Back to Work at the White House

Terry H. Schwadron

July 8, 2019

Other than the bright note of the U.S. Women’s Team’s victory for the World Cup championship, this post-holiday week is opening amid some despondent, uncertain notes as the Trump administration bulldozes on it is relentless campaign to tilt us towards an uncaring era of despotic government that serves itself rather than its constituents.

It’s not only that each situation arising carries national danger, we are stuck with the permanent lack of trust in our leadership. Even though we may not be able personally affect these outcomes, it seems necessary to be on alert. Consider:

· Iran is raising the stakes yet higher in its nuclear stare-down with the United States, stating boldly that beginning this week, it will raise uranium enrichment beyond the levels prescribed in the several-party nuclear agreement of 2015 that Donald Trump has pridefully ripped up. Rather than having taken steps to lessen any confrontation, Iran is publicly threatening to disrupt sea traffic in the Persian Gulf, while we just as stubbornly insist that Iran lay down its arms and sovereignty. Curiously, this seems to put the United States in the weird position of appealing to the United Nations, which, of course, backed the 2015 agreement in the first place.

· The Trump administration’s never-ending fight against the Affordable Care Act, Obamacare, returns to the fore as the three judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, hears oral arguments Tuesday on throwing out key features, and possibly all of the statute that represents the health care system of the country. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court was ruled constitutional as an allowable congressional tax, and again in 2015, when it ruled tax credits acceptable under the Constitution. But then, a federal district court judge said 2017 congressional action to void the individual mandate essentially voided the tax, and the basis of the law itself. It is the appeal of that ruling that comes up this week. Of course, Trump’s reelection stance is that only he can bring about a better, less expensive health care system that also protects insurance for pre-existing conditions, as if by magic.

· On the continuing issues related to the condition of detention centers on the southern border, we were left with this imbalance: There are a growing number of reports from inspectors general, journalists and congressional visitors that say the conditions continue to be bad, and, worse, that the detention centers are playing hide-and-seek with would-be investigators to make things look temporarily better or less crowded when there is an official visit by moving families and children around under cover of night. At the same time, here’s Donald Trump: Migrants are “living far better” in Border Patrol detention centers than in their home countries — one day after his own administration reported that children in some facilities were denied hot meals or showers, and that cells were so crowded that migrants begged to be freed. So, we start the week in which Congress returns to work believing that they worked out a deal — it needs a formal vote this week to provide $4.5 billion dollars — for better humanitarian treatment at these detention centers, and yet courts and observers are not seeing the results.

· Deportation questions are also on the table beginning this week for thousands of migrants whose appeals for asylum have run out. Trump has ordered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities to fan out to 10 U.S. cities to find migrants in these categories and deport them en masse — upwards of a million individuals, whether children, individuals, families, parts of families. Trump has repeated that this is not a threat, but a reality, because Congress shows no inclination to do what he wants, and to toss out asylum rules as we know them. We can expect ugly scenes as raids on homes come with more family separations, questions about whether sending people back to gang-violent Honduran neighborhoods proves a death sentence, and whether whatever is needed to support actual deportation proceedings are even effectively in place on the border where the complaint is that detention centers are already overcrowded. Once again, we are seeing re-election politics in action without a systemic approach to the problems at hand. To add to all of this, almost none of the agencies involved have Senate-approved agency heads, only temporary fill-ins.

· In yet another immigration front, this week the Department of Justice is supposed to decide what to do about a court slap down on any Trump administration ideas of using more than $8 billion for border wall construction despite Congress agreeing to give him only a fraction of that total. The Ninth Circuit Appeals Court decided last week to grant a stay that blocks the budgetary maneuvering that the administration was using to finance wall construction by raiding other federal budget accounts.

· Meanwhile, the Justice Department is still trying to come up with a constitutionally valid argument about adding a question about citizenship to the Census documents that are being printed even now. A federal judge in Maryland had set a deadline for such a response last Friday. Trump insists that the question will be added by presidential executive order if necessary, but the Justice Department told the judge that they are working on an acceptable justification, and don’t have it yet. Overnight, The New York Times reports, the Justice Department changed its legal team in the matter, suggesting that the previous set quit. This week, the Maryland judge will start moving ahead on the case, accepting testimony from a deceased political operative that such a question on the Census was being sought strictly for political advantage of Republicans.

It’s Monday, and I’m already weary. These public battles suggest disarray in foreign affairs, in national budget and immigration policies, in the fight to declare the executive branch much more important than either the Congress or the courts. Behind this, there is a long list of other foreign problems, including new talks with North Korea, the breaking of a missile treaty by Russia, the trade war with China and Europe. Trump is warring with the Fed over monetary policies, with Congress over health care, environment and education

Even the holiday weekend did not pass unscathed. Trump is the only public person praising himself for his jingoistic, military paean, complete with tanks and gaffes over Revolution Era airports (it was the fault of the teleprompter, not him, Trump says), and reports that even the Russian media mocked the militaristic parade charade.

It this is making America great, what will we do next week?

##

www.terryschwadron.wordpress.com