Newspaper & online reporters and analysts explore the cultural and news stories of the week, with photos frequently added by Esco20, and reveal their significance (with a slant towards Esco 20's opinions)
February 5, 2017
Steve Bannon is on the National Security Council. That sends a big signal.
Steve Bannon and Reince Priebus’s War for the White House — The New Yorker
Doubtless, many of America’s allies abroad will be delighted to hear that Bannon, who is widely regarded as the Dark Lord of Trumpland, has been nocked down a bit, at least on one front. But of course, there is no way to know if the Journal story is accurate, or merely the result of a mischievous leak from someone on the inside who is hostile to Bannon. As my colleague Ryan Lizza reported on Friday, there is a bitter struggle going on between Bannon and Priebus. Priebus’s allies inside the White House are widely thought to include Mike Pence, the Vice-President, and Sean Spicer, Trump’s spokesman. “In conversations I had with people close to Priebus and those close to Bannon, the two sides talk about each other as leaders of a zero-sum fight for control of the West Wing,” Lizza reported. He also quoted a source close to Priebus who, predictably enough, claimed that Priebus had virtually nothing to do with the disastrous rollout of the travel ban: that was all the fault of Bannon and his sidekick Stephen Miller.
WASHINGTON POST
FOREIGN POLICY
February 4, 2017
TRUMP'S REFUGEE ORDER: LEGAL OR ILLEGAL? We are in the midst of a great war of national identity.
[The] American myth was embraced and lived out by everybody from Washington to Lincoln to Roosevelt to Reagan. It was wrestled with by John Winthrop and Walt Whitman. It gave America a mission in the world — to spread democracy and freedom. It gave us an attitude of welcome and graciousness, to embrace the huddled masses yearning to breathe free and to give them the scope by which to realize their powers.
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And so along come men like Donald Trump and Stephen Bannon with a countermyth. Their myth is an alien myth, frankly a Russian myth. It holds, as Russian reactionaries hold, that deep in the heartland are the pure folk who embody the pure soul of the country — who endure the suffering and make the bread. But the pure peasant soul is threatened. It is threatened by the cosmopolitan elites and by the corruption of foreign influence.
The true American myth is dynamic and universal — embracing strangers and seizing possibilities. The Russian myth that Trump and Bannon have injected into the national bloodstream is static and insular. It is about building walls, staying put. Their country is bound by its nostalgia, not its common future.
The odd thing is that the Trump-Bannon myth is winning. The policies that emanate from it are surprisingly popular. The refugee ban has a lot of support. Closing off trade is popular. Building the wall is a winning issue.
We are in the midst of a great war of national identity. We thought we were in an ideological battle against radical Islam, but we are really fighting the national myths spread by Trump, Bannon, Putin, Le Pen and Farage.
We can argue about immigration and trade and foreign policy, but nothing will be right until we restore and revive the meaning of America. Are we still the purpose-driven experiment Lincoln described and Emma Lazarus wrote about: assigned by providence to spread democracy and prosperity; to welcome the stranger; to be brother and sister to the whole human race; and to look after one another because we are all important in this common project?
Since 9/11, as has been pointed out many times over the past week, no American has been killed in a terrorist attack on U.S. soil by an immigrant, or even the son or daughter of an immigrant, from any of the seven countries listed in the executive order. That’s true, but (a) it’s the sort of argument that implicitly concedes the propriety of some visa bans in some circumstances, and (b) it’s not by itself a reason to regard Trump’s executive order as wrong or irrational. National security policies such as this one aren’t prompted by statistical analysis of past events — at least one hopes they aren’t — but by current realities and prognostications based on them. The fact that no Islamist Yemeni has set off a bomb in an American city is not by itself an argument for continuing to allow Yemeni asylum seekers into the United States.
Many Americans, though, are guided by a simpler and more cogent logic than what animates policy debates in Washington and New York. It goes something like this: Islamist-inspired terrorism has taken many lives around the globe, especially, though not exclusively, in the Middle East and North Africa. The federal government allows many people from the Middle East and North Africa to enter the United States. It stands to reason that, if our immigration policy continues unchecked, the violence racking Syria, Somalia, Libya, et al., will in some measure show up here, too.
I don’t share that belief. But it is not an irrational one, and it is conceivable that I am wrong. Nor is support of the visa ban evidence of bigotry or coldhearted xenophobia. It is merely to value the safety of neighbors and countrymen whom one knows over the safety of foreigners whom one doesn’t — not an obviously malign preference. And it has the merit of reassuring ordinary Americans that, even if federal policy gets it wrong or goes too far, their government is at least trying to perform its most basic function. I’m not sure Trump’s adversaries can achieve their aims by telling such people they’re idiots and bigots.
The resisters had better pause for long enough to ask why anybody would approve of what Trump is doing. If they can’t or won’t, they’ll find themselves resisting for eight years and not just four.
WASHINGTON POST
GREG SARGENT, WASHINGTON POST
Airlines Told to Seat Passengers as Court Blocks Travel Ban
- In a defeat for the Trump administration, a federal judge in Seattle temporarily lifted the ban on all refugees and visa holders from seven predominantly Muslim countries.
- The White House called it “outrageous” and vowed to appeal, though the government told airlines to allow passengers from those countries to fly.
February 1, 2017
January 31, 2017
Trump blamed “big problems at airports” on other factors, including demonstrators and an airline’s technical problems.
Former president Barack Obama became the latest high-profile voice to weigh in on the issue, offering his first public criticism of his successor while backing the protests.
Refugee groups worried that 20,000 people could be affected by the 120-day suspension of refugee admission.
The disarray underscored the increasingly strained relationship between the new president and congressional Republicans, with some key GOP aides saying they felt the administration was moving too swiftly and without respect for critical protocol for vetting executive actions that have been in place for decades.
The opposition party has all but abandoned their pledge to find common ground with the new president, pledging a protracted fight against Cabinet confirmations and Trump’s imminent pick for the Supreme Court.
The quiet senator from Alabama — Trump’s nominee for attorney general — has become a singular power in the new Washington, with his aides and allies accelerating the president’s most dramatic early moves, including the controversial travel ban.
Before becoming the first sitting senator to support Trump, Sessions had the reputation as someone on the ideological edge of his own party, more conservative than even his fellow Republicans — a lawmaker who opposed even some forms of legal immigration and was denied a federal judgeship in the 1980s because of accusations he made racially insensitive comments.
Now, Sessions is center stage. He's Trump's pick to be attorney general, and three of the president's top policy and political advisers have close ties to Sessions. The Post's Philip Rucker and Robert Costa lay out how so many roads in the Trump White House lead back to Sessions.
TRUMP BANS MUSLIMS FROM 7 COUNTRIES FROM ENTERING AMER.
The 45th president has taken a series of actions in his first full week that have sent opponents of his agenda into an absolute frenzy. How can he do all this? The answer is simple: He’s implementing exactly the sorts of ideas that got him elected.
Marking a draconian shift in US policy, Donald Trump issued an executive order that will deny refugees and immigrants from certain Muslim-majority countries entry to the United States. Trump’s unprecedented action will indefinitely close US borders to refugees fleeing the humanitarian crisis in war-torn Syria and impose a de facto ban on Muslims traveling to the US from parts of the Middle East and North Africa by prioritizing refugee claims “on the basis of religious-based persecution”.
President Trump’s executive order on immigration indefinitely barred Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee admissions for 120 days and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries, refugees or otherwise, from entering the United States for 90 days: Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.
The order unleashed chaos on the immigration system and in airports in the United States and overseas, and prompted protests and legal action.
The president reiterated that the U.S. would resume issuing visas to all countries after implementing the “most secure policies over the next 90 days” and compared his order to action taken by then-President Obama in 2011.
On Saturday night, a federal judge in Brooklyn blocked part of Mr. Trump’s order, saying that refugees and others being held at airports across the United States should not be sent back to their home countries. But the judge stopped short of letting them into the country or issuing a broader ruling on the constitutionality of Mr. Trump’s actions.
Federal judges in three states — Massachusetts, Virginia and Washington — soon issued similar rulings to stop the government from removing refugees and others with valid visas. The judge in Massachusetts also said the government could not detain the travelers.
On Sunday morning, the Department of Homeland Security said it would comply with the rulings while it continued to enforce all of the president’s executive orders. “Prohibited travel will remain prohibited,” it said in a statement.
Hundreds lined Pennsylvania Ave. chanting “No hate! No fear! Refugees are welcome here.” Others at Dulles International Airport created a cheering section for travelers emerging from customs.
Reince Priebus, the White House chief of staff, appeared to reverse a key part of President Trump’s immigration order on Sunday, saying that people from the affected countries who hold green cards will not be prevented from returning to the United States.
But Priebus also said that border agents had “discretionary authority” to detain and question suspicious travelers from certain countries. That statement seemed to add to the uncertainty over how the executive order will be interpreted and enforced in the days ahead.
Even with his statement, much of the order was still being enforced, and travel was disrupted for many around the world.
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January 30, 2017
January 29, 2017
White House suggests 20% tax on Mexican imports
The feud between the White House and the Mexican government escalated on Thursday when the US press secretary suggested implementing a 20% border tax on goods coming from Mexico to pay for the wall the president intends to build across the southern border. White House press secretary Sean Spicer originally told reporters about the plan on Air Force One as the president returned from a Republican retreat in Philadelphia, before later walking the idea back slightly. “By doing it that way we can do $10bn a year and easily pay for the wall just through that mechanism alone. That’s really going to provide the funding,” he said. Donald Trump’s chief of staff, Reince Priebus, later said that the tax was just one of a “buffet of options” the president had to ensure Mexico paid for the wall. Mexican government officials have criticized the ramifications of a border tax and earlier on Thursday Mexico’s president, Peña Nieto, cancelled a planned visit to the White House.
January 27, 2017
SESSIONS REFUSING TO RECUSE HIMSELF:
“Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions won’t commit to recusing himself from potential Justice Department investigations into controversies involving Trump — from Russia to business conflicts of interest — despite his vigorous campaigning on behalf of Trump during the 2016 election season,” Politico’s Seung Min Kim reports. “In written responses to members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sessions said repeatedly that he is ‘not aware of a basis to recuse myself’ from issues surrounding Trump such as potential violations of the Emoluments Clause, a constitutional ban on officials accepting payments from foreign governments. That differs from Sessions’ vow to recuse himself from any ongoing issues involving the federal probe into Clinton’s use of a private email server. Sessions said during his confirmation hearing that he would step aside from any such investigations because his political rhetoric against Clinton during the campaign ‘could place my objectivity in question.”
The Post’s Editorial Board says the Senate should not confirm Sessions until he agrees to such a recusal: “Mr. Trump has tapped Rod J. Rosenstein, a respected career prosecutor, to be deputy attorney general. Mr. Sessions should have no qualms about entrusting him with these politically vexing issues. It would raise confidence in his Justice Department and save him plenty of headaches.”
"I do believe we regularly have fraudulent activities occur during election cycles.’ …
“President-day civil liberties advocates fear Session’s and Trump’s views on voter fraud could serve as a basis for them to support voter ID laws that disenfranchise poor or minority voters, such as the one in North Carolina that was overturned by the Supreme Court last summer. Studies have shown in-person voter fraud, which the laws are designed to prevent, is exceptionally rare. They are also concerned that Sessions hailed as ‘good news, I think, for the South’ a Supreme Court decision that gutted a critical section of the Voting Rights Act. …
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