“My third-year law students, they sit down and study this material, and sometimes they still don’t get it,” said Michelle Lyon Drumbl, a professor at Washington and Lee School of Law.

Since the 1990s, Republicans in Congress have focused on these improper payments as a major problem and harshly criticized the IRS for failing to stop them. In 2015, the Republican Congress passed, and President Barack Obama signed, a bill that required the IRS to hold EITC refunds until Feb. 15 each year. The purpose was to give the IRS more time to match tax returns with the corresponding W-2s to avoid misstatements of income. But it also meant people who are audited are more likely to see their refund held — instead of receiving the credit and then undergoing audit. That’s a crucial difference for low-income taxpayers.

“You expect this money during tax season and you don’t get it… It tears you down,” said Paul McCaw, a forklift operator in Rock Island, Illinois. He had refunds held for several years in a row because the IRS doubted that his niece’s three young children lived with him. For years, the family struggled. Bills piled up and eviction was a constant threat. Finally, this year, with the help of a legal aid attorney at Prairie State Legal Services, Macaw, 50, was able to convince the IRS to release the refunds.

“I was just beside myself,” he said of finally getting his refunds, adding, “I caught everything all up, and I also paid a month in advance.”

Stopping faulty refunds from going out, rather than trying to recoup them through an audit is “always the better option” because it is more effective, said Jesse Solis, a spokesperson for House Ways and Means Committee chair Kevin Brady, R-Texas. Congress should continue to look for ways to reduce improper payments, he said.

Taxpayers of all kinds cheat. And IRS studies have found that EITC recipients aren’t close to the worst offenders. For certain kinds of business income, for instance, people pay only about 37 percent of the tax they owe because they simply don’t report the income. Hundreds of billions of dollars in government revenue is lost. But people who have their own businesses are audited at about the same rate as EITC recipients.

The IRS’ disproportionate focus on stopping EITC “improper payments” is misguided, said Nina Olson, the national taxpayer advocate. “What’s the difference between an erroneous EITC dollar being sent out and a dollar attributed to unreported self-employment income not collected?” she asked. Unreported business income is “where the real money is,” she said.

When EITC cheating does occur, the culprits are usually tax preparers, said Chi Chi Wu of the National Consumer Law Center. “They know the system, they game the system and ultimately the taxpayer ends up on the hook if there’s an audit,” she said. In undercover investigations by the NCLC and the Government Accountability Office, multiple preparers advised taxpayers to file bogus EITC claims.

About 60 percent of taxpayers use a preparer, but in most states, preparers are not required to be licensed, and the IRS’ ability to oversee them is limited. After the agency launched a program to certify preparers and subject them to regular compliance checks, a federal appeals court ruled in 2014 that the IRS doesn’t have that power. Congress could pass a bill to confer such authority on the agency, but it has not done so, despite some bipartisan support for the idea.

The IRS has a difficult task in auditing taxpayers who claim the EITC. Low-income families are often complicated; they’re more likely to be multi-generational than more affluent filers, for instance, or to add or subtract household members from year to year. A study by the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center found that only about 48 percent of low-income households with children were married couples, while for other households it was 75 percent.

But advocates for taxpayers say the IRS makes the situation needlessly worse. Virtually all the EITC audits are conducted by correspondence, and the computer-generated letters are far from simple. A survey by the Taxpayer Advocate Service found that more than a quarter of EITC recipients who were audited didn’t even understand that they were under audit.

“When I first got audited, I couldn’t figure out what was going on,” said Denise Canady, 62, of West Memphis, Arkansas, who at the time was earning $8.50 an hour as a home health aide. The audit sent her on a scramble to get documents from her granddaughter’s doctor, pharmacy, hospital and school that would demonstrate that the toddler had lived at her address. “A lot of people don’t want to give you old records,” she said.

She eventually found her way to Legal Aid of Arkansas, where an attorney helped bolster her case, but, a year after her audit began, she is still awaiting the outcome.

“I pray and hope,” she said.

Chuck Schumer Earns Progressive Ire With Joe Manchin Promotion

At a time when people throughout the U.S. and around the world are rallying behind bold solutions to the climate crisis and urgently warning that there is no time to waste, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) decided late Tuesday to betray his constituents and the planet, groups warned, by promoting “fossil fuel servant” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to the top Democratic spot on the powerful Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.

“Appointing Senator Manchin as ranking member of the Energy Committee is completely at odds with any plan for real climate action,” May Boeve, executive director of 350.org, said in a statement. “Manchin has taken every opportunity to put Big Oil before the health and safety of communities and our climate.”

Erich Pica, president of Friends of the Earth, argued that the appointment of the pro-coal West Virginia senator to a top Energy Committee slot is a “stark failure of Chuck Schumer’s leadership” in the midst of dire scientific warnings that the world must cut carbon emissions in half by 2040 to avert planetary catastrophe.

“Schumer is out of touch with the progressive voters who will continue to push for a Green New Deal in the next Congress,” Pica declared, alluding to the demonstrators who have flooded the halls of Congress and faced mass arrests in recent weeks to pressure lawmakers to support ambitious climate solutions.

The West Virginia senator’s promotion—which was ratified Tuesday evening by members of the Senate Democratic caucus—came amid a wave of opposition from environmental groups, who adopted an “anyone but Manchin” stance in the weeks leading up to Tuesday’s announcement.

“Not even this foolish decision can stop the groundswell of momentum that’s building for a Green New Deal.”

—May Boeve, 350.org

Rep.-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.)—who is pushing for the formation of a Green New Deal Select Committee in the House—joined progressive advocacy groups in warning against the appointment of Manchin, who has raked in over $156,000 in campaign cash from the fossil fuel industry in 2018, and is reportedly still profiting from a coal brokerage company he helped run before entering politics.

“I have concerns over the senator’s chairmanship just because I do not believe that we should be financed by the industries that we are supposed to be legislating and regulating and touching with our legislation,” Ocasio-Cortez said during a press conference on the Green New Deal last month.

While corporate media outlets worked hard to blame Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—currently the ranking member on the powerful Senate Budget Committee—for not abandoning his post to block Manchin, commentators were quick to note that Sens. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), and Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) all have seniority over Manchin and could have taken the seat, but chose not to.

Ultimately, progressives placed the blame squarely on Schumer for refusing to heed grassroots demands to appoint a climate leader over a fossil fuel puppet.

“This is the wrong choice at the wrong time for the Democrats,” said David Turnbull, strategic communications director with Oil Change USA. “Senator Schumer has failed in finding a ranking member for this committee that truly understands that the climate crisis requires us to take on the fossil fuel industry, not cater to its demands.”

While dismayed by Manchin’s promotion, Boeve of 350.org expressed confidence that “not even this foolish decision can stop the groundswell of momentum that’s building for a Green New Deal.”

“With the leadership of communities and support from truly progressive members of Congress,” she concluded, “we’ll fight tooth and nail for climate policy that transitions us off fossil fuels to a 100 percent renewable energy economy.”

Palestinians Offer New Details of Israel’s Botched Gaza Raid

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — The small town of Abassan in the Gaza Strip is a tough place to infiltrate — everyone knows everyone else and outsiders passing through quickly attract attention. So when strangers drove through town, suspicious Hamas security men stopped the van and questioned those inside.

The answers didn’t add up.

With their covers about to be blown, the Israeli undercover forces inside the vehicle opened fire, setting off a fierce battle that left eight people dead and triggered a brief but intense round of cross-border fighting.

A month after the exchange, the raid remains clouded in mystery. The Israeli army has kept mum, while Hamas officials have declined to comment publicly as they investigate the incident. With each side protective of its secrets, and possibly keen to spread disinformation, the full story may never be known.

But based on interviews with Hamas officials, a picture is emerging of a carefully planned Israeli intelligence operation in which agents posing as Palestinian aid workers may have gone undetected for up to two weeks before it went awry. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity, citing a Hamas gag order.

In the meantime, Hamas has tightened security in Gaza and is questioning foreign visitors such as journalists and aid workers; it has also sentenced six alleged collaborators to death.

“We take security measures after any security incident to ensure it doesn’t happen again,” said Iyad al-Bozum, spokesman for Hamas’ Interior Ministry, which is leading the investigation.

Israel and Hamas are bitter enemies that have fought three wars since the Islamic militant group seized control of Gaza in 2007 from the rival Palestinian Authority. Israel and Egypt have blockaded Gaza by air, land and sea since the takeover.

Sending an undercover unit into Gaza would be complicated and risky. With Gaza fenced off, the border area is closely watched by Hamas. Only a handful of crossings operate. Parachuting in or bursting through the border would almost certainly be detected.

Hamas officials believe the Israeli team was disguised as aid workers and entered Gaza through the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing, a fortress-like facility through which all civilian traffic passes.

On the Gaza side of the crossing, the team passed through two checkpoints — one controlled by the Palestinian Authority and the second controlled by Hamas — using forged IDs with the names of well-known local Palestinian families. Hamas has released a number of images of people it says were squad members. In Israel, the military censor barred publication of the photos, forcing local media to blur the images.

The Associated Press spoke to eight Hamas figures, including some security officials.

It remains unclear what the Israeli team did inside Gaza. One official said they posed as aid workers, pretending to move disabled people to hospitals in a van. The team had a wheelchair, along with a member disguised as a disabled woman. They visited many houses and even rented an apartment in Gaza City, he said.

There are differing accounts on how long the team operated, from several hours to two weeks. One official said it appeared to have been a reconnaissance mission to “breach the communications network of the resistance.”

According to some of the accounts, the scheme began to unravel when the team made its way to Abassan. Suspicious residents alerted Hamas security, which stopped their van.

One official said the leader of the Israeli group, reportedly a member of Israel’s Arab Druze minority, spoke the local dialect fluently and remained calm.

But several things did not appear right. He said a woman was sitting between two men, even though their IDs showed them to be members of different families. Under local customs, it is frowned upon for a woman to sit alongside men who are not her relatives.

“That was the major reason for the suspicions,” he said. Under further questioning, the team told Hamas that they were going to visit a woman who does not live in the area.

Hamas security men asked them to wait while their commander, Nour Baraka, was summoned. According to various accounts, the situation deteriorated when Baraka arrived and began asking more questions. When Baraka ordered their detention for further questioning, the Israeli team opened fire and killed him. As the team fled, Hamas security men fired back, apparently killing the Israeli commander.

Hamas officials say the team was over 2 kilometers (over 1 mile) from the Israeli border, and Israeli military aircraft, including two helicopters and a warplane, carried out over 40 airstrikes to give the men cover to flee. An airstrike destroyed the Israeli van, apparently to get rid of incriminating evidence. Six more militants died in the fighting.

Mohammed Abu Daqqa, a resident of the area, said he was at home about 8:45 p.m. on Nov. 11 when he heard the sound of breaking glass outside.

He opened his window and saw a Palestinian gunman firing a pistol at a vehicle whose occupants were shooting weapons equipped with silencers. After the shooting subsided, he went outside, where he saw a gunman frantically shouting: “They shot Sheikh Nour.” He said the body was lying on the ground.

Hamas and other militant groups retaliated with rocket and missile fire, leading to the heaviest fighting with Israel since a 2014 war. On the brink of war, the sides agreed to a cease-fire on Nov. 13.

Israeli undercover units have been operating in the Palestinian areas since the 1980s — and currently have gained renewed attention with the Netflix hit show “Fauda.”

Samuel M. Katz, author of “The Ghost Warriors,” a book about Israeli undercover units during the second Palestinian uprising, said he had no knowledge of this raid, but that it appears to have been an intelligence-gathering team, not a hit squad.

Katz said that if Israel wanted to assassinate a wanted militant, it has less risky alternatives like airstrikes. “One thing you can say at this point, it must have been a high-value target or a high-value mission,” he said.

The Israeli military has said little about the raid and has refused to confirm foreign and Palestinian reports that the officer who was killed was Druze. But a military official, speaking on condition of anonymity under military protocol, said it was neither the first nor the last mission behind enemy lines.

“The IDF will continue to conduct special operations wherever necessary to ensure the safety of Israeli civilians,” he said.

Michael Cohen Sentenced to Three Years in Federal Prison

NEW YORK — Michael Cohen, who as President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and fixer once vowed he would “take a bullet” for his boss, was sentenced Wednesday to three years in prison for an array of crimes that included arranging the payment of hush money to two women that he says was done at the direction of Trump.

The sentence was in line with what federal prosecutors asked for. Sentencing guidelines called for around four to five years behind bars, and prosecutors asked in court papers that Cohen be given only a slight break. He is ordered to surrender March 6.

Cohen, standing alone at the defense table, shook his head slightly and closed his eyes briefly as the sentence was announced by the judge.

U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III said Cohen deserved modest credit for his decision over the summer to admit guilt and cooperate in a federal investigation of efforts by Russians to influence the presidential election, but his assistance “does not wipe the slate clean.”

“Somewhere along the way Mr. Cohen appears to have lost his moral compass,” the judge said. “As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better.”

Cohen told the judge just before he was sentenced that loyalty to Trump led him astray.

“It was my blind loyalty to this man that led me to take a path of darkness instead of light,” he said. “I felt it was my duty to cover up his dirty deeds.”

Cohen’s lawyers had argued for leniency, saying he decided to cooperate with investigators rather than hold out for a possible pardon.

“He came forward to offer evidence against the most powerful person in our country,” Cohen’s lawyer, Guy Petrillo, told the judge during the hearing.

Cohen, 52, pleaded guilty in August to evading $1.4 million in taxes related to his personal businesses. In the part of the case with greater political repercussions, he also admitted breaking campaign finance laws in arranging payments in the waning days of the 2016 election to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, both of whom said they had sexual encounters with Trump.

Cohen became the first — and so far, only — member of Trump’s circle during two years of investigations to go into open court and implicate the president in a crime, though whether a president can be prosecuted is a matter of legal dispute.

Last month, Cohen also pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump’s business dealings in Russia. He admitted hiding the fact that he was negotiating a proposal to build a Trump skyscraper in Moscow well into the presidential campaign. He said he lied out of devotion to Trump, who had insisted during the campaign that he had no business ties whatsoever to Russia.

The sentence was the culmination of a spectacular rise and fast fall of a lawyer who attached himself to the fortunes of his biggest client, helped him get elected president, then turned on him, cooperating with two interconnected investigations: one run by federal prosecutors in New York, the other by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into Russian efforts to influence the race for the White House.

At the sentencing hearing, a prosecutor in Mueller’s office, Jeannie Rhee, said Cohen has “sought to tell us the truth and that is of the utmost value to us.”

“He has provided consistent and credible information about core Russia-related issues under investigation,” she said without elaborating.

It remains to be seen how much damage Cohen’s cooperation will do to Trump. Legal experts said Cohen could get his sentence reduced if he strikes a deal with prosecutors to tell them more.

The defense team said Cohen’s tax crimes were unsophisticated, and his campaign violations and lies to lawmakers were motivated by overenthusiasm for Trump, rather than any nefarious intent.

But the New York-based prosecutors who handled the case had urged the judge to sentence Cohen to a substantial prison term and said he failed to fully cooperate with investigators.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicolas Roos said Cohen’s crimes showed a “pattern of deceit, brazenness and greed.”

He called for a sentence that sends a message that “even powerful, privileged individuals cannot violate these laws with impunity.”

In their court filing, the prosecutors left no doubt that they believe Cohen arranged the hush-money payments at Trump’s direction, saying the maneuver was part of an effort to “influence the election from the shadows.”

Trump, who insists the affairs never happened, argued on Twitter that the payments to the women were “a simple private transaction,” not a campaign contribution. And if it was a prohibited contribution, Trump said, Cohen is the one who should be held responsible.

“Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me,” Trump wrote, adding, “Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!”

Trump had repeatedly called for a tough sentence for Cohen, whom he labeled a liar.

Cohen has had at least seven meetings with Mueller’s team, which said in court papers that Cohen provided “relevant and useful” information about attempts by Russian figures to influence Trump’s campaign.

In the hush-money case, prosecutors said, Cohen arranged for the parent company of the National Enquirer to pay $150,000 to McDougal. He also paid $130,000 to Daniels and was reimbursed by Trump’s business empire. Prosecutors said the McDougal payment violated federal law against corporate campaign contributions, while the money that went to Daniels exceeded the $2,700 limit on campaign donations.

Censoring This Documentary Only Plays Into AIPAC’s Hands

On Wednesday, in keeping with its image as a progressive leader in social policy, the City of West Hollywood, Calif., was scheduled to host a film screening and panel discussion on the painful birth of Israel and the Palestinian refugee crisis. Instead, the city is playing censor, “postponing” the event until further notice.

The screening of the new documentary, “1948: Creation and Catastrophe,” and panel, which I was invited to join, are part of West Hollywood’s Human Rights Speaker Series, co-sponsored by PBS SoCal. But after spurious allegations of anti-Semitism by local rabbi Denise Eger, the city pulled the plug. City Council member Lindsey Horvath said she didn’t want West Hollywood to become a “refuge for hate.”

The real issue here, as it is increasingly in public forums and media across America, is who gets to tell the story. West Hollywood is taking the word of a constituent with a keenly vested interest—Rabbi Eger of West Hollywood’s Congregation Kol Ami is, after all, a staunch supporter of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and its efforts to lobby Congress and silence critics of Israel, often by accusing them of anti-Semitism. Rabbi Eger appears to have cut and pasted accusations against one of the film’s producers, Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb, communications professor at Cal State-San Bernardino, directly from Canary Mission, a shadowy blacklist that targets critics of Israel. As the Forward reported in August, the anonymously funded Canary Mission “is now being used as an intelligence source on thousands of students and academics by Israeli officials with immense power over people’s lives.”  

The West Hollywood City Council appears to be playing directly into an AIPAC-driven political agenda that conflates legitimate criticism of Israel with anti-Semitism. In many cases, calling someone an anti-Semite is an effective means to shut down open discussion. It is, however, a direct threat to free speech, which is why it’s long past time to stand up to this anti-democratic agenda.

The disingenuous claim that “1948” is anti-Semitic or promotes hatred is part of a broader effort to narrow the boundaries of “acceptable” discussion regarding Israel and Palestine. Recently, the commentator Marc Lamont Hill was fired by CNN for delivering a speech at the U.N. in which he suggested that the Holy Land would eventually become a single state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean. Hill’s words were certainly provocative, but decades of Israeli settler colonization of the West Bank have undermined a “two-state solution,” and a single, democratic state of Israelis and Palestinians is hardly an idea to be muzzled by the thought police.

Even more troubling are the broad efforts to slap the anti-Semitic label on nonviolent, constitutionally protected calls to boycott Israeli institutions. The Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has gained momentum in recent years, has prompted dozens of state laws and bills in Congress to impose civil and even criminal sanctions against groups that boycott Israeli products or institutions.

Some say the fears provoked by the recent wave of anti-Semitism, including the murder of 11 Jews in Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life synagogue, is reason enough to curtail criticism of Israel. As someone who has spent years working in Israel, and many hours interviewing Holocaust survivors for an oral history project of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, I have long known those fears to be legitimate. But exploiting that fear can be cynical. It is not legitimate to label critics as anti-Semites when they advocate a boycott of, say, Caterpillar, whose Israeli military D-9 bulldozers have helped to reduce almost 48,000 Palestinian homes and other buildings to rubble since 1967.

As for “1948,” it is not clear whether those involved in West Hollywood’s “indefinite delay,” as one organizer calls it, have even have seen the film. I have. It is fair and even-handed in its telling of a wrenching, difficult history that features the perspectives of Israelis who saw the 1948 war as their War of Independence, and Palestinians who experienced it as their nakba, or catastrophe. The film includes stories of expulsions of Palestinians, which have been well-documented by Israeli historians. (I did much the same in my 2006 book, “The Lemon Tree.”) What the “1948” film does not do is simply repeat the triumphal narrative conveyed in Leon Uris’s “Exodus,” which a generation of Americans grew up reading. Uris’s account describes the birth of Israel in exclusively heroic terms, with the plight of “the Arabs” (i.e., Palestinians) conspicuously missing from the story.

For those exposed to this blinkered history, a deeper, more inclusive narrative can be challenging to accept. Yet isn’t the role of a democracy to promote difficult debate, and to help us face our collective history? The Dec. 12 forum was an opportunity for West Hollywood, which takes pride in its “impact on the national progressive public policy agenda,” to do just that. Instead, the city has placed itself, unwittingly or not, on one side of the debate, and chosen to stifle free speech and open discussion.

Stormy Daniels Ordered to Pay Trump $293,000 for Lawyer Fees

LOS ANGELES — Porn star Stormy Daniels must pay President Donald Trump nearly $293,000 for his attorneys’ fees and another $1,000 in sanctions after her defamation suit against him was dismissed, a federal judge in Los Angeles ordered Tuesday.

Trump’s attorney, Charles Harder, had requested nearly $390,000 in fees and equal amount in sanctions as a deterrent against a “repeat filer of frivolous defamation cases.”

Judge S. James Otero cut the requested legal fees by 25 percent and awarded just $1,000 in sanctions.

Otero previously noted that fees by Harder’s firm — as high as $840 an hour — were reasonable but the 580 hours spent on the case appeared excessive.

Daniels alleges she had an affair with Trump in 2006 and was paid $130,000 as part of a nondisclosure agreement days before the 2016 presidential election. She sued him for defamation after he dismissed her claims of being threatened to keep quiet about the tryst as a “total con job.” The judge threw out the case in October.

Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti, tweeted Tuesday’s order “will never hold up on appeal.”

In a statement he predicted Daniels “will never have to pay a dime” because she will receive far more — $1 million — from Trump for attorneys’ fees and other costs related to a separate lawsuit Daniels brought in Los Angeles over the non-disclosure agreement.

Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is challenging the agreement she signed with Trump’s then-lawyer Michael Cohen to prevent her from discussing the alleged affair. The agreement was signed days before the 2016 election as part of a $130,000 hush-money settlement.

Daniels also has alleged that her former lawyer, Keith Davidson, colluded with Cohen to have her publicly deny the affair with Trump.

Cohen has pleaded guilty to several felonies and admitted funneling money to Daniels to keep her quiet about the affair. Trump has denied the affair, but essentially acknowledged the payment to Daniels.

Despite the deal to stay quiet, Daniels spoke out publicly and alleged that five years after the affair she was threatened to keep quiet by a man she did not recognize in a Las Vegas parking lot. She also released a composite sketch of the mystery man.

She sued Trump for defamation after he responded to her allegation by tweeting: “A sketch years later about a nonexistent man. A total con job, playing the Fake News Media for Fools (but they know it)!”

Otero ruled in October that Trump’s statement was “rhetorical hyperbole” against a political adversary and was protected speech under the First Amendment.

Trump’s lead attorney previously said the fees and unspecified monetary sanctions were earned because of the extraordinary nature of the defamation case and because of Avenatti’s gamesmanship.

“This action is virtually unprecedented in American legal history,” Harder wrote in court papers. Daniels “not only brought a meritless claim for defamation against the sitting president of the United States, but she also has engaged, along with her attorney, in massive national publicity.”

The Cohen and Davidson lawsuit in Los Angeles County Superior Court is on hold until May.

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Follow Weber at https://twitter.com/WeberCM

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Associated Press reporter Brian Melley in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Huawei CFO Gets Bail; China Detains Canadian Ex-Diplomat

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—A Canadian court granted bail on Tuesday to a top Chinese executive arrested at the United States’ request in a case that has set off a diplomatic furor among the three countries and complicated high-stakes U.S.-China trade talks.

Hours before the bail hearing in Vancouver, China detained a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing in apparent retaliation for the Dec. 1 arrest of Meng Wanzhou, chief financial officer of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei and daughter of the company’s founder.

After three days of hearings, a British Columbia justice granted bail of $10 million Canadian (US$7.5 million) to Meng, but required her to wear an ankle bracelet, surrender her passports, stay in Vancouver and its suburbs and confine herself to one of her two Vancouver homes from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m.

The decision was met with applause in the packed courtroom, where members of Vancouver’s Chinese community had turned out to show support for Meng.

Amid rising tension between China and Canada, Canadian Public Safety Minister Ralph Goodale confirmed Tuesday that a former Canadian diplomat had been detained in Beijing. The detention came after China warned Canada of consequences for Meng’s arrest.

“We’re deeply concerned,” Goodale said. “A Canadian is obviously in difficulty in China. … We are sparing no effort to do everything we possibly can to look after his safety.”

Michael Kovrig, who previously worked as a diplomat in Beijing, Hong Kong and the United Nations, was taken into custody Monday night during one of his regular visits to Beijing, according to a spokesman for International Crisis Group, where Kovrig now works as North East Asia adviser based in Hong Kong.

Canada had been bracing for retaliation for Meng’s arrest. The Canadian province of British Columbia canceled a trade mission to China amid fears China could detain Canadians to put pressure on Ottawa over Meng’s detention.

“In China there is no coincidence,” Guy Saint-Jacques, a former Canadian ambassador to China, said of Kovrig’s detention. “Unfortunately Canada is caught in the middle of this dispute between the U.S and China. Because China cannot kick the U.S. they turn to the next target.”

Earlier in the day, China vowed to “spare no effort” to protect against “any bullying that infringes the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese citizens.”

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi didn’t mention Meng by name. But ministry spokesman Lu Kang said Wang was referring to cases of all Chinese abroad, including Meng’s.

Washington accuses Huawei of using a Hong Kong shell company to sell equipment to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. It says Meng and Huawei misled banks about the company’s business dealings in Iran.

On Tuesday, U.S. State Department spokesman Robert Palladino told reporters in Washington “the charges against Meng pertain to alleged lies to United States financial institutions” about Huawei’s business dealings in Iran.

“It is clear from the filings that were unsealed in Canada, Meng and others are alleged to have put financial institutions at risk of criminal and civil liability in the United States by deceiving those institutions as to the nature and extent of Huawei’s business in Iran,” Palladino said.

Meng has denied the U.S. allegations through her lawyer in court, promising to fight them if she is extradited to face charges in the United States.

“We have every confidence that the Canadian and U.S. legal systems will reach a just conclusion in the following proceedings,” Huawei said in a statement.

“As we have stressed all along, Huawei complies with all applicable laws and regulations in the countries and regions where we operate, including export control and sanction laws of the UN, US, and EU. We look forward to a timely resolution to this matter.”

Huawei, the biggest global supplier of network gear for phone and internet companies, is the target of U.S. security concerns. Washington has pressured other countries to limit use of its technology, warning they could be opening themselves up to surveillance and theft of information.

The U.S. and China have tried to keep Meng’s case separate from their wider trade dispute and suggested Tuesday that talks to resolve their differences may resume.

But President Donald Trump undercut efforts to distinguish between trade talks and the Huawei case. In an interview with Reuters, he said Tuesday that he would consider intervening in the Justice Department’s case against Meng if it would be in the interest of U.S. national security or help forge a trade deal with Beijing.

The Chinese government said its economy czar had discussed plans with U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trade Rep. Robert Lighthizer for talks aimed at settling the two countries’ differences. Lighthizer’s office confirmed he had spoken by phone with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He.

The news that trade negotiations may resume lifted stock markets around the world.

The United States has slapped tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese imports in response to complaints Beijing steals American technology and forces U.S. companies to turn over trade secrets.

Tariffs on $200 billion of those imports were scheduled to rise from 10 percent to 25 percent on Jan. 1. But Trump agreed to postpone those by 90 days while the two sides negotiate.

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Associated Press writer Jim Morris reported this story in Vancouver, AP writer Rob Gillies reported from Toronto and AP writer Paul Wiseman reported from Washington. AP writers Matthew Lee in Washington and Joe McDonald in Beijing contributed to this report.

France Shooting: 4 Dead, Several Wounded in Strasbourg

PARIS—A shooting in the French city of Strasbourg killed four people and wounded 11 others near a world-famous Christmas market Tuesday, sparking a broad lockdown and a search for the suspected gunman, who remained at large.

French prosecutors said a terrorism investigation was opened, though authorities did not announce a motive for the bloodshed. The city is home to the European Parliament, which was locked down after the shooting.

It was unclear if the market — which was the nucleus of an al-Qaida-linked plot in 2000 — was targeted. The prefect of the Strasbourg region said the suspect was previously flagged as a possible extremist.

The gunman has been identified and has a criminal record, according to Interior Minister Christophe Castaner.

The death toll, first reported as one, rose to four by late Tuesday, according to two police union officials. One official, Stephane Morisse of union FGP, told The Associated Press the alleged shooter was wounded by soldiers guarding the market.

Gendarmes went to the suspect’s home to arrest him earlier Tuesday, before the attack, but he wasn’t there, Morisse said. They found explosive materials, he said.

French military spokesman Col. Patrik Steiger said the shooter did not aim for the soldiers patrolling in and around the Christmas market, but targeted civilians instead.

Several of the people wounded were in critical condition, the interior minister said.

Witnesses described to the AP hearing gunshots, screams and the shouts of police officers ordering people to stay indoors before the area fell silent and the officers fanned out.

“I heard two or three shots at around 7:55 p.m. (1855 GMT), then I heard screams. I got close to the window. I saw people running. After that I closed the shutters. Then I heard more shots, closer this time,” Yoann Bazard, 27, who lives in central Strasbourg.

“I thought maybe it’s firecrackers,” he said, speaking by phone. “And then, as it got close, it was really shocking. There were a lot of screams. … There were police or soldiers shouting ‘Get inside!’ and ‘Put your hands on your head.'”

Freelance journalist Camille Belsoeur was at a friend’s apartment when they heard the gunfire, at first mistaking it for firecrackers.

“We opened the window. I saw a soldier firing shots, about 12 to 15 shots,” Belsoeur said,

Other soldiers yelled for people to stay indoors and shouted ‘Go home! Go home!'” to those outside, he said.

Another witness, Peter Fritz, told the BBC one of the four people killed was a Thai tourist who was shot in the head and didn’t respond to lengthy attempts to revive him.

“We tried our best to resuscitate him. We applied CPR. We dragged him into a restaurant close by,” Fritz said.

He said it took more than 45 minutes for an ambulance to arrive, during which time an emergency doctor advised by telephone “that any further efforts would be futile.”

The victim “is still here in this restaurant but we have abandoned all hope for him,” Fritz said.

France previously endured several high-profile extremist attacks, including the coordinated attacks at multiple Paris locations that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds in November 2015. A 2016 truck attack in Nice killed dozens.

President Emmanuel Macron adjourned a meeting at the presidential palace Tuesday night to monitor the emergency, his office said, indicating the gravity of the attack.

Castaner and the Paris prosecutor, who is in charge of anti-terror probes in France, headed to Strasbourg. The prosecutor’s office said the investigation was being conducted on suspicion of murder and attempted murder in relation with a terrorist enterprise charges, suggesting officials think the alleged shooter may have links to extremists.

In multiple neighborhoods of Strasbourg, the French Interior Ministry urged the public to remain indoors. Local authorities tweeted for the public to “avoid the area of the police station,” which is close to the city’s Christmas market.

Strasbourg’s well-known market is set up around the city’s cathedral during the Christmas season and is a popular gathering place.

French soldiers were on patrol after the shooting. At the scene, police officers, police vehicles and barricades surrounded the sparkling lights of the market.

“Our security and rescue services are mobilized,” Castaner said.

European Parliament spokesman Jaume Duch said that “the European Parliament has been closed and no one can leave until further notice.” It wasn’t immediately clear how many people were inside.

The attack revived memories of a new millennium terror plot targeting Strasbourg’s Christmas market. Ten suspected Islamic militants were convicted and sentenced to prison in December 2004 for their role in a plot to blow up the market on the New Year’s Eve ushering in 2000..

The Algerian and French-Algerian suspects — including an alleged associate of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — went on trial in October on charges they were involved in the foiled plot for the attack.

They were sentenced to prison terms ranging from one to nine years.

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John Leicester and Angela Charlton contributed.

4 Journalists and a Newspaper Are Time’s Person of the Year

NEW YORK—Time magazine on Tuesday recognized journalists, including the slain Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, as its 2018 Person of the Year in what it said was an effort to emphasize the importance of reporters’ work in an increasingly hostile world.

The designation wasn’t intended as a specific message to the magazine’s runner-up choice, President Donald Trump, who has denounced “fake news” and called some reporters enemies of the people, said Ben Goldberger, executive editor.

Time cited four figures it called “the guardians.” Besides Khashoggi, they are the staff of the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, Maryland, where five people were shot to death in June; Philippine journalist Maria Ressa; and Reuters reporters Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo, who have been jailed in Myanmar for a year.

It’s the first time since the magazine began the end-of-year tradition in 1927 that Time has featured a journalist or recognized someone posthumously.

Time said that 2018 has been marked by manipulation and abuse of information, along with efforts by governments to foment mistrust of the facts.

Goldberger said the magazine hopes the choice reminds people outside of journalism about the importance of the work.

Joel Simon, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said he sees this message already starting to get through — sadly, in part because of the attention paid to Khashoggi’s killing. Khashoggi is one of at least 52 journalists murdered so far this year, the committee said.

“In some ways, I feel we’re at a turning point,” Simon said.

Khashoggi was killed two months ago when The Washington Post columnist, who had lived in the U.S., visited Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Turkey for paperwork so he could get married. He had been critical of the Saudi regime.

The Washington Post applauded Time for its message of support for journalists.

“We hope this recognition will prompt our nation’s leaders to stand up for America’s values and hold accountable those who attempt to silence journalists who cover our communities or in Jamal’s case, an oppressive authoritarian government,” said Fred Ryan, the Post’s publisher and CEO.

Reesa co-founded the online site the Rappler, which has aggressively covered the government of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte. She was recently charged with tax fraud, with many in the Philippines seeing that as a reaction to the Rappler’s reporting.

Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo were imprisoned after investigating a massacre of Rohingya Muslims.

Four journalists and a sales assistant were killed by a gunman at the Capital Gazette newspaper last spring.

Time is producing four different covers featuring “the guardians.”

Last year Time recognized people who came forward to report on sexual misconduct. Trump, this year’s runner-up, was Person of the Year in 2016.

The third-place finisher this year was special counsel Robert Mueller, who Time indicated could move up in next year’s rankings depending on the findings of his investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia.

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Associated Press writer Shawn Marsh contributed to this report.

The Arctic Just Had Its Hottest Five Years on Record, and It’s Only Getting Worse: Report

Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released their Arctic Report Card this week, with the equivalent of failing grades for a critical marker of environmental health.

The oldest and thickest ice in the region has declined by 95 percent, meaning, as The Washington Post reported Monday, that “the sea at the top of the world has already morphed into a new and very different state, with major implications not only for creatures such as walruses and polar bears but, in the long term, perhaps for the pace of global warming itself.”

The age of the ice is directly related to its ability to protect the earth. “The younger the ice, the thinner the ice, the easier it is to go away,” Don Perovich, a scientist at Dartmouth who coordinated the sea ice section of the yearly report, told the Post. The thinner, younger ice may be able to regrow more easily, but as the Post notes, that’s not helpful for climate change: “It may not add much stability or permanence to the Arctic sea ice system if it just melts out again the next summer.”

In addition, according to the latest report card, the Arctic has experienced its hottest consecutive five years on record (2018 alone is the second hottest, with 1990 in the top spot overall), thinning the usually protective ice, and leaving not just the Arctic, but the world, more vulnerable to climate change.

According to The Daily Beast, “the warming Arctic climate may be exacerbating extreme weather events around the world, including extreme cold events, such as the winter storms felt in the northeastern United States last year.”

Rafe Pomerance, chairman of Arctic 21, a network of organizations focused on educating policymakers and others on Arctic climate change, told The Daily Beast, “The signals of decline are so powerful and the consequences so great that they demand far more urgency from all governments to reduce emissions.”

The 2018 edition of the report card is also the first time that NOAA includes warnings about red tide and algal blooms. In practical terms, “PBS NewsHour” points out, this means “toxins from these microorganisms are threatening marine wildlife and coastal fisheries, imperiling communities that depend on these species.”

Among the species in decline due to the ice shrinking are reindeer and caribou. “Arctic caribou in North America and Greenland and reindeer in Russia and Norway have declined 56 percent over the last two decades, with their populations dropping from 4.7 million to 2.1 million,” PBS notes. This is because of outbreaks of infectious disease-causing bacteria, brought on by hotter weather.

If the ice’s decline worsens and results in ice-free summers for earth, the planet will get even hotter, according to the report card, and even minor changes in weather can have devastating impacts. “In the Arctic Ocean, a difference of 2 degrees can be huge,” Walt Meier, a sea ice expert at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the Post. He added, “If it goes from 31 Fahrenheit to 33 Fahrenheit, you’re going from ice skating to swimming. … the Arctic is an early warning system for the climate.”

Read the full report card here.