Chris Hedges's Blog, page 534

Trump Pardons Ranchers Who Sparked Refuge Occupation

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump has pardoned two ranchers whose case sparked the armed occupation of a national wildlife refuge in Oregon.

Dwight and Steven Hammond were convicted in 2012 of intentionally and maliciously setting fires on public lands. The arson crime carried a minimum prison sentence of five years, but a sympathetic federal judge, on his last day before retirement, decided the penalty was too stiff and gave the father and son much lighter prison terms.

Prosecutors won an appeal and the Hammonds were resentenced in October 2015 to serve the mandatory minimum.

The decision sparked a protest from Ammon Bundy and dozens of others, who occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near the Hammond ranch in southeastern Oregon from Jan. 2 to Feb. 11, 2016, complaining the Hammonds were victims of federal overreach.

The armed occupiers changed the refuge’s name to the Harney County Resource Center, reflecting their belief that the federal government has only a very limited right to own property within a state’s borders.

Bundy was arrested during a Jan. 26 traffic stop, effectively ending the protest. Another key occupier, Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, was fatally shot that day by Oregon State Police.

In a statement Tuesday, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders called that decision to resentence the Hammonds “unjust.”

“The Hammonds are devoted family men, respected contributors to their local community, and have widespread support from their neighbors, local law enforcement, and farmers and ranchers across the West,” she said. “Justice is overdue for Dwight and Steven Hammond, both of whom are entirely deserving of these Grants of Executive Clemency.”

The pardons are the latest in a growing list of clemency actions by Trump, who has been using his pardon power with increasingly frequency in recent months.

Trump has been especially pleased with news coverage of his actions, which included commuting the sentence of Alice Johnson, a woman serving a life sentence for drug offenses whose case had been championed by reality television star Kim Kardashian West.

He has repeatedly referenced emotional video of Johnson being freed from prison and running into her family members’ arms, and has said he’s considering thousands more cases — both famous and not.

But critics say the president could be ignoring valid claims for clemency as he works outside the typical pardon process, focusing on cases brought to his attention by friends, famous people and conservative media pundits.

Aides say that Trump has been especially drawn to cases in which he believes the prosecution may have been politically motivated — a situation that may remind him of his own position at the center of the ongoing special counsel investigation into Russian election meddling.

Many have also seen the president as sending a signal with his pardons to former aides and associates caught up in the probe, or lashing out at enemies like former FBI Director James Comey, who oversaw the prosecution of lifestyle guru Martha Stewart, whom Trump has said he is thinking of pardoning.

Thai Soccer Team Freed in Daring Rescue Mission

MAE SAI, Thailand—A daring rescue mission in the treacherous confines of a flooded cave in northern Thailand has saved all 12 boys and their soccer coach who were trapped deep within the labyrinth, ending a grueling 18-day ordeal that claimed the life of an experienced volunteer diver and riveted people around the world.

Thailand’s Navy SEALs, who were central to the rescue effort, said on their Facebook page that the remaining four boys and their 25-year-old coach were all brought out safely Tuesday. Eight of the boys were rescued by a team of Thai and international divers on Sunday and Monday.

“We are not sure if this is a miracle, a science, or what. All the thirteen Wild Boars are now out of the cave,” the SEALs said, referring to the name of the boys’ soccer team. “Everyone is safe.”

They said they were waiting for a medic and three SEALs who had stayed with the boys in their dark refuge deep inside the cave complex to come out.

Cheers erupted at a local government office where dozens of volunteers and journalists were awaiting news of whether the intricate and high-risk rescue mission had succeeded. Helicopters taking the boys to a hospital roared overhead.

People on the street cheered and clapped when ambulances ferrying the boys arrived at the hospital in Chiang Rai city.

Payap Maiming, 40, who helped provide food and necessities to rescue workers and journalists, said a “miracle” had happened.

“I’m happy for Thais all over the country, for the people of Mae Sai, and actually just everyone in the world because every news channel has presented this story and this is what we have been waiting for,” she said. Mae Sai is the district where the cave is located, in the northern part of Chiang Rai province, near the border with Myanmar.

“It’s really a miracle,” Payap said. “It’s hope and faith that has brought us this success.”

The plight of the boys and their coach has captivated Thailand and much of the world — from the heart-sinking news that they were missing to the first flickering video of the huddle of anxious yet smiling boys when they were found 10 days later by a pair of British divers. They were trapped in the Tham Luan Nang Non cave on June 23, when they were exploring it after a soccer practice and it became flooded by monsoon rains.

Each of the boys, ages 11 to 16 and with no diving experience, was guided out by a pair of divers in three days of intricate and high-stakes operations. The route, in some places just a crawl space, had oxygen canisters positioned at regular intervals to refresh each team’s air supply.

Highlighting the dangers, a former Thai navy SEAL died Friday while replenishing the canisters.

Cave diving experts had warned it was potentially too risky to dive the youngsters out.

But Thai officials, acutely aware that the boys could be trapped for months by monsoon rains that would swell waters in the cave system, seized a window of opportunity provided by relatively mild weather. A massive water pumping effort also made the winding cave more navigable. The confidence of the diving team, and expertise specific to the cave, grew after its first successful mission.

Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha, speaking before the final rescue was completed, said the boys were given an anti-anxiety medication to help with their perilous removal from the cave.

Asked at a weekly press conference Tuesday in Bangkok if the boys had been sedated, Prayuth said: “Who would chloroform them? If they’re chloroformed, how could they come out? It’s called anxiolytic, something to make them not excited, not stressed.”

Prayuth said the Tham Luan Nang Non cave would be closed for some time to make it safe for visitors.

The eight boys brought out by divers on Sunday and Monday were doing well and were in good spirits, a senior health official said. There were given a treat Tuesday: bread with chocolate spread that they’d requested.

Jedsada Chokdumrongsuk, permanent secretary at the Public Health Ministry, said the first four boys rescued were able to eat normal food, though they couldn’t yet take the spicy dishes favored by many Thais.

Two of the boys possibly have a lung infection but all eight are generally “healthy and smiling,” he said.

“The kids are footballers so they have high immune systems,” Jedsada said. “Everyone is in high spirits and are happy to get out. But we will have a psychiatrist to evaluate them.”

It could be at least seven days before they can be released from the hospital, Jedsada told a news conference.

Family members have seen at least some of the boys from behind a glass isolation barrier.

It was clear doctors were taking a cautious approach. Jedsada said they were uncertain what type of infections the boys could face “because we have never experienced this kind of issue from a deep cave.”

If medical tests show no dangers, after another two days, parents will be able to enter the isolation area dressed in sterilized clothing and staying 2 meters (yards) away from the boys, said Tosthep Bunthong, a public health official.

John Tangkitcharoenthawon, a local village chairman who was working as a volunteer translator for the tourist police, was bursting with happiness at the successful rescue.

“If this place had a roof, the morale has gone straight through it,” he said.

President Donald Trump joined those paying tribute to the rescuers.

“On behalf of the United States, congratulations to the Thai Navy SEALs and all on the successful rescue of the 12 boys and their coach from the treacherous cave in Thailand,” he tweeted.

He added: “Such a beautiful moment – all freed, great job!”

One of soccer’s most popular teams, Manchester United, expressed its relief over the rescue and invited the boys and their coach, as well as those who saved them, to come see them play on their home ground this season.

A message posted on the English Premier League club’s Twitter account said: “Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected. We would love to welcome the team from Wild Boars Football Club and their rescuers to Old Trafford this coming season.”

The international soccer federation, FIFA, had already invited the boys to attend the World Cup final in Russia this Sunday. However, doctors treating the boys said it would be too soon for them to make the trip.

Brett Kavanaugh, Trump’s Supreme Court Pick, Will Drive U.S. Law Hard to the Right

President Trump announced the nomination of ultraconservative District of Columbia Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday night. Short of selecting 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett, a religious zealot who belongs to the fringe Catholic cult People for Praise and was reportedly among the finalists for the nod, Trump could not have chosen a candidate who poses a greater threat to progressive values and causes.

Since President George W. Bush appointed Kavanaugh to the appellate bench in 2006, he has amassed a record that shows extreme hostility to the rights of consumers, voters, women, gays and lesbians, workers and immigrants. If confirmed, Kavanaugh will take the seat vacated by Anthony Kennedy, the panel’s most frequent “swing voter,” who announced his retirement late last month. The nominee would give the court a solid five-member right-wing majority.

There is little that Senate Democrats, who hold only 49 seats, can do to prevent Kavanaugh from being confirmed, unless the party holds together to block the nomination (not likely) and one or more Republicans defect (even less likely).

Elections have consequences. One of the most disastrous results of Trump’s 2016 election is that the former-reality-TV-show-host-turned-most-powerful-man-in-the-world has gotten the chance to remake the Supreme Court. And he has made the most of the opportunity, stacking the nation’s highest judicial body with two young, hard-right conservatives, both recommended by the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation.

Last year, Trump replaced the deceased firebrand Antonin Scalia with Neil Gorsuch, dubbed by many legal commentators as “Scalia 2.0” for his doctrinaire adherence to Scalia’s “originalist” theory of jurisprudence, which holds that the Constitution should be interpreted according to the meaning it had for the Founding Fathers. A young whippersnapper by judicial standards, Gorsuch won’t turn 51 until August. Barring an untimely demise, he’ll be on the bench for two or three decades, reshaping our legal landscape.

So would Kavanaugh, who is 53, and who, like Gorsuch, is a committed originalist.

More than likely, Kavanaugh’s obeisance to conservative legal doctrine is not all that drew him to Trump. The president probably also had the Mueller investigation in mind when he made the pick. In 2009, Kavanaugh authored an article for the University of Minnesota Law Review in which he argued that sitting presidents should be immune from both civil suits and criminal prosecutions. Who better than Kavanaugh (along with Samuel Alito, Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas) to protect Trump against special counsel Robert Mueller should issues involving the Russia investigation reach the Supreme Court?

So let the Mueller probe be blocked, and let the dirges play for abortion rights, affirmative action and possibly same-sex marriage. Expect the Affordable Care Act to be toppled once and for all, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Environmental Protection Agency to be gutted by new adverse rulings.

We’re in for a dark period. Let’s just hope that Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 85, and Stephen Breyer, 79, can hang on until the 2020 election, and that Americans exercise better judgment when they next cast their ballots for president.

The World According to Trump

I’m confident that we can eventually repair the damage President Trump is doing to the nation. What he’s doing to the world is another story.

As with much of his program, Trump’s foreign policy is contradictory and ultimately self-defeating. He wants to lead—his voracious yet delicate ego demands nothing less—but does not know how. He fails to grasp that not all sacred cows should be butchered. The result is mindless abdication of American leadership, to the dismay of allies and the delight of adversaries.

This week, Trump heads to Brussels for a NATO summit and Helsinki for a one-on-one meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The question is whether he further damages the trans-Atlantic relationship—a keystone of international relations since the end of World War II—by a little or a lot.

Since he took office, Trump has gone out of his way to bash the other members of NATO for not spending what they pledged—2 percent of gross domestic product—on defense. He was at it again Monday, complaining on Twitter that “The United States is spending far more on NATO than any other Country. This is not fair, nor is it acceptable. While these countries have been increasing their contributions since I took office, they must do much more. Germany is at 1%, the U.S. is at 4%, and NATO benefits Europe far more than it does the U.S.”

Does it really? In Trump’s zero-sum mindset, perhaps, but not in the real world. Yes, the other NATO countries should ante up as they promised. But only one member has ever drawn upon the NATO treaty’s biggest benefit by invoking Article 5, which states that an attack on one is tantamount to an attack on all: the Uni ted States, following 9/11.

Trump went on to claim, falsely, that the United States has a $151 billion trade deficit with Europe. That is approximately the deficit in goods, but when services are taken into account the actual deficit is $101 billion.

Trump’s obsession with military costs would make sense if it were part of an attempt to reduce the U.S. defense budget. But Trump has proposed a big boost in Pentagon spending to an astounding $686 billion for the 2019 fiscal year. His screeds against NATO seem to be motivated not by any potential savings but by an apparent dislike of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and a mistaken understanding of what trade surpluses and deficits mean.

European allies may be less worried about how Trump might behave in Brussels than about what he could say or do in his meeting with Putin, whose approval he so appears to crave.

I’ll leave it to special counsel Robert Mueller to say whether there are sinister motives for Trump’s consistent willingness to look past Putin’s many transgressions—to name a few, his attempts to subvert Western democracies including ours; his illegal annexation of Crimea; his human rights violations and muzzling of free speech, including the press; and his alleged assassinations of dissidents abroad, including an attempt to kill a former intelligence agent in Britain with a Soviet-era nerve agent.

Will Trump ignore all of this in pursuit of a new U.S.-Russia alliance? The fact that our allies even have to consider such a possibility is destabilizing.

Much of the rest of Trump’s foreign policy is equally bizarre. The tariffs he has imposed on goods made by allies such as Canada and the EU may never escalate into a full-scale trade war, but those against China just might. Most economists agree that China’s trade policies are indeed unfair—and that Trump’s tariffs, crude and unwieldy instruments, are far more likely to end up hurting American workers than helping them.

Trump speculated in another Monday morning tweet that “China … may be exerting negative pressure” to disrupt the nuclear deal he made with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. Nevertheless, Trump wrote, he is confident that Kim will “honor the contract we signed &, even more importantly, our handshake.” Good lord.

I wrote at the time, and still believe, that Trump was right to meet with Kim. But if the president really trusts the handshake promise of a murderous dictator to give up the nuclear weapons he sees as an airtight insurance policy, then the president is a fool.

Trump is giving power to Russia and China while taking it away from the United States and the Atlantic alliance. Some greatness.

Benjamin Netanyahu Is Cozying Up to Europe’s Worst Authoritarians

“Europe needs to decide whether it wants to live and prosper, or it will disappear.” Those words belong not to former White House senior adviser Steve Bannon or the chairwoman of the ultranationalist Alternative for Germany, Frauke Petry, but Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who shared them with his Hungarian counterpart, Viktor Orban, in Budapest last year. As Noa Landau argues in Haaretz, this was not merely a prescient glimpse of Israel’s “systematic warming” to the Visegrád Four but an abandonment of the governing principles upon which it claims to pride itself.

In Landau’s telling, the linchpin of this burgeoning alliance is the migrant crisis engulfing Europe and the Middle East. Both Poland and Hungary, which are led by far-right governments, have advocated for screening centers within their borders, while European Union leadership has balked at such measures. Slovakia and the Czech Republic have ostensibly center-right governments, but the former has made no secret of its distaste for migrants, and the latter’s president, Milos Zeman, is a fervent Trump supporter with a long-reported history of Islamophobia.

“Israel has been exploiting this internal, complex and delicate European dissent in recent years in order to change the way decisions about its politics are made in the EU,” Landau contends. “Observers in Brussels point to a chilling effect created by the alliance between Israel and the V-4 on the ability to issue joint statements in the name of all 28 EU members.”

Netanyahu has already seen returns on his diplomatic investment. In May, Israel successfully thwarted the EU from condemning the United States’ relocation of its embassy. According to the Times of Israel, objections by “Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania helped Jerusalem stop the statement.”

As the embassy incident reveals, it’s not just V-4 nations that Netanyahu is cultivating. Israel has developed ties to Austria, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Cyprus and Greece, many of whose democracies are comparatively weaker than those in the rest of Europe. Fueled by Chinese investment in the region, Berlin is “preparing for the possibility that states in Central and Eastern Europe may leave the EU and set up a European-Asian autocratic union,” writes Landau.

The development would appear to suit Netanyahu just fine. Not only has he lent support both tacit and explicit to some of these countries, but he’s done so at a time when at least one has attempted to exculpate itself of its crimes during World War II. On Monday, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum joined Yad Vashem and Israeli Holocaust scholars in denouncing an Israeli-Polish statement on Poland’s role in Shoah, claiming it “does not secure a future for Holocaust education, scholarship and remembrance.” (In January, Poland passed legislation that would make accusing the country or its people of complicity in the mass exterminations a criminal offense.)

All of these maneuverings point to a single conclusion: Netanyahu, who narrowly defeated the Labor Party’s Isaac Herzog in 2015 after appealing to his country’s worst instincts, and who counts the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia among his closest allies in the region, has openly embraced authoritarianism.

“Israel has traditionally preferred strengthening ties with specific countries, but in the past, it recognized the importance of its ties with the EU, in terms of common interest and values,” warns Dr. Nimrod Goren of Mitvim, the Israeli Institute for Regional Foreign Policies. “In recent years there has been a change, and the ties with the Visegrad group reflect this well. The choice of these countries attests to Israel’s moving away from the values of a liberal democracy.”

Read Landau’s analysis in its entirety at Haaretz.

Amazon Is Quietly Selling Racist, Anti-Semitic Products, Report Finds

Amazon prides itself on the ability to sell and deliver almost any product imaginable. It also creates television shows and movies and builds its own electronics like the Kindle and Echo and runs such businesses as Whole Foods, Audible and IMDb. However, what should not be included in its vast offerings, according to its own policies, are “products that promote or glorify hatred, violence, racial, sexual or religious intolerance or promote organizations with such views.”

A new report from the Partnership for Working Families and the Action Center on Race & the Economy, however, outlines how Amazon continues to sell products and host content in violation of the company’s own rules. Many of the products are made or promoted by hate groups, as classified by the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center, both of which monitor extremist groups.

As the report says, “for growing racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic movements, the breadth of Amazon’s business combined with its weak and inadequately enforced policies provides a number of channels through which hate groups can generate revenue, propagate their ideas, and grow their movements.”

Among the items the researchers found are “a ‘Confederate Officer’ kids’ costume, which is stickered as ‘Amazon’s Choice,’ with the Confederate flag pin and patch gift set [and a] hangman’s noose lynching” decal.

Even babies are not exempt: “Parents looking for racist clothing for infants can purchase baby onesies featuring a burning cross.”

And for just $3 at the Kindle store (and more in hard copy), consumers can purchase “The Fable of the Ducks and the Hens: A Dramatic Saga of Intrigue, Propaganda and Subversion,” written by the founder of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln Rockwell.

“The description on Amazon’s site,” the report points out, “makes no mention of Rockwell’s background or the racist propaganda in the book. Parents considering the book would see it described as a ‘witty,’ colorfully illustrated story about ducks whose lives are ruined by ‘an influx of pushy, scheming hens.’ ”

Nazi and modern-day white supremacist imagery is also available. There are swords with SS symbols, swastika necklaces and toys featuring Pepe the Frog, a cartoon animal popular within the alt-right. These items are sold both by Amazon and the third-party sellers it hosts.

The continued sales of these items, the report explains, “are made possible by a combination of weak and poorly enforced policies.”

According to The New York Times, some of the items were taken off the site as of Sunday, but others, “like a sword with Nazi symbols, remained.”

An Amazon spokesperson reiterated the company’s anti-hate speech content to reporters Sunday, telling the Times that sellers “must follow our guidelines, and those who don’t are subject to swift action, including potential removal of their account.”

The company did not answer the Times’ questions about the specific items it had removed or any procedures for vetting products or content in the future. According to The Washington Post, “An Amazon spokesman said the company is in the process of removing some of the identified neo-Nazi bands from its music platform,” but the article doesn’t mention specific steps.

Moriah Montgomery, campaign director for the Partnership for Working Families and one of the report’s authors, told the Times about Amazon: “They’re making money, they are doing business with the people who are selling these things. The company has tremendous resources, and some of them should be devoted to making sure they are not propping up racist organizations.”

The report recommends that Amazon develop clearer, stricter and more consistent policies for the content and products it sells, and that it do so with help from organizations and experts that study hate groups.

“It’s about investing the resources in developing better policies and enforcing them adequately,” Carrie Sloan, research director for the Action Center on Race & the Economy, told The Washington Post. She said it’s also about “making a public commitment to say that Amazon will not be used to spread these ideologies.”

Where Is the Spirit of Rebellion?

Editor’s note: Journalist John Pilger gave this address on the 200th anniversary of the establishment of the Parramatta Female Factory, Sydney, a prison in Britain’s Australian colony where “intractable” female convicts mostly from Ireland and England were sent in the early 19th century.

Like all colonial societies, Australia has secrets. The way we treat indigenous people is still mostly a secret. For a long time, the fact that many Australians came from what was called “bad stock” was a secret.

“Bad stock” meant convict forebears: those like my great-great grandmother, Mary Palmer, who was incarcerated here, at the Female Factory in Parramatta in 1823.

According to nonsense spun by numerous aunts—who had irresistible bourgeois ambitions—Mary Palmer and the man she married, Francis McCarthy, were a lady and a gentleman of Victorian property and propriety.

In fact, Mary was the youngest member of a gang of wild young women, mostly Irish, who operated in the East End of London. Known as “The Ruffians,” they kept poverty at bay with the proceeds of prostitution and petty theft.

The Ruffians were eventually arrested and tried, and hanged—except Mary, who was spared because she was pregnant.

She was just 16 years old when she was manacled in the hold of a ship under sail, the Lord Sidmouth, bound for New South Wales “for the term of her natural life,” said the judge.

The voyage took five months, a purgatory of sickness and despair. I know what she looked like because, some years ago, I discovered an extraordinary ritual in St. Mary’s Cathedral in Sydney.

Every Thursday, in a vestry, a nun would turn the pages of a register of Irish Catholic convicts—and there was Mary, described as “not more than 4ft in height, emaciated and pitted with the ravages of smallpox.”

When Mary’s ship docked at Sydney Cove, no one claimed her as a servant or a skivvy. She was a “third class” convict and one of “the inflammable matter of Ireland.” Did her newly born survive the voyage? I don’t know.

They sent her up the Parramatta River to the Female Factory, which had distinguished itself as one of the places where Victorian penal experts were testing their exciting new theories. The treadwheel was introduced in the year Mary arrived, 1823. It was an implement of punishment and torture.

The Cumberland Pilgrim described the Female Factory as “appallingly hideous … the recreation ground reminds one of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.”

Arriving at night, Mary had nothing to sleep on, only boards and stone and straw, and filthy wool full of ticks and spiders. All the women underwent solitary confinement. Their heads were shaved, and they were locked in total darkness with the whine of mosquitoes.

There was no division by age or crime. Mary and the other women were called “the intractables.” With a mixture of horror and admiration, the Attorney General at the time, Roger Terry, described how the women had “driven back with a volley of stones and staves” soldiers sent to put down their rebellion. More than once, they breached the sandstone walls and stormed the community of Parramatta.

Missionaries sent from England to repair the souls of the women were given similar short shrift.

I am so proud of her.

Then there was “courting day.” Once a week, “bereft gentlemen” (whoever they might be) were given first pick, followed by soldiers, then male convicts.

Some of the women found “finery” and primped urgently, as if an inspecting male might provide a way out of their predicament. Others turned their backs should an aspiring mate be an “old stringybark fella” down from the bush.

During all this, the matron would shout out what she called “the good points” of each woman, which was a revelation to all.

In this way, my great-great grandparents met each other. I believe they were well matched.

Francis McCarthy had been transported from Ireland for the crime of “uttering unlawful oaths” against his English landlord. That was the charge leveled at the Tolpuddle Martyrs.

I am so proud of him.

Mary and Francis were married at St. Mary’s Church, later St. Mary’s Cathedral, on Nov. 9, 1823, with four other convict couples. Eight years later, they were granted their “ticket of leave” and Mary her “conditional pardon” by one Colonel Snodgrass, the captain general of New South Wales—the condition being she could never leave the colony.

Mary bore 10 children and they lived out hard lives, loved and respected by all accounts, to their 90th year.

My mother knew the secret about Mary and Francis. On her wedding day in 1922, and in defiance of her own family, she and my father came to these walls to pay tribute to Mary and the intractables. She was proud of her “bad stock.”

I sometimes wonder: Where is this spirit today? Where is the spirit of the intractables among those who claim to represent us and those of us who accept, in supine silence, the corporate conformity that is characteristic of much of the modern era in so-called developed countries?

Where are those of us prepared to “utter unlawful oaths” and stand up to the authoritarians and charlatans in government, who glorify war and invent foreign enemies and criminalize dissent and who abuse and mistreat vulnerable refugees to these shores and disgracefully call them “illegals.”

Mary Palmer was “illegal.” Francis McCarthy was “illegal.” All the women who survived the Female Factory and fought off authority, were “illegal.”

The memory of their courage and resilience and resistance should be honored, not traduced, in the way we are today. For only when we recognize the uniqueness of our past—our indigenous past and our proud convict past—will this nation achieve true independence.

Trump Administration to Release 50 Detained Children

SAN DIEGO—At least 50 immigrant children under age 5 will be released with their parents by Tuesday’s court-ordered deadline for the Trump administration to reunify families forcibly separated at the border, a government attorney said Monday.

That’s only about half of the 100 or so children covered by the court order.

At a court hearing, Justice Department lawyer Sarah Fabian acknowledged the Trump administration won’t meet the deadline for all the youngsters.

She said the government was still working to do background checks and confirm the relationships between the adults and children in its custody.

More than 2,000 children in all were separated from their parents by U.S. immigration authorities at the border this spring before President Donald Trump reversed course on June 20 amid an international outcry and said families should remain together.

Late last month, U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw set deadlines of Tuesday to reunite children under 5 with their parents and July 26 for older children. On Monday, the Justice Department updated the judge on its progress.

Before the court hearing, American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt said that a judge can impose sanctions, usually fines, for failure to meet a deadline but that the organization is not pressing for that at this time.

He said the ACLU instead wanted a detailed explanation of when all families will be reunited.

“At this point what we need is very specific, concrete steps,” he said.

Gelernt said the youngsters “have already suffered so much because of this policy, and every extra day apart just adds to that pain.”

A Plea to the Media: Don’t Move On From the Immigration Crisis

No, Mr. and Ms. Media, I am not ready to just move on. Yes, I realize that the next calamitous act by Donald Trump and his band of thugs will further desecrate the name of America and portend more ruinous consequences for many, but goddamn it, you cannot simply set aside the soul-murdering ramifications of having 3,000 helpless, innocent children set aswirl in chaos—an unregulated, uncoordinated, Babel-like system led by unprepared and clearly heartless political hacks more interested in covering their asses than in reunifying terrified children with heartbroken parents who have the audacity to be poor and nonwhite.

Yes, the possibility of Trump slobbering over Vladimir Putin while giving away more of the store is worthy of attention, but is it more important than the ongoing torture of innocents? The damage being done every day to this legion of lost children who have harmed no one tears at the heart of every sentient being in this country, even as it labels us all as uncaring, conniving monsters to the rest of the world. And is the rest of the world wrong to hold that opinion? What else are we if we turn away from lost, suffering infants and heartsick children and focus instead on the ever-unfolding follies of the pathologically needy man our system has vaulted into prominence?

If traducing the sanctity of the family isn’t a crime, it should be. And the willing accomplices to this racist monstrosity should be made to suffer every indignity they’ve been so dutifully willing to inflict on their victims. To snatch a babe from the arms of its mother is a new low for authorities in a nation that not long ago condemned soldiers who justified their crimes by claiming to be just “following orders.” But a special place in hell should be reserved for the bureaucrats who devised and supervised a one-way system that stripped child from parent with no thought of return. These are the villains who, their Machiavellian intentions now exposed, suggest they can meet the court-ordered “reunification” of these families by the simple expedient of placing any kid they can’t account for with a willing “foster parent.”

Really? Given the forethought and care they’ve demonstrated so far, why not just skip the middleman and ship the kid into slavery?

No, Mr. and Ms. Media, I’m not asking you to stop jollying us along by tracking and categorizing Trump’s ongoing buffoonery. I realize you have bills to pay and ratings to chase. What I am saying is that 3,000 children are in danger. Some may have already been lost. Arguably all have been severely traumatized in ways that will affect the rest of their lives—as long or short as they may be. Granted, these children are not being put into ovens or gassed to death, but in terms of fear, of horror, of pain, of literal torment, their plight constitutes a psychological holocaust of our making. And because the apparatus of our government is hopelessly entwined with and complicit in the perpetration of this tragedy, it can neither be expected nor trusted to properly solve it.

Mr. and Ms. Media, you are the Fourth Estate. The time, energy and investigative prowess your industry is known for should be put to the test, every day, of airing and remedying the plight of these children and exposing the crimes and the criminals responsible for it.

8 Ways Departing EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Suppressed Science

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt, who announced [last week] that he is resigning, leaves a legacy of suppressing the role of science at the agency.

Blocking science in the name of transparency

In March, Pruitt proposed a new “science transparency policy.” Under the proposed rule, when the EPA designs pollution standards and rules, it would use only studies in which the underlying data is public. Pruitt said his policy would prevent the EPA from using “secret science” that cannot be tested by other researchers. But scientists say important findings could be excluded.

One example is research by Harvard University that linked fine particle pollution in U.S. cities with an increase in deaths from lung and heart diseases. The data for the 1993 study was key to the EPA’s setting of health standards that regulate air pollution. But the study’s underlying data is not public because researchers promised confidentiality to their subjects, 8,000 adults and 14,000 children in six cities.

Firing academic science advisers

Pruitt fired Science Advisory Board members who receive EPA grants for their research, saying they cannot remain objective if they accept agency money. In replacing them, Pruitt transformed the board from a panel of the nation’s top environmental experts to one dominated by industry-funded scientists and state government officials who have fought federal regulations.

Pruitt removed 21 members of the advisory board, mostly academics, and replaced them with 16 experts with ties to industries regulated by the agency and two with no industry ties. Fourteen of the new members consulted or worked for the fossil fuel or chemical industries, which gave Pruitt nearly $320,000 for his campaigns in Oklahoma as a state senator and attorney general. Eleven new members of the EPA’s board have a history of downplaying the health risks of secondhand smoke, air pollution and other hazards, including two who have spun science for tobacco companies, according to an investigation by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting.

Misrepresenting climate change science

Pruitt repeatedly cast doubt on the scientific consensus that human activities are the primary cause of climate change. For instance, in a 2017 interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box,” Pruitt said: “I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do, and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s (carbon dioxide) a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.”

Along the same lines, HuffPost in March published leaked talking points from the EPA’s public affairs office. The memorandum seemed designed to downplay humans’ role in climate change.

This contradicts the overwhelming science that people are causing climate change.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its 2013 summary for policymakers found that it is “extremely likely that more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951 to 2010 was caused by the anthropogenic increase in greenhouse gas concentrations,” or human activity. By “extremely likely,” the group of international scientists means a probability of 95 to 100 percent.

Ignoring science to reduce protections for waterways

Pruitt took steps toward repealing Obama-era protections for waterways and wetlands to fulfill a Trump executive order to roll back the reach of the Clean Water Act. That rollback would strip federal protection from seasonal streambeds, isolated pools and other transitory wetlands, exposing them to damage, pollution or destruction from housing developments, energy companies and farms.

In June, Pruitt sent his proposal to redefine which waters are protected to the Office of Management and Budget, which is the final step before it is made public. Trump had ordered Pruitt to incorporate a definition put forth by late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, which defines protected waters as relatively permanent and continuously connected by surface water to navigable bays, rivers or lakes. If that definition is incorporated, it could allow damage to waterways that provide drinking water for more than 117 million Americans.

EPA brain drain

Pruitt’s hostility toward science fueled a brain drain at the EPA. The New York Times reported that out of 700 employees who left the agency in 2017, more than 200, or 27 percent, were scientists.

Among those leaving were 34 biologists and microbiologists, 19 chemists, 81 environmental engineers and environmental scientists, and more than a dozen toxicologists, life scientists and geologists. Few of these scientists have been replaced. According to the report, seven of the 129 people hired by the agency in 2017 were scientists.

Website goes light on science

After first removing the EPA’s Climate and Energy Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments web page, the agency relaunched it with a new name: Energy Resources for State, Local, and Tribal Governments. The new web page omits many links to EPA information that was designed to help local officials prepare for climate change and reduce climate change emissions, according to an October study by the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative.

Dirty power plants

Pruitt took steps to repeal the Clean Power Plan, the Obama-era regulation intended to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants 32 percent by 2030 compared with 2005.

Pruitt also was revamping an earlier Obama administration rule that required that all new power plants meet greenhouse gas standards that roughly equate to emissions from modern natural gas plants.

Budget cuts to tribes

Pruitt proposed deep cuts in the EPA’s budget that could slow the cleanup of the Navajo Nation’s uranium mines. So far, Congress has resisted much of the cuts. But Pruitt kept proposing them. For instance, the $2.9 billion he proposed in state and tribal assistance grants for fiscal 2019 would provide $574 million less than the current budget.

Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye worries that such cuts could derail the EPA’s efforts to identify the companies responsible for cleaning up old mines and supervise the projects.