What Will It Cost to Fix New York’s Public Housing?
NY TIMES
NY TIMES
July 2, 2018
June 27, 2018
Court Deals a Blow to Labor Unions
In a 5-4 decision, the court ruled that government workers cannot be required to pay for collective bargaining, which could cost public unions tens of millions of dollars.
Mitch McConnell Just Weakened Unions ― And The Democratic Party
Federal Judge in California Halts Splitting of Migrant Families at Border.
A federal judge in California issued a nationwide injunction late Tuesday temporarily stopping the Trump administration from separating children from their parents at the border and ordered that all families already separated be reunited within 30 days.
Judge Dana M. Sabraw of the Federal District Court in San Diego said children under 5 must be reunited with their parents within 14 days, and he ordered that all children must be allowed to talk to their parents within 10 days.
“The unfortunate reality is that under the present system, migrant children are not accounted for with the same efficiency and accuracy as property,” the judge wrote.
Judge Sabraw’s order is likely to prompt a high-profile legal battle with the Justice Department.
A Top House Democrat loses in upset.
Ocasio-Cortez Upsets Joseph Crowley in NYC
Defeat May Have Wide Impact
- Joseph Crowley of New York, who was seen as a possible Democratic House speaker, was defeated by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a former campaign organizer for Bernie Sanders.
- It was the most significant loss for a Democratic incumbent in years and one that will reverberate across the party and the country.
Who Is Ocasio-Cortez? A Democratic Giant Slayer
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, 28, is still paying off student loans. She just beat the No. 4 House Democrat in her first run for office.
Progressives in the Democratic Party are fired up. As Joe Crowley learned Tuesday night, they can’t be ignored. Ocasio-Cortez beat Crowley campaigning on Medicare for all, guaranteed jobs and abolishing ICE.
Trump’s Travel Ban Is Upheld by Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court upheld President Trump’s ban on travel from five predominantly Muslim countries, delivering to the president on Tuesday a political victory and an endorsement of his power to control immigration at a time of political upheaval about the treatment of migrants at the Mexican border.
In a 5-to-4 vote, the court’s conservatives said that the president’s power to secure the country’s borders, delegated by Congress over decades of immigration lawmaking, was not undermined by Mr. Trump’s history of incendiary statements about the dangers he said Muslims pose to the United States.
NY TIMES
Justice Kennedy Announces Retirement
Court Loses Swing Vote and Trump Can Move It Rightward
- Justice Anthony M. Kennedy announced that he would retire, setting the stage for a furious fight over the future direction of the Supreme Court.
- His retirement gives President Trump the opportunity to help create a solid five-member conservative majority.
- Kennedy, 81, has been the court’s most important member for more than a decade, casting the deciding vote on the court’s controversial Citizens United campaign finance decision, the constitutional right to same-sex marriage and the continued viability of affirmative action.
The GOP reaps its reward for selling its soul to Trump
MICHAEL TOMASKY, DAILY BEAST;
MICHAEL TOMASKY, DAILY BEAST;
Anthony Kennedy, You Are a Total Disgrace to America
No one expected Kennedy to allow Donald Trump to pick his successor. But he has. And it should forever taint his legacy as a jurist.
June 26, 2018
Border Officials Suspend Handing Over Migrant Families to Prosecutors.
- The announcement by the nation’s top border security official effectively revives the Obama administration’s “catch and release” policy that has so angered President Trump.
- Still, prosecutions of adults crossing the border illegally without children continued unabated.
NY TIMES
June 24, 2018
What Border Crisis? Federal data show that the crisis is not a crisis.
NY TIMES
The real hoax about the border crisis.
WASHINGTON POST
Trump Calls for Depriving Immigrants Who Illegally Cross Border of Due Process Rights By Deporting Them Without Trial.
In a pair of tweets, President Trump described immigrants as invaders and wrote that U.S. immigration laws are “a mockery” and must be changed. His latest exhortations sowed more confusion among Republicans.
NY TIMES
June 21, 2018
June 20, 2018
June 15, 2018
the Trump-Kim summit
WASHINGTON POST, Fareed Zakaria
WASHINGTON POST, Fareed Zakaria
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| After becoming the country’s first prime minister in 1959, he oversaw independence from Britain and Malaysia. |
June 14, 2018
Trump’s America does not care.
To ensure global peace that Americans sought after being pulled into two world wars, the United States became the main provider of security in Europe and East Asia. In Europe, the U.S. security guarantee made European integration possible and provided political, economic and psychological safeguards against a return to the continent’s destructive past. In East Asia, the American guarantee ended the cycle of conflict that had embroiled Japan and China and their neighbors in almost constant warfare since the late 19th century. The security bargain had an economic dimension. The allies could spend less on defense and more on strengthening their economies and social welfare systems. The United States wanted allied economies to be strong, to counter extremism on both the left and right, and to prevent the arms races and geopolitical competitions that had led to past wars. The United States would not insist on winning every economic contest or every trade deal. The perception by the other powers that they had a reasonably fair chance to succeed economically and sometimes even to surpass the United States — as Japan, Germany and other nations did at various times — was part of the glue that held the order together.
The United States’ allies count on the American security guarantee and on access to the United States’ vast market — its prosperous consumers, financial institutions and innovative entrepreneurs. In the past, U.S. presidents were unwilling to exploit this leverage. They believed that the United States had a stake in upholding the liberal world order, even if it meant abiding by or paying lip service to international rules and institutions to provide reassurance. The alternative was a return to the great-power clashes of the past from which the United States could never hope to remain uninvolved. To avoid a world of war and chaos, the United States was, up to a point, willing to play Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians’ ropes, in the interest of reassuring and binding the democratic community together. Europeans and others may have found the United States selfish and overbearing, too eager to use force and too willing to pursue its goals unilaterally,
The United States’ allies are about to find out what real unilateralism looks like and what the real exercise of U.S. hegemony feels like, because Trump’s America does not care. It feels free to pursue objectives without regard to the effect on allies or, for that matter, the world. It has no sense of responsibility to anything beyond itself. Trump’s policies are pure realism, devoid of ideals and sentiment, pursuing a narrow “national interest” defined strictly in terms of dollars and cents and defense against foreign attack. Trump’s world is a struggle of all-against-all. There are no relationships based on common values. There are merely transactions determined by power. It is the world that a century ago brought us two world wars. The United States’ adversaries will do well in this world, for Trump’s America does not want war. It will accommodate powers that can harm it. It will pay them the respect they crave and grant them their spheres of interest. Those that depend on the United States, meanwhile, will be treated with disdain, pushed around and used as pawns. At times they will be hostages to be traded for U.S. gain. The United States [is] willing to offer them up as sacrifices to appease aggressors.
The United States rejected this approach to the world after 1945, choosing instead to take a broad, “enlightened” view of its interests. It built and defended a world order premised on the idea that Americans would be safe only if democratic and liberal values were safe. It regarded its interests and ideals as intimately bound together, its democratic alliances as permanent. But that was a choice. The United States, with all its great power, could have gone in a different direction. Now it appears to have done so.ROBERT KAGAN, WASHINGTON POST
At NYCHA, failure most foul.
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Let history record: The collapse of the crown jewel of New York City’s progressive infrastructure proceeded without pause on the watch of its most ostentatiously progressive mayor. And as the conditions at the New York City Housing Authority deteriorated, Mayor de Blasio and the boss he tapped to run the bureaucracy kicked up a massive dust cloud of lies.
With the new consent decree, the de Blasio administration apparently has agreed to accept federal oversight — and spend billions of city dollars on repairs — in exchange for the Justice Department not pursuing criminal prosecutions. This is first and foremost a case of right and wrong, and of cash-strapped bureaucrats choosing to treat rent- and taxpaying New Yorkers with deep, callous contempt. The law has been violated here, and it might be best to treat those responsible like the criminals they are. For shame, Mayor de Blasio. For shame. |
June 13, 2018
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