Opinion | Donald Trump’s Unconstitutional Dreams - The New York Times

 Eric Foner is the leading historian of the post-Civil War era known as Reconstruction.  In those years the Union government and the Republican party sought to implement the emancipation of the slaves and create a new order consistent with the Declaration of Independence.  The principal means of this the 13th (emancipation), 14th (equal protection and national citizenship) and 15th (voting rights) Amendments were betrayed by the Supreme Court and the Democrat "redeemer" state governments which stripped African Americans of voting rights, and implemented the system of legal discrimination known as Jim Crow. - gwc
Opinion | Donald Trump’s Unconstitutional Dreams - The New York Times

by  Eric Foner

In an interview with the news program “Axios on HBO,” President Trump announced that he plans to issue an executive order ending birthright citizenship, the principle that everyone born in the United States, with a handful of exceptions, is automatically a citizen of the United States.

“It was always told to me,” the president declared, “that you needed a constitutional amendment. Guess what? You don’t.”

In fact, such an order would undoubtedly be unconstitutional. It would also violate a deeply rooted American idea — that anybody, regardless of race, religion, national origin, or the legal status of one’s parents, can be a loyal citizen of this country.

Birthright citizenship is established by the Civil Rights Act of 1866, still on the books today, and by the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, ratified two years later. The only exceptions, in the words of the amendment, are persons not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States. Members of Congress at the time made clear that this wording applied only to Native Americans living on reservations — then considered members of their own tribal sovereignties, not the nation — and American-born children of foreign diplomats. (Congress made all Native Americans citizens in 1924.)

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Trump’s iPhone Is a Warning Sign - Jonathan Bernstein - Bloomberg

As if we needed another one...The Times recounts his foolishness about his use of an unsecured iPhone.
Unprepared presidents make big mistakes...think Carter and Iran, Reagan and Iran-Contra (trading arms for hostages), GW Bush and Iraq.  We are waiting for Trump's defining debacle. - gwc
Trump’s iPhone Is a Warning Sign - Bloomberg
by Jonathan Bernstein

Sometimes, all it takes is one story to remind us that President Donald Trump, 21 months in, remains wildly unfit for office. 

In this case, it’s Matthew Rosenberg and Maggie Haberman in the New York Times detailing Trump’s persistent use of an unsecured mobile phone. It’s one of those stories in which every paragraph contains a new “wow” – beginning, as usual, with the existence of the story itself. The piece is sourced to “several current and former officials” who talked “out of frustration with what they considered the president’s casual approach to electronic security.” In other words: Apparently nothing else worked, so they’re taking a stab at public pressure.

The revelations in this story? I counted eight blockbusters:

• Trump insists on using his personal iPhone, even after he’s been told that Chinese and Russian intelligence are almost certainly listening in.
• He’s supposed to swap out his official phones every month to provide some security, but he usually doesn’t. 
• He continues using his unsecured phone, apparently, because it allows him to keep his list of contacts. In other words, he’s jeopardizing national security to avoid the minor inconvenience of dialing.
• He also uses the phone to evade having his calls logged by the White House, because he doesn’t want his staff to know who he’s speaking with.
• China is apparently using what it learns by eavesdropping to manipulate Trump’s friends so they can manipulate him.
• Officials think the Russians aren’t bothering to do the same “because of Mr. Trump’s apparent affinity for President Vladimir V. Putin.” 
• Those close to Trump evidently assume that he would blurt out classified information on his unsecured phone.
• Except for one thing: They think he pays so little attention to his briefings that he may not know enough classified information to leak anything important.

I’m not even including the time when Trump left his iPhone behind in a golf cart. Nor am I including the incredible hypocrisy of a president who campaigned on – and still constantly talks about – the information-security practices of his opponent. 

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The China toll deepens: Growth in the bilateral trade deficit between 2001 and 2017 cost 3.4 million U.S. jobs, with losses in every state and congressional district | Economic Policy Institute

The China toll deepens: Growth in the bilateral trade deficit between 2001 and 2017 cost 3.4 million U.S. jobs, with losses in every state and congressional district | Economic Policy Institute

Summary and key findings

The United States has a massive trade deficit with China. The growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China, which has increased by more than $100 billion since the beginning of the Great Recession, almost entirely explains why manufacturing employment has not fully recovered along with the rest of the economy. And the growing trade deficit with China isn’t just a post-recession phenomenon hitting manufacturing: it has cost the U.S. millions of jobs throughout the economy since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, a finding validated by numerous studies.

This report underscores the ongoing trade and jobs crisis by updating EPI’s research series on the jobs impact of the U.S.–China trade deficit. The most recent of these reports (Scott 2012; Kimball and Scott 2014; Scott 2017a) look at the effect of the U.S. trade deficit with China since China entered the WTO in 2001. Our model examines the job impacts of trade by subtracting the job opportunities lost to imports from those gained through exports. As with our previous analyses, we find that because imports from China have soared while exports to China have increased much less, the United States is both losing jobs in manufacturing (in electronics and high tech, apparel, textiles, and a range of heavier durable goods industries) and missing opportunities to add jobs in manufacturing (in exporting industries such as transportation equipment, agricultural products, computer and electronic parts, chemicals, machinery, and food and beverages).

The growing trade deficit with China since China entered the WTO affects different regions in different ways. Some regions are devastated by layoffs and factory closings while others are surviving but not growing the way they could be if new factories were opening and existing plants were hiring more workers. This slowdown in manufacturing job generation is also contributing to stagnating wages of typical workers and widening inequality.

Following are the key highlights of this report:

U.S. jobs lost are spread throughout the country but are concentrated in manufacturing, including in industries in which the United States has traditionally held a competitive advantage.

• The growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China between 2001 and 2017 was responsible for the loss of 3.4 million U.S. jobs, including 1.3 million jobs lost since 2008 (the first full year of the Great Recession, which technically began at the end of 2007). Nearly three-fourths (74.4 percent) of the jobs lost between 2001 and 2017 were in manufacturing (2.5 million manufacturing jobs lost).
• The growing trade deficit with China has cost jobs in all 50 states and in every congressional district in the United States. The 10 hardest-hit states, when looking at job loss as a share of total state employment, were New Hampshire, Oregon, California, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Vermont, Wisconsin, and Texas. Job losses in these states ranged from 2.57 percent (in Texas) to 3.55 percent (in New Hampshire) of total state employment. The five hardest-hit states based on total jobs lost were California (562,500 jobs lost), Texas (314,000), New York (183,500), Illinois (148,200), and Pennsylvania (136,100).
• The trade deficit in the computer and electronic parts industry grew the most: 1,209,000 jobs were lost in that industry, accounting for 36.0 percent of the 2001–2017 total jobs lost. Not surprisingly, the hardest-hit congressional districts (those ranking in the top 20 districts in terms of jobs lost as a share of all jobs in the district) included districts in Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Oregon, and Texas, where jobs in that industry are concentrated. A district in Georgia and another in North Carolina were also especially hard hit by trade-related job displacement in a variety of manufacturing industries, including computer and electronic parts, textiles and apparel, and furniture.
• Surging imports of steel, aluminum, and other capital-intensive products threaten hundreds of thousands of jobs in key industries such as primary metals, machinery, and fabricated metal products as well.
• Global trade in advanced technology products—often discussed as a source of comparative advantage for the United States—is instead dominated by China.This broad category of high-end technology products includes the more advanced elements of the computer and electronic parts industry as well as other sectors such as biotechnology, life sciences, aerospace, and nuclear technology. In 2017, the United States had a $135.4 billion trade deficit in advanced technology products with China, and this deficit was responsible for 36.1 percent of the total U.S.–China goods trade deficit that year. In contrast, the United States had a $24.5 billion trade surplus in advanced technology products with the rest of the world in 2017.

Growing trade deficits are also associated with wage losses not just for manufacturing workers but for all workers economywide who don’t have a college degree.

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On Election Day, You Will Be Voting for Who We Are as a Nation » DeepStateRadioNetwork

On Election Day, You Will Be Voting for Who We Are as a Nation » DeepStateRadioNetwork
by David Rothkopf (former editor - Foreign Policy - journal of the Carnegie Endowment)

This coming election is going to tell us more about the character of the US than any in our recent past. The 2016 election of Trump was deeply concerning, of course, both because of how Trump won, who he appeared to be & because it seemed to come in reaction to Obama’s victory.

But we were only just getting to know Trump and we were uncertain how he would act once in office. He appeared to be a racist, ignorant, hate-monger but we knew little more than that. Would his business experience help? How would he work with Congress? With world leaders?

We only were beginning to have an idea of Russian interference in the election. And much of the ’16 vote was in response to HRC. But the election in two weeks is largely about Trump and Trump alone. He has said it. And despite his propensity for lies, it appears to be true.

Now we know him well. We have seen his racism in action in Charlottesville and Puerto Rico. We have seen his incompetence in his WH chaos. We have come to know how compromised he was by the Russians and how his defense of them continued.

We have seen his corruption, his self-dealing, and that of all those around him. We have watched him cozy up to autocrats and thugs around the world and embrace their language at home. We have seen him wage war on the rule of law. We have watched as he and the Congress stole from the poor and gave to the rich. We have watched him cage children and separate families. We have watched him undermine the global order that America spent 75 years building. We have listened to him lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie and lie.

We have come to know the GOP would embrace him rather than repudiate his sexism, hate-mongering and embrace of and service to our enemies. We know that if they are re-elected he and they will see this as a great affirmation that America is with them.

Policing Alone Can’t Fix Baltimore, Says Former Face of the Force | Opinion | OZY

Policing Alone Can’t Fix Baltimore, Says Former Face of the Force | Opinion | OZY
by T.J.Smith (former Baltimore Police Spokesman)

FLOODING AN UNDERSERVED COMMUNITY WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT ONLY SERVES TO FURTHER EXACERBATE THE ALREADY STRAINED POLICE AND COMMUNITY RELATIONSHIPS.

Obama in NV - Your Vote is the only check on power

Obama in Las Vegas: "Right now we can tip the balance of power back to you, the American people, because, ultimately, there is only one real check on abuses of power. There is only one real check on bad policy. And that is you and your vote." (via CBS) pic.twitter.com/751ltwK97W

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 22, 2018

Donald Trump doesn't like Caravan - but see Van Morrison

I'm hardly surprised that Trump doesn't like "Caravan"--he's got terrible taste.https://t.co/Y6oJlvrC9f

— Marty Lederman (@marty_lederman) October 22, 2018

Originalism is all the rage, but the Constitution’s authors had something else in mind - The Boston Globe

Originalism is all the rage, but the Constitution’s authors had something else in mind - The Boston Globe

The Power of the Supreme Court Inside America’s Schools - The New York Times

The Power of the Supreme Court Inside America’s Schools - The New York Times

By Dana Goldstein

• Sept. 19, 2018

THE SCHOOLHOUSE GATE 
Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind
By Justin Driver
564 pp. Pantheon. $35.

Do children who are undocumented immigrants have the right to a free public education? (They do.) Under what circumstances can teenagers be searched or suspended by school staff? (A very wide variety.) Can districts draw school zones in irregular shapes in order to achieve racial diversity in the classroom? (They can.)

These are among the most divisive issues I’ve written about in a decade of education reporting. Indeed, they are among the most divisive issues in American life. And as Justin Driver explains in his indispensable “The Schoolhouse Gate: Public Education, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for the American Mind,” the highest court has ruled on each of these questions, profoundly shifting the American legal landscape not only in classrooms but outside of schools as well.

Driver, a University of Chicago law professor and former clerk to Justices Stephen Breyer and Sandra Day O’Connor, offers a bold and ultimately persuasive argument: that despite the American tradition of local and state control of education, “schools should be deemed our most significant theaters of constitutional conflict.”
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Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression - The Washington Post

Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression - The Washington Post

Opinions

Jamal Khashoggi: What the Arab world needs most is free expression

Jamal Khashoggi (Illustration by Alex Fine for The Washington Post)

By Jamal Khashoggi

October 17 at 7:52 PM

A note from Karen Attiah, Global Opinions editor

I received this column from Jamal Khashoggi’s translator and assistant the day after Jamal was reported missing in Istanbul. The Post held off publishing it because we hoped Jamal would come back to us so that he and I could edit it together. Now I have to accept: That is not going to happen. This is the last piece of his I will edit for The Post. This column perfectly captures his commitment and passion for freedom in the Arab world. A freedom he apparently gave his life for. I will be forever grateful he chose The Post as his final journalistic home one year ago and gave us the chance to work together.

I was recently online looking at the 2018 “Freedom in the World” report published by Freedom House and came to a grave realization. There is only one country in the Arab world that has been classified as “free.” That nation is Tunisia. Jordan, Morocco and Kuwait come second, with a classification of “partly free.” The rest of the countries in the Arab world are classified as “not free.”

As a result, Arabs living in these countries are either uninformed or misinformed. They are unable to adequately address, much less publicly discuss, matters that affect the region and their day-to-day lives. A state-run narrative dominates the public psyche, and while many do not believe it, a large majority of the population falls victim to this false narrative. Sadly, this situation is unlikely to change.

The Arab world was ripe with hope during the spring of 2011. Journalists, academics and the general population were brimming with expectations of a bright and free Arab society within their respective countries. They expected to be emancipated from the hegemony of their governments and the consistent interventions and censorship of information. These expectations were quickly shattered; these societies either fell back to the old status quo or faced even harsher conditions than before.

My dear friend, the prominent Saudi writer Saleh al-Shehi, wrote one of the most famous columns ever published in the Saudi press. He unfortunately is now serving an unwarranted five-year prison sentencefor supposed comments contrary to the Saudi establishment. The Egyptian government’s seizure of the entire print run of a newspaper, al-Masry al Youm, did not enrage or provoke a reaction from colleagues. These actions no longer carry the consequence of a backlash from the international community. Instead, these actions may trigger condemnation quickly followed by silence.

As a result, Arab governments have been given free rein to continue silencing the media at an increasing rate. There was a time when journalists believed the Internet would liberate information from the censorship and control associated with print media. But these governments, whose very existence relies on the control of information, have aggressively blocked the Internet. They have also arrested local reporters and pressured advertisers to harm the revenue of specific publications.

[Read Khashoggi’s last column for The Post before his disappearance in Arabic]

There are a few oases that continue to embody the spirit of the Arab Spring. Qatar’s government continues to support international news coverage, in contrast to its neighbors’ efforts to uphold the control of information to support the “old Arab order.” Even in Tunisia and Kuwait, where the press is considered at least “partly free,” the media focuses on domestic issues but not issues faced by the greater Arab world. They are hesitant to provide a platform for journalists from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. Even Lebanon, the Arab world’s crown jewel when it comes to press freedom, has fallen victim to the polarization and influence of pro-Iran Hezbollah.

The Arab world is facing its own version of an Iron Curtain, imposed not by external actors but through domestic forces vying for power. During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe, which grew over the years into a critical institution, played an important role in fostering and sustaining the hope of freedom. Arabs need something similar. In 1967, the New York Times and The Post took joint ownership of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, which went on to become a platform for voices from around the world.

My publication, The Post, has taken the initiative to translate many of my pieces and publish them in Arabic. For that, I am grateful. Arabs need to read in their own language so they can understand and discuss the various aspects and complications of democracy in the United States and the West. If an Egyptian reads an article exposing the actual cost of a construction project in Washington, then he or she would be able to better understand the implications of similar projects in his or her community.

The Arab world needs a modern version of the old transnational media so citizens can be informed about global events. More important, we need to provide a platform for Arab voices. We suffer from poverty, mismanagement and poor education. Through the creation of an independent international forum, isolated from the influence of nationalist governments spreading hate through propaganda, ordinary people in the Arab world would be able to address the structural problems their societies face.

Read more:

Read Jamal Khashoggi’s columns for The Washington Post

Hatice Cengiz: Please, President Trump, shed light on my fiance’s disappearance

The Post’s View: Why is the Trump administration cleaning up Saudi Arabia’s mess?

David Ignatius: MBS’s rampaging anger will not silence questions about Jamal Khashoggi

Manal al-Sharif: Jamal Khashoggi’s disappearance spreads fear worldwide, but we won’t be silenced