Helen H. Moore's Blog, page 293

Empire of madness

(Credit: Reuters/Tim Wimborne)

It’s January 2025, and within days of entering the Oval Office, a new president already faces his first full-scale crisis abroad. Twenty-four years after it began, the war on terror, from the Philippines to Nigeria, rages on. In 2024 alone, the U.S. launched repeated air strikes on 15 nations (or, in a number of cases, former nations), including the Philippines, Burma, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, the former Iraq, the former Syria, Kurdistan, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Mali, and Nigeria.

In the weeks before his inauguration, a series of events roiled the Greater Middle East and Africa. Drone strikes and raids by U.S. Special Operations forces in Saudi Arabia against both Shiite rebels and militants from the Global Islamic State killed scores of civilians, including children. They left that increasingly destabilized kingdom in an uproar, intensified the unpopularity of its young king, and led to the withdrawal of the Saudi ambassador from Washington.  In Mali, dressed in police uniforms and riding on motorcycles, three Islamic militants from the Front Azawad, which now controls the upper third of the country, gained entry to a recently established joint U.S.-French military base and blew themselves up, killing two American Green Berets, three American contractors, and two French soldiers, while wounding several members of Mali’s presidential guard.  In Iraq, as 2024 ended, the city of Tal Afar — already “liberated” twice since the 2003 invasion of that country, first by American troops in 2005 and then by American-backed Iraqi troops in 2017  — fell to the Sunni militants of the Global Islamic State. Though now besieged by the forces of the Republic of Southern Iraq backed by the U.S. Air Force, it remains in their hands.

The crisis of the moment, however, is in Afghanistan where the war on terror first began. There, the Taliban, the Global Islamic State (or GIS, which emerged from the Islamic State, or ISIS, in 2019), and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (or AQIA, which split from the original al-Qaeda in 2021) now control an increasing number of provincial capitals.  These range from Lashgar Gah in Helmand Province in the southern poppy-growing heartlands of the country to Kunduz in the north, which first briefly fell to the Taliban in 2015 and now is in the hands of GIS militants.  In the meantime, the American-backed government in the Afghan capital, Kabul, is — as in 2022 when a “surge” of almost 25,000 American troops and private contractors saved it from falling to the Taliban — again besieged and again in danger.  The conflict that Lieutenant General Harold S. Forrester, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, had only recently termed a “ stalemate ” seems to be devolving.  What’s left of the Afghan military with its ghost soldiers , soaring desertion rates, and stunning casualty figures is reportedly at the edge of dissolution. Forrester is returning to the United States this week to testify before Congress and urge the new president to surge into the country up to 15,000 more American troops, including Special Operations forces, and another 15,000 private contractors, as well as significantly more air power before the situation goes from worse to truly catastrophic.

Like many in the Pentagon, Forrester now regularly speaks of the Afghan War as an “eonic struggle,” that is, one not expected to end for generations. . .

You think not?  When it comes to America’s endless wars and conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa, you can’t imagine a more-of-the-same scenario eight years into the future?  If, in 2009, eight years after the war on terror was launched, as President Obama was preparing to send a “surge” of more than 30,000 U.S. troops into Afghanistan (while swearing to end the war in Iraq), I had written such a futuristic account of America’s wars in 2017, you might have been no less unconvinced.

Who would have believed then that political Washington and the U.S. military’s high command could possibly continue on the same brainless path (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say superhighway) for another eight years?  Who would have believed then that, in the fall of 2017, they would be intensifying their air campaigns across the Greater Middle East, still fighting in Iraq (and Syria), supporting a disastrous Saudi war in Yemen, launching the first of yet another set of mini-surges in Afghanistan, and so on?  And who would have believed then that, in return for prosecuting unsuccessful wars for 16 years while aiding and abetting in the spread of terror movements across a vast region, three of America’s generals would be the most powerful figures in Washington aside from our bizarre president (whose election no one could have predicted eight years ago)?  Or here’s another mind-bender: Would you really have predicted that, in return for 16 years of unsuccessful war-making, the U.S. military (and the rest of the national security state) would be getting yet more money from the political elite in our nation’s capital or would be thought better of than any other American institution by the public?

Now, I’m the first to admit that we humans are pathetic seers. Peering into the future with any kind of accuracy has never been part of our skill set.  And so my version of 2025 could be way off base.  Given our present world, it might prove to be far too optimistic about our wars.

After — just to mention one grim possibility of our moment — for the first time since 1945, we’re on a planet where nuclear weapons might be used by either side in the course of a local war, potentially leaving Asia aflame and possibly the world economy in ruins.  And don’t even bring up Iran, which I carefully and perhaps too cautiously didn’t include in my list of the 15 countries the U.S. was bombing in 2025 (as opposed to the seven at present).  And yet, in the same world where they are decrying North Korea’s nuclear weapons, the Trump administration and its U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, seem to be hard at work creating a situation in which the Iranians could once again be developing ones of their own.  The president has reportedly been desperate to ditch the nuclear agreement Barack Obama and the leaders of five other major powers signed with Iran in 2015 (though he has yet to actually do so) and he’s stocked his administration with a remarkable crew of Iranophobes, including CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, all of whom have been itching over the years for some kind of confrontation with Iran. (And given the last decade and a half of American war fighting in the region, how do you think that conflict would be likely to turn out?)

Donald Trump’s Washington, as John Feffer has recently pointed out, is now embarked on a Pyongyang-style “military-first” policy in which resources, money, and power are heading for the Pentagon and the U.S. nuclear arsenal, while much of the rest of the government is downsized.  Obviously, if that’s where your resources are going, then that’s where your efforts and energies will go, too.  So don’t expect less war in the years to come, no matter how inept Washington has proven when it comes to making war work.

Now, let’s leave those wars aside for a moment and return to the future:

It’s mid-September 2025.  Hurricane Wally has just deluged Houston with another thousand-year rainfall, the fourth since Hurricane Harvey hit the region in 2017.  It’s the third Category 6 hurricane — winds of 190 or more miles an hour — to hit the U.S. so far this year, the previous two being Tallulah and Valerie, tying a record first set in 2023.  ( Category 6 was only added to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale in 2022 after Hurricane Donald devastated Washington D.C. )  The new president did not visit Houston.  His press secretary simply said, “If the president visited every area hit by extreme weather, he would be incapable of spending enough time in Washington to oversee the rebuilding of the city and govern the country.”  She refused to take further questions and Congress has no plans to pass emergency legislation for a relief package for the Houston region.

Much of what’s left of that city’s population is either fled ahead of the storm or is packed into relief shelters.  And as with Miami Beach, it is now believed that some of the more flood-prone parts of the Houston area will never be rebuilt.  (Certain ocean-front areas of Miami were largely abandoned after Donald hit in 2022 on its way to Washington, thanks in part to a new reality: sea levels were rising faster than expected because of the stunning pace of the Greenland ice shield’s meltdown .)   

Meanwhile, the temperature just hit 112 degrees, a new September record , in San Francisco.  That came after a summer in which a record 115 was experienced, making Mark Twain’s apocryphal line, “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” an artifact of the past. In another year without an El Niño phenomenon, the West Coast has again been ablaze and the wheat-growing regions of the Midwest have been further devastated by a tenacious drought, now four years old.

Around the planet, heat events are on the rise, as are storms and floods, while the wildfire season continues to expand globally.  To mention just two events elsewhere on Earth: in 2024, according to the U.N. Refugee Agency (UNHCR), thanks to both spreading conflicts and an increase in extreme weather events, more people were displaced — 127.2 million — than at any time on record, almost doubling the 2016 count . UNHCR director Angelica Harbani expects that figure to be surpassed yet again when this year’s numbers are tallied.  In addition, a speedier than expected meltdown of the Himalayan glaciers has created a permanent water crisis in parts of South Asia also struck by repeated disastrous monsoons and floods.

In the United States, the week after Hurricane Wally destroyed Houston, the president flew to North Dakota to proudly mark the beginning of the construction of the Transcontinental Pipeline slated to bring Canadian tar sands oil from Alberta, Canada, to the East Coast.  “It will help ensure,” he said, “that the United States remains the oil capital of the planet.”

Think of it this way: a new weather paradigm is visibly on the rise.  It just walloped the United States from the burning West Coast to the battered Florida Keys.  And another crucial phenomenon has accompanied it: the rise to power in Washington — and not just there — of Republican climate-change denialism. Think of the two phenomena together as the alliance from hell.  So far there’s no evidence that a Washington whose key agencies are well stockedwith climate-change deniers is likely to be transformed any time soon.

Now, meld those two future scenarios of mine: the fruitless pursuit of never-ending wars and the increasing extremity of the weather on a planet seemingly growing hotter by the year.  (Sixteen of the 17 warmest years on record occurred in the twenty-first century and the 17th was 1998.)  Try to conjure up such a world for a moment and you’ll realize that the potential damage could be enormous, even if the planet’s “lone superpower” continues to encourage the greatest threat facing us for only a brief period, even if Donald Trump doesn’t win reelection in 2020 or worse than him isn’t heading down the pike.

The frying of our world

There have been many imperial powers on Planet Earth.  Any number of them committed massive acts of horror — from the Mongol empire (whose warriors typically sacked Baghdad in 1258, putting its public libraries to the torch, reputedly turning the Tigris River black with ink and that city’s streets red with blood) to the Spanish empire (known for its grim treatment of the inhabitants of its “new world” possessions, not to speak of the Muslims, Jews, and other heretics in Spain itself) to the Nazis (no elaboration needed). In other words, there’s already competition enough for the imperial worst of the worst.  And yet don’t imagine that the United States doesn’t have a shot at taking the number one spot for all eternity. (USA! USA!)

Depending on how the politics of this country and this century play out, the phrase “fiddling while Rome burns” might have to be seriously readjusted.  In the American version, you would substitute “fighting never-ending wars across the Greater Middle East, Africa, and possibly Asia” for “fiddling” and for “Rome,” you would insert “the planet.” Only “burns” would remain the same.  For now, at least, you would also have to replace the Roman emperor Nero (who was probably playing a lyre, since no fiddles existed in his world) with Donald Trump, the Tweeter-in-Chief, as well as “his” generals and the whole crew of climate deniers now swarming Washington, one more eager than the next to release the full power of fossil fuels into an overburdened atmosphere.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that my own country, so eternally overpraised by its leaders in these years as the planet’s “indispensable” and “exceptional” nation with “the finest fighting force the world has ever known” might usher in the collapse of the very environment that nurtured humanity all these millennia.  As the “lone superpower,” the last in a line-up of rival great powers extending back to the fifteenth century, what a mockery it threatens to make of the long-gone vision of history as a march of progress through time.  What a mockery it threatens to make of the America of my own childhood, the one that so proudly put a man on the moon and imagined that there was no problem on Earth it couldn’t solve.

Imagine the government of that same country, distracted by its hopeless wars and the terrorist groups they continue to generate, facing the possible frying of our — and not lifting a finger to deal with the situation.  In a Washington where less is more for everything except the U.S. military (for which more is invariably less), the world has been turned upside down.  It’s the definition of an empire of madness.

Hold on a second!  Somewhere, faintly, I think I hear a fiddle playing and maybe it’s my imagination, but do I smell smoke?

Note: Credit must be given for the citation in this piece of “Hurricane Donald,” the storm that devastated Washington in 2022. I stole it from John Feffer’s superb dystopian novel Splinterlands. Tom

Mexico in shock over fake news story of Frida Sofia, girl trapped after quake

A building that collapsed after an earthquake in Mexico City. (Credit: AP/Rebecca Blackwell)

Media reports about Frida Sofia, a supposed 12-year-old girl stuck under the rubble of her former school after a terrible earthquake on Tuesday, may have been false.

Although Mexicans were captivated by the story of the little girl struggling to stay alive while rescue crews attempted to retrieve her, it soon became clear that she may not exist at all, according to The Los Angeles Times. There was no student at the school registered under the name Frida Sofia, no frantic parents were found and no one had reason to believe any children were alive beneath the former school.

As the Times reported:

Much of the story appeared to originate from reporters for the Televisa network. They said on social media that the girl told rescue workers that she was with five other classmates.

News that there apparently was no living girl under the rubble prompted a new social media eruption, this one of outrage.

“Fake news,” many people tweeted.

Much criticism has been leveled at the Mexican deputy minister of information, who along with other government officials gave conflicting accounts as to whether there were children caught alive under the rubble of the former schools. Members of the Los Angeles County Fire Department had even been sent to the school with canines but were unable to find any signs of life, although they were only able to access 75 percent of the wreckage.

Tuesday’s earthquake was measured at a 7.1 on the Richter scale, according to ABC News. It destroyed 44 buildings throughout Puebla state in central Mexico, centering around Raboso, which is roughly 75 miles south of Mexico City.

The current death toll is 286 people, with 1,900 being treated at hospitals in Mexico City so far.

“Wonder Woman,” a massive hit in America, isn’t as loved overseas

Gal Gadot in "Wonder Woman" (Credit: Warner Bros. Entertainment)

As the first major female-centric, female-directed super hero film, “Wonder Woman” burst upon the scene in the United States, becoming the highest-grossing film of the summer with $411.5 million in earnings at the North American box office.

Film fanatics were abuzz with excitement upon its release in June, and the praise and positive reviews soon followed. With a great message, it was a welcome thing to have at the box office.

This, however, was not true for the rest of the world, where “Wonder Woman” failed to work wonders.

The sum total of its earnings at home and overseas amounted to $819 million, which — while well above the movie’s budget — showed a strikingly low percentage from abroad: just 49.7, according to a Forbes report. Yes, still highly profitable, but compare that to its less successful predecessor in the Warner Bros. DC franchise, “Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice,” which swiped 62.2 percent of its take from foreign markets.  

But this wasn’t a worldwide phenomenon. While, inn some foreign markets the film performed miserably — like the United Kingdom, Italy, Russia and South Korea — in others it thrived: places like Brazil, Australia and Taiwan.

Previous big-name superhero films, such as “The Amazing Spiderman 2” and “X-Men: Apocalypse” both earned 71.4 percent of their revenue overseas, according to the report, but even lesser-known ones like “Doctor Strange” did well with 65.7 percent.

While its success in North America broke records, “Wonder Woman” could have had even more impressive earning totals had it been able to penetrate the foreign market. Yes, the film is an unqualified success in many, many ways — but there seems to be at least something wrong with the rest of the globe here.

The why of this lack of success overseas is a mystery: Lack of foreign interest in the film, lack of knowledge of the character, the sub-par Warner Bros. offerings, the 11 Marvel films that have come before it, chauvinism and lead actress Gal Gadot’s anti-Palenstinian rhetoric were all factors proposed by Forbes — none of that seems fully satisfactory however.

Whatever happened, it’s something that best be figured out by 2019, when “Wonder Woman 2” is scheduled for release.

Majority of Americans support single-payer: poll

People rally in favor of single-payer healthcare for all Californians (Credit: Getty/Robyn Beck)

As Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders continues the fight for his groundbreaking “Medicare-for-all” legislation, a new poll shows that Americans are in favor of a single-payer health care system by a “slim majority.”

As the Hill reported on Friday, a new Harvard-Harris Poll shows that as a whole, 52 percent of Americans support a single-payer system.

“Given all of the discontent with health care and desire for coverage, single-payer has more support than I have seen in the past, with the country split down the middle,” said Harvard-Harris Poll co-director Mark Penn.

The poll also showed that 69 percent of respondents believe the single-payer system would “provide more coverage.” 54 percent of Republicans agree. Nevertheless, a great majority of Republicans and a small majority of Independents are against the bill, 65 percent and 51 percent in opposition, respectively.

Sen. Sanders formally introduced his “Medicare-for-all,” single-payer health-care bill in mid-September, transforming a once abstract and idealistic concept into an ambitious possibility. Sixteen senators have already signed on to co-sponsor the bill, including Democratic Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker, all 2020 presidential contenders. Though at the moment its unlikely the bill will pass in a

Though such a bill will never be passed by a Republican-controlled Congress, Sanders intends to garner public awareness and support for his proposal, in the hopes that public demand will eventually overwhelm politics.

“Our job is to join every major country on Earth and guarantee health care to all as a right, not a privelege. Today, we tell the insurance and drug companies we are sick and tired of being ripped off by your greed,” Sanders said in an address at the California Nurses Association/National Nurses Organizing Committee Convention. “Do everything you can, get the word out, all over this country, to your friends, that no republicans should vote for this disastrous [Repeal and Replace] bill. And if they do, they will pay a very heavy political price.”

The Harvard-Harris poll comes at a time when Republican Senators Bill Cassidy and Lindsey Graham are watching their last-ditch attempt to repeal Obamacare fall apart. And for 56 percent of Americans, another poll shows they are more than pleased to see its defeat.

The latest Washington Post-ABC News poll found that even 42 percent of Republicans prefer Obamacare over the Republican’s current bill.

Penn says that all of these figures are likely to change — in either direction — following an upcoming nationally televised debate. On Monday, September 25th, Graham and Cassidy will face off against Sanders and Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar on CNN, while also answering questions from the audience.

The debate will come five days before the Senate’s September 30th deadline to vote on a repeal.

How Matt Drudge became the pipeline for Russian propaganda

Matt Drudge (Credit: Getty/Evan Agostini)

On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 passengers and crew. The next day, President Barack Obama alleged that the responsible parties were Russian-backed separatists seizing territory in the region following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Obama’s statement came amid a furious effort by Russian propaganda outlets to foster confusion about the act. In their telling, the tragedy had actually been a failed attempt by Ukrainians to shoot down President Vladimir Putin’s plane.

The Russian propaganda effort received a substantial boost when right-wing internet journalist Matt Drudge highlighted a story on the topic from RT.com, the website of the Russian government-backed English-language news channel RT. Drudge titled the resulting item on the Drudge Report, his highly trafficked link aggregation website, “RT: Putin’s plane might have been target…” in bright red text.

After Drudge propelled the RT story to his massive audience, it was picked up by right-wing U.S. conspiracy websites. (Others on the right warned that Drudge had gone too far by aiding a Russian disinformation campaign.)

This was not an anomaly. Drudge has for years used his site as a web traffic pipeline for Russian propaganda sites, directing his massive audience to nearly 400 stories from RT.com and fellow Russian-government-run English-language news sites SputnikNews.com and TASS.com since the beginning of 2012, according to a Media Matters review. Those numbers spiked in 2016, when Drudge collectively linked to the three sites 122 times.

Drudge’s increasing affinity for and proliferation of Russian propaganda comes amid what The New York Times calls “a new information war Russia is waging against the West.”

RT and Sputnik News are part of what the Times’ Jim Rutenberg has termed “the most effective propaganda operation of the 21st century so far,” a coordinated network of state-controlled TV and online media outlets and social media accounts that take advantage of the traditional protections of Western liberal democracies to undermine public confidence in the governments of those nations. TASS, which has received less attention in the United States, is a Russian news agency similar to The Associated Press but owned by the state.

Russia’s English-language propaganda operation came under increasing scrutiny from the U.S. intelligence community during and following the 2016 presidential election, during which, according to U.S. intelligence agencies, it was part of an effort to bolster now-President Donald Trump’s campaign. Mixing slanted coverage with outright lies, the state media effort promotes an anti-establishment worldview featuring criticisms of the U.S. from both the far left and far right, packaged with the same strategies used by modern American news outlets to increase viewership.

When the Kremlin’s interests converge with the right’s interests in undermining Democratic politicians like former President Barack Obama and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, its outlets find prominent allies in the U.S. conservative media landscape. As Andrew Feinberg, the former White House correspondent for Sputnik News, has explained, the Russian media outlets are part of the “right-wing media ecosystem,” with their stories picked up and promoted by prominent far-right news sites like Breitbart.com and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars.com.

For decades, Drudge has played a dominant role in that ecosystem. The Drudge Report is one of the most highly trafficked news websites in the country, and because it simply aggregates links, it is the top source of referral traffic to a host of right-wing and mainstream news websites. That ability to create a firehose of traffic leads some reporters, especially on the right, to craft stories for the explicit purpose of getting Drudge links, allowing him to serve as the media’s assignment editor. And the media outlets benefiting from that traffic are not only U.S. traditional media or conservative outlets, but the press organs of one of the nation’s top adversaries.

To measure this effect, Media Matters wrote a program to crawl through Drudge’s archives and create an index of all instances in which the website linked to pages that included the URLs “rt.com,” “sputniknews.com,” or “tass.com.”

We found that the Drudge Report has promoted dozens of RT articles every year since 2012. Soon after Sputnik launched in November 2014, it, too, began regularly receiving attention from Drudge. TASS articles receive much less promotion, but Drudge’s website features a permanent link to the TASS main page (listed as ITAR-TASS).

As the U.S. presidential race and Russia’s machinations both escalated in 2015, the number of Russian propaganda articles promoted by Drudge shot up to 79 for the year. The total jumped again to a high of 122 articles in 2016, before dropping down to 45 this year through September 18.

The articles Drudge highlighted cover a wide range of U.S. and international topics, but — as one might expect from the content of Russian propaganda outlets — many fall into discrete categories that fit the interests of the Kremlin.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, for example, several of the Drudge-promoted articles reported on the contents of emails and voicemails the U.S. intelligence community says were stolen from the Democratic National Committee or former Clinton campaign chair John Podesta by Russian hackers.

Others promoted the claims of WikiLeaks founder and former RT host Julian Assange. Drudge highlightedcoverage from Russian propaganda outlets of his attacks on Clinton and his contradiction of the U.S. intelligence community over whether Russia was the source of the Democratic emails he published.

Drudge has also regularly turned to RT and Sputnik for unskeptical coverage of statements from Putin and other Kremlin officials, including their denials of Russian election interference, their criticisms of the U.S. role in Syria, and their efforts to undermine NATO members.

And he’s frequently highlighted the Russian outlets’ conspiracy theories and hysterics, including their reports on meetings of the “mysterious Bilderberg Group,” debunked claims that Google manipulated its search results to favor Clinton, and warnings of increasing Western support for satanism.

Drudge’s affinity for Russian president Vladimir Putin and his propaganda outlets is undoubtedly a major asset for the Kremlin. Drudge has rare power as a media gatekeeper due to his unusual ability to push reporting from previously unknown outlets to a massive audience.

Jones’ Infowars — also a favorite of the Russian government — is a case study in the potential impact of sustained promotion from Drudge. A 2013 Media Matters study found that the Drudge Report linked to Infowars hundreds of times over the previous two years, giving the conspiracy theory website crucial exposure to the rest of the right-wing media space.

As Jones himself put it, Drudge was the “one source who really helped us break out, who took our information, helped to punch it out to an even more effective level.”

Putin could say the same.

Research provided by Adama Ngom and Shelby Jamerson.

Flood insurance is broken. Here are some ways to fix it

Destruction left after Hurricane Irma (Credit: Getty/Gerben Van Es)

Hundreds of thousands of Americans whose homes were damaged or destroyed by flooding from Hurricanes Harvey and Irma don’t know how they will pay for repairs, rebuilding or replacement. Likewise, the nation as a whole needs a plan for fixing the deeply flawed federal system for managing and financing flood risks.

The National Flood Insurance Program insures almost five million homes and businesses against flood risks and handles related services such as flood risk mapping and floodplain management. It nearly ran out of funding before Congress voted to temporarily extend its authorization in early September. This reprieve means it can keep renewing and issuing new policies through December 8 – instead of being frozen at an inconvenient juncture.

As an expert on the structure and performance of insurance markets, I was relieved to see the program at least get patched. But I’m also concerned because lawmakers are making too little progress toward a long-overdue overhaul of the program that would make it solvent and more effective.

What’s wrong?

As House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling put it recently, Congress must “finally get serious about fixing the NFIP because it is not only broke, it is broken.”

After years of struggles, its problems worsened considerably after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Along with other flooding programs and policies, it’s failing in four main ways.

First, too few of the property owners who need flood insurance are buying it, and in some cases their coverage can’t cover their losses. That leaves too many Americans saddled with uninsured losses – which in turn puts more pressure on the government to step up its assistance.

Second, the NFIP doesn’t charge premiums high enough to cover its costs.

Third, since Congress hasn’t officially filled the gap through appropriations, the program is running a big deficit.

Finally, the NFIP is forced to cover previously flooded homes and properties in very risky places. This mandate takes advantage of taxpayers since no private insurer would voluntarily cover those properties. Without leeway, the program – and by extension all taxpayers – is subsidizing the owners of homes and businesses that have been repeatedly flooded. Representing about 1 percent of all insured properties, they account for roughly 30 percent of NFIP claims.

Separately, measures aimed at reducing flood risk and losses aren’t working. Local authorities allow too much building – and rebuilding – after disaster strikes in high-risk areas, such as barrier islands along the Southeast and Gulf coasts. And too many people are moving into those areas or staying put when they shouldn’t.

Expanding coverage

The Insurance Information Institute estimates that only about 12 percent of homeowners currently have flood insurance policies. Without vouchers – or a similar approach – even fewer Americans who need flood insurance will buy it if premiums rise.

The NFIP and other insurers will cover only an estimated 30 percent of the flood losses from Harvey’s record rainfalls and storm surges, real estate data company CoreLogic estimates.

Roy Wright, who runs the NFIP, blames premium increases stemming from the Biggert-Waters Act, which Congress passed in 2012, for a recent decline in the number of flood insurance policies purchased. He says the number of policies in the U.S. should double to 10 million.

Even more properties would have lacked flood insurance had Congress not rolled back Biggert-Waters two years later. The law was supposed to make the NFIP more self-sufficient by raising premiums and instituting other changes. Homeowners in high-risk areas pressured lawmakers to scrap it, though some rates were still allowed to rise.

Currently, people with mortgages are required to carry flood insurance only when their properties are located in high-risk areas. Like the General Accountability Office, I support extending this requirement to everyone with a mortgage.

 

Problematic premiums

So why doesn’t the NFIP charge enough to cover its costs? One reason is subsidies.

The GAO estimates that the government subsidizes about one in five homeowner flood insurance policies.

These subsidies tend to help the people who need it least – like those with expensive mansions in coastal areas – at taxpayer expense. (Some of the subsidies are being phased out.)

Many experts and policymakers want the government to grant a new kind of subsidy by giving the homeowners who can’t afford flood insurance means-tested vouchers to help pay for it.

In addition, experts at the Wharton School and elsewhere also argue that the NFIP miscalculates premiums, charging homeowners too little or too much. Adopting the latest technology and methods would make it more accurate.

I believe that the NFIP should also charge higher premiums for policies that cover properties that are especially susceptible to catastrophic losses from severe floods.

Forgiving the program’s debt

Unless premiums start covering the program’s costs or Congress appropriates more money for it, the NFIP will keep running deficits. It already owed the Treasury nearly US$25 billion before the latest hurricanes made landfall. Harvey and Irma could add $10 billion or more to this tab based on my broad-brush analysis of National Flood Insurance Program projections.

The GAO has argued that the NFIP should not have to repay its debt. I agree.

Private sector insurance pricing is prospective, not retrospective. Since private insurers cannot recoup losses from prior years by charging current and future policyholders more than what they owe, public sector insurers like the NFIP cannot either.

How Congress wants to fix it

Lawmakers have floated several flood insurance bills, all offering to fix different problems. So far, none of them would forgive the NFIP’s debt, as a House bill introduced last year would have done.

The House bill that Texas Rep. Hensarling supports would make it easier for some homeowners to get and pay for flood insurance. It would also help put the NFIP on firmer fiscal footing by ruling out coverage for homes and businesses that have had claims amounting to more than twice their replacement cost and other reforms.

In the Senate, there are two bipartisan bills that would instead tighten the caps on annual rate increases, forcing taxpayers to pay more for flood losses at a time when scientists expect climate change to make bouts of extreme weather more common.

While the House bill would not solve all of the program’s problems, the Senate bills fall even shorter. However, the Senate bills would substantially increase funding for flood-prevention efforts such as mapping that gauges the risk of flooding in coastal and inland areas.

They also call for boosting spending on floodplain management and risk mitigation by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which runs the NFIP.

In practice that means the government could do more to encourage flood-prone areas to strengthen their zoning and building ordinances. As a result, more homeowners in risky areas might elevate their dwellings to make them less prone to flooding or communities could use zoning to discourage construction vulnerable to storm damage.

Many lawmakers also want to expand the role of private insurers, which underwrite only a small fraction of the flood policies now in place, by making it easier for them to sell flood policies. Some provisions in pending legislation that would do this would be helpful, but others could create problems such as allowing private companies to sell policies with substantial coverage gaps.

Alfonso Jose and his wife Cristina Ventura pull son Alfonso Jr. in a cooler while wading through their flooded street after Hurricane Irma soaked Bonita Springs, Florida.

AP Photo/David Goldman

What about the Trump administration?

Unfortunately, the White House isn’t helping. Trump’s proposed budget would cut NFIP spending on flood mapping by $190 million. In August, shortly before Harvey made landfall, he rescinded an Obama-era executive order to establish a federal flood risk management standard for public infrastructure.

Clearly, there is no magical way to fix flood insurance while cutting what homeowners and the government spend on it.

But there are ways to make the program more sustainable and capable of doing more for the people who need help more than the affluent beneficiaries whom it now subsidizes. The Trump administration and Congress just have to be willing to do what it takes.

Robert W. Klein, Director, Center for RMI Research, Associate Professor, Risk Management and Insurance, Georgia State University

 

Senate Republicans want to provide a death blow to any future health care reform

(Credit: AP Photo/Susan Walsh, File)

The Senate Republicans’ latest anti-Obamacare bill has bigger goals than destroying the Affordable Care Act and dismantling Medicaid. This bill aims to blow up the very foundation upon which a national health care system could be built — even if it roils private insurance markets via massive premium hikes for 2018.

This overarching goal — to destroy the health care system’s structural underpinnings that could be used to create a national health care system—was made clear in the opening boasts of the Senate bill’s co-sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., when he introduced the bill on the same day Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., introduced a Medicare for All bill.

“If you want a single-payer health care system, this is your worst nightmare,” Graham boasted on September 13, referring to his own bill. “Hell no to Berniecare!” If that wasn’t clear enough, Graham doubled down on Tuesday, when in an appearance with Vice President Mick Pence, Graham said, “federalism versus socialism, you pick.” Then on Wednesday, a Pence aide told reporters the vice president was leaving a U.N. Security Council meeting on peacekeeper reforms “to speak with leader McConnell on continuing momentum behind Graham-Cassidy.”

The legislation introduced by Graham and his co-sponsors is the GOP’s last hope to take action before the new federal fiscal year begins October 1. It has run into opposition from within GOP ranks — at least six Republican governors don’t want to see millions of federal dollars diverted from state-run Medicaid programs, which expanded coverage of lower-income people under the ACA. On top of that, virtually every medical association opposes the bill because they know the chaos it would bring, starting with double-digit insurance premium hikes and leading to an estimated 32 million people losing coverage over the next decade. It also deregulates minimum coverage requirements, meaning the private insurance industry would lessen what’s covered.

The bill’s parade of horribles doesn’t end there. It would cut an estimated $4 trillion in federal funds to states for Medicaid over the next two decades, which typically is a fifth of state budgets, and turn the federal subsidy into block grants with no strings attached — meaning the grants could be used for anything else, like roads or corporate subsidies. And it would pull tens of billions of dollars out of blue states that expanded their Medicaid programs under Obamacare (California loses $78 billion, New York $45 billion) and redistribute it to red states that refused to expand their Medicaid programs (Texas gets $35 billion, Georgia $10 billion), according to an analysis by Avalere Health LLC.

As expected, the political response has been a mounting firestorm that is on track to equal the intensity of the opposition last summer to earlier Obamacare repeal bills. The stakes became apparent Tuesday, when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suspended that body’s consideration of a bipartisan effort to ward off private insurance premium increases in 2018. In short, McConnell single-handedly sabotaged the bipartisan effort by Senate Health Education Labor and Pensions Committee chairman and co-chair, senators Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patti Murray, D-Wash., in one fell swoop.

“I am disappointed the Republican leaders decided to freeze this bipartisan approach and are trying to jam through a partisan Trumpcare, but I am confident we can reach a deal if we keep working together,” Murray said in a statement after McConnell knee-capped her.

The Senate Republican bill has so many potentially harmful effects it is easy to lose sight of the bigger picture and the GOP’s game plan. McConnell, Graham, Pence and the others lining up behind this ruthless legislation don’t just want to kill Obamacare. Graham, to his credit, laid out the stakes very candidly when he said “hell no” to Berniecare and portrayed the choice as “federalism versus socialism.”

Bernie Sanders’ bill is most accurately described as an “aspiration,” as the New Yorker put it, in that it creates a national single-payer system by expanding Medicare, the federal health program for those 65 and over. Sanders doesn’t say how it’s to be paid for, nor does the bill address how that transition would be phased in beyond lowering Medicare’s eligibility age over a four-year period. But 62 percent of the public support national health care, according to a nationwide poll by the Associated Press. That means Sanders is winning the war of ideas, even if he isn’t offering the implementation details.

In contrast, Graham’s bill attacks the governing structures and foundation of a national health care system like a malignant cancer. The Republicans don’t care a whit about being aspirational. They are ruthless and remorseless, and focused on dismantling the building blocks for a nationwide system: the federal funding of Obamacare and Medicaid, and the government’s most prominent means of delivery, state-run Medicaid and subsized Obamacare. As NBC Capitol Hill Reporter Lee Anne Caldwell tweeted about Graham’s fellow South Carolina sentor, “SenTimScott#: (the bill) stops us from having conversation in the future about Medicare for All” bc $ (because money) and decisions go to states.”

This is not the first time powerful Republicans have used Medicaid as a deliberate fissure to undermine Obamacare’s potential.

You may remember 2012’s U.S. Supreme Court decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts that preserved Obamacare. He ruled the law’s tax penalties (for not having coverage) were legal, but did so by saying the feds could not force states to expand Medicaid — even if the feds initially were paying for that expansion. In short, Roberts validated the parts of Obamacare that was corporate welfare for private insurers (Obamacare subsidies), but fractured a nationwide public program, Medicaid expansion. Taken together, Roberts ensured that the private sector would flourish while impeding any government program that could build toward a national system.

What’s happened since then is the American public — as evidenced by the AP poll and a handful of Republican governors who have expanded Medicaid and see its benefits to their citizens — increasingly are realizing that government-managed health care is viable and preferable to the current mostly privatized system. (The GOP governors are from Ohio, Nevada, Massachusetts, Vermont, Maryland and New Hampshire.) In other words, the Supreme Court’s 2012 Obamacare ruling slowed, but didn’t reverse, the progression toward nationalized health care, as seen in polls and successful Medicaid expansions.

The target of the Senate bill is not just Obamacare. That’s the political opening for a larger and deeper attack on the structures that are the basis for national health system — perhaps like what’s in Sanders’ bill. By dismantling Medicaid, ending federal subsidies for Obamacare policy holders, ending minimum insurance coverage standards, cutting trillions in health care funding, and shifting billions from blue to red states, Republicans are knowingly destroying the near-term possibility for socialized health care — to use Graham’s words, “federalism versus socialism.”

The Supreme Court slowed the march toward a national system when it made Medicaid expansion optional. Now, the Republicans running the Senate and White House are aiming at the systemic underpinnings of implementing national health care solutions.

They might not succeed in the long run. But if they’re successful passing legislation next week, when the bill comes to the Senate floor, America’s health care system would be set back years — with multitudes of people needlessly suffering from a triumph of right-wing extremists.

Scientists are unraveling the mystery of your body’s clock

(Credit: Getty/Poike)

For people who don’t get sleepy until 2 a.m., the buzz of an alarm clock can feel mighty oppressive.

Relief may be on the horizon, thanks to the discovery this spring of a genetic mutation that causes night-owl behavior.

Whether you’re a night owl or a morning lark rising effortlessly each day with the sun, your sleep habits are regulated by circadian rhythms. These internal clocks control just about every aspect of our health, from appetite and sleep to cell division, hormone production and cardiovascular function.

Like many who study the intricacies of circadian biology, I’m optimistic that one day we’ll be able to design drugs that synchronize our cellular clocks. Bosses frowning on tardy arrivals could soon become a thing of the past.

Our internal clocks

Nearly every cell in your body contains a molecular clock. Every 24 hours or so, dedicated clock proteins interact with one another in a slow dance. Over the course of a day, this slow dance results in the timely expression of genes. This controls when particular processes will occur in your body, such as the release of hormones like sleep-promoting melatonin.

Why are heart attacks and strokes two to three times more common in the early morning? Chalk that up to our internal clocks, which coordinate an increase in blood pressure in the morning to help you wake up. Why should teens listen to their parents’ pleas to go to bed? Because human growth hormone is secreted only once a day, linked to sleeping at night.

Nearly every biological function is intimately linked to our internal clocks. Our bodies are so finely tuned to these cycles that disruptions caused by artificial light increase our risk of obesity, chronic inflammatory diseases and cancer.

The timing of meals can also impact your health: When you eat may be more important than what you eat. Several years ago, a study looked at the feeding behavior of mice, which are nocturnal animals. When the mice ate a high-fat diet during their nighttime active phase, they stayed relatively trim. Those who nibbled on the same diet throughout the day and night became morbidly obese. Ongoing studies may soon show how this translates to human eating habits.

What’s more, some 1,000 FDA-approved drugs target genes that are controlled by our internal clocks. That means the time of day that drugs are administered could matter. For example, some cholesterol-fighting statins are most efficient when taken in the evening so they can best hit their target, the HMG-CoA reductase enzyme.

Clock care 101

Our internal clocks are individually encoded, with most people falling in the middle range of a 24-hour cycle, but there are many outliers — including night owls — whose clocks are out of sync.

One in 75 people are predicted to have the “night owl mutation” in clock protein CRY1, delaying sleepiness until the wee hours. Not only does this make it harder for night owls to wake up in the morning, but their longer-than-a-day internal clocks puts them in a perpetual state of jet lag.

For night owls, the sleep cycle is largely beyond their control. But for the rest of us, there are steps we can take to rest easier and improve our health.

The clocks in individual cells are synchronized by the brain. The light that streams into the eye helps the brain’s “master clock” stay in harmony with the day/night cycle. That’s why, when you travel to another time zone, your internal clock no longer matches up with the solar cycle. It takes about a week to sync up to a new local time.

Bright artificial light at night tells the master clock that it’s still daytime, leading cellular clocks to race to keep up. That’s why seeing too much bright light at night can give you jet lag without going anywhere. One recent study found that simply viewing e-readers at night for a few hours can cause worse sleep and less alertness the next day.

You can minimize disruptions caused by artificial light by practicing good “light hygiene.” Expose yourself to plenty of bright light during the day and minimize your exposure to artificial light after dusk. These steps will help your internal circadian clock stays in sync with the light/dark cycle, promoting good sleep patterns and overall health.

What makes you tick?

As we learn more about how circadian rhythms work, we’ll be better able to design therapeutic treatments that harness life’s natural rhythms.

In my lab, we study the complex molecular mechanisms that govern circadian rhythms. By looking at how CRY1 interacts with other clock proteins, we hope to understand how inherited mutations can wreak havoc on circadian rhythms. The night owl mutation in CRY1 appears to make it grab onto its partner proteins more tightly, like a bad dance partner who doesn’t know when to move on. When CRY1 doesn’t release its partner with the right timing, it delays the timing of everything controlled by the clock.

If we could understand these mechanisms better, it would set the stage for new drugs that could bring relief to a significant portion of the population. Perhaps we could shorten night owls’ internal clocks back to about 24 hours, helping them go to sleep at a “normal” time.

Given the complicated nature of biological timekeeping, there are likely many more genes that influence circadian timing. Imagine tailoring the timing of dosages to each patient’s circadian cycle, maximizing a medication’s impact while minimizing exposure to side effects. Picture patients checking their watch before popping a pill to treat high blood pressure or lower cholesterol. Ideally, one day our Fitbit-type devices will monitor our circadian rhythms, giving us precise real-time measures of our biological functions.

This may sound far-fetched, but it’s not that far off. Scientists are now searching for biomarkers that could be measured in blood to figure out internal clock timing.

Carrie L. Partch, Associate Professor of Physical & Biological Sciences, University of California, Santa Cruz

Here’s why an ad offering lamb to the Hindu god drew offense

An Indian artisan puts the finishing touches of paint on an idol of elephant-headed Hindu God Ganesh ahead of the Ganesh Chaturthi festival in Allahabad on September 1, 2016.

The popular eleven-day long Hindu religious festival, Ganesh Chaturthi will be celebrated from September 5-15. / AFP / SANJAY KANOJIA (Photo credit should read SANJAY KANOJIA/AFP/Getty Images) (Credit: Afp/getty Images)

A recent ad from the meat industry in Australia, seeking to promote lamb as a food that people from a wide range of religious backgrounds can consume, has given offense to many Hindus in Australia and internationally.

In Australia, the ad prompted a complaint by the High Commission of India. In the United States, Hindu organizations issued a statement protesting the airing of such an ad.

While the ad was initially released in Australia, it quickly made its way onto YouTube, where it had recorded over a million views at the time of writing.

The ad features a host of deities from various religions sitting down to a meal of lamb. These diners include Jesus, Moses, the Buddha, Kuan Yin (the Buddhist goddess of compassion) and Confucius, as well as Greek Gods Dionysus, Aphrodite, Thor, Isis and the founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard. Prophet Muhammad is left out as his depiction is considered highly offensive to Muslims.

However, on this guest list is a highly revered and beloved Hindu deity, Ganesha, readily recognizable by his elephant head. As a scholar of Indic traditions, I can see why Hindus are upset.

Animal sacrifice and Hinduism

Vegetarianism is an important part of Hindu religious worship. To be sure, not all Hindus practice vegetarianism. According to a 2006 survey, only 31 percent of India’s population, home to the vast majority of the world’s Hindus, are vegetarian.

It is also true that there are some Hindu deities who are offered meat. Most famously, goats are regularly offered to the Hindu goddess Kali. Meat offerings are also not uncommon in Nepal, a majority Hindu nation.

But the vast majority of food offerings to Hindu deities today are vegetarian in nature. This author has witnessed, for example, offerings of gourds, cucumbers and bananas being made to the goddess Kali at worship services in both the U.S. and India, despite the fact that this goddess is considered to be fierce and is widely associated with animal sacrifice.

These food offerings have religious significance. After being reverently presented to the deities, they are distributed to worshipers as “prasad.” Prasad represents the blessing of the deities in return for the worship and devotion they have received.

Vegetarianism through the centuries

Hindu vegetarianism developed gradually. In ancient times there were Hindus who ate meat, including beef, and meat was part of many religious rituals.

Later texts condemn the violence in meat offerings. “Bhagavata Purana,” an ancient Hindu text from the Vaishnava tradition, for example, condemns violence against animals to feed oneself. In this tradition, the popular deity Krishna is also worshipped as the protector of cows.

“Manu Smriti,” considered to be the authoritative book on Hindu codes dating from roughly 300 to 100 B.C., also condemns meat-eating, saying,

“Whoever does violence to harmless creatures out of a wish for his own happiness does not increase his happiness anywhere, neither when he is alive nor when he is dead.”

Indeed, by the eighth century religious rituals had become largely vegetarian. It was at this time that an influential scholar and reformer, Shankara, promoted the replacement of meat offerings to Hindu deities with vegetarian substitutes. Meat, due to its association with death, came to be seen as ritually impure.

Today, roughly 55 percent of Brahmins in India are vegetarian.

Who is Ganesha?

Coming back to the ad, what does it mean for Hindus when Ganesha is depicted in an ad serving lamb?

For many Hindus, Ganesha is a beloved deity who is considered to be the “remover of obstacles.” As such, he is invoked at the start of any venture (including worship offered to other deities). Most recognizable for his elephant head, he is the son of Shiva, the supreme being for the Hindus and his consort, Parvati.

While at least one ancient text, the “Manava Gṛhyaśāstra,” suggests that at one time, Ganesha may have been offered meat, in contemporary practice this has been replaced with vegetarian food, the most popular of which is the “ladoo” – a delightful Indian ball-shaped sweet made from chickpea flour, usually yellow or orange in color. It is common for Ganesha to be depicted holding a plate of ladoos.

The chief rationale for vegetarianism is the principle of “ahimsa,” or doing no deliberate harm to any living being. This value is promoted not only in Hindu traditions, but among the Jains (a community that is almost exclusively vegetarian) and Buddhists in India.

While vegetarianism may not be universal among Hindus – nor have they always practiced it – the ideal it represents is held in high regard. This makes an image of Ganesha sitting down to eat lamb jarring, to say the least, for many Hindus.

Jeffery D. Long, Professor of Religion and Asian Studies, Elizabethtown College

 

Will the Courts save the Dreamers?

Carlos Esteban, a nursing student and recipient of DACA, rallies in support of DACA. (Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin)

The Trump administration’s rescission of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) has been met with widespread resistance by people across the political spectrum. Thousands have marched in the streets to save the “Dreamers” from deportation. Human rights and civil liberties organizations as well as legislators on both sides of the aisle condemned the ending of DACA.

Donald Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions announced the impending termination of DACA on September 5, 2017, disingenuously claiming it was necessary to forestall a looming legal challenge by 10 state attorneys general. Sessions cited no legal authority for his assertion that DACA was unconstitutional. In fact, no court has ever found DACA to be unlawful.

Lawsuits were immediately filed against Trump’s cruel targeting of the “Dreamers.”

Apparently surprised at the level of opposition to his action, Trump tried to reassure the public that he might save DACA if Congress fails to act within the six-month period, tweeting:

“Congress now has 6 months to legalize DACA (something the Obama administration was unable to do). If they can’t, I will revisit this issue!”

Two days later, at the urging of Minority Leader Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-California, Trump issued another tweet, apparently in support of the Dreamers:

“For all of those (DACA) that are concerned about your status during the six month period, you have nothing to worry about – No action!”

Trump’s tweet was not reassuring. In fact, it was not inconsistent with Sessions’ announcement, which also said no action would be taken against the Dreamers for six months; then the axe will fall.

The White House Talking Points memo on the rescission of DACA advises, “The Department of Homeland Security urges DACA recipients to use the time remaining on their work authorizations to prepare for and arrange their departure from the United States — including proactively seeking travel documentation — or to apply for other immigration benefits for which they may be eligible.”

Trump’s “No action!” tweet indicates he is being pulled in different directions — by his right-wing nativist base, on the one hand, and by the majority of the population who oppose his heartless act, on the other.

So, what’s next? Will Congress save DACA? Will Trump reinstate it if Congress doesn’t? Or does the fate of DACA rest with the courts?

Will Congress Reinstate DACA?

Congress is now under pressure to reinstitute DACA within six months. Congressional action could take one of three forms. First, Congress might defy years of history and agree on comprehensive immigration reform.

Second, Congress could pass a stand-alone bill legalizing DACA. For example, the BRIDGE Act would enshrine DACA into law and extend it for three additional years to give Congress time to enact comprehensive immigration reform. The Dream Act of 2017 includes protections similar to DACA, but, unlike DACA and the BRIDGE Act, it would create a path for citizenship or permanent legal residency.

Finally, Congress members could engage in horse-trading, exchanging the legalization of DACA for stepped up “border security” measures. They could include cutbacks on legal immigration, withholding federal funds from “sanctuary cities,” hiring additional immigration enforcement agents and even appropriating money to build “The Wall.”

In any event, the chances of Congress acting in any meaningful way to save DACA in the next six months are slim to none. That leaves the fate of the Dreamers with the courts.

Litigating for the Dreamers

The day after Trump rescinded DACA, attorneys general from 15 states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit against Trump and his administration in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.

They asked the court to declare that the rescission of DACA violated the Constitution and federal statutes. The plaintiffs also requested an injunction preventing Trump from rescinding DACA and forbidding him from using personal information the Dreamers provided in their DACA applications to deport them or their families.

The states signing on as plaintiffs in this lawsuit are New York, Massachusetts, Washington, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont and Virginia.

California, home to more than 240,000 DACA recipients, the largest number in the country, filed its own lawsuit on September 11.

“Rescinding DACA will cause harm to hundreds of thousands of the States’ residents, injure State-run colleges and universities, upset the States’ workplaces, damage the States’ economies, hurt State-based companies, and disrupt the States’ statutory and regulatory interests,” the complaint alleges. It specified the number of DACA or DACA-eligible recipients, the amount of revenue each state would lose, and other injuries the rescission would cause.

The plaintiffs argue that Trump’s DACA rescission violates the Constitution’s Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses, the Administrative Procedure Act and the Regulatory Flexibility Act.

DACA Rescission Violates Equal Protection

More than 78 percent of DACA recipients are of Mexican origin. During the presidential campaign, Trump repeatedly made disparaging and racist comments about Mexicans.

When he announced he was running for president, Trump said, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. . . They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”

Candidate Trump tweeted that anti-Trump protesters who carried the Mexican flag were “criminals” and “thugs.”

And Trump denounced Gonzalo Curiel, a well-respected federal judge of Mexican heritage who presided in a lawsuit filed by people claiming they were scammed by Trump University. After Curiel unsealed documents, Trump declared that Curiel had “an absolute conflict” that should disqualify him from the case. Trump’s reason: “He is a Mexican,” adding, “I’m building a wall. It’s an inherent conflict of interest.”

Trump reiterated his racist comments about Curiel in a June 2016 interview with CBS News, stating, “[Judge Curiel]’s a member of a club or society, very strongly pro-Mexican, which is all fine. But I say he’s got bias.”

In a presidential debate, Trump said, “We have some bad hombres here and we’re going to get them out.”

And two weeks before rescinding DACA, Trump pardoned the notorious racist, former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, whom Trump called “an American patriot.” Arpaio had been convicted of criminal contempt for refusing to comply with a court order to stop racially profiling Latinos.

The complaint in State of New York et al v. Donald Trump et al states that the September 5, 2017, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memorandum rescinding DACA, together with Trump’s statements about Mexicans, “target individuals for discriminatory treatment based on their national origin, without lawful justification.” That memo, the complaint alleges, was motivated, “at least in part, by a discriminatory motive.”

Thus, the complaint says, defendants violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment.

A similar allegation has been leveled against Trump’s Muslim Ban, which singles out Muslims for discriminatory treatment. As in State of New York et al v. Donald Trump et al, equal protection challenges to the ban cite several anti-Muslim statements Trump made. The Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of the ban when its new term begins in October.

Using Personal Information to Deport Dreamers Violates Due Process

Since the DACA program’s launch in 2012, the DHS repeatedly promised applicants that the information they provided in their applications would “not later be used for immigration enforcement purposes.” This reassurance encouraged applications.

The State of New York et al v. Donald Trump et al  complaint avers, “The government’s representations that information provided by a DACA recipient would not be used against him or her for later immigration enforcement proceedings were unequivocal and atypical.” However, the complaint notes, the September 5th DHS memo “provides no assurance to DACA grantees, or direction to USCIS [US Citizenship and Immigration Services] and ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] that information contained in DACA applications or renewal requests cannot be used for the purpose of future immigration enforcement proceedings.”

Using information such as names, addresses, social security numbers, fingerprints, photographs and dates of entry into the United States for immigration enforcement would be “fundamentally unfair” and thus would violate due process, according to the complaint.

DACA Rescission Violates Administrative Procedure Act and Regulatory Flexibility Act

The complaint also alleges that in rescinding DACA with “minimal formal guidance,” federal agencies acted “arbitrarily and capriciously,” in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), 5 U.S.C. § 706(2).

In addition, 5 U.S.C. §§ 553 and 706(2)(D) of the APA require federal agencies to “conduct formal rule making before engaging in action that impacts substantive rights.” Defendants did not go through the notice-and-comment rulemaking required by the APA.

Finally, the complaint claims that defendants violated the Regulatory Flexibility Act, 5 U.S.C. §§ 601-612, which requires federal agencies to analyze the impact of rules they promulgate on small entities and publish initial and final versions of those analyses for public comment.

Deferred Action Is a Well-Established Form of Prosecutorial Discretion

The complaint states that deferred action, such as the DACA program, is a well-established form of prosecutorial discretion.

More than 100 immigration law teachers and scholars signed a letter to Trump in August stating that the Constitution’s Take Care Clause is the primary source for prosecutorial discretion in immigration cases. Article II, Section 3 of the Constitution states that the president “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”

As the Supreme Court noted in Heckler v. Chaney,

[W]e recognize that an agency’s refusal to institute proceedings shares to some extent the characteristics of the decision of a prosecutor in the Executive Branch not to indict — a decision which has long been regarded as the special province of the Executive Branch, inasmuch as it is the Executive who is charged by the Constitution to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.”

Congress and the Supreme Court have acknowledged that the executive branch has the authority to grant deferred action for humanitarian reasons. That has included certain categories of people, including victims of crimes and human trafficking, students affected by Hurricane Katrina and widows of US citizens.

In 1999, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in Reno v. American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, an immigration case, that presidents have a long history of “engaging in a regular practice … of exercising [deferred action] for humanitarian reasons or simply for its own convenience.”

Presidents from both parties have deferred immigration action to protect certain groups. Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson permitted Cubans to remain in the United States before Congress enacted legislation to allow them to stay. Ronald Reagan allowed about 200,000 Nicaraguan immigrants to remain in the US even though Congress had not passed authorizing legislation. And George H.W. Bush permitted almost 200,000 Salvadorans fleeing civil war to stay in the US.

University of California vs. Trump

Janet Napolitano created the DACA program in 2012, while serving as secretary of homeland security in the Obama administration. Now, as president of the University of California (UC), she has filed a lawsuit in the US District Court in Northern California against Trump to save DACA, alleging violations of due process and the APA.

“Defendants compound the irrationality of their decision by failing to acknowledge the profound reliance interests implicated by DACA and the hundreds of thousands of individuals, employers, and universities who will be substantially harmed by the termination of the program,” the UC complaint states.

It accuses the Trump administration of “failing to provide the University with any process before depriving it of the value of the public resources it invested in DACA recipients, and the benefits flowing from DACA recipients’ contributions to the University.” The complaint adds, “More fundamentally, they failed to provide DACA recipients with any process before depriving them of their work authorizations and DACA status, and the benefits that flow from that status.”

Napolitano promised that UC campuses will continue to provide undocumented immigrant students with free legal services, financial aid and loans, and will order campus police to refrain from contacting, detaining, interrogating or arresting people solely on the basis of their immigration status.

How Would the Supreme Court Rule?

If Congress or Trump were to reinstate DACA, these legal challenges may become moot. But if the lawsuits proceed and ultimately reach the Supreme Court, what are the justices likely to do?

After Scalia’s death, but before Neil Gorsuch joined the Court, the justices split 4-to-4 in United States v. Texas. That tie left in place a circuit court decision striking down the Obama program called Deferred Action for Parents of Americans (DAPA) and an expanded version of DACA. Gorsuch would likely have broken the tie by voting against DAPA.

But the core of DACA has never been litigated. A lawsuit challenging DACA was thrown out of court for lack of jurisdiction.

The Muslim Ban case could serve as a bellwether of DACA’s fate in the high court. In a temporary order, the Court left parts of the ban in place pending its decision on the merits. Three justices — Alito, Thomas and Gorsuch — would have allowed the ban to continue in its entirety. They would also probably defer to Trump in the DACA case.

It remains to be seen how the remaining justices would rule. Chief Justice Roberts is generally conservative but is very concerned about the legacy of the Roberts Court, which led him to side with the liberals in upholding the Affordable Care Act.

Will the DACA case be remembered like Brown v. Board of Education, the most significant civil rights case in US history? Or will Roberts’s legacy be tarnished by a result that looks more like the infamous Korematsu v. United States, in which, under the guise of national security, the Supreme Court upheld the president’s power to lock up people of Japanese descent in internment camps during World War II?

The bottom line is that if Trump has the opportunity to appoint one or more additional justices to the high court, DACA may well be struck down.

Stay tuned.