George Packer's Blog, page 74

Michael Flynn and the Trump Administration’s Lobbyist Secrets

This week, there have already been reminders of how much the upholding of government ethics relies on access to open information—and of how little Donald Trump’s Administration cares about either. Some of those reminders have come in the case of Michael Flynn, the President’s first national-security adviser. Others have come in the Administration’s clumsy attempt to tell Walter Shaub, the head of the Office of Government Ethics, not to do his job. The Administration had said loudly that it would not allow lobbyists to take positions relating to their “particular” lobbying-market niche. It also said, more quietly, that it could issue waivers. And it had, in total silence, issued an unknown number of waivers, as evidenced by lobbyists popping up, without other explanation, at various agencies. (When the Obama Administration issued such waivers, it not only said so but indicated why, in writing.) Shaub had asked various agencies to send him, by June 1st, a list of those waivers, a “data call” of the sort that he is explicitly authorized to make. The White House doesn’t seem to have liked that.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Remaining Countries on Trump’s Itinerary Say They’d Rather Wait a Month and Meet with Next President
Mahmoud Abbas, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Peace
Trump’s Big Saudi Arms Deal Will Cause More Misery for Yemen

Manchester’s Recent History of Tragedy

The explosion last night in England, at the Manchester Arena, occurred just as fans and their families were leaving a concert. The venue, which was playing host to Ariana Grande, seats more than twenty thousand guests. In the initial confusion, some of those attending or standing outside thought that the loud bang might have been part of the show’s balloon-enhanced finale. It was not.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
At a Vigil, Manchester Gets the Poem It Needs
A Soft and Vulnerable Moment at Ariana Grande’s Manchester Concert, Destroyed by Terror
Responding to Terror in the Aftermath of the Manchester Attack

Mahmoud Abbas, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Peace

Donald Trump met Mahmoud Abbas, in Bethlehem today, a twofer for a President intent, as the national-security adviser, H. R. McMaster, put it last week, on visiting “homelands and holy sites” and expressing “his desire for dignity and self-determination for the Palestinians.” Reading prepared remarks, in a Presidential palace outfitted with the trappings of sovereignty, Trump told reporters that he’d work with Abbas on “unlocking the potential of the Palestinian economy.” Naftali Bennett, the Israeli education minister and a settlement advocate, probably spoke for most of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last November, when he declared that, with Trump’s election, “the era of the Palestinian state is over.” Today, in Bethlehem, it was prolonged.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Michael Flynn and the Trump Administration’s Lobbyist Secrets
Remaining Countries on Trump’s Itinerary Say They’d Rather Wait a Month and Meet with Next President
Trump’s Big Saudi Arms Deal Will Cause More Misery for Yemen

Trump’s Big Saudi Arms Deal Will Cause More Misery for Yemen

On Monday, the first day of trading since the announcement that Saudi Arabia had agreed to buy a hundred and ten billion dollars in U.S. weaponry, defense stocks jumped. “General Dynamics (GD.N), Raytheon (RTN.N), and Lockheed Martin (LMT.N) all hit record highs before easing to trade up between 0.4 percent and 1.6 percent,” Reuters reported. “Boeing (BA.N) was up 1.3 percent and the second-biggest boost to the Dow.”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Michael Flynn and the Trump Administration’s Lobbyist Secrets
Remaining Countries on Trump’s Itinerary Say They’d Rather Wait a Month and Meet with Next President
Mahmoud Abbas, Donald Trump, and the Politics of Peace

Responding to Terror in the Aftermath of the Manchester Attack

Shaky cell-phone videos of the aftermath of the attack. Wrenching images of innocent victims. Condemnation from world leaders. The pattern is grimly familiar. In the days ahead, the background of the Manchester bomber will be probed. Investigators will study how he was trained and financed. Questions will be raised about missed warning signs. The search for co-conspirators will span cities, countries, and perhaps even continents.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
At a Vigil, Manchester Gets the Poem It Needs
Manchester’s Recent History of Tragedy
A Soft and Vulnerable Moment at Ariana Grande’s Manchester Concert, Destroyed by Terror

A Terrorist Attack in Manchester

What was it about an arena full of teen and preteen children and their parents, listening to an American pop singer, that so offended the man who detonated the bomb in Manchester last night? We don’t know for sure, although recent tragedies in Berlin, Nice, Paris, and London may give us strong suspicions. The bomber—whose identity is unknown, for now—is dead, along with twenty-two of his victims. Fifty-nine more are hurt, some with life-threatening injuries. The attacker triggered his bomb at around 10:35 P.M. last night, at the end of an Ariana Grande concert, in the foyer of the Manchester Arena, just as fans were coming out of the gig. The timing appeared to have been calculated to inflict as much death and panic as possible. In concertgoers’ videos, the terror in the arena is palpable. A girl recording one video asked the same question, over and over: “What is going on? What is going on?”

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
At a Vigil, Manchester Gets the Poem It Needs
Manchester’s Recent History of Tragedy
A Soft and Vulnerable Moment at Ariana Grande’s Manchester Concert, Destroyed by Terror

Trump Chases His “Ultimate Deal”

Not so long ago, President Donald Trump had backers of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process worried and Israeli settlers and annexationists elated. Many were convinced that a change in U.S. policy toward Israel was imminent, not least because the President’s three main advisers on Israel were modern Orthodox Jews with ties to West Bank settlements. Mr. Trump’s chief negotiator, Jason Greenblatt, is a former West Bank yeshiva student. The new U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, until recently headed a settler fund-raising group. And the family of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has donated to the institutions of a settlement northeast of Ramallah.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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The Post-Presidential Paintings of Donald Trump (Probably)
The Onion Leaks a Trove of Trump Docs
Trump’s Simplistic Strategy on Jihadism

The Seven-Year Saga of One Undocumented Student in Georgia

In 2013, after a legal battle that had already stretched on for three years, Jessica Colotl, a twenty-six-year-old paralegal who was born in Mexico and raised in Georgia, thought that her immigration troubles were finally over. In 2010, she had been arrested for a traffic violation on the campus of Kennesaw State University, in Georgia, where she was a junior. She then spent thirty-eight days in an immigration-detention center, in Alabama, and was supposed to be deported, until a national outcry over her case led Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reconsider, and she was allowed to return home. Within days, however, she was rearrested, this time by the local sheriff, who claimed that she had given a false home address when she’d been booked into the county jail after her arrest. (The address corresponded to an old family residence listed on the insurance registration for the car Colotl was driving.) After several more months of legal wrangling, prosecutors offered her a plea deal, which she accepted out of desperation: community service in exchange for dropped charges. In 2012, she received protection against deportation from a federal program called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), and, in 2013, the charges against her were officially dismissed.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

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A Harrowing Turning Point for Haitian Immigrants
How I Solved It: New York or Lahore?
Remembering a Pioneer of Asian-American Studies

Trump’s Simplistic Strategy on Jihadism

Six days after the 9/11 attacks, in 2001, President George W. Bush went to the Islamic Center in Washington to dampen fears of a clash of civilizations between the Islamic world and the West. “The face of terror is not the true face of Islam,” he said. “Islam is peace.” Three days later, at a joint session of Congress, Bush defined the challenge from Al Qaeda in political rather than religious or cultural terms. “This is the fight of all who believe in progress and pluralism, tolerance and freedom,” he told Congress. “This will not be an age of terror. This will be an age of liberty here and across the world.” A central theme of Bush’s Presidency was fostering democracy through nation-building.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Iran’s Moderates Win Election, but It Won’t Matter to Trump
Nation Favors Travel Ban on Person Who Has Recently Visited Muslim Country
Trump or Comey: Who’s the Real “Nut Job” Here?

Iran’s Moderates Win Election, but It Won’t Matter to Trump

Donald Trump arrived in Saudi Arabia this weekend to launch a new Middle East coalition designed to confront Iran just as Tehran announced the reëlection of President Hassan Rouhani, the man who dared to engage diplomatically with the United States. Rouhani won a commanding victory: fifty-seven per cent in a four-way race, with seventy per cent turnout. He fended off a challenge from a populist right-wing cleric, Ebrahim Raisi, a rising political star backed by hard-line power centers such as the Revolutionary Guards. Street celebrations erupted Saturday night from Tehran to Mashhad, the eastern city with Iran’s holiest shrine.

See the rest of the story at newyorker.com

Related:
Nation Favors Travel Ban on Person Who Has Recently Visited Muslim Country
Trump or Comey: Who’s the Real “Nut Job” Here?
Washington, D.C., Job Fair