Chris Hedges's Blog, page 580

Syria Declares Capital Back Under Its Control

BEIRUT—Syria’s military on Monday captured an enclave in southern Damascus from Islamic State militants following a ruinous monthlong battle, bringing the entire capital and its far-flung suburbs under full government control for the first time since the civil war began in 2011.

The gains freed President Bashar Assad’s forces to move with allied militiamen on remaining rebel-held territory in the south near the border with Israel, as Syria’s chief ally Iran comes under growing pressure from the Trump administration to withdraw its troops from the country.

Iranian-backed militias, including the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have been instrumental in helping Assad’s over-stretched forces recapture huge areas around Damascus and in the country’s center and north, building a military presence that has alarmed Israel and its U.S. ally, which is now looking to constrain Iran’s activities.

Iranian officials have vowed to stay on in Syria for as long as needed, setting the stage for a potential confrontation as Washington seeks to tighten the screws on Tehran following the U.S. withdrawal from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal brokered with Iran under President Barack Obama and world powers.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo threatened Iran with the “strongest sanctions in history” if Tehran doesn’t change course. In his first major foreign policy speech since taking the post as the top U.S. diplomat, he issued a list of demands that he said should be included in any new nuclear treaty with Iran, including that it “withdraw all forces” from Syria, halt support for Hezbollah and stop threatening Israel.

Iran and Russia have joined forces in Syria, providing crucial military support to Assad’s forces and giving them the upper hand in the civil war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told Assad at a meeting last week that a political settlement in Syria should encourage foreign countries to withdraw their troops from Syria. Putin’s envoy to Syria, Alexander Lavrentyev, said Putin was referring to Iranian forces, among others.

Iran says it is in Syria at the behest of the Assad government and says it is fighting “terrorism” in the form of Islamic extremists, including the Islamic State group and al-Qaida.

Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Ghasemi told reporters that no one can force Tehran to do anything it doesn’t want to do.

“Our presence in Syria has been based on a request by the Syrian government and Iran will continue its support as long as the Syrian government wants,” he said, speaking shortly before Pompeo made his remarks.

The recapture of IS-held pockets in the Palestinian refugee camp of Yarmouk and the nearby Hajar al-Aswad district in southern Damascus came after a massive bombing campaign that has all but decimated what was left of the residential area on the edge of the capital, once home to about 200,000 Palestinian refugees.

The camp has been deserted by most of its inhabitants following years of siege, and the few remaining residents fled to nearby areas in the last days of the bombardment.

The last push on the Yarmouk camp came after a group of civilians was evacuated overnight. State TV showed images of troops moving in, waving the Syrian flag and flashing victory signs atop wrecked buildings in the destroyed neighborhood. Some fired in the air in celebration.

The move boosts morale and security in Assad’s seat of power, putting it out of range of insurgents’ mortar fire and shells for the first time in nearly seven years.

With Iran’s help, Assad’s forces have been making steady gains since 2015, when Russian launched an air campaign on behalf of his forces. In December 2016, government forces captured rebel-held eastern neighborhoods of the northern city of Aleppo, in Assad’s biggest victory since the conflict began.

With a mix of military pressure and surrender deals brokered by Russia, thousands of opposition fighters capitulated and were evacuated in March and April from Damascus suburbs known as eastern Ghouta after a crushing government offensive.

Syrian troops and their allies are expected to turn their attention to opposition-held parts of southern Syria, including Daraa province, in a push that could bring allied Iranian forces even closer to the increasingly tense frontier with Israel. Idlib, in the north, remains a major rebel bastion, but government forces are expected to leave that confrontation to a later stage.

Israel has warned Iran and its proxies to stay away from the border and has carried out a series of airstrikes on Syrian air bases where it believes Iranian troops maintain a presence. Earlier this month, it launched a blistering bombardment of Iranian positions in Syria after an alleged Iranian rocket barrage toward its positions on the annexed Golan Heights.

Gen. Ali Mayhoub, a Syrian army spokesman, declared Damascus and its surroundings “completely secure” on Monday.

A war monitoring group said about 1,600 people, including hundreds of IS gunmen, left the area Saturday and Sunday, heading toward the desert in the east of the country following a deal with the government. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the month of fighting left scores of dead on both sides.

Syrian TV earlier quoted an unidentified Syrian military official as saying the two-day truce had been in place to evacuate women, children and the elderly Sunday night from Hajar al-Aswad. Syrian state media denied a deal was reached to evacuate the militants.

“The Daesh terrorist organization was wiped out in Hajar al-Aswad,” an unidentified Syrian soldier told state TV, using an Arabic acronym to refer to IS. “We will keep marching until we liberate all parts of Syria.”

___

Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, Albert Aji in Damascus, Syria, and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Supreme Court Allows Employers to Ban Class Action Lawsuits

For a variety of workers, the class action lawsuit has been a powerful tool against employer abuse, but in a new Supreme Court decision, the court’s conservatives have given companies the right to ban potential employees from joining class action lawsuits as a condition of employment.

The 5-4 ruling, based on three cases, was written by Justice Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s Supreme Court appointee. As NPR reports, Gorsuch wrote “that the 1925 Federal Arbitration Act trumps the National Labor Relations Act and that employees who sign employment agreements to arbitrate claims must do so on an individual basis—and may not band together to enforce claims of wage and hour violations.”

In other words, instead of harnessing their collective power, employees who have signed such contracts can’t join a class action lawsuit and instead must seek recourse individually, through arbitration.

The decision strengthens employers’ arguments that forced arbitration clauses don’t violate labor laws. As Gorsuch wrote, “This court is not free to substitute its preferred economic policies for those chosen by the people’s representatives.”

As Politico points out, “Studies have shown that workers win far less often in mandatory arbitration than in court.” Compounding the problem for employees, “since most arbitration is conducted in secret, mandatory arbitration has helped businesses avoid unfavorable publicity that might compel them to address chronic worker abuses.”

The three cases were brought against Ernst & Young LLP, Epic Systems Corp. and Murphy Oil USA Inc. All three companies required employees to sign contracts with forced arbitration clauses. The employees in question had tried to join together, saying that any money they’d win in individual cases would be cancelled out by massive legal fees required to try these cases individually.

In her dissent, read from the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned that the ruling will lead to “underenforcement of federal and state statutes designed to advance the well-being of vulnerable workers.”

She also encouraged Congress to step in and update federal labor laws.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Obamas Sign Deal With Netflix

NEW YORK—Barack and Michelle Obama are getting into the television business with Monday’s announcement that they had signed a multi-year deal with Netflix.

The former president and first lady have formed their own production company, Higher Ground Productions, for the material. In announcing a deal that had been rumored since March, Netflix offered no specifics on what shows they would make.

Netflix said the Obamas would make “a diverse mix of content,” potentially including scripted and unscripted series, documentaries or features.

“We hope to cultivate and curate the talented, inspiring, creative voices who are able to promote greater empathy and understanding between peoples, and help them share their stories with the wider world,” Barack Obama said in Netflix’s announcement.

The Obamas can be expected to participate in some of the programming onscreen, said a person familiar with the deal, not authorized to talk publicly about it, on condition of anonymity. The programming itself is not expected to be partisan in nature; a president who often derided the way things were covered on cable news won’t be joining in.

The type of people that Obama — like other presidents — brought forward as guests at his State of the Union addresses would likely provide fodder for the kinds of stories they want to tell.

“Barack and I have always believed in the power of storytelling to inspire us, to make us think differently about the world around us, and to help us open our minds and hearts to others,” Michelle Obama said.

No content from the deal is expected to be available until at least 2019, said the person familiar with the deal.

The former president appeared in January on David Letterman’s Netflix talk show, “My Next Guest Needs No Introduction.” Obama is said to be friendly with Ted Sarandos, Netflix chief content officer, and discussions for other programming were already under way.

“We are incredibly proud they have chosen to make Netflix the home for their formidable storytelling abilities,” Sarandos said.

Netflix has 125 million subscribers worldwide. The company has always been reluctant to discuss how many people watch its programming, but it clearly dominates the growing market for streaming services. Roughly 10 percent of television viewing now is through these services, the Nielsen company said.

Forty-nine percent of streaming being viewed now comes through Netflix, and no other service comes close, Nielsen said.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

U.S. Issues Steep Demands for New Iran Nuclear Deal

WASHINGTON—The United States on Monday issued a steep list of demands to be included in a nuclear treaty with Iran to replace the deal scuttled by President Donald Trump and threatened “the strongest sanctions in history” if Iran doesn’t change course.

Drawing sharp contrasts with the 2015 deal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said a stronger pact should require that Iran stop enrichment of uranium, which was allowed within strict limitations under the previous deal. Iran would also have to walk away from core pillars of its foreign policy, including its involvement in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and Afghanistan.

“This list may seem long to some, but it is simply a reflection of the massive scope of Iranian malign behavior,” Pompeo said. “America did not create this need for changed behavior. Iran did.”

Pompeo vowed that Trump’s approach would ensure “Iran has no possible path to a nuclear weapon, ever.” As he called for a better agreement to constrain Iran’s activities, he said the U.S. would “apply unprecedented financial pressure” to bring Tehran back to the table.

“These will end up being the strongest sanctions in history by the time we are complete,” Pompeo said at the conservative Heritage Foundation in his first major policy speech since taking over as top diplomat.

At the same time, Pompeo offered Iran a series of dramatic potential U.S. concessions if it agrees to make “major changes.” Under a new agreement, the U.S. would be willing to lift all sanctions, restore full diplomatic and commercial ties with Iran, and even support the modernization of its economy, Pompeo said.

“It is America’s hope that our labors toward peace and security will bear fruit for the long-suffering people of Iran,” Pompeo said.

Still, Pompeo’s list of 12 requirements included many that Iran is highly unlikely to consider. He said Iran must allow nuclear inspectors “unqualified access to all sites throughout the country,” Pompeo said, alluding to military sites that were off-limits under the 2015 deal except under specific circumstances. To that end, he also said Iran must declare all previous efforts to build a nuclear weapon, reopening an issue that the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency has already deemed a closed matter.

Pompeo also demanded that Iran cease from a range of activities throughout the Middle East that have long drawn the ire of the U.S. and its allies. He said Iran must end support for Shiite Houthi rebels in Yemen, “withdraw all forces” from Syria, halt support for its ally Hezbollah and stop threatening Israel.

Iran must also “release all U.S. citizens” missing in Iran or being held on “spurious charges,” he said.

Taken together, the demands would constitute a wholesale transformation by Iran’s government, and they hardened the perception that what Trump’s administration really seeks is a change in the Iranian regime. A longtime Iran hawk, Pompeo has spoken positively about regime change in the past, but in his confirmation hearing last month he sought to soften that stance.

Laying out Trump’s new approach Monday, Pompeo said he couldn’t put a timeline on how long the strategy might take.

“At the end of the day, the Iranian people will get to make their choice about their leadership,” Pompeo said. “If they make the decision quickly, that would be wonderful. If they choose not to do so, we will stay hard at this until we achieve the outcomes that I set forward today.”

In another departure from the Obama administration’s approach, Pompeo said that “a treaty is our preferred way to go.” Former President Barack Obama did not seek a Senate-ratified treaty with Iran because of the dim prospects for getting approval from a Republican-run Congress.

Pompeo’s speech came after Trump earlier this month infuriated U.S. allies in Europe by withdrawing from the 2015 deal brokered by President Barack Obama, Iran and world powers. Europeans allies had pleaded with Trump not to scuttle that deal and are now scrambling to keep the deal alive even without the U.S.

But the Trump administration has held out hope that those same allies will put aside that frustration and work with the U.S. to ramp pressure back up on Iran through sanctions in a bid to bring Tehran back to the negotiating table for a stronger deal.

Pompeo said he understood that Trump’s decision “will pose financial and economic difficulties for a number of our friends.” But he warned them that the U.S. planned to follow through with threats to punish European companies that continue doing business with Iran that is allowed under the deal but will violate reimposed U.S. sanctions.

“I know our allies in Europe may try to keep the old nuclear deal going with Tehran. That is their decision to make,” Pompeo said. “They know where we stand.”

___

Associated Press writer Matthew Pennington contributed to this report.

Truthdig is running a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us by making a donation.

Poor People’s Campaign: A Struggle Rising From the Streets

Editor’s note: Truthdig has launched a reader-funded project to document the Poor People’s Campaign. Please help us provide firsthand accounts of this activism by making a donation.

The second week of the Poor People’s Campaign has kicked off in Chicago,  where the theme of the week is “Linking Systemic Racism and Poverty: Voting Rights, Immigration, Xenophobia, Islamophobia, and the Mistreatment of Indigenous Communities.”

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Truthdig reported from the front lines as thousands of activists and civil rights advocates gathered in Washington, D.C., last week for the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to relaunch Martin Luther King Jr.’s fight against poverty, war and income inequality. May 14 was the first of 40 days of action planned across the nation. The campaign’s goals include federal and state living-wage laws, an end to anti-union and anti-workers’ rights efforts, welfare programs for the poor, equity in education, Medicaid expansion and accessible housing.

See Truthdig’s multimedia coverage of the action, read Truthdig photojournalist Michael Nigro’s piece about the movement and view his 18-minute audio photo essay.

With funding support from our readers, Nigro is reporting live from the first day of action this week. Scroll down to see Truthdig’s live multimedia updates.

4:38 p.m. CDT: One of the most interesting things about the Poor People’s Campaign so far has been the police response, or lack of response. The police are not arresting people, even though many of the acts of civil disobedience—sitting in a state capitol building, for example—are arrestable actions.

The police non-action appears to be a coordinated tactic. Arrests give people motivation and momentum. Arrests bring more media coverage. More exposure can turn a campaign into a movement. Not arresting people defuses the power of protest.

The corporate state does not want the Poor People’s Campaign to turn into a major political force. The state does not want the voices of 140 million poor people to be heard and would like extinguish every last ember of this activism.

We have a battle of wills. Whichever side prevails will determine how much America changes.

4:15 p.m. CDT: Terrence Wise, one of the organizers with Fight for $15, sums up the meaning of Monday’s action in Chicago and Springfield, Ill.: “All labor has dignity, whether you are a worker at McDonald’s or a sanitation worker.”

Wise, who works at McDonald’s and Burger King to make ends meet, adds that McDonald’s (and every corporation making millions because of its workers) can pay their workers better. Fifteen dollars won’t make people rich, but it will allow them to have a living wage and take their kids to a movie or the zoo.

This protest is not the beginning, middle or end. It is an ongoing struggle.

Remember the words of Frederick Douglass: “If there is no struggle, there is no progress. … This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”

The Poor People’s Campaign gives the 140 million Americans living in poverty hope.

4:02 p.m. CDT: This video explains why Michael Nigro is in Chicago today, documenting the Poor People’s Campaign and the Fight for $15.

Please support independent media and Truthdig’s reader-funded project. Click here to give now, so we can stay on the front lines of the Poor People’s Campaign and keep documenting this important movement for you.

 

Your mainstream corporate media WILL NOT cover activism. In fact, it’s their job to UNDERMINE and dilute activist movements. Luckily @TruthDig is picking up the slack with a new project to cover the #PoorPeoplesCampaign. https://t.co/6O1AswoeUs

— Lee Camp [Redacted] (@LeeCamp) May 14, 2018

3:12 p.m. CDT: About 500 to 600 people are in the Illinois state Capitol, chanting as one. These are some of the chants.

Ain’t no power like the power of the people ’cause the power of the people don’t stop.

Which side are you on?

We demand justice.

Everybody’s got a right to live.

We are the workers. The mighty, mighty workers. Fighting for $15. Fighting for a union.

Hold them burgers. Hold those fries. Make my wages supersized.

Show me what democracy looks like. This is what democracy looks like.

We work, we sweat, for $15 on our check.

3:15 p.m. CDT: Poor People’s Campaign and Fight for $15 workers occupy the Illinois state Capitol.

“Do you think God loves rich people more than poor people? Do you think God loves white people more than poor people? Hell no,” said one of the speakers.

Watch all of the live stream from the Illinois state Capitol below.

1:51 p.m. CDT: After a morning action at the McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago, busloads of the Poor People’s Campaign and Fight for $15 workers are headed to the Illinois state Capitol to kick off a second week of direct action. Truthdig will begin live streaming the protest around 3 p.m. CDT. Join in your area.

 

On the march to the Illinois State Capitol to demand that @McDonalds raises wages for its workers and closes the racial gap. https://t.co/NoLl3UdwZ4 @UniteThePoor @fightfor15 @RevDrBarber @liztheo @wilsonhartgrove

@Nigrotime #40daysofAction #poorpeoplescampaign pic.twitter.com/aCZoB2B7EE

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

1:38 p.m. CDT: ​Between 1973 and 2016, hourly compensation increased just 12.3 percent, while productivity increased 73.7 percent.

 

Demonstrators in Chicago stand in solidarity with @UniteThePoor @fightfor15. https://t.co/NoLl3UdwZ4 @RevDrBarber @liztheo @wilsonhartgrove @Nigrotime #40daysofAction #poorpeoplescampaign pic.twitter.com/mZ2CX1mjtB

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

1:08 p.m. CDT: ​In 2016, there was no state or county in the U.S. where an individual earning the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour could afford a two-bedroom apartment at market rate.

 

How will @McDonalds respond to @fightfor15 @UniteThePoor demands to provide living wages for workers? Take the poll in our live blog to share your thoughts. https://t.co/NoLl3UdwZ4 @RevDrBarber @liztheo @wilsonhartgrove @Nigrotime #40daysofAction #poorpeoplescampaign pic.twitter.com/fmItZbGV21

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

12:59 p.m. CDT: Poverty is violence. It destroys families and lives. There’s no reason it needs to exist. The Pentagon reported $21 trillion of unaccounted-for expenses.

 

No kinship, no #peace. No kinship, no #equality. No kinship, no #justice. @UniteThePoor @fightfor15 @RevDrBarber @liztheo @wilsonhartgrove @Truthdig @Nigrotime #PoorPeoplesCampaign#40daysofAction https://t.co/NoLl3UdwZ4 pic.twitter.com/3oTDYY3ytF

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

Greed, contrary to what Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) said in “Wall Street,” is not good.

Racism—one reason for America’s greed—is one of the evils the Poor People’s Campaign is protesting in Chicago at the new McDonald’s headquarters at 110 North Carpenter St.

12:34 p.m. CDT: The goal of the Poor People’s Campaign is to finish what Martin Luther King Jr. started. It is a continuation of King’s work—before his assassination in 1968—reigniting the effort led by civil rights organizations, labor and tenant unions, farmworkers, Native American elders and grass-roots organizers.

Today’s Poor People’s Campaign is not a matter of left or right. This is not a matter of Democrat or Republican. This is not a matter of conservative or liberal. This is a matter of right and wrong.

For a refresher on King’s work, watch this 1963 interview, produced by the United States Information Agency. The discussion was not broadcast for American audiences until 12 years after the rest of the world saw it, because USIA programs were restricted by law from airing in the United States until a dozen years after production.

King was ahead of his time. The problems he sought to solve persist. In fact, they have gotten worse in some cases. These challenges, however, are not insurmountable. But time is running out. That is why the Poor People’s Campaign matters and needs the support of anyone who wants to make our world better and create a more fair and just society for future generations.

To put King’s actions into the context of current events, here are some Truthdig Originals to read.

James Baldwin and the Meaning of Whiteness, Chris Hedges

Martin Luther King’s Revolutionary Dream Deferred, Maj. Danny Sjursen

What Would Martin Luther King Do?, Ron Young

Peace First, Eric Ortiz

12:10 p.m. CDT: Some people are skeptical about the Poor People’s Campaign. They believe the movement will be co-opted by political forces and not lead to any real change. But unlike previous resistance movements that may have been “more show than go,” the Poor People’s Campaign is putting demands behind its civil disobedient actions.

How do you think McDonald’s will respond to the demands from Fight for $15 and the Poor People’s Campaign for living wages for workers?

 

How do you think McDonald’s will respond to the letter from Fight for 15 and the Poor People’s Campaign?

Take positive action to address their concerns and increase wages for McDonald’s workers.
Take no action to address their concerns and maintain the same wages for McDonald’s workers.
Take punitive action against McDonald’s workers affiliated with the Fight for 15 and Poor People’s Campaign.












Created with PollMaker

11:54 a.m. CDT: Correction: An earlier post of the live blog included an old version of the letter Fight for $15 and the Poor People’s Campaign drafted to send to McDonald’s executives. The version of the letter that was sent to McDonald’s executives can be read below.

10:55 a.m. CDT: The Guardian published a new piece Monday about the Poor People’s Campaign.

Frustrated by conservative Christians’ focus on culture wars over issues such as abortion and gay marriage, [the Rev. William] Barber leads an ascendent grassroots movement that is trying to turn the national conversation to what they believe are the core teachings of the Bible: care for the poor, heal the sick, welcome the stranger.

The Poor People’s Campaign, a revival of Martin Luther King’s final effort to unite poor Americans across racial lines, last week brought together activists from several faiths, the Women’s March, the labor movement and other liberal organizations to launch 40 days of civil disobedience and protest against inequality, racism, ecological devastation and militarism. As many as 1,000 people were arrested during the first wave. More expect to be held in future.

Barber, a co-chair of the campaign, says some conservative faith leaders have “cynically” interpreted the Bible’s teachings to demonize homosexuality, abortion, scientific facts and other religions. They are guilty, he says, of “theological malpractice” and “modern-day heresy”.  … The demands of the Poor People’s Campaign are as ambitious as they are progressive. They have called for a repeal of the Republican tax cuts, federal and state minimum wage laws and universal single-payer healthcare. Other proposals also mirror those of politicians like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

“We are surely trying to impact politics,” said Liz Theoharis, a co-chair. “And we are surely trying to make sure that our elected officials take these issues seriously. But this goes far beyond any one election or election year.”

Read more.

10:46 a.m. CDT: Demonstrators give an enlarged version of their letter of demands to security officers at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago. To see the full letter, read our earlier posts.

Video: The oversized version of the protesters’ letter to @McDonalds, with their reasons of discontent, is taken into the HQ by security @Nigrotime @UniteThePoor @fightfor15 https://t.co/NoLl3TVW7w pic.twitter.com/zLXUxYi2Ry

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

10:35 a.m. CDT: The protest for fair wages continues outside McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago.

“We work! We sweat! For $15 on our check!” Fast food workers serve notice to @McDonalds executives that they’ll be participating in civil disobedience with the #PoorPeoplesCampaign @fightfor15 https://t.co/NoLl3TVW7w pic.twitter.com/8tX4ZsjPJB

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

10:15 a.m. CDT: Activists link white supremacy to corporate greed in a letter addressed to McDonald’s CEO Steve Easterbrook:

Take a look at the letter @fightfor15 & @UniteThePoor delivered to executives at @McDonalds HQ #PoorPeopleCampaign https://t.co/NoLl3TVW7w pic.twitter.com/sAd334r7d8

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

10:05 a.m. CDT: Nigro joined the Poor People’s Campaign and Fight for $15 movement as participants demonstrated outside fast-food giant McDonald’s headquarters in rainy Chicago. Watch the two-part clip below.

Over 100 members of the @fightfor15 who have joined the #poorpeoplescampaign deliver demands to @McDonalds HQ in Chicago @UniteThePoor@nigrotime@RevDrBarber@liztheo@wilsonhartgrove. Follow our live blog: https://t.co/NoLl3TVW7wpic.twitter.com/z7M8fUrNXp

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

Video: @UniteThePoor & @fightfor15 brave the elements outside @McDonalds HQ in Chicago @nigrotime @RevDrBarber @liztheo @wilsonhartgrove. Follow our live blog: https://t.co/NoLl3TVW7w pic.twitter.com/ZzLrLAdUT9

— Truthdig (@Truthdig) May 21, 2018

Texas’ Lt. Gov. Floats Chilling Solution for School Shooting Crisis

Shortly after the shooting at Santa Fe High School in Southeast Texas that left 10 dead and 10 others wounded, two of them critically, the state’s lieutenant governor, Dan Patrick, named an improbable culprit in the massacre: doors. Less than 48 hours late, Patrick offered a fix for gun violence that was no less unlikely, this time reverting to one of the president’s newest talking points.

In an interview with CNN that echoed Donald Trump’s remarks after February’s mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, the Texas official called on the country to start arming its educators, in accordance with the Second Amendment. “Our teachers are part of that well-run militia,” Patrick told “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos, adding,  “It’s guns that also stop crimes.”

The absurdity of Patrick’s remarks should be self-evident. Teachers fail to meet any conceivable definition of a militia, and their arming is hardly “necessary to the security of a free state,” as the Second Amendment stipulates. More troubling is that one of the president’s more febrile ideas appears to be gaining currency within the greater Republican Party. (A recent HuffPost survey found as many as 70 percent of Republicans support arming teachers.)

If Sean Hannity truly has Trump’s ear, as a recent New York Magazine report indicates, it probably won’t be the last such proposal. This week, the Fox News host challenged the federal government to monitor every student’s social media activity, insisting the mounting number of school shootings is “not a gun issue.”

Santa Fe High had taken multiple steps to avoid Friday’s tragedy, having two armed police officers patrol the school’s hallways as part of an “active-shooter plan.” According to The Washington Post, “they thought they were a hardened target.”

As of Friday, 29 students have been slain in 16 such incidents in American schools this year. Just 13 U.S. service members have been killed on active duty over the same period.

The Coming Collapse

The Trump administration did not rise, prima facie, like Venus on a half shell from the sea. Donald Trump is the result of a long process of political, cultural and social decay. He is a product of our failed democracy. The longer we perpetuate the fiction that we live in a functioning democracy, that Trump and the political mutations around him are somehow an aberrant deviation that can be vanquished in the next election, the more we will hurtle toward tyranny. The problem is not Trump. It is a political system, dominated by corporate power and the mandarins of the two major political parties, in which we don’t count. We will wrest back political control by dismantling the corporate state, and this means massive and sustained civil disobedience, like that demonstrated by teachers around the country this year. If we do not stand up we will enter a new dark age.

The Democratic Party, which helped build our system of inverted totalitarianism, is once again held up by many on the left as the savior. Yet the party steadfastly refuses to address the social inequality that led to the election of Trump and the insurgency by Bernie Sanders. It is deaf, dumb and blind to the very real economic suffering that plagues over half the country. It will not fight to pay workers a living wage. It will not defy the pharmaceutical and insurance industries to provide Medicare for all. It will not curb the voracious appetite of the military that is disemboweling the country and promoting the prosecution of futile and costly foreign wars. It will not restore our lost civil liberties, including the right to privacy, freedom from government surveillance, and due process. It will not get corporate and dark money out of politics. It will not demilitarize our police and reform a prison system that has 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although the United States has only 5 percent of the world’s population. It plays to the margins, especially in election seasons, refusing to address substantive political and social problems and instead focusing on narrow cultural issues like gay rights, abortion and gun control in our peculiar species of anti-politics.

This is a doomed tactic, but one that is understandable. The leadership of the party, the Clintons, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Tom Perez, are creations of corporate America. In an open and democratic political process, one not dominated by party elites and corporate money, these people would not hold political power. They know this. They would rather implode the entire system than give up their positions of privilege. And that, I fear, is what will happen. The idea that the Democratic Party is in any way a bulwark against despotism defies the last three decades of its political activity. It is the guarantor of despotism.

Trump has tapped into the hatred that huge segments of the American public have for a political and economic system that has betrayed them. He may be inept, degenerate, dishonest and a narcissist, but he adeptly ridicules the system they despise. His cruel and demeaning taunts directed at government agencies, laws and the established elites resonate with people for whom these agencies, laws and elites have become hostile forces. And for many who see no shift in the political landscape to alleviate their suffering, Trump’s cruelty and invective are at least cathartic.

Trump, like all despots, has no ethical core. He chooses his allies and appointees based on their personal loyalty and fawning obsequiousness to him. He will sell anyone out. He is corrupt, amassing money for himself—he made $40 million from his Washington, D.C., hotel alone last year—and his corporate allies. He is dismantling government institutions that once provided some regulation and oversight. He is an enemy of the open society. This makes him dangerous. His turbocharged assault on the last vestiges of democratic institutions and norms means there will soon be nothing, even in name, to protect us from corporate totalitarianism.

But the warnings from the architects of our failed democracy against creeping fascism, Madeleine Albright among them, are risible. They show how disconnected the elites have become from the zeitgeist. None of these elites have credibility. They built the edifice of lies, deceit and corporate pillage that made Trump possible. And the more Trump demeans these elites, and the more they cry out like Cassandras, the more he salvages his disastrous presidency and enables the kleptocrats pillaging the country as it swiftly disintegrates.

The press is one of the principal pillars of Trump’s despotism. It chatters endlessly like 17th-century courtiers at the court of Versailles about the foibles of the monarch while the peasants lack bread. It drones on and on and on about empty topics such as Russian meddling and a payoff to a porn actress that have nothing to do with the daily hell that, for many, defines life in America. It refuses to critique or investigate the abuses by corporate power, which has destroyed our democracy and economy and orchestrated the largest transfer of wealth upward in American history. The corporate press is a decayed relic that, in exchange for money and access, committed cultural suicide. And when Trump attacks it over “fake news,” he expresses, once again, the deep hatred of all those the press ignores. The press worships the idol of Mammon as slavishly as Trump does. It loves the reality-show presidency. The press, especially the cable news shows, keeps the lights on and the cameras rolling so viewers will be glued to a 21st-century version of “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.” It is good for ratings. It is good for profits. But it accelerates the decline.

All this will soon be compounded by financial collapse. Wall Street banks have been handed $16 trillion in bailouts and other subsidies by the Federal Reserve and Congress at nearly zero percent interest since the 2008 financial collapse. They have used this money, as well as the money saved through the huge tax cuts imposed last year, to buy back their own stock, raising the compensation and bonuses of their managers and thrusting the society deeper into untenable debt peonage. Sheldon Adelson’s casino operations alone got a $670 million tax break under the 2017 legislation. The ratio of CEO to worker pay now averages 339 to 1, with the highest gap approaching 5,000 to 1. This circular use of money to make and hoard money is what Karl Marx called “fictitious capital.” The steady increase in public debt, corporate debt, credit card debt and student loan debt will ultimately lead, as Nomi Prins writes, to “a tipping point—when money coming in to furnish that debt, or available to borrow, simply won’t cover the interest payments. Then debt bubbles will pop, beginning with higher yielding bonds.”

An economy reliant on debt for its growth causes our interest rate to jump to 28 percent when we are late on a credit card payment. It is why our wages are stagnant or have declined in real terms—if we earned a sustainable income we would not have to borrow money to survive. It is why a university education, houses, medical bills and utilities cost so much. The system is designed so we can never free ourselves from debt.

However, the next financial crash, as Prins points out in her book “Collusion: How Central Bankers Rigged the World,” won’t be like the last one. This is because, as she says, “there is no Plan B.” Interest rates can’t go any lower. There has been no growth in the real economy. The next time, there will be no way out. Once the economy crashes and the rage across the country explodes into a firestorm, the political freaks will appear, ones that will make Trump look sagacious and benign.

And so, to quote Vladimir Lenin, what must be done?

We must invest our energy in building parallel, popular institutions to protect ourselves and to pit power against power. These parallel institutions, including unions, community development organizations, local currencies, alternative political parties and food cooperatives, will have to be constructed town by town. The elites in a time of distress will retreat to their gated compounds and leave us to fend for ourselves. Basic services, from garbage collection to public transportation, food distribution and health care, will collapse. Massive unemployment and underemployment, triggering social unrest, will be dealt with not through government job creation but the brutality of militarized police and a complete suspension of civil liberties. Critics of the system, already pushed to the margins, will be silenced and attacked as enemies of the state. The last vestiges of labor unions will be targeted for abolition, a process that will soon be accelerated given the expected ruling in a case before the Supreme Court that will cripple the ability of public-sector unions to represent workers. The dollar will stop being the world’s reserve currency, causing a steep devaluation. Banks will close. Global warming will extract heavier and heavier costs, especially on the coastal populations, farming and the infrastructure, costs that the depleted state will be unable to address. The corporate press, like the ruling elites, will go from burlesque to absurdism, its rhetoric so patently fictitious it will, as in all totalitarian states, be unmoored from reality. The media outlets will all sound as fatuous as Trump. And, to quote W.H. Auden, “the little children will die in the streets.”

As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.

How the President Could Be Re-Elected

Trump’s strategy for keeping power is to build up his coalition of America’s white working class and the nation’s ownership class.

It’s a curious coalition, to say the least. But if Democrats don’t respond to it, it could protect Trump from impeachment and even re-elect him. It just might create a permanent Republican majority around an axis of white resentment and great wealth.

Two decades ago, Democrats and Republicans competed over the middle class. They battled over soccer moms and suburban “swing” voters.

Since then the middle class has shrunk while the working class has grown, and vast wealth has been accumulated by a comparative few who own a large portion of America. Some of their wealth has taken over American politics.

Enter Trump.

Counties whose voters shifted from Obama to Trump in 2016 had lost economic ground to the rest of America, even more than did solidly-Republican counties. Trump is counting on the unwavering support of these mostly white working class voters.

Meanwhile, much of the ownership class has come over to Trump. He’s counting on it to bankroll Republican politicians who are loyal to him.

Since becoming president, Trump has sought to reward both sides of this coalition – tossing boatloads of money to the ownership class, and red meat to the white working class.

One boatload is the corporate and individual tax cut, of which America’s richest 1 percent will take home an estimated 82 percent by 2027, according to the Tax Policy Center.

Another boatload is coming from government itself, which Trump has filled with lobbyists who are letting large corporations do whatever they want – using public lands, polluting, defrauding consumers and investors, even employing children – in order to push profits even higher.

Trump’s red meat for the white working class is initiatives and tirades against unauthorized immigrants and foreign traders – as if they’re responsible for the working class’s lost ground – and other symbolic gestures of economic populism, along with episodic racist outbursts, and support for guns and evangelicals.

Every time Trump sends more money to the wealthy he sends more red meat to his base.

Weeks ago, after announcing he’d seek another big tax cut before the midterm elections – “phase two,” as he termed it – he threatened China with a trade war; arranged another crackdown on unauthorized immigrants, including a carefully-choreographed plan to break up families at the border and attack sanctuary cities; and vowed to go after pharmaceutical companies.

Yet red meat goes only so far. At some point, you’d think, the white working class would realize that the only real beneficiaries of the Trump coalition are the super-rich.

Trump’s clampdown on foreign imports and immigrants won’t raise working-class wages. It’s more likely to erode their paychecks because it will cause consumer prices to rise. Yet it leaves American multinational corporations unscathed. They don’t make their money off trade and don’t rely on immigrants; they fabricate and sell from all over the world. If a trade war with China breaks out, they’ll merely shift their sourcing to other nations.

His tax cut put a few dollars in working-class pockets but is already requiring cuts in services they rely on, and will demand more.

His plan to bring down drug prices won’t make drugs any cheaper. Instead, it’s a big win for drug companies whose prices won’t be controlled and won’t have to negotiate with Medicare and Medicaid.

Trump doesn’t want his base to know that the only way they can permanently become better off is by reining in the ownership class.

He doesn’t want them to recall that the ownership class is largely responsible for hollowing out the middle class. For decades the captains of American industry, backed by the nation’s biggest investors, have squeezed payrolls by outsourcing abroad, cutting or eliminating job benefits, busting unions, and shifting to part-time and contract work.

He’d rather they didn’t see that corporate profits – flowing into higher executive pay and higher share prices – have constituted a steadily larger portion of economy, while wages have been a steadily lower portion. Most economic gains have gone to the top. We have had socialism for the rich and harsher capitalism for everyone else.

If Democrats were smart they would expose all this – and commit themselves to reversing these trends by creating a multi-racial coalition of the poor, working class, and what’s left of the middle.

Trump’s curious coalition endures only because he’s a clever salesman and conman. The only way it can possibly succeed at entrenching Trump is if Democrats say and do little or nothing.

Trump, the NRA, Mass Shootings and the American Culture of Death

“A fish rots from the head down.”

—Ancient proverb of disputed origin

Another week has come and gone, and with it, another mass shooting. The American culture of death marches on, fueled by our obscene stockpiles of lethal weaponry and stoked by the divisions, alienation, hatred and fear that have come to define us as a nation.

As I wrote in my column after the 2012 Sandy Hook massacre, we are in the grips of a self-destructive social and psychological disorder—a Hobbesian “war of all against all”—that has long festered. Far from improving since then, the disorder has metastasized to new levels under the leadership of our 45th president.

The latest outrage took place early Friday morning at a high school in Santa Fe, Texas, a rural community of just over 12,000 about 20 miles northwest of Galveston.

The perpetrator has been identified as Dimitrios Pagourtzis, a 17-year-old student, who used a shotgun and a .38 revolver belonging to his father to shoot 10 people dead—eight fellow pupils and two teachers—and wound at least 10 more. Pagourtzis is being held without bail on charges of capital murder. In all likelihood, in the “hang ’em high” Lone Star State, he’ll be tried as an adult and given the death penalty.

Described by classmates as a quiet loner who had been subjected to persistent bullying, Pagourtzis was carrying a duffel bag and wearing a long black trench coat and combat boots, despite the 88-degree temperature outside, when he entered an art class and opened fire. His Facebook page, investigators learned shortly after the incident, contained photos of a custom-made T-shirt printed with the words “Born to Kill,” along with photos of a duster jacket adorned with Nazi military medallions and an Iron Cross. According to some accounts, he was wearing the shirt at the time of the shooting.

In addition to seizing the firearms Pagourtzis used, police reportedly have found improvised explosive devices on campus and in surrounding areas. Authorities have interviewed, but apparently not charged, two other students as persons of interest or possible accomplices.

Within hours of the shooting, President Trump sent his official condolences to the people of Santa Fe. Speaking at a prison-reform conference at the White House, he assured the community: “We grieve for the terrible loss of life and send our support and love to everyone affected by this absolutely horrific attack. To the students, families, teachers and personnel at Santa Fe High: We’re with you in this tragic hour and we will be with you forever.”

On Friday afternoon, Trump ordered flags at federal facilities to be flown at half-staff. Still later in the day, he announced that his school safety commission would reconvene. The commission, which is led by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and includes Attorney General Jeff Sessions but has no rank-and-file teachers or students, was set up after the murders in February at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

We’ve been here before, all of us in one way or another. We’ve witnessed the carnage, either as survivors ourselves or as friends or relatives of the fallen, or just from afar as spectators watching images of blood and grief on television and social media. We’ve heard the heartfelt prayers and the feckless clichés from political figures pledging solidarity, support and vague promises of action. Over and over again.

Worse, we all know that nothing constructive will come from Trump’s safety commission. After Parkland, the best the commission could offer was the arming of teachers. In the meantime, we’ve come to embrace mass shootings as routine features of everyday life.

Mass shootings are defined broadly as crimes with at least four victims, whether killed or wounded. Delineated thusly, the slaughter in Santa Fe is the 101st event of its kind this year. As one Santa Fe student told a local ABC news reporter in an interview Friday, she wasn’t at all shocked that one had erupted at her school. “It’s been happening everywhere,” the student said. “I’ve always kind of felt like eventually it was going to happen here too.”

The student’s grim fatalism, sadly, is grounded in fact. We are awash in an ocean of firearms and killers armed to the teeth.

In a purely empirical sense, America’s obsession with guns and gun violence is easy to chart, as CNN did in an online article that was first posted in October 2017 and updated in March, not long after the Parkland shootings. Among other findings the network summarized were the following:

● Americans own 310 million guns, nearly half of the 650 million owned by civilians worldwide. According to a 2017 Pew Center study cited by CNN, 66 percent of American gun owners have more than one firearm, and 74 percent say their sense of personal freedom is directly tied to their gun ownership.

● Americans possess more guns per capita—89 per 100—than any other country. War-ravaged Yemen places second with 55 per 100.

● The U.S. makes up less than 5 percent of the world’s population but accounts for 31 percent of mass shooters worldwide.

● Gun homicide rates are 25.2 percent higher in the U.S. than in other high-income countries.

Guns are also a big business in the U.S. The annual revenue of gun and ammunition manufacturers tops $13 billion a year, and gun stores rake in $3 billion. In 2013, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, nearly 11 million pistols, revolvers, rifles and shotguns were sold across the country.

The surge in sales and profits has been accompanied by stepped-up political spending by gun industry lobbyists, particularly the National Rifle Association. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Federal Election Commission records show that the PAC and nonprofit arms of the NRA spent a combined $54.4 million in the 2016 elections. A cool $30 million was directed to supporting Trump’s presidential bid.

The NRA has also spent millions more to defeat even modest legislative proposals aimed at restoring the assault weapons ban: bolstering the federal background-check system and applying the system to gun shows and private sales; limiting the sale of large-capacity magazines; outlawing straw purchases (in which a nominal buyer poses for an ineligible end user); restricting the number of guns that any single person can buy in a given time period; and ensuring the availability of mental health counseling for all Americans.

It’s tempting to think of Trump, a businessman of expediency and self-aggrandizement, as the NRA’s tool, happy to do the gun lobby’s bidding in exchange for buckets of campaign cash. Tempting but wrong.

In the NRA, Trump has found the perfect vehicle for the culture of death that helped propel him to office. The NRA is as much his tool as he is theirs.

What is that culture? In a 2013 column on gun control titled “Mass Violence, Gun Control and the American Culture of Death,” I quoted Rich Broderick, an unheralded journalist based in Minnesota, who described it well before Trump’s election as a “culture that embraces a soulless free-market idolatry in which the value of everything, including human beings, is determined by the bottom line. … It is a culture of death that prevails on Wall Street, K-Street, Hollywood, and our ever-expanding Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex.”

In the aftermath of Trump’s ascension, others have taken the metaphor further. In a column posted by Truthout in early March this year, the American and Canadian scholar Henry Giroux wrote:

“We live in an age in which the politics of disposability has merged with what [CounterPunch editor] Jeffrey St. Clair has called the spectacle of ‘American Carnage.’ The machineries of social death and misery now drive a mode of casino capitalism in which more and more people are considered waste, expendable and excess. The politics of disposability now couples with acts of extreme violence as pressure grows to exclude more and more people from the zones of visibility, justice and compassion. This is especially true for children. Violence against children in the United States has reached epidemic proportions.”

Even conservative commentators see the grave dangers afoot. In a Washington Post column printed the day before the shooting in Santa Fe, Michael Gerson, who helped craft George W. Bush’s second inaugural address, wrote:

“Whatever else Trumpism may be, it is the systematic organization of resentment against outgroups. Trump’s record is rich in dehumanization. It was evident when he called Mexican migrants ‘criminals’ and ‘rapists.’ When he claimed legal mistreatment from a judge because ‘he’s a Mexican.’ (Judge Gonzalo P. Curiel was born in Indiana.) When he proposed a ‘total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.’ When he attacked Muslim Gold Star parents. When he sidestepped opportunities to criticize former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. When he referred to ‘very fine people’ among the white-supremacist protesters in Charlottesville. When he expressed a preference for Norwegian immigrants above those from nonwhite ‘shithole countries.’ ”

This does not imply, of course, that the NRA or Trump can be held criminally responsible for the acts of Dimitrios Pagourtzis or any other mass shooter. Still, it implies something of nearly equal weight: Trump and the NRA have combined to put fear and dehumanization into the hearts and minds of Americans, and fear and dehumanization sustain a fertile environment for continued outbreaks of mass violence.

If we are ever to heal our culture of death, at a minimum, we have to dislodge both the NRA and Trump from the pinnacles of power they now occupy. As the old saying goes, “A fish rots from the head down.”

Mnuchin Says U.S.-China Trade War ‘on Hold’

WASHINGTON—The world’s two biggest economies are pulling back from the brink of a trade war after making progress in talks aimed at bringing down America’s massive trade deficit with China.

“We are putting the trade war on hold,” U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on “Fox News Sunday.”

After high-level talks Thursday and Friday, Beijing agreed in a joint statement with the U.S. to “substantially reduce” America’s trade deficit with China — but didn’t commit to cut the gap by any specific amount. The Trump administration had sought to slash the deficit by $200 billion.

Still, Mnuchin said that the two countries had made “meaningful progress” and that the Trump administration has agreed to put on hold proposed tariffs on up to $150 billion in Chinese products. China had promised to retaliate in a move that threatened a tit-for-tat trade war.

Mnuchin said they expect to see a big increase — 35 to 45 percent this year alone — in U.S. farm sales to China. He also forecast a doubling in sales of U.S. energy products to the Chinese market, increasing energy exports by $50 billion to $60 billion in the next three to five years.

Mnuchin said Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has been part of the U.S. negotiating team, would soon be traveling to China to follow up on last week’s discussions.

In Saturday’s statement, Beijing committed to “significantly increase” its purchases of American goods and services, saying the increase would “meet the growing consumption needs of the Chinese people and the need for high-quality economic development.”

Last year, the U.S. racked up a record $376 billion deficit with China in the trade of goods, largest by far with any nation.

Trade analysts were not surprised that China refused to agree to a numerical target for cutting the trade gap, but they said the talks likely were more successful in de-escalating trade tensions.

“The Trump administration seems eager to engineer at minimum a temporary peace with China to ensure a smooth run-up to the Kim-Trump summit in June,” Cornell University economist Eswar Prasad said, referring to the June 12 meeting scheduled between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

If there is success in the U.S.-China discussions, analysts suggest it likely would involve the countries’ presidents this fall before the U.S. midterm elections.

“Part of the good news for markets: as long as both sides continue to be ‘constructively’ engaged, imposition of additional tariffs by either side is very unlikely,” analysts at investment management firm Evercore ISI said in a research note. “There is no reason for either side — particularly the U.S. — to destroy the process that both sides are building, which is what imposing tariffs would do.”

Republican. Sen Lindsey Graham of South Carolina praised the Trump administration’s efforts with China.

“It’s smart to engage China on trade abuses, and it would also be smart to get them more involved in trying to help us with North Korea,” Graham said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Trump, a Republican, campaigned in 2016 on a pledge to get tough on China and other U.S. trading partners. He views the U.S. trade deficit with China as evidence that Beijing is engaged in abusive trading practices and has outmaneuvered previous U.S. administrations.

Last August, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer began investigating Beijing’s strong-arm tactics to challenge U.S. technological dominance. These include outright cybertheft of U.S. companies’ trade secrets and China’s demands that American corporations hand over technology in exchange for access to the Chinese markets.

Last month, the Trump administration proposed tariffs on $50 billion of Chinese imports to protest the forced technology transfers. Trump later ordered Lighthizer to seek up to an additional $100 billion in Chinese products to tax.

China responded by targeting $50 billion in U.S. products, including soybeans — a shot at Trump supporters in America’s heartland. The prospect of an escalating trade war has shaken financial markets and alarmed business leaders.

In a separate controversy, the Commerce Department last month blocked China’s ZTE Corp. from importing American components for seven years, accusing the telecommunications company of misleading U.S. regulators after it settled charges last year of violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea.

The ban amounted to a death sentence for ZTE, which relies heavily on U.S. parts, and the company announced that it was halting operations. A week ago, Trump tweeted that he was working with Chinese President Xi Jinping to put ZTE “back in business, fast.” Media reports suggested that the U.S. was offering to swap a ZTE rescue for an end to proposed Chinese tariffs on U.S. farm products.

Speaking Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, called Trump’s intervention in the case “outrageous” and said that using ZTE “as a bargaining chip … is not in the best interests of our national security.”

Top White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week” that there could be “some small changes around the edges” in the sanctions against ZTE. But Kudlow added: “Do not expect ZTE to get off scot-free. It ain’t gonna happen.”

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AP Business Writer Marcy Gordon contributed to this report from Washington.