Chris Hedges's Blog, page 539

Trump Pressed Aides on Venezuela Invasion, U.S. Official Says

BOGOTA, Colombia—As a meeting last August in the Oval Office to discuss sanctions on Venezuela was concluding, President Donald Trump turned to his top aides and asked an unsettling question: With a fast unraveling Venezuela threatening regional security, why can’t the U.S. just simply invade the troubled country?

The suggestion stunned those present at the meeting, including U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom have since left the administration. This account of the previously undisclosed conversation comes from a senior administration official familiar with what was said.

In an exchange that lasted around five minutes, McMaster and others took turns explaining to Trump how military action could backfire and risk losing hard-won support among Latin American governments to punish President Nicolas Maduro for taking Venezuela down the path of dictatorship, according to the official. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions.

But Trump pushed back. Although he gave no indication he was about to order up military plans, he pointed to what he considered past cases of successful gunboat diplomacy in the region, according to the official, like the invasions of Panama and Grenada in the 1980s.

The idea, despite his aides’ best attempts to shoot it down, would nonetheless persist in the president’s head.

The next day, Aug. 11, Trump alarmed friends and foes alike with talk of a “military option” to remove Maduro from power. The public remarks were initially dismissed in U.S. policy circles as the sort of martial bluster people have come to expect from the reality TV star turned commander in chief.

But shortly afterward, he raised the issue with Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, according to the U.S. official. Two high-ranking Colombian officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid antagonizing Trump confirmed the report.

Then in September, on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly, Trump discussed it again, this time at greater length, in a private dinner with leaders from four Latin American allies that included Santos, the same three people said and Politico reported in February.

The U.S. official said Trump was specifically briefed not to raise the issue and told it wouldn’t play well, but the first thing the president said at the dinner was, “My staff told me not to say this.” Trump then went around asking each leader if they were sure they didn’t want a military solution, according to the official, who added that each leader told Trump in clear terms they were sure.

Eventually, McMaster would pull aside the president and walk him through the dangers of an invasion, the official said.

Taken together, the behind-the-scenes talks, the extent and details of which have not been previously reported, highlight how Venezuela’s political and economic crisis has received top attention under Trump in a way that was unimaginable in the Obama administration. But critics say it also underscores how his “America First” foreign policy at times can seem outright reckless, providing ammunition to America’s adversaries.

The White House declined to comment on the private conversations. But a National Security Council spokesman reiterated that the U.S. will consider all options at its disposal to help restore Venezuela’s democracy and bring stability. Under Trump’s leadership, the U.S., Canada and European Union have levied sanctions on dozens of top Venezuelan officials, including Maduro himself, over allegations of corruption, drug trafficking and human rights abuses. The U.S. has also distributed more than $30 million to help Venezuela’s neighbors absorb an influx of more than 1 million migrants who have fled the country.

For Maduro, who has long claimed that the U.S. has military designs on Venezuela and its vast oil reserves, Trump’s bellicose talk provided the unpopular leader with an immediate if short-lived boost as he was trying to escape blame for widespread food shortages and hyperinflation. Within days of the president’s talk of a military option, Maduro filled the streets of Caracas with loyalists to condemn “Emperor” Trump’s belligerence, ordered up nationwide military exercises and threatened with arrest opponents he said were plotting his overthrow with the U.S.

“Mind your own business and solve your own problems, Mr. Trump!” thundered Nicolas Maduro, the president’s son, at the government-stacked constituent assembly. “If Venezuela were attacked, the rifles will arrive in New York, Mr. Trump,” the younger Maduro said. “We will take the White House.”

Even some of the staunchest U.S. allies were begrudgingly forced to side with Maduro in condemning Trump’s saber rattling. Santos, a big backer of U.S. attempts to isolate Maduro, said an invasion would have zero support in the region. The Mercosur trade bloc, which includes Brazil and Argentina, issued a statement saying “the only acceptable means of promoting democracy are dialogue and diplomacy” and repudiating “any option that implies the use of force.”

But among Venezuela’s beleaguered opposition movement, hostility to the idea of a military intervention has slowly eased.

A few weeks after Trump’s public comments, Harvard economics professor Ricardo Hausmann, a former Venezuelan planning minister, wrote a syndicated column titled “D Day Venezuela,” in which he called for a “coalition of the willing” made up of regional powers and the U.S. to step in and support militarily a government appointed by the opposition-led national assembly.

Mark Feierstein, who oversaw Latin America on the National Security Council during the Obama administration, said that strident U.S. action on Venezuela, however commendable, won’t loosen Maduro’s grip on power if it’s not accompanied by pressure from the streets. However, he thinks Venezuelans have largely been demoralized after a crackdown on protests last year triggered dozens of deaths, and the threat of more repression has forced dozens of opposition leaders into exile.

“People inside and outside the administration know they can ignore plenty of what Trump says,” Feierstein, who is now a senior adviser at the Albright Stonebridge Group, said of Trump’s talk of military invasion of Venezuela. “The concern is that it raised expectations among Venezuelans, many of whom are waiting for an external actor to save them.”

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin in Washington contributed to this report.

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Three Grievances America’s Founders Would Have Had Against Trump

In the section of the Declaration of Independence on grievances, there are a number of paragraphs that resonate with today’s politics. The whole authoritarian thrust of Trumpism, with the disregard for rule of law and for checks and balances among the branches of government, runs counter to the key concerns of the Founders.

*Trump keeps saying he’ll do whatever the generals advise him to do. This is a direct violation of the Founding Generation’s commitment to civilian control of the armed forces. They complained of the king:

“He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.”

* The Founding Generation deeply believed in immigration, and resented the reluctance of King George to allow immigrants into the 13 colonies.

The Declaration of Independence says,

“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither . . .”

The British crown saw non-British immigrants as lacking loyalty to the empire, i.e. as potential subversives, while the colonists were aware that a thin population was a brake on economic growth.

The colonists’ point is still valid today. Immigration causes economic growth. Immigrants fill niches different from those of locally-born workers and allow small firms to expand.

Turkey has taken in 2.5 million Syrian refugees since 2011, and has been growing around 4 percent a year. The International Monetary Fund believes that Turkish growth would have been negligible without the immigrants, who spurred growth.

Trump implies that stagnating wages are owing to immigrants. In fact, economists have determined that wage stagnation comes from the destruction of unions.

*Another grievance had to do with the independence of the judiciary, which they believed the king had undermined. Trump, in his attacks on the Mueller investigation, on the Department of Justice, and on judges who cross him, is guilty of the same sort of interference in the judiciary.

Cost of Rising Seas Could Reach $27 Trillion a Year by 2100

The rising seas’ cost may be $27 trillion a year in U.S. dollars for the world by 2100 if it fails to meet the UN’s 2ºC global warming limit by then, with sea level rise of, at its worst, almost six feet (nearly two meters), new research says.

A study led by the UK’s National Oceanography Centre (NOC) says the worldwide cost of flooding caused by rising sea levels, at their median level, could by 2100 be $14 trillion, if governments miss the United Nations target of keeping the rise in global temperatures, caused by unremitting fossil fuel use, to less than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels. But the extent and cost could be much higher.

The target was agreed by 195 nations in Paris in 2015, with many politicians and most scientists urging them to treat 2ºC as a more modest and feasible limit while aiming if possible for 1.5°C. The cuts in greenhouse gas emissions already promised through the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change are not yet enough to achieve the 2ºC limit, let alone the more stringent figure, and much deeper cuts will be needed.

The researchers also found that it was upper-middle income countries such as China that would see the largest increase in flood costs, while the richest ones would suffer the least, because of the high levels of protection infrastructure they already enjoyed. The research is published in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Svetlana Jevrejeva of the NOC is the study’s lead author. She said: “More than 600 million people live in low-elevation coastal areas, less than 10 meters above sea level. In a warming climate, global sea level will rise due to the melting of land-based glaciers and ice sheets, and from the thermal expansion of ocean waters. So sea level rise is one of the most damaging aspects of our warming climate.”

The researchers explored the pace and consequences of global and regional sea level rise under warming limited to both 1.5 ºC and 2 ºC, and compared their findings with projections for unmitigated warming.

Using World Bank income groups (high, upper-middle, lower-middle and low-income countries), they then assessed the impact of sea level rise in coastal areas from a global perspective.

Steep Increase

Dr Jevrejeva said: “We found that with a temperature rise trajectory of 1.5°C, by 2100 the median sea level will have risen by 0.52m (1.7ft). But, if the 2°C target is missed, we will see a median sea level rise of 0.86m (2.8ft), and a worst-case rise of 1.8m (5.9ft).”

If warming was not mitigated the global annual flood costs without adaptation would increase to $14tn annually for the median sea level rise of 0.86m, and up to $27tn per year for 1.8m. This would account for 2.8% of global GDP in 2100.

The conclusions she and her colleagues reached sound hair-raising and possibly far-fetched. But an earlier study put the possible global cost by 2100 of coastal flooding at nearly four times more than the NOC team – $100tn.

Another group of researchers suggested that if global warming continued at its present rate it could start a process in Antarctica which would lead ultimately to sea level rise of almost three metres.

Impact on Tropics

The projected difference in coastal sea levels is also likely to mean that tropical areas will see very high sea levels more often, the study says.

“These extreme sea levels will have a negative effect on the economies of developing coastal nations, and the habitability of low-lying coastlines,” said Dr Jevrejeva.

“Small, low-lying island nations such as the Maldives will be very easily affected, and the pressures on their natural resources and environment will become even greater.

“These results place further emphasis on putting even greater efforts into mitigating rising global temperatures.”

‘I Just Want to Tell My Son I Love Him’: Hearing From the Families Separated by ‘Zero Tolerance’

LOS FRESNOS, Texas — Calling from an unreliable phone at the Port Isabel Detention Center, her voice sounds muffled, and far away. To be understood, she needs to keep repeating herself. For her to hear the person calling, they need to yell.

Blanca wishes more than anything else that it was her two daughters, ages 6 and 14, on the other end of the line. But she hasn’t spoken to them since they were separated at the border, after a long journey from Honduras. It’s been almost three weeks.

To arrange calls at the facility run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, parents need to fill out a request form. Blanca says she has submitted five.

“This is maddening,” she said. “The officials, they don’t say anything.”

As President Donald Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy, which separated more than 2,500 children from their parents at the border in May and June, stretches into its third month, the administration has to contend with some impending deadlines, set by a judge last week after the American Civil Liberties Union sued. By July 10, children under 5 must be reunited with their parents. By July 26, all families must be together. By Friday, officials must arrange phone calls between all parents and children.

But a week after Department of Homeland Security officials called their process to reunify families “well-coordinated,” many parents at Port Isabel — the primary facility housing separated parents — don’t know where their children are and some still haven’t been able to reach their kids, according to three detainees interviewed by ProPublica, along with two family members of parents inside and five lawyers granted broader access to the facility, who say they have interviewed more than 200 separated parents and guardians. ProPublica is not including the detainees’ last names at their request; their immigration cases are still pending.

“I just want to tell my son I love him,” sobbed Arely, a mother from El Salvador, during a phone call with a reporter. She, too, had been in detention almost three weeks without a call.

ICE did not immediately respond to questions posed Friday about parents not being able to speak with their children, and being in the dark about their whereabouts. It did not respond to additional questions posed Sunday about how many separated parents are being held at Port Isabel, how many have been able to speak with their kids, and whether any have been released on bond.

The parents wait in a detention center where the telephones barely work, there’s no internet, and officers shut off the TV news when the topic turns to immigration, the detainees said. Phone conversations are guarded — detainees know calls are recorded. Rumors are what’s left. There was one about detention officers urging people to sign deportation papers as the quickest way to see their kids again. It’s made detainees wary about signing any piece of paper, even when it comes from lawyers offering to help connect them with their kids, said Sophia Gregg, an immigration lawyer at Legal Aid Justice.

When she and a group of lawyers came from Washington, D.C., to conduct outreach interviews with the parents two weeks ago, many parents overcame their distrust enough to pass them letters, in hopes that the lawyers would find their children and deliver the messages. ProPublica reviewed a portion of the letters.

In one, a father tries to reassure his daughter. Don’t worry, because I am with you. I want to ask you to eat well, and if you eat well, then I will be happy.

In another, a mother apologizes to her daughter, for putting you in this situation that is so difficult … I just pray to God that you are well, because I am suffering a lot for you. I want this nightmare to end already, my love.

No one outside DHS knows for sure how many separated parents are inside Port Isabel. Unlike some other immigrant detention facilities, this one does not make detainee information public, so the lawyers say it has taken extra work to reach parents. The lawyers who visited two weeks ago started with a small list of parents whose names they knew. Word of mouth within the dorms brought out more who previously had no contact with lawyers and no family members on the outside to help them.

The lawyers say they now have a list of more than 200 separated parents from Port Isabel. They hope a new database launched by the Vera Institute and New America will help reconnect the families.

When the lawyers first began reaching out to parents about three weeks ago, some told them they had been kept apart from their kids for days, others for close to a month. “ICE never came and talked to them and even asked if they were separated from their child,” said Jodi Goodwin, a local immigration lawyer. “Literally, there was zero communication at all.”

In conversations with the lawyers, parents weighed the decisions they’d have to make: Continue an asylum claim or choose deportation, hoping the U.S. government would stand by its word to reunite them with their children? If they lost their asylum claims, would they ask their children to give up theirs, too, or try to place them with family members in the U.S.? Some worried that their children were too young or did not know enough to accurately describe the danger in their home countries, especially after their parents had done their best to shield them from it. Such details are crucial to winning asylum cases.

Natasha Quiroga, an education civil rights lawyer who flew in from Washington to volunteer, said the stories flowed together: The mom concerned about her 7-year-old who is deaf and mute; the dad who had just signed his deportation orders, hoping it meant he would be reunified with his 4-year-old; the father who had no idea where his daughter was, and wanted to write a letter to her, but did not know how to write. Quiroga wrote the letter for him, transcribing as he repeated the same sentence over and over, telling her how much he loves her and how much he hopes to see her soon.

Such opportunities for contact with outsiders are rare at Port Isabel. The facility is tucked away down remote rural roads on Texas’ southeastern tip, making it difficult for lawyers to maintain a consistent presence.

Trying to coordinate speaking with a detainee from outside is also difficult. ProPublica was able to arrange calls with three detained parents with the help of lawyers and a family member who contacted ProPublica about a relative’s case. People on the outside can call and leave messages asking a detainee to call them back, but cannot call a detainee directly. So parents call outsiders back at unexpected times. You must be available to pick up and sometimes have your credit card handy to pay for the call, or else lose the chance. Once on the line, their phones sometimes break up and lose service unexpectedly.

For those inside Port Isabel, access to information is limited, detainees said. After their plight became national news, detainees say televisions began to show only telenovelas and English programming. Parents said they weren’t aware of the court order on reunification until they heard from lawyers. Jenn Elzea, a spokesperson for ICE, said that only some televisions in the facility are controlled by detention staff. “They do have access, in theory, to television throughout the facility,” she said. ICE Detention standard guidelines say, “All television viewing schedules shall be subject to the facility administrator’s approval.”

Goodwin, one of the lawyers, said ICE confiscated letters addressed to detainees by reporters, and pulled three intended recipients out of their dorms to ask, “Why does this person have your name? Where did they get your information?”

ICE did not immediately respond to questions about this posed on Sunday.

Democratic Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada toured the facility last week and offered their assessments. “It’s clear … They’re not running a reunification process here,” Warren said. In response, ICE promised to set up phone calls for every separated parent to speak to their children, lawyers said. ICE has also clarified that physical reunifications will not be taking place at Port Isabel, a detention center where children are not allowed to be held. “We are reuniting people via communication,” said Elzea.

And so, this past week, a trickle of officially coordinated phone calls slowly began. Parents were called one by one to small visitation rooms to hear their children’s voices for a few minutes.

“An officer would dial the number, make sure the Office of Refugee Resettlement employee was on the other line, and bring the parent to take the call,” said Ruby Powers, an immigration attorney based out of Houston who volunteered at Port Isabel this week. “You could just see tears of joy,” she said. “You can tell from a parent who has talked to a child and one who hasn’t … The parent who has, has a lot more peace.”

Some parents were so overcome with emotion during the brief calls, it didn’t cross their minds to ask their children where exactly they were, Quiroga said. Before they knew it, time was up.

Some calls were difficult for other reasons.

One mother told Goodwin her 6-year-old didn’t want to talk to her on the phone “porque me abandonaste, mamá” — because you abandoned me, mommy.

And Daisy, a 21-year-old separated from her 12-year-old brother, hung up feeling unsettled after a vague conversation, she told ProPublica. Normally hyperactive, he answered her in monosyllables.

“How are you?” Daisy asked. Good, he said.

“How’s it going?” Fine.

“Are you eating well?” Yes.

“Are you having any fun there?” Yeah.

She said she brought her brother to the U.S. border from Honduras after their mother died. Their father was violent, she said, and she felt she was the only person looking out for him. Lawyers said they are worried the two may face even more roadblocks in trying to reunite, as Daisy is a sibling, not a mother.

“When I spoke with him, it’s not like when you have them near — I don’t know the truth,” Daisy said. “He says he is fine, but I won’t really know until I see him. Then I’ll know that he is well.”

Even when family members do connect, it’s far from clear what happens next in the hastily created reunification process.

The Department of Homeland Security appears to present deportation as the only path to reunification. The department’s zero tolerance fact sheet says “a parent who is ordered removed from the U.S. may request that his or her minor child accompany them,” but says nothing about reunifying families during the immigration process and beyond. (Reporters have also documented cases of parents who were deported without their children, before the fact sheet was released.)

For those who hold out hope that they will be able to receive asylum protection in the U.S., this weekend brought a glimpse of what reunification might look like when a mother was released Saturday from a detention center in Arizona, after she passed the first step of her asylum claim.

Supporters helped her pay a $7,500 bond with a crowdfunding campaign and drove her to New York, where her three children — 6, 9, and 11 — had been placed in foster homes. She’ll be able to visit them as much as she wants from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., but she can’t take custody of them while her asylum case is pending, The New York Times reported. A relative in North Carolina has applied to sponsor the children, but the mother probably won’t be able to live with them, because every adult in a sponsor’s home must be legally vetted.

At Port Isabel, lawyers say they know of no parents who have been released on bond into the U.S.

So Blanca waits, straining to hear what she can on her unreliable lifeline to the outside world. She said her sister-in-law told her that her daughters are now in a New York foster home. But a social worker told her sister-in-law the location is undisclosed, to protect the caregiver’s privacy.

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What Trump Is Actually Doing With ‘Infrastructure’ Spending

Other than shouting about building a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, one of Donald Trump’s most frequently proclaimed promises on the 2016 campaign trail was the launching of a half-trillion-dollar plan to repair America’s crumbling infrastructure (employing large numbers of workers in the process). Eighteen months into his administration, no credible proposal for anything near that scale has been made. To the extent that the Trump administration has a plan at all for public investment, it involves pumping up Pentagon spending, not investing in roads, bridges, transportation, better Internet access, or other pressing needs of the civilian economy.

Not that President Trump hasn’t talked about investing in infrastructure. Last February, he even proposed a scheme that, he claimed, would boost the country’s infrastructure with $1.5 trillion in spending over the next decade. With a typical dose of hyperbole, he described it as “the biggest and boldest infrastructure investment in American history.”

Analysts from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania — Trump’s alma mater — beg to differ. They note that the plan actually involves only $200 billion in direct federal investment, less than one-seventh of the total promised. According to Wharton’s experts, much of the extra spending, supposedly leveraged from the private sector as well as state and local governments, will never materialize. In addition, were such a plan launched, it would, they suggest, fall short of its goal by a cool trillion dollars. In the end, the spending levels Trump is proposing would have “little to no impact” on the nation’s gross domestic product. To add insult to injury, the president has exerted next to no effort to get even this anemic proposal through Congress, where it’s now dead in the water.

There is, however, one area of federal investment on which Trump and the Congress have worked overtime with remarkable unanimity to increase spending: the Pentagon, which is slated to receive more than $6 trillion over the next decade. This year alone increases will bring total spending on the Pentagon and related agencies (like the Department of Energy where work on nuclear warheads takes place) to $716 billion. That $6-trillion, 10-year figure represents more than 30 times as much direct spending as the president’s $200 billion infrastructure plan.

In reality, Pentagon spending is the Trump administration’s substitute for a true infrastructure program and it’s guaranteed to deliver public investments, but neglect just about every area of greatest civilian need from roads to water treatment facilities.

The Pentagon’s Covert Industrial Policy

One reason the Trump administration has chosen to pump money into the Pentagon is that it’s the path of least political resistance in Washington. A combination of fear, ideology, and influence peddling radically skews “debate” there in favor of military outlays above all else. Fear — whether of terrorism, Russia, China, Iran, or North Korea — provides one pillar of support for the habitual overfunding of the Pentagon and the rest of the national security state (which in these years has had a combined trillion-dollar annual budget). In addition, it’s generally accepted in Washington that being tagged “soft on defense” is the equivalent of political suicide, particularly for Democrats. Add to that the millions of dollars spent by the weapons industry on lobbying and campaign contributions, its routine practice of hiring former Pentagon and military officials, and the way it strategically places defense-related jobs in key states and districts, and it’s easy to see how the president and Congress might turn to arms spending as the basis for a covert industrial policy.

The Trump plan builds on the Pentagon’s already prominent role in the economy. By now, it’s the largest landowner in the country, the biggest institutional consumer of fossil fuels, the most significant source of funds for advanced government research and development, and a major investor in the manufacturing sector. As it happens, though, expanding the Pentagon’s economic role is the least efficient way to boost jobs, innovation, and economic growth.

Unfortunately, there is no organized lobby or accepted bipartisan rationale for domestic funding that can come close to matching the levers of influence that the Pentagon and the arms industry have at their command. This only increases the difficulty Congress has when it comes to investing in infrastructure, clean energy, education, or other direct paths toward increasing employment and economic growth.

Former congressman Barney Frank once labeled the penchant for using the Pentagon as the government’s main economic tool “weaponized Keynesianism” after economist John Maynard Keynes’s theory that government spending should pick up the slack in investment when private-sector spending is insufficient to support full employment. Currently, of course, the official unemployment rate is low by historical standards. However, key localities and constituencies, including the industrial Midwest, rural areas, and urban ones with significant numbers of black and Hispanic workers, have largely been left behind. In addition, millions of “discouraged workers” who want a job but have given up actively looking for one aren’t even counted in the official unemployment figures, wage growth has been stagnant for years, and the inequality gap between the 1% and the rest of America is already in Gilded Age territory.

Such economic distress was crucial to Donald Trump’s rise to power. In campaign 2016, of course, he endlessly denounced unfair trade agreements, immigrants, and corporate flight as key factors in the plight of what became a significant part of his political base: downwardly mobile and displaced industrial workers (or those who feared that this might be their future fate).

The Trump Difference

Although insufficient, increases in defense manufacturing and construction can help areas where employment in civilian manufacturing has been lagging. Even as it’s expanded, however, defense spending has come to play an ever-smaller role in the U.S. economy, falling from 8%-10% of the gross domestic product in the 1950s and 1960s to under 4% today. Still, it remains crucial to the economic base in defense-dependent locales like Southern California, Connecticut, Georgia, Massachusetts, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, and Washington state. Such places, in turn, play an outsized political role in Washington because their congressional representatives tend to cluster on the armed services, defense appropriations, and other key committees, and because of their significance on the electoral map.

A long-awaited Trump administration “defense industrial base” study should be considered a tip-off that the president and his key officials see Pentagon spending as the way to economically prime the pump. Note, as a start, that the study was overseen not by a defense official but by the president’s economics and trade czar, Peter Navarro, whose formal title is White House director of trade and industrial policy. A main aim of the study is to find a way to bolster smaller defense firms that subcontract to giants like Boeing, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin.

Although Trump touted the study as a way to “rebuild” the U.S. military when he ordered it in May 2017, economic motives were clearly a crucial factor. Navarro typically cited the importance of a “healthy, growing economy and a resilient industrial base,” identifying weapons spending as a key element in achieving such goals. The CEO of the Aerospace Industries Association, one of the defense lobby’s most powerful trade groups, underscored Navarro’s point when, in July 2017, he insisted that “our industry’s contributions to U.S. national security and economic well-being can’t be taken for granted.” (He failed to explain how an industry that absorbs more than $300 billion per year in Pentagon contracts could ever be “taken for granted.”)

Trump’s defense-industrial-base policy tracks closely with proposals put forward by Daniel Goure of the military-contractor-funded Lexington Institute in a December 2016 article titled “How Trump Can Invest in Infrastructure and Make America Great Again.” Goure’s main point: that Trump should make military investments — like building naval shipyards and ammunition plants — part and parcel of his infrastructure plan. In doing so, he caught the essence of the arms industry’s case regarding the salutary effects of defense spending on the economy:

“Every major military activity, whether production of a new weapons system, sustainment of an existing one or support for the troops, is embedded in a web of economic activities and supports an array of businesses. These include not only major defense contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, and Raytheon, but a host of middle-tier and even mom-and-pop businesses. Money spent at the top ripples through the economy. Most of it is spent not on unique defense items, but on products and services that have commercial markets too.”

What Goure’s analysis neglects, however, is not just that every government investment stimulates multiple sectors of the economy, but that virtually any other kind would have a greater ripple effect on employment and economic growth than military spending does. Underwritten by the defense industry, his analysis is yet another example of how the arms lobby has distorted economic policy and debate in this country.

These days, it seems as if there’s nothing the military won’t get involved in. Take another recent set of “security” expenditures in what has already become a billion-dollar-plus business: building and maintaining detention centers for children, mainly unaccompanied minors from Central America, caught up in the Trump administration’s brutal security crackdown on the U.S.-Mexico border. One company, Southwest Key, has already received a $955-million government contract to work on such facilities. Among the other beneficiaries is the major defense contractor General Dynamics, normally known for making tanks, ballistic-missile-firing submarines, and the like, not ordinarily ideal qualifications for taking care of children.

Last but not least, President Trump has worked overtime to tout his promotion of U.S. arms sales as a jobs program. In a May 2018 meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman at the White House (with reporters in attendance), he typically brandished a map that laid out just where U.S. jobs from Saudi arms sales would be located. Not coincidentally, many of them would be in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, and Florida that had provided him with his margin of victory in the 2016 elections. Trump had already crowed about such Saudi deals as a source of “jobs, jobs, jobs” during his May 2017 visit to Riyadh, that country’s capital. And he claimed on one occasion — against all evidence — that his deals with the Saudi regime for arms and other equipment could create “millions of jobs.”

The Trump administration’s decision to blatantly put jobs and economic benefits for U.S. corporations above human rights considerations and strategic concerns is likely to have disastrous consequences. Its continued sales of bombs and other weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for example, allows them to go on prosecuting a brutal war in Yemen that has already killed thousands of civilians and put millions more at risk of death from famine and disease. In addition to being morally reprehensible, such an approach could turn untold numbers of Yemenis and others across the Middle East into U.S. enemies — a high price to pay for a few thousand jobs in the arms sector.

Pentagon Spending Versus a Real Infrastructure Plan

While the Trump administration’s Pentagon spending will infuse new money into the economy, it’s certainly a misguided way to spur economic growth. As University of Massachusetts economist Heidi Garrett-Peltier has demonstrated, when it comes to creating jobs, military spending lags far behind investment in civilian infrastructure, clean energy, health care, or education. Nonetheless, the administration is moving full speed ahead with its military-driven planning.

In addition, Trump’s approach will prove hopeless when it comes to addressing the fast-multiplying problems of the country’s ailing infrastructure. The $683 billion extra that the administration proposes putting into Pentagon spending over the next 10 years pales in comparison to the trillions of dollars the American Society of Civil Engineers claims are needed to modernize U.S. infrastructure. Nor will all of that Pentagon increase even be directed toward construction or manufacturing activities (not to speak of basic infrastructural needs like roads and bridges). A significant chunk of it will, for instance, be dedicated to paying the salaries of the military’s massive cadre of civilian and military personnel or health care and other benefits.

In their study, the civil engineers suggest that failing to engage in a major infrastructure program could cost the economy $4 trillion and 2.5 million jobs by 2025, something no Pentagon pump-priming could begin to offset. In other words, using the Pentagon as America’s main conduit for public investment will prove a woeful approach when it comes to the health of the larger society.

One era in which government spending did directly stimulate increased growth, infrastructural development, and the creation of well-paying jobs was the 1950s, a period for which Donald Trump is visibly nostalgic. For him, those years were evidently the last in which America was truly “great.” Many things were deeply wrong with the country in the fifties — from rampant racism, sexism, and the denial of basic human rights to McCarthyite witch hunts — but on the economic front the government did indeed play a positive role.

In those years, public investment went far beyond Pentagon spending, which President Dwight Eisenhower (of “military-industrial complex” fame) actually tried to rein in. It was civilian investments — from the G.I. Bill to increased incentives for housing construction to the building of an interstate highway system — that contributed in crucial ways to the economic boom of that era. Whatever its failures and drawbacks, including the ways in which African-Americans and other minorities were grossly under-represented when it came to sharing the benefits, the Eisenhower investment strategy did boost the overall economy in a fashion the Trump plan never will.

The notion that the Pentagon can play a primary role in boosting employment to any significant degree is largely a myth that serves the needs of the military-industrial complex, not American workers or Donald Trump’s base. Until the political gridlock in Washington that prevents large-scale new civilian investments of just about any sort is broken, however, the Pentagon will continue to seem like the only game in town. And we will all pay a price for those skewed priorities, in both blood and treasure.

The Creator of the World Wide Web Is ‘Devastated’ by What It Has Become

Tim Berners-Lee isn’t a household name like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. He is, however, the inventor of a tool that has dramatically remade the way the world communicates, shares information, even lives. In 1989, Berners-Lee created what became the World Wide Web, releasing the code for free. Now, after multiple privacy scandals involving Facebook and Twitter, and especially after revelations of how Russian hackers used Facebook to attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. election, Berners-Lee is redoubling his efforts to save the internet, as he explains in a newly published interview with Vanity Fair.

He has, as the article observes, “never directly profited off his invention” and “spent most of his life trying to guard it.” He always knew that his creation could fall into the wrong hands, but the web’s role in the 2016 election shocked him. “I was devastated,” Berners-Lee told writer Katrina Brooker. “Actually, physically—my mind and body were in a different state.”

He had spent years advocating for a free and open internet but consolidated his efforts in 2009, starting the World Wide Web Foundation to, as explained on the organization’s site, “advance the open web as a public good and a basic right.”

The World Wide Web Foundation was instrumental in the fight for “net neutrality,” bridging the gender gap in internet access for women in Mexico and India, supporting Ugandans suing their government over a tax on the use of social media, and, most critically, funding research to examine how Facebook’s algorithms determine what kind of information its users are exposed to. Those algorithms, as the world learned in 2016, had political consequences.

As CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote in March, congressional investigators, lawyers and other analysts examining Facebook’s impact on the 2016 election found a “pipeline of Russian propaganda. A so-called troll farm hijacked Facebook’s platform to sow chaos and, eventually, to try to tip the scale in Donald Trump’s direction.”

A New York Times/Observer investigation found Facebook had sold user data to the voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica, which had close ties to the Trump campaign.

“Looking at the ways algorithms are feeding people news and looking at accountability for the algorithms—all of that is really important for the open Web,” Berners-Lee said.

To achieve his goal of accountability, Berners-Lee is also focused on building Solid, a project housed at MIT that, Vanity Fair explains, aims to “re-decentralize the Web.” The platform is designed to “give individuals, rather than corporations, control of their own data.”

The idea is still in its infancy, but if Berners-Lee and his team can turn it into reality it will have potential to democratize the web:

The system aims to give users a platform by which they can control access to the data and content they generate on the web. This way, users can choose how that data gets used rather than, say, Facebook and Google doing with it as they please. Solid’s code and technology is open to all—anyone with access to the internet can come into its chat room and start coding.

Berners-Lee’s vision of an internet controlled by people, rather than by massive corporations, is a tall order in the age of Google and Facebook. These tech giants may be, as Vanity Fair says, “chastened by bad press and public outrage,” but as long as their behavior, however abhorrent to many, is both legal and lucrative, it’s hard to see an opening for legislative action. Still, Berners-Lee is trying.

As for what the average, non-tech-savvy person can do, he ends his Vanity Fair interview with the following advice: “You don’t have to have any coding skills. You just have to have a heart to decide enough is enough. Get out your Magic Marker and your signboard and your broomstick. And go out on the streets.”

The Creator of the World Wide Web Is ‘Devastated’ by What it Has Become

Tim Berners-Lee isn’t a household name like Steve Jobs, Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg. He is, however, the inventor of a tool that has dramatically remade the way the world communicates, shares information, even lives. In 1989, Berners-Lee created what became the World Wide Web, releasing the code for free. Now, after multiple privacy scandals involving Facebook and Twitter, and especially after revelations of how Russian hackers used Facebook to attempt to influence the 2016 U.S. election, Berners-Lee is redoubling his efforts to save the internet, as he explains in a newly published interview with Vanity Fair.

He has, as the article observes, “never directly profited off his invention” and “spent most of his life trying to guard it.” He always knew that his creation could fall into the wrong hands, but the web’s role in the 2016 election shocked him. “I was devastated,” Berners-Lee told writer Katrina Brooker. “Actually, physically—my mind and body were in a different state.”

He had spent years advocating for a free and open internet but consolidated his efforts in 2009, starting the World Wide Web Foundation to, as explained on the organization’s site, “advance the open web as a public good and a basic right.”

The World Wide Web Foundation was instrumental in the fight for “net neutrality,” bridging the gender gap in internet access for women in Mexico and India, supporting Ugandans suing their government over a tax on the use of social media, and, most critically, funding research to examine how Facebook’s algorithms determine what kind of information its users are exposed to. Those algorithms, as the world learned in 2016, had political consequences.

As CNN’s Brian Stelter wrote in March, congressional investigators, lawyers and other analysts examining Facebook’s impact on the 2016 election found a “pipeline of Russian propaganda. A so-called troll farm hijacked Facebook’s platform to sow chaos and, eventually, to try to tip the scale in Donald Trump’s direction.”

A New York Times/Observer investigation found Facebook had sold user data to the voter-profiling company Cambridge Analytica, which had close ties to the Trump campaign.

“Looking at the ways algorithms are feeding people news and looking at accountability for the algorithms—all of that is really important for the open Web,” Berners-Lee said.

To achieve his goal of accountability, Berners-Lee is also focused on building Solid, a project housed at MIT that, Vanity Fair explains, aims to “re-decentralize the Web.” The platform is designed to “give individuals, rather than corporations, control of their own data.”

The idea is still in its infancy, but if Berners-Lee and his team can turn it into reality it will have potential to democratize the web:

The system aims to give users a platform by which they can control access to the data and content they generate on the web. This way, users can choose how that data gets used rather than, say, Facebook and Google doing with it as they please. Solid’s code and technology is open to all—anyone with access to the internet can come into its chat room and start coding.

Berners-Lee’s vision of an internet controlled by people, rather than by massive corporations, is a tall order in the age of Google and Facebook. These tech giants may be, as Vanity Fair says, “chastened by bad press and public outrage,” but as long as their behavior, however abhorrent to many, is both legal and lucrative, it’s hard to see an opening for legislative action. Still, Berners-Lee is trying.

As for what the average, non-tech-savvy person can do, he ends his Vanity Fair interview with the following advice: “You don’t have to have any coding skills. You just have to have a heart to decide enough is enough. Get out your Magic Marker and your signboard and your broomstick. And go out on the streets.”

Trump Continues Interviews With Supreme Court Candidates

WASHINGTON — President Trump spoke with three more potential Supreme Court candidates on Tuesday as a key senator privately aired concerns about one of the contenders.

That follows four Trump interviews with judicial candidates a day earlier, as well as a conversation with Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who is not regarded as a top contender. An administration official said Trump had spoken to seven candidates in total.

“These are very talented people, brilliant people,” Trump said during an appearance in West Virginia. “We’re going to give you a great one.”

With trademark flair, Trump has said he’ll announce his pick to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on Monday, choosing from a list of 25 candidates vetted by conservative groups. Top contenders include federal appeals judges Raymond Kethledge, Amul Thapar, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

Trump has also been consulting with lawmakers — including Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., who has expressed reservations about Kavanaugh’s candidacy, according to a person familiar with the call.

Paul has told colleagues that he wouldn’t vote in favor of Kavanaugh if the judge is nominated, citing Kavanaugh’s role during the Bush administration on cases involving executive privilege and the disclosure of documents to Congress.

Trump’s choice to replace Kennedy — a swing vote on the nine-member court — has the potential to be part of precedent-shattering court decisions on abortion, health care, gay marriage and other issues.

On Monday, Trump interviewed Kethledge, Thapar, Kavanaugh and Barrett, according to a person with knowledge of the meetings who was not authorized to speak publicly about them.

The White House did not disclose Trump’s additional conversations, but two other names considered top contenders are Thomas Hardiman, who has served with Trump’s sister, now on senior inactive status, on the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia; and Joan Larsen, who serves on the federal appeals court in Cincinnati and previously served as a Michigan Supreme Court Justice.

The president also spoke by phone with Lee on Monday, as first reported by the Deseret News and later confirmed by the senator’s office, which characterized it as an interview. Asked about the call, White House spokesman Raj Shah said only, “Yesterday, the President spoke on the phone with Sen. Mike Lee.” Lee is the only lawmaker on Trump’s list of potential justices.

Since Trump said his short list includes at least two women, speculation has focused on Barrett, a former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia and a longtime Notre Dame Law School professor who serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

Conservative groups rallied around Barrett after her confirmation hearing last year featured questioning from Democrats over how her Roman Catholic faith would affect her decisions.

“There’s little doubt from the movement perspective that Barrett would be an excellent choice. It also might make sense politically,” said Tom Fitton of the conservative group Judicial Watch. He said Barrett “has been through the fire in terms of an unpleasant confirmation hearing. There won’t be much new under the sun.”

Barrett has won some high-profile praise, with former House speaker and Trump ally Newt Gingrich tweeting Monday: “Judge Amy Coney Barrett would make an outstanding Supreme Court Justice. Her clarity and intellectual strength in the Senate hearings for her current judgeship showed an intellect and a depth of thought that would be powerful on the Supreme Court.”

But her short tenure on the bench may work against her. And Democrats claim that Barrett — like the other picks — would favor overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 case that affirmed a woman’s right to abortion, and would weaken President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law.

Brian Fallon, who is heading a group opposing Trump’s judicial picks, said Barrett had been outspoken on both issues, adding, “I wouldn’t be intimidated at all if that’s the direction that they go.”

During his 2016 campaign and presidency, Trump has embraced anti-abortion groups and vowed to appoint federal judges who will favor efforts to roll back abortion rights. But he told reporters Friday that he would not question potential high-court nominees about their views on abortion, saying it was “inappropriate to discuss.”

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, has said she would oppose any nominee she believed would overturn Roe v. Wade, stressing she wants to back a judge who would show respect for settled law such as the Roe decision.

Without Kennedy, the high court will have four justices picked by Democratic presidents and four picked by Republicans, giving Trump the chance to shift the ideological balance toward conservatives for years to come. Both Chief Justice John Roberts and Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first pick to the high court, have indicated more broadly that they respect legal precedent.

Currently the court has three women justices, all appointed by Democrats.

___

Associated Press reporters Mark Sherman, Hope Yen and Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

Republican Congressman Barred From Entering Detention Camp for Children

Immigrant rights advocates earned a dramatic victory this week when a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration cannot indefinitely detain asylum seekers awaiting hearings. Still, more than a week after President Trump signed an executive order halting the practice of family separation, thousands of children remain in camps across the country, with no plan in place to reunite them with their parents.

According to Rep. Jeff Denham of California, at least 25 such boys and girls are being housed at a facility in the San Francisco suburb of Pleasant Hill. On Monday, the California congressman attempted to visit the detention center, which is in a district near the one he represents, only to be denied entry. As the Sacramento Bee reveals, “employees inside had been instructed to not answer the door, not to even speak to him.”

Denham, a Republican up for re-election this November, maintains that he coordinated with Trump administration officials to tour the building, and had been told Friday that he had clearance to enter. He also claims that Southwest Key, the nonprofit running the facility, had requested two weeks’ notice before his visit without offering an explanation.

“They knew that we were coming,” Denham told reporters Monday. “We knew cameras most likely wouldn’t be allowed in, but if they wanted to show the conditions, and what a lovely facility they run, then why wouldn’t they want people to come in and report on it?”

Denham is not the first elected official to be denied access to an immigrant detention camp. Last month, Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley of Oregon was barred from entering a facility operated in Brownsville, Texas, by the Office of Refugee Resettlement. At a separate holding center, he described seeing “cages that looked like dog kennels.”

Despite Trump’s executive order, administration officials maintain that his “zero tolerance policy,” which prosecutes migrants for entering the country illegally, remains in effect. A report from NBC News on Tuesday indicates that Border Patrol officials have been instructed to present migrant parents with an ultimatum: Leave the country with your kids or do so without them.

“Similar instructions were given to child welfare workers in U.S. Health and Human Services shelters before Trump ended family separations,” the report reads. “The workers were instructed to reunite parents and children only if the parents agreed to drop their own asylum claims as well as the claim of their child and be deported.”

Shame on the Supreme Court for Upholding Trump’s Muslim Ban

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, affirming Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, allows the United States to act in flagrant violation of international law.

Under the guise of deferring to the president on matters of national security, the 5-4 majority disregarded a litany of Trump’s anti-Muslim statements and held that the ban does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which forbids the government from preferring one religion over another. Neither the majority nor the dissenting opinions even mentions the U.S.’ legal obligations under international human rights law.

The travel ban violates two treaties to which the United States is a party: the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. It also runs afoul of customary international law.

Both these treaties and customary international law prohibit the government from discriminating on the basis of religion or national origin. Trump’s Muslim ban does both.

Trump v. Hawaii “signals strongly that international law in general, and international human rights law in particular, no longer binds the United States in federal courts,” Aaron Fellmeth, professor at Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law, wrote in an email. “Fortunately, it does not squarely hold that, but the effect may prove to be the same. For now, the Supreme Court appears determined to be complicit in U.S. human rights violations and cannot be relied upon as a check on the Executive Branch.”

The case that the Supreme Court ruled on this week involved the legality of Trump’s third travel ban. Issued by Trump in a “proclamation” on September 24, 2017, the third iteration of the ban restricts travel by most citizens of Libya, Syria, Iran, Yemen, Chad, Somalia and North Korea. The ban forbids everyone from Syria and North Korea from obtaining visas. Nationals from the other six countries have to undergo additional security checks. Iranian students are exempted from the ban. The ban also forbids Venezuelan government officials and their families from traveling to the U.S.

More than 150 million people, roughly 95 percent of them Muslim, are affected by the ban.

Two prior iterations of the ban restricted travel of citizens from only Muslim-majority countries. After federal courts struck them down, Trump cosmetically added Venezuela and North Korea to avoid charges of religious discrimination.

As Justice Sonya Sotomayor, joined by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, wrote in her dissent, “it is of no moment” that Trump included “minor restrictions” on North Korea and Venezuela—two non-Muslim-majority countries. Travel by North Korean nationals was already restricted and the ban bars travel only by Venezuelan officials and their families.

Court Did Not Address International Law Claims



All the justices on the Supreme Court ignored significant international law arguments in their majority and dissenting opinions in spite of an amicus brief signed by 81 international law scholars, including this writer, and a dozen nongovernmental organizations. The amicus brief drew attention to the travel ban’s violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, both of which the United States has ratified.

Ratification of a treaty not only makes the United States a party to that treaty, its provisions also become part of U.S. domestic law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, which says treaties “shall be the supreme law of the land.”

Customary international law arises from the general and consistent practice of states. It is part of federal common law and must be enforced in U.S. courts, whether or not its provisions are enshrined in a ratified treaty. Courts have a duty to rein in federal executive action which conflicts with a ratified treaty.

In Trump v. Hawaii, the high court concluded that the ban did not violate the Immigration and Nationality Act. We argued in our amicus brief:

The Immigration and Nationality Act and other statutes must be read in harmony with these international legal obligations pursuant to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution and long established principles of statutory construction requiring acts of Congress to be interpreted in a manner consistent with international law, whenever such a construction is reasonably possible.

But the Court did not construe the legality of the travel ban in light of U.S. treaty obligations and customary international law.

The primary thrust of the ban is to prohibit Muslims from entering the United States and thus constitutes religious discrimination. By singling out specific countries for exclusion, the ban also makes a prohibited distinction on the basis of national origin.

Muslim Ban Violates International Covenant



The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits distinctions based on religion or national origin, which have “the purpose or effect of nullifying or impairing the recognition, enjoyment or exercise by all persons, on an equal footing of human rights and fundamental freedoms,” the United Nation Human Rights Committee, which monitors compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, has said.

Although the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights does not generally “recognize a right of aliens to enter or reside in the territory of a State party …  in certain circumstances an alien may enjoy the protection of the Covenant even in relation to entry or residence, for example, when considerations of non-discrimination, prohibition of inhuman treatment and respect for family life arise,” the Human Rights Committee opined.

The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights prohibits discrimination against the family. “The family is the natural and fundamental group of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.” Immigrants and refugees flee their countries of origin and come to the United States to reunify with their families. The covenant protects them against discrimination based on religion or national origin. They need not be physically present in the United States to enjoy these protections.

The non-discrimination provisions of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also constitute customary international law. In 1948, the United States approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which is part of customary international law. The declaration forbids discrimination based on religion or national origin, guarantees equal protection of the law and shields family life against arbitrary interference.

Ban Violates Convention Against Discrimination



The International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination also prohibits discrimination based on religion or national origin and doesn’t confine its nondiscrimination provisions to citizens or resident noncitizens. While the convention “does not speak specifically to restrictions on entry of nonresident aliens,” our amicus brief states, “the general language of [the Convention Against Racial Discrimination] expresses a clear intention to eliminate discrimination based on race or national origin from all areas of government activity.”

States parties to the convention “shall not permit public authorities or public institutions, national or local, to promote or incite racial discrimination.” Parties are required to outlaw speech that stigmatizes or stereotypes noncitizens, immigrants, refugees and people seeking asylum.

Evidence of the Discriminatory Nature of the Travel Ban



Even though the Supreme Court majority held that the ban did not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, much evidence exists to the contrary.

The Establishment Clause says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” That means “one religious denomination cannot be officially preferred over another,” according to Supreme Court case law.

After quoting a few of Trump’s anti-Muslim statements, Chief Justice John Roberts said, “the issue before us is not whether to denounce the statements” but rather “the significance of those statements in reviewing a Presidential directive, neutral on its face, addressing a matter within the core of executive responsibility.” Roberts added, “we must consider not only the statements of a particular President, but also the authority of the Presidency itself.”

Roberts wrote that the Court could consider the president’s statements, “but will uphold the policy so long as it can reasonably be understood to result from a justification independent of unconstitutional grounds.” Courts must give great deference to the president in immigration matters and will uphold his policy if it has any legitimate purpose, Roberts added. “The entry suspension has a legitimate grounding in national security concerns, quite apart from any religious hostility.” The text doesn’t specifically mention religion, so Roberts wrote it was “neutral on its face.”

Justice Sotomayor spent seven of the 28 pages of her dissent listing more than a dozen statements by Trump denigrating Muslims. She cited the policy’s initial purpose as a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” in Trump’s words. But that policy “now masquerades behind a façade of national security concerns,” Sotomayor wrote.

She quoted a Trump adviser who said, “When [Donald Trump] first announced it, he said, ‘Muslim ban.’ ” Sotomayor also listed Trump’s declarations that “Islam hates us,” “we’re having problems with Muslims coming into the country” and “Muslims do not respect us at all.”

Trump said President Franklin D. Roosevelt “did the same thing” with his internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, Sotomayor noted. Trump told a story about General John J. Pershing killing a large group of Muslim insurgents in the Philippines with bullets dipped in pig’s blood. When he issued his first ban, Trump explained that Christians would be given preference for entry as refugees into the United States. He also retweeted three anti-Muslim videos.

“Taking all the relevant evidence together,” Sotomayor wrote, “a reasonable observer would conclude that the Proclamation was driven primarily by anti-Muslim animus, rather than by the Government’s asserted national security justifications.” The Proclamation, she added, “is nothing more than a ‘religious gerrymander.’ ”

Looking Ahead

There is hope that the most abhorrent effects of this case can be mitigated. Yale law professor Harold Hongju Koh wrote on Scotusblog that transnational actors—including nation-states, international organizations, nongovernmental organizations, multinational enterprises and private individuals—will invariably file litigation in international fora based on international law to lessen the impact of the ruling in Trump v. Hawaii:

[A]s they have done against other Trump policies, other transnational actors will invoke what I have called “transnational legal process” to contest and limit the impact of the court’s ruling. As they did after losing the Haitian interdiction case at the Supreme Court 25 years ago, litigants will surely seek out international fora to make arguments against the travel ban based on international law.

The Constitution’s Take Care Clause requires the president to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” Trump has a constitutional duty to comply with U.S. legal obligations under both treaty and customary international law.

By enacting a travel ban aimed at excluding from the United States people from six Muslim-majority countries, Trump has violated both the Constitution and international law.