Chris Hedges's Blog, page 593

Trump to Pull Out of Nuclear Deal With Iran

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump announced Tuesday the U.S. will pull out of the landmark nuclear accord with Iran, declaring he’s making the world safer [although critics say he is] dealing a profound blow to allies and deepening the president’s isolation on the world stage.

“The United States does not make empty threats,” he said in a televised address from the White House Diplomatic Room.

Trump said the 2015 agreement, which included Germany, France and Britain, was a “horrible one-sided deal that should never ever have been made.” He added that the United States “will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.”

Trump’s decision means Iran’s government must now decide whether to follow the U.S. and withdraw or try to salvage what’s left of the deal. Iran has offered conflicting statements about what it may do — and the answer may depend on exactly how Trump exits the agreement.

One official briefed on the decision said Trump would move to reimpose all sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 deal, not just the ones facing an immediate deadline.

Supporters of trying to fix the agreement had hoped Trump would choose a piecemeal approach that could leave more room for him to reverse himself and stay in if he could secure the additional restrictions on Iran that European nations have tried unsuccessfully to negotiate with Trump. Still, the administration planned to allow a grace period of at least three months and possibly up to six months so that businesses and governments can wind down operations that would violate the reimposed U.S. sanctions, officials said.

As administration officials briefed congressional leaders about Trump’s plans Tuesday, they emphasized that just as with a major Asia trade deal and the Paris climate pact that Trump has abandoned, he remains open to renegotiating a better deal, one person briefed on the talks said.

The Iran agreement, struck in 2015 by the United States, other world powers and Iran, lifted most U.S. and international sanctions against the country. In return, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program making it impossible to produce a bomb, along with rigorous inspections.

In a burst of last-minute diplomacy, punctuated by a visit by Britain’s top diplomat, the deal’s European members gave in to many of Trump’s demands, according to officials, diplomats and others briefed on the negotiations. Yet they still left convinced he was likely to re-impose sanctions.

Trump spoke with French President Emmanuel Macron and Chinese leader Xi Jinping about his decision Tuesday. The British foreign secretary traveled to Washington this week to make a last-minute pitch to the U.S. to remain in the deal, according to a senior British diplomat. The diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the British objective will remain to uphold and maintain the deal.

Hours before the announcement, European countries met to underline their support for the agreement. Senior officials from Britain, France and Germany met in Brussels with Iran’s Deputy Foreign Minister for Political Affairs, Abbas Araghchi.

If the deal collapses, Iran would be free to resume prohibited enrichment activities, while businesses and banks doing business with Iran would have to scramble to extricate themselves or run afoul of the U.S. American officials were dusting off plans for how to sell a pullout to the public and explain its complex financial ramifications.

In Iran, many were deeply concerned about how Trump’s decision could affect the already struggling economy. In Tehran, President Hassan Rouhani sought to calm nerves, smiling as he appeared at a petroleum expo. He didn’t name Trump directly, but emphasized that Iran continued to seek “engagement with the world.”

“It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this,” Rouhani said.

Under the most likely scenario, Trump would allow sanctions on Iran’s central bank — intended to target oil exports — to kick back in, rather than waiving them once again on Saturday, the next deadline for renewal, said individuals briefed on Trump’s deliberations. Then the administration would give those who are doing business with Iran a six-month period to wind down business and avoid breaching those sanctions.

Depending on how Trump sells it — either as an irreversible U.S. pullout, or one final chance to save it — the deal could be strengthened during those six months in a last-ditch effort to persuade Trump to change his mind. The first 15 months of Trump’s presidency have been filled with many such “last chances” for the Iran deal in which he’s punted the decision for another few months, and then another.

Even Trump’s secretary of state and the U.N. agency that monitors nuclear compliance agree that Iran, so far, has lived up to its side of the deal. But the deal’s critics, such as Israel, the Gulf Arab states and many Republicans, say it’s a giveaway to Tehran that ultimately paves the path to a nuclear-armed Iran several years in the future.

Iran, for its part, has been coy in predicting its response to a Trump withdrawal. For weeks, Iran’s foreign minister had been saying that a re-imposition of U.S. sanctions would render the deal null and void, leaving Tehran little choice but to abandon it as well. But on Monday, Rouhani said Iran could stick with it if the European Union, whose economies do far more business with Iran than the U.S., offers guarantees that Iran would keep benefiting.

For the Europeans, Trump’s withdrawal constitutes dispiriting proof that trying to appease him is futile.

Although the U.S. and Europeans made progress on ballistic missiles and inspections, there were disagreements over extending the life of the deal and how to trigger additional penalties if Iran were found violating the new restrictions, U.S. officials and European diplomats have said. The Europeans agreed to yet more concessions in the final days of negotiating ahead of Trump’s decision, the officials added.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee, Jill Colvin, Zeke Miller and Ken Thomas in Washington and Amir Vahdat and Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.

President to Announce Decision Tuesday on Iran Nuclear Deal

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump is set to reveal his decision on whether to keep the U.S. in the Iran deal on Tuesday, a move that could determine the fate of the 2015 agreement that froze Iran’s nuclear program.

The announcement is set to cap more than a year of deliberation and negotiation that has at times pitted Trump against some of his closest aides and key American allies. Trump is facing a self-imposed May 12 deadline over whether to uphold the 2015 nuclear agreement, which he long has criticized. The president has signaled he will pull out of the pact by the deadline unless it is revised, but he faces intense pressure from European allies not to do so.

“I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm,” Trump tweeted Monday.

The president has been the subject of an intense lobbying effort by American allies to maintain the agreement, with British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson making a last-ditch appeal to the administration in a visit to Washington this week. European leaders say that they are open to negotiating a side agreement with Iran, but the existing framework must remain untouched for that to happen.

It is not immediately clear what Trump will announce Tuesday or whether he will announce the end of the deal or push for a renegotiation. Trump in October “decertified” the deal with Iran, but did not move to re-impose sanctions, known as a “snap-back.”

On Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Iran would be willing not to abandon the nuclear deal even if the United States pulls out, providing the European Union offers guarantees that Iran would keep benefiting from the accord.

Rouhani said that “what we want for the deal is that it’s preserved and guaranteed by the non-Americans” — a reference to other signatories of the 2015 agreement.

U.S. officials and European allies share the conclusion that the deal, known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has halted Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. Trump has objected to a sunset provision that would allow Iran to restart some nuclear development in 2025.

Supporters of the deal argue that withdrawing from the JCPOA would undermine Trump’s push for North Korea, which has a far more advanced nuclear program than ever possessed by Iran, to denuclearize. Trump is planning on meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un within the next month.

Earlier Monday, Trump criticized John Kerry after reports that the former secretary of state has been promoting the Iran nuclear deal.

Trump said on Twitter: “The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!”

Kerry, who was also the lead negotiators for the Obama administration on the Paris climate accord, has been promoting both agreements since he left office.

The Boston Globe reported Friday that Kerry, the lead negotiator on the deal for the Obama administration, had been privately meeting with foreign officials to strategize on how to keep the U.S. in the deal.

Kerry has met with Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. At least one of their meetings was at a June 2017 public event in Oslo, Norway, where they sat on the same panel with EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini and extolled the virtues of the nuclear deal.

Kerry, a keen environmentalist who regularly derided climate change skeptics and championed ocean health while secretary of state, has also continued to speak out on those issues since becoming a private citizen.

Last week at an event in Dallas, Trump mocked Kerry over a bicycle accident he had three years ago.

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Associated Press writers Matthew Lee and Josh Lederman contributed to this report from Washington.

Australian Scientist, 104, Arrives in Switzerland for Assisted Suicide

BASEL, Switzerland—A 104-year-old Australian scientist arrived Monday in Switzerland before his planned assisted suicide, unbowed about his intentions and hopeful that his premeditated death will send a message to legislators back home.

Petting a dog in a warm welcoming crew at Basel’s airport, David Goodall answered reporters’ questions after coming in from visiting relatives in Bordeaux, France, over the weekend.

“I am glad to arrive,” Goodall said from a wheelchair. “The message I would like to send is: Once one passes the age of 50 or 60, one should be free to decide for oneself whether one wants to go on living or not.”

Lucid and humorous, Goodall reiterated his frustration about not being as free or as mobile in his later life as he once was. While not suffering from a terminal illness, he said he hoped his trip to take his own life in Switzerland — which allows assisted suicide, unlike Australia — would change legislators’ minds one day.

“I think we’ve got quite a way to go. I would like to see the system change, but I doubt it will happen within the next ten years,” he said.

Goodall is expected to meet Tuesday with a doctor who will assess his mindset and hold another news conference on Wednesday. On Thursday, he plans to swallow a lethal cocktail of chemicals, ending his life.

After the weekend visit in France, he acknowledged he was “a bit sorry to say goodbye to my family in Bordeaux. But that’s the way it was.”

Switzerland is one of the world’s most permissive countries when it comes to assisted suicide. Representatives of the Swiss “assisted voluntary death” group Life Circle, which is helping Goodall, say only Switzerland and Colombia allow foreigners to travel into the country for an assisted suicide.

Asked whether he was sure he wanted to go through with it, Goodall replied “Oh yes. That’s what I’m here for!”

Trump Signals Cooperative Approach With Mueller Is Fading

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump signaled a more confrontational legal strategy against the special counsel’s Russia probe on Monday, ripping into what he dismissed as an investigation into a “made up, phony crime.”

His series of tweets were fresh evidence that the cooperative approach with special counsel Robert Mueller that had been advocated by the president’s legal team for months has gone by the wayside. It also revealed the president’s anxiety about how the investigation could sway voters as they decide whether to keep congressional Republicans in power or force him to face an aggressive Democratic majority.

Trump’s new lawyer, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has used a string of media appearances over the past week to cast the probe as a “totally garbage investigation.” And Giuliani has called into question whether Trump would be treated fairly by Mueller’s prosecutors if he were to agree to an interview.

Mueller’s team is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with Trump associates as well as whether the president obstructed justice. So far, the special counsel’s office has charged 19 people — including four Trump campaign advisers — and three Russian companies.

On Monday, Trump seized on Giuliani’s message, focusing on what he sees as the conflicts of interest on Mueller’s team.

“The 13 Angry Democrats in charge of the Russian Witch Hunt are starting to find out that there is a Court System in place that actually protects people from injustice…and just wait ’till the Courts get to see your unrevealed Conflicts of Interest!” he wrote.

Trump appeared to be drawing attention to a federal judge’s questioning last week of Mueller’s authority in a case against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. But it was unclear what legal action Trump was referring to that would touch on “unrevealed” conflicts of interest.

Mueller is a longtime Republican, but some members of his team have made political contributions to Democrats, including to Hillary Clinton, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2016 election.

Mueller could not have barred them from serving on the team based solely on their political contributions. Federal regulations and Justice Department policy prohibit the consideration of political affiliation in hiring and other personnel actions involving career attorneys.

In congressional testimony, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein has defended Mueller’s team against criticism that it was politically tainted.

“We recognize we have employees with political opinions. And it’s our responsibility to make sure those opinions do not influence their actions,” Rosenstein said, adding: “I believe that Director Mueller understands that and that he is running that office appropriately.”

Mueller’s investigation has operated largely in secrecy with the public only getting glimpses into its operation through witnesses who are questioned or when indictments and guilty pleas are publicly unsealed.

It’s unclear when the investigation will conclude, a fact that Trump seized on as he worried that it could affect Republican chances in the November midterm elections.

“Is this Phony Witch Hunt going to go on even longer so it wrongfully impacts the Mid-Term Elections, which is what the Democrats always intended?” Trump tweeted. “Republicans better get tough and smart before it is too late.”

Democratic majorities in either the House or Senate would give the president’s political opponents subpoena power to investigate the administration. And White House officials have privately expressed concerns that Republicans may lose the House in November.

Asked about the tweet on Monday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Trump was referring to “the fact that we’re still talking about it.”

Sanders said, “I think the point he’s making is how ridiculous it is that we’re still having this conversation and the depths to which this research has gone on and investigation has been conducted and still produced nothing.”

In his tweets, Trump also took issue with Mueller’s investigation into whether he obstructed the Russia investigation. To that, Trump wrote, “There is no O, it’s called Fighting Back.”

He also criticized FBI lawyer Lisa Page and FBI agent Peter Strzok, who made headlines for exchanging derogatory text messages about Trump. Trump noted that Page has left the bureau and asked, “Why is Peter S still there? What a total mess. Our Country has to get back to Business!”

Text messages between Page and Strzok, who was assigned to Mueller’s investigation, show them expressing negative views about Trump and referring to him in derogatory ways. Strzok was reassigned from the special counsel team after the text messages were brought to Mueller’s attention. Page had already left the Mueller team.

Rosenstein has said that Mueller handled the matter appropriately.

“When we have evidence of any inappropriate conduct, we’re going to take action on it. That’s what Mr. Mueller did here,” Rosenstein said. “As soon as he learned about this issue, he took action.”

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Associated Press writer Jill Colvin and Zeke Miller contributed to this report.

Iran-Contra Figure Oliver North Named President of NRA

ATLANTA—Retired Lt. Col. Oliver North, the Marine at the center of the Iran-Contra affair three decades ago, was named president Monday of the National Rifle Association, giving it star power as it faces a powerful backlash over the massacres in Florida and Las Vegas.

North’s appointment was ripped by gun-control advocates who called his appointment symptomatic of an NRA tone-deaf given his role in the arms-trafficking scandal that engulfed the White House in the Reagan administration. Conservatives and gun-rights supporters hailed him as a patriot who will vigorously battle efforts to restrict access to firearms.

North, 74, will be the biggest celebrity to lead the 5-million-member gun lobby since Hollywood leading man Charlton Heston, who famously declared in 2000 that his guns would have to be taken “from my cold, dead hands.”

“Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre said.

Momentum for gun control has been building since the mass shooting in Las Vegas last fall that killed 58 people and the Feb. 14 rampage at a Parkland, Florida, high school that left 17 dead.

“The election of Oliver North is the clearest sign yet that the NRA is floundering in the face of plummeting popularity, scrutiny into its Russia ties, and state lawmakers who are defying the gun lobby left and right,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, founded by former New York mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg. “The NRA doesn’t need a new leader—it needs an entirely new direction.”

North was picked by the NRA’s board of directors, which elects a president every two years, and is expected to assume office within the next several weeks. He succeeds Pete Brownell, who did not seek a second term.

LaPierre remains as vice president and chief executive, running the powerful group’s day-to-day operations. North will lead the board, and NRA observers say they anticipate he will take on a more public role in the style of Heston, a fiery presence who used his acting background to energize members.

North was a military aide to the National Security Council during the Reagan administration in the 1980s when he emerged into the spotlight for his role in arranging the secret sale of weapons to Iran and the diversion of the proceeds to the anti-communist Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

He was convicted in 1989 of obstructing Congress during its investigation, destroying government documents and accepting an illegal gratuity. Those convictions were overturned in 1991.

With his crisp military bearing and teary-eyed testimony before Congress, North came to be regarded as an earnest American patriot by many on the right, and he went on to run for office, write several books and serve as a commentator on Fox News.

In a statement, North said he was honored to be selected and “eager to hit the ground running.”

“For an organization so concerned with law and order, picking a new leader who admitted that he lied to Congress is a truly remarkable decision,” said Avery Gardiner, co-president of the Brady Campaign. The gun lobby “will be led by a man whose own concealed carry permit was revoked because he was ‘not of good character.'”

Robert J. Spitzer, chairman of political science at the State University of New York at Cortland and an expert on guns and the Second Amendment, called North the closest thing the NRA has to a celebrity.

“And maybe they figure they need a more prominent person at the helm, as opposed to the string of relative unknowns who have served in recent years,” Spitzer said.

Heston, who died in 2008, served from 1998 to 2003. In 2000, he sought to rally NRA supporters against Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore, warning that Gore was going to “slander you as gun-toting, knuckle-dragging, bloodthirsty maniacs.”

Hoisting a flintlock rifle, Heston declared: “From my cold, dead hands!”

It was a time similar to today, an election following a high-profile mass shooting — the one at Columbine high school in 1999.

The Giuliani News No One Is Talking About

Was Donald Trump starved for cash in fall 2016, when 62 million voters cast ballots for a candidate who told them repeatedly that he was “rich—really, really rich”?

The way that Trump “funneled” hush money to a porn actress just 11 days before the election sure makes it look that way. This would be consistent with four decades of Trump claiming vast wealth, but not being able to pay his bills as they come due.

As you read what follows keep two thoughts in mind:

First, would any billionaire need months to pay a $130,000 bill?
Second, there is not now and never has been a shred of verifiable evidence that Trump is or ever was a billionaire, a myth I first demolished using his own net worth statement prepared for a lawsuit in spring 1990.

Trump called me a liar back then for four months until he had to put into the public record his bankers’ assessment of his riches. The bankers calculated that Trump was worth a negative $295 million.

Casino regulators concluded that without many tens of millions of new loans, Trump could not pay his bills coming due over the next several years, not exactly the story of someone with a net worth in eight figures. This also is not the story one expects of anyone who owns three large casinos.

Rudy Giuliani revived the issue of whether Trump merely poses as a billionaire during his Wednesday night chat with Fox entertainer Sean Hannity. No doubt that was not what he intended.

During a rambling chat full of legal nonsense, meandering syntax and ludicrous assertions that captivated reporters and pundits, Giuliani also revealed that Trump took four months or more to pay the hush money to Stephanie Clifford, better known as the porn star Stormy Daniels. The news focused on the admission that Trump did pay the hush money, showing that the president and the White House lied earlier.

But the more significant revelation came when Giuliani said that it took Trump four months or more to pay the bill. Think of it as one of those 90-days same-as-cash deals that merchants with excess goods offer so they can generate enough immediate cash to pay their bills.

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen “funneled it [the $130,000] through a law firm and the president repaid it,” Giuliani said, speaking with Trump’s advance knowledge.

“You’re going to do a couple of checks for $130,000,” Giuliani said.

Why didn’t Trump pay with a single check, as any mere multimillionaire could be expected to do? Giuliani didn’t say, and the entertainer Hannity didn’t ask even though his show appears on Fox News.

Some reporters and pundits cited the multiple payments as potential violations of the federal Cash Transaction Report rules on payments of more than $10,000. But those rules don’t apply to checks and do not apply to payments for services.

Then came the real news, however much unintended, by Giuliani. His very next words:

“When I heard Cohen’s retainer of $35,000 when he was doing no work for the president, I said that’s how he’s repaying—that’s how he’s repaying it with a little profit and a little margin for paying taxes for Michael.”

“The president reimbursed that over a period of several months,” Giuliani said.

That makes clear that the hush money paid to keep the porn star silent just before voters went to the polls was a loan from lawyer Cohen to Trump. No such loan is disclosed in either Trump’s ethics filings or campaign finance filings. That might cause legal problems for Trump and Cohen, though keep in mind that “might” implies doubt.

There might also be federal gift tax violations, depending on the fine print of the transactions.

Maybe these comments will get political journalists to stop making a claim that Trump has himself taken back and to look hard at whether his fortune is really just massive cash flow, not wealth. And much of that cash flow may be going to pay interests on debts that, because of loopholes in federal ethics and campaign finance laws, Trump has not been required to disclose.

As readers of DCReport know, Trump last year claimed to be worth just $1.4 billion. That figure, attested to by Trump under penalty of perjury, is a nearly 90 percent reduction from the more than $10 billion he touted on the campaign trail.

Even that much reduced net worth figure is grossly inflated. For example, Trump claims his Scottish golf courses are each worth more than $50 million. That’s odd because in recent years they have lost tens of millions of dollars, British disclosure statements show.

If put on the market, the Scottish courses might well fail to attract any buyer because their value, including debt, appears to be less than zero.

Federal ethics laws are so riddled with loopholes that we have no idea how deeply Trump is in debt. Debts owed via partnerships are not reported, for example.

From the unreported debts we do know about, thanks to the diligence of New York Times reporters, we can report that Trump’s net worth is significantly less than $1 billion.

So just keep asking yourself, and asking others: Have you ever heard of a multibillionaire who couldn’t pay a $130,000 bill and needed a 120 day or longer loan from his lawyer to cover the bill?

Bill Cosby’s Confused Notions of ‘Responsibility’

The following article was written by Glen Ford when he was editor of The Black Commentator and originally ran on June 3, 2004.

Bill Cosby has some nerve talking about “personal responsibility.” On May 17, with no warning, the 67-year-old multimillionaire comedian ambushed three venerable Black organizations—the NAACP, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Howard University—fatally disrupting a gala celebration of the 50th anniversary of the Brown desegregation decision. Cosby drew from the hip (or the lip) to spray the hall with generalized insults against people who weren’t even there: the Black poor who, he said, “are not holding up their end in this deal.”

Apparently, Cosby thinks he is one of the deal-makers, and that he’s been cheated. The mostly Black, tuxedoed attendees at Washington’s Constitution Hall, forced to bear witness to Cosby’s tirade, were also to blame “in this deal” since they had collectively failed to sufficiently call the “lower economic people” to account for their “personal responsibility” deficits.

Not once did it occur to “Cos” that he owed his immediate and larger audience the benefit of a well-prepared presentation. Dr. Cosby saw no need to buttress his rant with a single reliable fact, nor to provide a coherent structure for his argument, so that reasonable people might arrive at some useful conclusions. Instead, he played the elderly “shock jock,” frothing and flailing away, spewing a sewer of abuse that, if directed against other ethnic groups, would be considered blood libels. (See a compilation of “Cosbyisms” at the end of this essay.)

The super-successful entertainer, famed for his practiced timing and flawless delivery, the evangelist of education—the discipline in which he received his Ph.D.—displayed an utter disrespect for his audience and for the august occasion of the anniversary. His extended outburst, presented without the evident benefit of even the most rudimentary preparation, was a gross violation of professional and personal discipline—an affront Cosby would never commit against a half-drunk nightclub crowd, much less the corporate and university audiences he regularly addresses. Yet he gave free rein to his inner demons in front of a throng of African-Americans at Constitution Hall on the anniversary of Brown.

The irresponsible icon

Icons always have apologists; Cosby has a media-full. Black people who should be insulted, instead make excuses for Cosby’s shameful, impulsive, totally uninhibited behavior that, in a non-icon, would invite suspicions of substance abuse.

USA Today’s Black columnist DeWayne Wickham—normally a smart fellow—sugarcoats Cosby’s bile as “talking black”–as if Black discussions of public policy, including subjects as momentous as the Fate of the Race, are by definition devoid of substance, structure, precision or logic. A similar exculpatory current runs through most corporate newspaper columns penned by Black writers in the wake of the Cosby abomination.

Amazingly, the out-of-control, grotesquely self-indulgent comedian was roundly praised for his “courage” in confronting the supposed Black phobia against “airing dirty linen” in public, i.e., within hearing distance of whites. How perverse and ironic! Much of the Black talking classes forgive Cosby’s clear lack of a sense of “personal responsibility” and elementary decorum, precisely because to do otherwise would risk diminishing a Black icon—in front of white people! Better to let Cosby’s insults to African-Americans, slide.

And since when was it an act of courage to badmouth poor Black people in America?

By simple standards of civility Cosby is guilty of an extreme lapse in “personal responsibility” by dint of his behavior to his audience and to the millions of people he slandered. More to the point, Cosby doesn’t know the meaning of the term—and neither do most of the Black chatterers who have been bandying it about.

Role Model mogul

What do the various political actors mean by “personal responsibility?” Certainly, we know that in the mouths of Republicans and their Black camp followers “personal responsibility” is a code for what people are told to exercise when the state refuses to see to the general welfare of its non-rich citizens. We know that song. But what does Cosby mean, and why are otherwise progressive Black writers and politicians bending over backwards to find ways to agree with him?

An enormous vacuity surrounds the Black discussion over Cosby’s remarks. People rush to say “yes” to a term, the definition of which is not necessarily shared or understood. Where does “personal responsibility” end and “social responsibility” begin? If a comedian turned demagogue can hector a substantial portion of a race of people to behave as he (vaguely) commands, then surely he is talking politics, not just giving advice to individuals. Cosby’s politics are in fact rooted on the conservative side of the Black spectrum—that is, when he is being coherent at all.

The Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page recalls:

Cosby was saying the same thing backstage when I interviewed him during my college days. It was 1968, but he didn’t want to talk about black power, Black Panthers or cultural revolutions. He wanted to complain about why so many young blacks of my generation were wasting the great opportunities that hard-won civil rights victories had brought us. In those politically polarized times, I was disappointed by his traditionalist attitude. But I appreciate its wisdom today with new eyes, the eyes of a parent.

Actually, Page appreciates Cosby with the “new” eyes of a highly paid corporate journalist who finds enough common ground with white conservatives to appear regularly on shows like The McLaughlin Group.

Thirty-two years later, Cosby was still urging young people on campus to be politically passive. At Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in May, 2000, he warned students:

Those of you going to grad school, listen to me carefully. … I know you have an idea of how you want to make a change in the world. That is not what grad school is for. Do what they tell you to do and then when you graduate, do what you want to do. That is what grad school is for. If you’re gonna argue with the professor, you’re going to not get a good grade, you’re not going to graduate in grad school. Okay? So take your young idea, study what they want you to study, kick tail and then when you get your turn to write your dissertation then you tell it the way it ought to be told.

“It is not for you to stand up and argue. … You get an A on all the tests and then, make your move.

By that, Cosby meant, make your personal career move. Don’t dabble in campus politics, or challenge the orthodoxy of those in power at the institution. Shut up.

Because of men and women who shared Cosby’s worldview, many Black college campuses were relatively quiet during the Civil Rights Movement, a silence enforced by Black administrators who did not hesitate to expel students and fire faculty who sought any change whatsoever in the status quo, on or off campus. Later in the Sixties, Blacks on white college campuses tended to be significantly more activist than students at traditionally Black schools, largely because they were not smothered by a “tradition” hostile to mass Black political activity.

Cosby advocates a neutered Black politics of individual striving within the parameters that are allowed by those in power. He projects his own, self-invented persona as a “role model” for African-Americans to follow as individuals, while rejecting collective action to alter power relationships. His message: Each of you people should do as I did. Cosby’s method is derived from a long line of accommodationist Negro leaders whose message was the equivalent of, “Eat your Jell-O.”

Ironically, the young Cosby did not follow traditionalist counsel. He dropped out of college to pursue the wildly perilous career of Black standup comedian in a largely segregated America. Had he failed as a comic—as the odds overwhelmingly dictated—without a good education he might not have been able to buy his mother a fine house far from the projects where he grew up. Luckily, Cosby the dropout didn’t listen to people like—Cosby.

Spurned, vengeful benefactor

Cosby bucked the odds, but never the system. His job was to become a Role Model for a Black presence within the existing order. Once that was accomplished, he added a make-believe family to the Model: the Huxtables. Writer Khalil Tian Shahyd “wasn’t surprised at all” at the tone of Cosby’s Constitution Hall remarks:

After all, for more than a decade he presented us every Thursday with what he thought the ideal African-American family should look like. That we should listen to jazz, and have people like BB King come into our home for dinner and invite us to sit front row at his shows. Take weekend trips by limo to the most expensive hotel in the city for dinner and pampering just to treat our partners to a day without the children. Live in a big house with not one neighbor of color, where our children shave their heads to appear in a skin head rock video and are sheltered from the real world of zero sum politics, gentrification, under-funded and abandoned school districts, swelling prison populations, racial profiling, economic marginalization, domestic abuse and all those specifically “poverty based social ills.”

In addition to making Cosby a lot richer, the TV show proved that a Black-cast show could hold white people’s attention in prime time for multiple seasons. This was considered a great victory. The ideal Black Role Model—Cosby himself, or the self he created—was now the entire nation’s Role Model for Black people. Heady stuff.

Role Model Politics is nearly as emotion-laden as cult-of-personality politics—and just as divorced from reality. The Role Model is, by definition, the template of righteousness and progress. Those who fail to follow the Role Model’s path are rejecting the Model’s persona. No wonder Cosby goes ballistic at poor Black people’s behavior—or what he imagines that behavior to be. He takes it personally. It’s as if “those people” are all playing the “dozens” at his expense. How else to explain the explosive vitriol of Cosby’s Constitution Hall performance?

However, Cosby’s inability to perceive that he is obligated as a matter of “personal responsibility” to atone for his blanket verbal assaults, is his personal problem. It is far more worrisome that so many Black opinion molders harbor similar attitudes toward politics and the poor. Cosby showed his ass, but the same ill winds are blowing through the spaces in lots of Black skulls in high places. Deep down, they value other Black people little, and trust them less. They would rather celebrate virtual social mobility (the “Huxtables”) than fight for the material resources that bring the possibility of dignity to millions. They see more virtue in a millionaire parting with a fraction of his money—although never enough to risk falling out of wealth—than in the selfless work of thousands of community organizers and activists who are motivated by a sense of both personal and social responsibility.

Dr. King and Malcolm X and Fred Hampton died in a social struggle to empower Black people. Cosby demonizes these same people, employing the enemy’s language, like some vengeful, spurned benefactor. Yet much of Black media pretend not to see the throbbing ugliness in their icon, thus calling into question their own fitness. In the face of a brazen assault on the human dignity of African-Americans, they equivocate—or join in the mass lynching. Mimicking racists, they impose yet another burden on the already super-disadvantaged Black poor. As Paul Street wrote in the April 8 issue of The Black Commentator:

The harsh material and structural-racist reality of American society interacts with timeworn, victim-blaming ruling-class explanations of poverty to play an ugly game on the nation’s most truly disadvantaged. They are expected to magically leap beyond their social-historical circumstances—to exercise an inordinately high degree of sound personal responsibility just to keep their heads above water—while others are structurally empowered to “pass Go and collect $2 million” without such exercise, and indeed to deepen the well of black disadvantage.

If huge numbers of Black people could be drawn together to figure out precisely how we have failed each other, that would be one helluva “social responsibility” conversation. But the Bill Cosbys of the community cannot be allowed to hog the microphone, just because they may have paid for it. As journalist-educator-lawyer-activist Lizz Brown says, “That doesn’t give him license.”

In truth, we can’t afford Bill Cosby anymore. He costs more than he gives.

Bill Cosbyisms

Cosby on the Black poor:

“Lower economic people are not holding up their end in this deal. These people are not parenting. They are buying things for kids—$500 sneakers for what? And won’t spend $200 for ‘Hooked on Phonics.’ ”

Cosby on Black youth culture:

“People putting their clothes on backward: Isn’t that a sign of something gone wrong? … People with their hats on backward, pants down around the crack, isn’t that a sign of something, or are you waiting for Jesus to pull his pants up? Isn’t it a sign of something when she has her dress all the way up to the crack and got all type of needles [piercings] going through her body? What part of Africa did this come from? Those people are not Africans; they don’t know a damn thing about Africa.”

Cosby on civil rights:

“Brown versus the Board of Education is no longer the white person’s problem. We have got to take the neighborhood back. We have to go in there—forget about telling your child to go into the Peace Corps—it is right around the corner. They are standing on the corner and they can’t speak English.”

Cosby on literacy:

“Basketball players—multimillionaires—can’t write a paragraph. Football players—multimillionaires—can’t read. Yes, multimillionaires. Well, Brown versus Board of Education: Where are we today? They paved the way, but what did we do with it? That white man, he’s laughing. He’s got to be laughing: 50 percent drop out, the rest of them are in prison.”

Cosby on poor Black women:

“Five, six children—same woman—eight, 10 different husbands or whatever. Pretty soon you are going to have DNA cards to tell who you are making love to. You don’t know who this is. It might be your grandmother. I am telling you, they’re young enough! Hey, you have a baby when you are 12; your baby turns 13 and has a baby. How old are you? Huh? Grandmother! By the time you are 12 you can have sex with your grandmother, you keep those numbers coming. I’m just predicting.”

Cosby on the sons and daughters of poor, Black, unmarried mothers:

“… with names like Shaniqua, Taliqua and Mohammed [!] and all of that crap, and all of them are in jail.”

Cosby on Blacks shot by police:

“These are not political criminals. These are people going around stealing Coca-Cola. People getting shot in the back of the head over a piece of pound cake and then we run out and we are outraged, [saying] ‘The cops shouldn’t have shot him.’ What the hell was he doing with the pound cake in his hand?”

Glen Ford is the executive editor of Black Agenda Report. He can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

Outsiders in Lebanese Politics Make a Small Win Look Big

BEIRUT — They won just one seat in Lebanon’s 128-seat national assembly, but they celebrated like they’d won 20. A grassroots movement of activists, journalists and other political newcomers said any presence in parliament was a landmark victory for its campaign against patronage in an era when politics is run as a family business.

Candidates and volunteers gathered at a Beirut shisha cafe erupted in cheers Sunday night when the first positive forecasts came in for the largest outsider campaign in recent memory — waged under the banner, “We are all Patriots,” or “Kulna Watani” in Arabic.

“I’m proud of all the volunteers and candidates who said ‘no’ to the face of the corrupt political class and to this vacuous political play we’ve been stuck in for years,” said Joumana Haddad, a novelist who campaigned on a platform of reforming Lebanon’s personal status laws that govern everything from marriage, divorce, inheritance and child custody.

Initial results on Sunday had shown that Haddad and another candidate, Paula Yacoubian, were projected to take two seats for Watani. But official results announced late Monday showed Haddad had been edged out by another candidate and Watani won just one seat.

Haddad’s supporters, gathered outside the Interior Ministry before the official results were released, protested what they maintained were clear signs of fraud to deny her victory.

“The people in power didn’t like this result, so they proceeded with rigging the result at the last minute,” said Lucian Bourjeily, a Watani candidate.

It’s been a long struggle for the candidates running under the Watani banner, many involved in anti-establishment politics for years before Sunday’s vote.

They helped organize the protests that filled the capital in 2015 when a waste management scandal left trash uncollected in the streets for weeks. Environmental activists have accused politicians at the highest levels of arranging lucrative deals for their friends to bury trash without treatment or recycling.

“We learned we can succeed when we persevere,” said Bourjeily, a writer and director who helped organize the 2015 protests.

Watani’s single-seat victory came in a district of Beirut, breaking a monopoly traditionally held by established political parties in the capital.

On Sunday, the activists allowed themselves an evening of relief, laughing and wiping away tears as they watched the projected results on TV.

“We changed the way people talk about politics in this country,” said Michelle Keserwany, half of a sister musical duo that has satirized Lebanon’s moribund political scene through their snappy lyrics and expertly produced videos.

“Candidates are now publishing programs to run on. It may sound obvious in other countries, but it’s these things we are demanding here,” Keserwany said.

In Lebanon, politics is about jobs and kickbacks more than it is about platforms. Since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, political bosses have held onto their seats through networks of patronage that supported the middle class with steady work that kept families above the poverty line but without avenues for self-advancement. In exchange, communities gave their patrons their votes and looked the other way as infrastructure crumbled and services decayed.

Their staying power was reinforced by a winner-takes-all voting system that worked against independents. Politicians bequeathed their seats to their sons and, less commonly, wives and daughters. To date many of the country’s top politicians are the warlords or heirs of the warlords of the civil war three decades ago.

That law was replaced this year with one awarding seats by proportional representation, but complications to the law worked to keep outsiders from taking a larger share.

Watani had fielded 66 candidates across nine of the country’s 15 districts. The new national assembly largely reproduces the one it replaces; leading politicians look set to stay in their posts, while some newcomers hail from decades-old family dynasties in Lebanese politics.

To Watani volunteers, the struggle for political reform is much larger than one election. They say they will run again in the next national race and win more seats as voters get acquainted with the alternative.

“We started this election with having no seats in parliament, so every seat is a win for us,” Bourjeily said.

Here’s How ICE Sent Children Seeking Asylum to Adult Detention Centers

One teen arrived in the United States in 2015 seeking asylum after his father was murdered in Somalia. Another fled Afghanistan last year after the Taliban killed his father and the Islamic State group killed his brother.

But instead of building new lives in the U.S., both ended up in adult detention centers based on the opinion of the same University of Texas dentist – who never met them or examined their teeth.

It’s the latest example of the Department of Homeland Security failing to abide by federal policies, laws and directives from both Congress and internal agency auditors about how to determine the age of unaccompanied immigrant youths, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has found. 

For more than a decade, the department’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement has come under fire for its use of  dental and bone scans. Congressional committees twice have directed ICE to stop subjecting youths to the procedures. A federal audit questioned the scientific validity of bone and dental scans to determine age with much precision.

“Using radiographs of a person’s bones or teeth … cannot produce a specific age due to a range of factors affecting an individual’s growth,” the audit states. “These include normal biological variation, as well as cultural and ethnic differences.”

Mixing juveniles and adults in immigration detention centers violates a longstanding federal decree. But youths who arrive in the country unaccompanied often lack official documents such as birth certificates, and immigration authorities are legally required to make a determination on age within a few days.

On these two occasions, ICE held youths in adult detention centers based on analysis federal immigration authorities had conducted by Dr. David R. Senn, a dentist and clinical assistant professor with the dentistry school at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

According to one of Senn’s reports obtained by Reveal, he determined in 2015 that a Somali youth, Billal I. Caroog, was between 17 and 23 years old. Caroog had fled Somalia after his father was murdered, according to court records.

“The empirical statistical probability of (Caroog) having attained 18 years of age is 92.55%,” Senn’s report states.

U.S. District Judge Marsha J. Pechman disagreed, ruling that the age determination process in Caroog’s case was unlawful. Her order notes that a 2009 trafficking victims law requires the Office of Refugee Resettlement to use “multiple forms of evidence” rather than relying exclusively on dental and bone scans.

“The procedures … here resulted in the exclusive use of dental radiographs to make an age determination,” states Pechman’s May 2016 order, which required Caroog to be released from an adult detention center near Seattle. The Department of Homeland Security was ordered to immediately transfer Caroog out of adult detention until he “reaches the age of 18 based on the birth date he reported to Department of Homeland Security officials at the time he applied for admission into the United States.”

In September, ICE echoed that ruling in its own internal handbook, which states that dental and bone scans must be used only as “a last resort,” once all other avenues of verifying a young person’s purported age have been exhausted.

When reached by phone today, Senn declined to talk to Reveal on the record.

Attorney Matt Adams with the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project represented Caroog in the case. In an interview with Reveal on Wednesday, Adams repeatedly called Senn’s dental analysis “pseudoscience.” He said Senn “keeps his hands clean and does it all on paper without ever even seeing the kids, using some kind of template formula that has the most drastic consequences on children.”

When Caroog’s X-rays were taken, Adams said he wasn’t aware they could be used as evidence against the youth. The X-rays, along with mug-shot-style photos of Caroog, were sent by the Office of Refugee Resettlement in Oregon to Senn’s office. Senn’s report states the X-rays were “provided by client” but doesn’t list who the client is.  

In making the determination that ICE used to take Caroog into adult detention, Senn did not meet Caroog or physically examine his teeth.

Once ICE determined he was an adult, Caroog was taken from his foster family in handcuffs and placed in the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington, where he was held for nearly six months until the federal judge ordered his release.

In a more recent case, Senn produced a dental analysis in December for another youth. The youth, H.S., fled Afghanistan after his father was killed by the Taliban and his brother was killed by the Islamic State group, according his attorney, Mariel Villarreal, who works with Pangea Legal Services in San Francisco. Reveal is using the youth’s initials because he is a minor and faces great risk if identified.

Senn’s report on H.S.’s dental scans contains much of the same language as the age estimation he made in Caroog’s case.

With H.S., Senn found the “range of possible ages for such a male is 16.56 to 23.18 years,” a span of nearly seven years. He concluded there was a 79.5 percent chance that H.S. was older than 18. Last week, a California immigration judge disagreed.

“The respondent’s birth certificate and consistent assertions of being under eighteen outweigh the dental age test,” Judge Patrick O’Brien wrote in an April 23 ruling. He directed ICE and attorneys for H.S. “to take appropriate actions consistent with the court’s finding.”

However, as of today, ICE continued to hold H.S. at the Mesa Verde Detention Facility, an adult detention center in Bakersfield, California – 10 days after O’Brien’s ruling. Attorneys for ICE submitted a motion to reconsider based on evidence obtained after the immigration judge’s order.

ICE did not respond to a request for comment about either case. Following a Reveal story last week, the agency declined to say how many times in the past year medical age assessment procedures were used to determine age. The Office of Refugee Resettlement said it was unable to respond to a request for comment by deadline.  

Congressional committees in 2007 and 2008 directed ICE to halt the practice of obtaining dental and bone scans, calling the practice “insensitive and inappropriate.”

But ICE continued to use the scans, and the following year, an audit by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General criticized ICE’s reliance on them. The audit found that ICE failed to keep data on the practice, including how many minors had been subjected to bone and dental scans and how many had been commingled with adults as a result.

One problem with using dental and bone scans in immigration cases is that research was largely based on studies of  “ethnically homogenous populations,” the audit states.

In 2009, a new federal law called the William Wilberforce Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act required the Department of Homeland Security to develop age determination procedures that take “multiple forms of evidence” into account, including “non-exclusive use” of radiographs.

Dubbed the dental detective, Dr. Michael Bowers, a lawyer and dentist who writes about dental forensics, told Reveal that dental exams can be useful but should never be used as the sole evidence to make a medical age determination.

“You’ve got to use skeletal evidence,” he said, explaining that there is more data available on skeletal development than on dental development.

The Washington Post’s Radley Balko has chronicled challenges to a bite-mark analysis championed by Senn. In 2016, Texas Monthly wrote that the Texas Forensic Science Commission was examining use of bite-mark evidence in criminal cases and gathering input from experts, including Senn, who insisted that bite-mark analysis was based on science.

In making his case to the commission, The Dallas Morning News reported that Senn invoked the need to keep children safe. Bite-mark analysis, for instance, has been used in child abuse cases.

“If this committee decides to declare a moratorium on bite-mark analysis, children will suffer,” he said. 

But today, X-ray dental reports by Senn and other medical professionals working with ICE can end up sending minors to adult detention centers, which may not be safe for them.

“This practice has led to the erroneous placement of children in facilities commingled with adults who may seek to prey upon young children,” the House Appropriations Committee stated in its 2008 funding bill. “The Committee directs the Department to cease immediately its reliance on fallible forensic evidence as determinative of a child’s age, and provides no funding for this activity.”

Adams, whose client was released from an adult detention center despite Senn’s age estimation, said he believes dental and bone scan analyses are “basically giving rubber stamps to ICE to strip children of the protections they should receive.”

This story was originally published by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit news organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Learn more at revealnews.org and subscribe to the Reveal podcast, produced with PRX, at revealnews.org/podcast.

Caravan Migrants Remain Hopeful, Brave in Fight for Legal Asylum

The 300 asylum seekers who arrived at the U.S. border on April 29 after a month-long, 2,000-mile journey have another grueling struggle ahead of them, according to the immigration attorneys who are donating their time to represent them.

More than three-quarters of asylum claims from Hondurans, Guatemalans and Salvadorans between 2012 and 2017 were denied, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, and this year’s caravan of asylum seekers are facing a climate made even more hostile by the xenophobic Trump administration.

Once the asylum applicants—who traveled in a caravan to the Tijuana-San Ysidro border from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala—establish that they face a credible fear of persecution in their home countries, their ordeals are just beginning.

Colleen Flynn, an immigration attorney with the National Lawyers Guild’s Los Angeles chapter, told Truthout that because of retaliation by the Trump administration, even those who establish “credible fear” could face years of detention.

“Some will bond out, but many others will be unable to raise the money for high bonds,” Flynn said. “There is a possibility their kids will be taken away.”

In the face of these fears, Flynn said, the asylum seekers she met in Tijuana are “incredibly resilient, incredibly hopeful, really brave.”

Hundreds of supporters, many of whom had marched 150 miles from Los Angeles, gathered on the U.S. side of the border in solidarity with the asylum seekers. It was “a really moving sight to see people coming together at the border,” said Kath Rogers, executive director of the National Lawyers Guild’s Los Angeles chapter.

When the asylum seekers arrived at the border, however, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers informed them that the port of entry was “at capacity” and repeated that mantra throughout the day. When Gilbert Saucedo, an attorney, human rights advocate and co-president of the L.A. chapter of the National Lawyers Guild, asked the CBP officers, “Is that what you were told to say?” they said “yes,” Saucedo reported to Truthout.

Pueblo Sin Fronteras, a group that has accompanied migrants and refugees on their journeys for 15 years, took issue with the officers, saying in a statement: “Customs and Border Protection is the largest law enforcement agency in the country, and is able to detain, transport and incarcerate thousands of people in a day, but is pretending that they don’t have the ‘capacity’ to accept 150 refugee parents and children whose arrival has been anticipated and communicated weeks in advance.”

The asylum seekers have a legal right to have their applications considered, and many of them have meritorious claims. Notwithstanding Trump’s bloviating, CBP officers began slowly processing the asylum requests. By the end of the fifth day, roughly half of the caravan asylum seekers had been taken to San Diego for processing.

Meanwhile, the remaining asylum seekers continue to wait. They are camping on the ground in unseasonably cool and drizzly weather. Mostly women and children, they are cold and hungry, despite some rations provided by their supporters.

“It just broke my heart to see them,” Saucedo said.

Flynn spoke of a group of women whose lives are endangered in their home countries because they are transgender. These women “really kept spirits up” among the asylum seekers, “singing, dancing, elevating the mood and keeping people’s hopes alive.”

Trump Administration Tries to Keep Asylum Seekers Out of US

Donald Trump tweeted on April 23 that he ordered the Department of Homeland Security “not to let these large Caravans of people into our Country,” adding, “It is a disgrace.”

Unsurprisingly, Trump demonstrated no compassion for those who made the dangerous trip by bus, train and on foot to escape persecution in their home countries, referring to them as “this problem.” On April 3, he tweeted, “The big Caravan of People from Honduras … had better be stopped before it gets there.” The caravan asylum seekers were “openly defying our border,” Trump tweeted on April 30, and wrote in a fundraising email to his supporters on April 26, “We need a strong, impenetrable WALL that will end this problem once and for all.”

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi), ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, disagreed with Trump’s assessment.

“It’s overkill,” Thompson told HuffPost. “You would have expected [Trump] to have been briefed by intelligence officers exactly who was headed this way … We know who they are. We know where they are. And we even know why they’re coming. So to try to elevate this into some heightened sense of threat, it just didn’t measure up.”

Caravans of asylum seekers arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border annually. But this year, Trump began his Twitter and verbal assaults on the caravan before it reached Tijuana. “Are you watching that mess that’s going on right now with the caravan coming up?” he said at an April 29 rally in Michigan. “We have the worst laws anywhere in the world, we don’t have borders.”

Michael Knowles, president of the asylum officers union, told The San Diego Union-Tribune, “If they’re coming to seek asylum, they need to be given due process. We shouldn’t be impeded from doing our job, and those applicants should not be impeded from having their cases heard.”

Trump betrayed his ignorance of U.S. immigration law, tweeting, “These big flows of people are all trying to take advantage of DACA. They want in on the act!” In fact, the asylum seekers have nothing to do with Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, which allowed immigrants brought to the U.S. as children relief from deportation before Trump sought to end the program.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as contemptuous of immigrants as his boss, called the caravan “a deliberate attempt to undermine our laws and overwhelm our system.” Sessions short-circuited immigration court policies, vacating a Board of Immigration Appeals decision that required immigration judges to provide asylum seekers with a full hearing. Now, thanks to Sessions, judges can deny applications without testimony from the asylum seeker.

The Legal Right to Apply for Asylum

The 1951 Refugee Convention requires the United States to accept and consider asylum applications. Applicants must show they are unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion.

Once an applicant demonstrates a credible fear of persecution, which can be shown by evidence of past persecution, he or she must establish that fear stemmed from the applicant’s membership in a particular social group or political opinion. These are the two categories that cover most of the caravan asylum seekers, immigration attorney Helen Sklar, a member of the L.A. chapter executive board of the National Lawyers Guild, told Truthout.

“Membership in a particular social group” requires that members of the group share a “common, immutable” trait that is “so fundamental to the identity or conscience of the member that he or she should not be required to change it.”

The roughly 35 transgender women on the caravan will likely apply for asylum based on membership in the particular social group of being transgender, Sklar explained.

“Political opinion” is the category that applies to many of the asylum seekers, particularly those fleeing violence in Honduras. Most people in the caravan came from Honduras.

Sklar interviewed one asylum seeker who was subjected to persecution by the current Honduran regime because of her opposition to government policies. She reported being threatened and beaten at an anti-government demonstration.

U.S. policy, particularly during the Obama administration, helped create the conditions that caused the asylum seekers to undertake their long and perilous journey north. In 2009, the U.S. government supported a coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya and made life nearly unbearable for many Hondurans.

As Pamela Spees, senior staff attorney at the Center for Constitutional Rights, wrote:

Honduras has been declared the most dangerous country in the world for land rights and environmental activists. … It’s not surprising then that the rising and pervasive violence and deep economic insecurity in Honduras and the region has resulted in unprecedented numbers of refugees and migrants fleeing to seek safety and security.

Sklar, who is one of about a dozen attorneys who have been helping the asylum seekers without remuneration, criticized the Trump administration for suggesting that the asylum seekers’ motives are not legitimate.

“Who would undertake such hardship without a compelling need to find safety?” Sklar asked.

Trump’s Racist, Nativist Immigration Policy

Trump’s verbal attacks on the asylum seekers did not occur in a vacuum. From instituting the Muslim ban to attempting to end the DACA program, he has consistently appealed to his base by pursuing racist, nativist immigration policies.

Late last year, the Trump administration stopped accepting applications for a program that allowed people from Central America legally residing in the United States to bring their children here. As a result, 3,800 people—primarily children—who were being processed under that program are stranded in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala. Trump has also drastically reduced the admission of refugees into the U.S. and deployed National Guard troops to the border.

If he had his way, Trump would build a border wall and end the practice of family migration and the diversity visa lottery system. He would also halt the policy of releasing undocumented immigrants with notices to appear in court (a practice that he describes using the dehumanizing language of “catch and release”), opting instead to detain or deport them.

At his April 29 Michigan rally, Trump threatened to shut down the country if his wall did not get built.

“We need security. We need the wall … if we don’t get border security, we’ll have no choice. We’ll close down the country,” Trump declared.

Meanwhile, the asylum seekers brace for the next stage of their long struggle. “Our trip isn’t over,” 17-year-old Jose Coello from Honduras said as he walked into the United States from Tijuana on May 2. “This is just the next step.”