Author Archives: News Sources

Don’t let Trump hide behind the Constitution in ending DACA

Adam Cox and Cristina Rodríguez write: On Tuesday, the Trump administration formally announced its decision to end one of President Obama’s signature immigration accomplishments—the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy (DACA). Designed to protect Dreamers, that policy has insulated from deportation as many as 800,000 young people who were brought to the United States as children. Attorney General Jeff Sessions claims that the Obama Administration violated the Constitution when it decided, as a matter of prosecutorial discretion, not to deport Dreamers and instead to invest enforcement resources elsewhere. But Sessions’ position is both wrong and disingenuous. The Constitution’s Take Care Clause has never barred under-enforcement of the law. And Sessions knows that. Since assuming office he has spearheaded the under-enforcement of several laws. Dreamers simply don’t count in his and Trump’s books the way others do. That’s a policy choice. Not a constitutionally required one.

Jeff Sessions knows all too well that, when fulfilling the constitutional duty to enforce the law, administrations from both parties have historically had broad discretion to decide when and how the law should be enforced. This is true not just for immigration, but also with respect to criminal prosecutions, civil rights laws, and regulatory enforcement actions on matters as diverse as the environment, antitrust, and labor law. And it is not at all uncommon for the Department of Justice or other agencies to decide that enforcing the law against a particular group of people is neither just nor worth their limited time and resources.

In fact, Sessions himself has already announced radical shifts in enforcement priorities, particularly in the domain of civil rights. He no longer intends for the Justice Department to exercise supervisory authority over state and local police departments to ensure that they comply with basic civil rights laws. The Department appears to be looking for ways of abandoning consent decrees in school desegregation cases. And it almost certainly has no intention of enforcing the voting rights act in a rigorous fashion. [Continue reading…]

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Attorneys general across the U.S. threaten to sue Trump over DACA

The Hill reports: Democratic attorneys general across the country have threatened to sue President Trump over his decision Tuesday to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, opening another front in the growing legal war between blue states and the Republican administration.

In public statements and letters to the Trump administration, 20 attorneys general urged Trump not to follow through on threats to end the five-year-old program, which allows those brought into the country illegally as children to work and live free of the threat of deportation.

“Ending DACA is un-American, and it’s going to threaten the health and safety of many individuals,” New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas (D) told The Hill. “Various attorneys general from across the country are preparing to defend DACA recipients. The Constitution applies [to them] as well in terms of equal protection and due process.” [Continue reading…]

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Obama calls Trump’s decision to end DACA ‘wrong,’ ‘self-defeating’ and ‘cruel’

The Washington Post reports: Former president Barack Obama said Tuesday that it is “wrong,” “self-defeating” and “cruel” for the Trump administration to end an Obama-era program that allowed younger undocumented immigrants to continue to live in the United States without fear of deportation.

“Let’s be clear: The action taken today isn’t required legally. It’s a political decision, and a moral question,” Obama said in a lengthy statement posted on his Facebook page on Tuesday afternoon, following an announcement earlier in the day that the Trump administration will unwind the program, pending action from Congress in the next six months. “Whatever concerns or complaints Americans may have about immigration in general, we shouldn’t threaten the future of this group of young people who are here through no fault of their own, who pose no threat, who are not taking away anything from the rest of us. … Kicking them out won’t lower the unemployment rate, or lighten anyone’s taxes, or raise anybody’s wages.” [Continue reading…]

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Hurricane Harvey and the storms to come

Elizabeth Kolbert writes: On August 29, 2005, at six-ten in the morning, Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the border of Mississippi and Louisiana, just east of New Orleans. Katrina had spent days wobbling over the Gulf of Mexico, and by the time it reached the coast it was classified as a strong Category 3 storm. As it pressed inland, its winds, which were clocked at up to a hundred and twenty-five miles an hour, pushed water from the Gulf westward into Lake Pontchartrain, and north, up a mostly abandoned shipping canal. The levees that were supposed to protect New Orleans failed, and low-lying neighborhoods were inundated. That day in Louisiana, at least six hundred and fifty people died.

Katrina was widely described as a “wake-up call” for a country in denial about climate change. President George W. Bush and his Vice-President, Dick Cheney, during their first term, had withdrawn the United States from a global climate agreement and dismissed the findings of the government’s own climate scientists. Now, a few months into their second term, the nation was facing just the sort of disaster that the scientists had warned about. Even if global warming hadn’t caused Katrina, clearly it had intensified the damage: with higher sea levels come higher storm surges. And, with sea surface temperatures rising, there was more energy to fuel hurricanes, and more evaporation, which inevitably produces more rain. “How many killer hurricanes will it take before America gets serious about global warming?” the journalist Mark Hertsgaard asked at the time.

Last week, as Hurricane Harvey lingered over Houston, dumping so much water on the city that the National Weather Service struggled to find ways to describe the deluge, this question sloshed back to mind. Again, climate change can’t be said to have caused Harvey, but it unquestionably made the storm more destructive. When Harvey passed over the western part of the Gulf, the surface waters in the region were as much as seven degrees warmer than the long-term average. “The Atlantic was primed for an event like this,” Kevin Trenberth, a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, told the Guardian.

Harvey was less lethal than Katrina; as of this writing, forty-six storm-related deaths have been confirmed. But in financial terms the storm’s costs are likely to be as high or even higher. One estimate put the price of repairing homes, roads, businesses, and the petrochemical plants that line the Houston Ship Channel at a hundred and ninety billion dollars. And that estimate was made before storm-damaged plants started to explode.

As misguided as the Bush Administration was about climate change, Donald Trump has taken willful ignorance to a whole new level. [Continue reading…]

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Russian politician says ‘let’s hit Trump with our Kompromat’ on state TV

The Independent reports: A Russian politician has threatened to “hit Donald Trump with our Kompromat” on state TV.

Speaking on Russia-24, Nikita Isaev, leader of the far-right New Russia Movement, said the compromising material should be released in retaliation over the closure of several Russian diplomatic compounds across the US.

When asked whether Russia has such material, Mr Isaev, who is also director of the Russian Institute of Contemporary Economics, replied: “Of course we have it!”

The exchanges were first translated and reported by Russian media analyst Julia Davis. [Continue reading…]

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Trump ‘crushed’ by planned departure of one of his closest confidants

Bloomberg reports: President Donald Trump’s allies are worried that the most damaging of the many recent departures from his White House may be that of Keith Schiller, a little-known former bodyguard who’s one of the president’s closest confidants outside his family.

Schiller is leaving the White House soon to return to the private security business, according to three people familiar with his plans, for a job that will pay far more than his $165,000 government salary. His title, director of Oval Office operations, hardly begins to describe his importance to Trump, who is “crushed” by his planned departure, according to one person close to the president.

Multiple people interviewed described Schiller as an emotional anchor for the president in a White House often marked by turmoil. Schiller has worked for Trump for nearly two decades, and within the West Wing he serves as the president’s protector, gate-keeper and wing man, according to people close to Schiller and Trump. Most of the people requested anonymity to candidly discuss relationships between the president and his aides.

“He’s a confidant and friend,” said Stuart Jolly, a former national field director for Trump’s presidential campaign. Trump “trusts Keith, and Keith trusts him. Trust is a really big deal at that level.”

Schiller has also acted as Trump’s hatchet-man. It was Schiller who told James Comey that the president had decided to fire him as FBI director. Two weeks ago, after Trump was angered by preparations for a rally in Phoenix, Schiller delivered the message to another longtime aide, George Gigicos, that Trump no longer wanted him to organize such events, according to three people familiar with the matter. [Continue reading…]

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Rohingya crisis intensifies as India’s Modi arrives in Burma for talks

The Washington Post reports: Nearly 125,000 refugees belonging to the Rohingya minority ethnic group have fled Burma for neighboring Bangladesh in just the past week and a half, according to local aid organizations. They have relayed testimony of indiscriminate executions, gunfire from helicopters and a scorched-earth campaign seemingly aimed at destroying Rohingya villages and driving the mostly Muslim population out of predominantly Buddhist Burma. Hundreds have died making the journey to Bangladesh, including 46 who drowned when a boat carrying them capsized last week.

As the crisis deepens, governments and influential international figures — primarily, but not exclusively, from the Muslim world — have begun to speak out against the Burmese government and its de facto leader, Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in the Burmese capital on Tuesday to discuss trade, but he was also expected to bring up the Rohingya issue.

The most recent spate of violence in Burma’s southwestern Rakhine state broke out Aug. 25, when Rohingya militants attacked local security forces, killing at least 12. The attack mirrored a similar one in October that killed nine border police personnel and spurred almost 90,000 Rohingyas to flee to Bangladesh, which has been a refuge for the group for decades, though increasingly reluctantly.

This year’s violence appears to be more widespread and intense. The Burmese military has acknowledged killing at least 370 Rohingyas in what it calls “clearance operations.” The government maintains that all those killed belonged to the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA), a militant group that has been building up its ranks since last year’s violence. It is unclear how much local and international support ARSA has, but videos of its training camps show only small numbers of shabbily dressed and ill-equipped fighters. [Continue reading…]

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Leaked document reveals UK Brexit plan to deter EU immigrants

The Guardian reports: Britain will end the free movement of labour immediately after Brexit and introduce restrictions to deter all but highly-skilled EU workers under detailed proposals set out in a Home Office document leaked to the Guardian.

The 82-page paper, marked as extremely sensitive and dated August 2017, sets out for the first time how Britain intends to approach the politically charged issue of immigration, dramatically refocusing policy to put British workers first.

“Put plainly, this means that, to be considered valuable to the country as a whole, immigration should benefit not just the migrants themselves but also make existing residents better off,” the paper says.

It proposes measures to drive down the number of lower-skilled EU migrants – offering them residency for a maximum of only two years, in a document likely to cheer hardliners in the Tory party. Those in “high-skilled occupations” will be granted permits to work for a longer period of three to five years.

The document also describes a phased introduction to a new immigration system that ends the right to settle in Britain for most European migrants – and places tough new restrictions on their rights to bring in family members. Potentially, this could lead to thousands of families being split up. [Continue reading…]

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The Merkel effect

Emily Schultheis reports: On August 12, German Chancellor Angela Merkel kicked off her reelection campaign in the west German city of Dortmund. Fresh from a three-week vacation in the Italian Alps, she joked that she’d neglected to mention that the election wasn’t yet over and done with. “I almost forgot to say that the election isn’t already decided,” she said. “And of course, we need every vote.”

With the way this campaign is going, Merkel could be forgiven for nearly forgetting that crucial piece of information. After expectations that this year’s campaign would be Germany’s most contentious one in years, the final weeks of the election have felt decidedly devoid of drama—enough so that the Wall Street Journal’s headline in a recent story about the campaign declared succinctly: “Wow, it’s Boring.”

But still, the fact that Merkel could make so casual a comment barely a month before election day is a sign of how much the political outlook has shifted even in the last six months—and how secure her position has become. A confluence of several factors, from her opponent’s stumbles to an improving outlook for refugees, have converged to Merkel’s benefit, seemingly making her reelection an all-but-foregone conclusion.

2017 was expected to be Merkel’s toughest campaign yet: to start, it’s the year when Europe’s far-right populist parties, including the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), have sought to showcase their electoral strength amid a growing backlash against globalization and Europe’s refugee crisis. When Merkel announced her reelection bid last December, she did so battered by more than a year of tough criticism over her open-door policy toward refugees, and facing a certain degree of voter fatigue after hitting her 12th year in office. [Continue reading…]

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Undercover in North Korea: ‘All paths lead to catastrophe’

Jon Schwarz writes: The most alarming aspect of North Korea’s latest nuclear test, and the larger standoff with the U.S., is how little is known about how North Korea truly functions. For 65 years it’s been sealed off from the rest of the world to a degree hard to comprehend, especially at a time when people in Buenos Aires need just one click to share cat videos shot in Kuala Lumpur. Few outsiders have had intimate contact with North Korean society, and even fewer are in a position to talk about it.

One of the extremely rare exceptions is the novelist and journalist Suki Kim. Kim, who was born in South Korea and moved to the U.S. at age thirteen, spent much of 2011 teaching English to children of North Korea’s elite at the Pyongyang University of Science and Technology.

Kim had visited North Korea several times before and had written about her experiences for Harper’s Magazine and the New York Review of Books. Incredibly, however, neither Kim’s North Korean minders nor the Christian missionaries who founded and run PUST realized that she was there undercover to engage in some of history’s riskiest investigative journalism.

Although all of PUST’s staff was kept under constant surveillance, Kim kept notes and documents on hidden USB sticks and her camera’s SIM card. If her notes had been discovered, she almost certainly would have been accused of espionage and faced imprisonment in the country’s terrifying labor camps. In fact, of the three Americans currently detained in North Korea, two were teachers at PUST. Moreover, the Pentagon has in fact used a Christian NGO as a front for genuine spying on North Korea.

But Kim was never caught, and she returned to the U.S. to write her extraordinary 2014 book, “Without You, There Is No Us.” The title comes from the lyrics of an old North Korean song; the “you” is Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un’s father.

Kim’s book is particularly important for anyone who wants to understand what happens next with North Korea. Her experience made her extremely pessimistic about every aspect of the country, including the regime’s willingness to ever renounce its nuclear weapons program. North Korea functions, she believes, as a true cult, with all of the country’s pre-cult existence now passed out of human memory. [Continue reading…]

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Cold War lessons in coercive diplomacy for dealing with North Korea today

Michael McFaul writes: Unfortunately, like many national security debates these days, our national discussion about how to address the growing North Korean threat has quickly become polarized between two extreme positions. In one corner, President Trump has threatened a preemptive military strike in response (I’m paraphrasing his remarks into more analytic terms) to new threats from the North Korean regime. In reaction, Trump opponents have advocated the exact opposite — talks with Kim Jong-un. Both of these options are insufficient. In fact, threatening nuclear war or proposing talks are only partial strategies at best, slogans at worst, for dealing with one of our most pressing national security challenges. What we need instead is first a clearly defined objective, then second a smart mix of both diplomacy and pressure — coercive diplomacy — to achieve that national security goal.

Coercive diplomacy served the United States well in deterring and then reducing the Soviet threat during the Cold War. This same strategy can also work against a much less formidable North Korean foe. Like Stalin, Kim Jong-un is a ruthless dictator, capable of unspeakable crimes against his citizens. But he is not irrational. Like his grandfather and father, he can be deterred. And he might be capable of doing a deal.

All effective national security policies must start with defining the objectives before pivoting to discussions about how to achieve them. Right now, our objectives regarding North Korea are ill-defined and many. Some, including Trump administration officials, argue for denuclearization. Others seek regime change and reunification. Diminishing the North Korean nuclear program through limited military strikes is a third objective proffered. A fourth camp advocates the removal of Kim Jong-un, or decapitation of the regime. A fifth group advocates a more modest goal — the resumption of talks with the North Korean government. The Trump administration itself sends conflicting messages about its objectives.

All of these must be set aside for now. While Kim Jong-un and his regime remain in power, denuclearization is not a realistic goal. The North Korean leader rationally believes that possession of nuclear weapons helps to deter threats to his regime, including first and foremost from the United States. No amount of coercion or diplomacy will ever convince him otherwise. Foreign induced regime change or leader decapitation also is not a realistic goal. Tragically, the North Korean dictatorship has demonstrated real resilience in the face of famine, sanctions and international isolation. American efforts to strengthen internal opposition have not produced pressure on the regime. Assassination or decapitation, even if it could be done (and I am skeptical) would not compel the next North Korean leader to give up his nuclear weapons. On the contrary, the effect would be the exact opposite. And nothing more will rally North Koreans to defend their government than such an action. Nor should resumption of talks be the goal of our efforts. Talks are the means to achieve other objectives, not the objective in and of itself.

Instead, our singular focus for the short term must be to freeze the North Korean nuclear weapons and missile programs. Early arms control during the Cold War (SALT) slowed the acceleration of nuclear weapons acquisition, creating the predicate for eventual weapons reduction in later negotiations (START). The same sequence must be embraced now with North Korea. The objective of freezing North Korean nuclear and missile programs would enhance American national security as well as the security of allies. This objective is also obtainable. [Continue reading…]

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Obama protected me from deportation. Will Trump return me to the shadows?

Ivy Teng Lei writes: I was seven years old when my family and I arrived at JFK Airport in New York City on a visitor’s visa in 1998. Our visa eventually expired and with no way of renewing our papers in the United States, we decided to stay on without documents after falling in love with this country and its promise for a better future.

“Living in the shadows” is a very accurate way of describing our way of life. We never caused trouble, never asked for more than what we were given, and were perpetually afraid to attract anyone’s attention.

People like me – who came to America as children and are currently without papers – are the reason that the Obama administration introduced the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program in 2012. Daca protected us from deportation and over 800,000 young people currently benefit from it.

When the program was first introduced, I was hesitant to apply because it meant that I would have to expose my immigration status to the government. In the application I was asked for my travel documents, where I lived in the last 10 years, my education record and fingerprints for an extensive background check.

Once I was approved, I was given temporary relief from deportation, a two-year work permit, and a nine-digit social security number that I can use to work, get health insurance and travel domestically.

It’s been 5 years since I received this protected status. Today, I worry that my worst fears will come true and the government will use the information I gave against me. The Trump administration, by all accounts, intends to escalate it’s psychological warfare against us by terminating Daca. I am deeply afraid for what that will mean for my future. [Continue reading…]

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EPA now requires political aide’s sign-off for agency awards, grant applications

The Washington Post reports: The Environmental Protection Agency has taken the unusual step of putting a political operative in charge of vetting the hundreds of millions of dollars in grants the EPA distributes annually, assigning final funding decisions to a former Trump campaign aide with little environmental policy experience.

In this role, John Konkus reviews every award the agency gives out, along with every grant solicitation before it is issued. According to both career and political employees, Konkus has told staff that he is on the lookout for “the double C-word” — climate change — and repeatedly has instructed grant officers to eliminate references to the subject in solicitations.

Konkus, who officially works in the EPA’s public affairs office, has canceled close to $2 million competitively awarded to universities and nonprofit organizations. Although his review has primarily affected Obama administration priorities, it is the heavily Republican state of Alaska that has undergone the most scrutiny so far. [Continue reading…]

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Sebastian Gorka played for the ‘deplorables’ — he just didn’t know the rules

Michael Vlahos writes: Sebastian Gorka was a subaltern mini-me of the emperor himself: in which his media appearances were also meant to stoke emotional fires within the legions. Like throwing red meat to lions in the arena, Gorka presented himself as a living affront to the aristocratic class—Washington’s rulers—in the realm of strategy and war. Take that, you sniveling Yuppie handmaids!

Truth was, the shiv was out for him among the courtier class, and he offered them an easy target.

Paradoxically, Gorka started showing his chinks and weak spots shortly after his first, successful, ceremonial performances. [Daniel] Drezner relished, like other anti-Red courtiers, how Gorka began to take mortal offense at the razor-like, if understandable, critique of his bona fides. His notoriously thin skin became as celebrated among Blue stiletto artists as his notorious Fox News eruptions.

Rather than lashing out at his Yuppie tormentors, Gorka should have reveled in his stained professional notoriety, throwing slings and arrows right back at the madding crowd. Rather than taking shrill umbrage when mere students impugned his bona fides, he might have instructed them: “This is what you get for creating venal PhD-for-profit factories to enrich a debased university system.” Or, “Are ideas now to be ranked according to a Miss Manners’ pecking order, like a latter day Pride and Prejudice?”

Thus, in the colorful Trumpian parade, Sebastian Gorka got it half right. The power of the emperor remains undiminished, because it still relies on two unimpeachable sources of authority: 1) That the elites, both Blue and Never Trump Red, still cannot recognize their enabling role, and so continue to blurt out, reinforce, and re-ratify the hated emperor; and 2) That a never-apologize, throw-it-back-always, and make your-double-down-better ethos will always authenticate your commitment to the legions who acclaimed you emperor in the first place. [Continue reading…]

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Sara Netanyahu expected to be indicted for fraud in pocketing $110,000 in goods

Haaretz reports: Sara Netanyahu is expected to be indicted, pending a hearing, on charges of fraudulently receiving items worth 400,000 shekels ($111,851), Haaretz has learned. Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit is expected to inform Netanyahu, wife of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, of the charges against her in a few weeks.

Sara Netanyahu is suspected of ordering chef’s meals at the prime minister’s official residence, which is against regulations, and concealing the fact that she did so. She and her husband have accused the former chief caretaker of the official residence, Meni Naftali, who is currently leading protests against the prime minister, of inflating the residence’s expenses.

At a rally last week, Netanyahu also accused Naftali of stealing food from the residence. But a senior police official, commenting recently on the high expenses run up at the official residence, said recently that “this phenomenon began before Naftali came to work at the residence and continued after he was fired.”

The decision to indict Sara Netanyahu in the residence affair is the first in a series of moves to be made in the coming months in cases in which the prime minister and members of his inner circle are suspects. A senior law enforcement official said the likelihood was that police would submit their recommendations in around December in Case 1000, in which the prime minister is suspected of illicitly receiving gifts from wealthy patrons, and Case 2000, in which the suspicion is that Netanyahu tried to concoct a deal with Arnon Mozes, publisher of the mass-circulation daily Yedioth Ahronoth, to receive favorable coverage in the newspaper in exchange for cutting back on commercial activity of the competing free daily, Israel Hayom. [Continue reading…]

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Kim Jong Un’s destructive power has grown in tandem with the rest of the world’s powers of denial

Jeffrey Lewis writes: The North Koreans are boasting [about having built a two-stage thermonuclear weapon], but I see no particular reason to doubt them. The resulting explosion was large enough to be a thermonuclear weapon and, as I have written elsewhere, six nuclear tests is plenty to develop such a device. Still, it would be nice to have some official confirmation. Let’s hope U.S. sniffer aircraft get a great big whiff of Kim Jong Un’s barking spiders and can tell us precisely what he had dinner.

I am seeing a lot of people saying: so what? A nuclear weapon is a nuclear weapon. What does it matter?

Well, obviously a larger nuclear weapon does more damage. Go ahead and check out Alex Wellerstein’s Nuke Map. Drop a 30 kiloton bomb on Trump Tower, then drop a 300 kiloton bomb there. Larger yields help compensate for less accurate missiles. If your goal is to consume Manhattan in a cleansing thermonuclear firestorm with missiles that have accuracies on the order of a kilometer or so, a couple hundred kilotons is going to be a lot more credible of a threat.

The North Koreans also went out of their way to taunt us about electromagnetic pulse (EMP) effects, I suppose because they think we’re worried about them. I think its laughable to imagine that North Korea would waste a nuclear weapon hoping to knock down parts of the power grid. For my part, I would much prefer the North Koreans waste nuclear weapons trying to achieve an uncertain EMP effect than incinerating cities with real people pushing strollers with real babies. KCNA is really stepping up its trolling game.

But there is also a deeper meaning here, a theme that I keep returning to over and over again. We have struggled, over and over again, to accept North Korea’s stated goal of possessing a thermonuclear weapon that can be delivered against targets in the United States. The North Koreans spent all summer talking about how its new missiles were designed to carry a “large sized heavy nuclear weapon.” But when I told people that meant a thermonuclear weapon, a lot of them laughed. We’ve gotten comfortable with the idea that wars are things that happen in other places — that we can “take out” tinpot dictators with little or no risk to ourselves. The idea that the North Koreans could retaliate, that they could threaten us here in the United States, is something that U.S. officials have openly described as “unimaginable.”

The thing is, you don’t have to imagine it, at least not any more. [Continue reading…]

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Warning from Mattis makes war more likely than ever

Emile Simpson writes: U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis delivered a pithy response on Sunday to North Korea’s nuclear test earlier that day. This was the core of the statement: “Any threat to the United States or its territories including Guam or our allies will be met with a massive military response, a response both effective and overwhelming.”

Global markets barely moved upon opening on Monday, which was consistent with the broader treatment of these words as just more of the same from Washington. But that is to misinterpret Mattis, whose words represent a significant escalation in U.S. policy: The probability of a U.S. strike on North Korea has clearly risen.

Compare Mattis’ statement with the key part of Donald Trump’s remarks on August 8, in which the president said, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States. They will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

First, context. On August 8, Trump spoke off the cuff from a golf club during a discussion on opioids, which left ambiguous how far his words represented the administration’s position. Mattis spoke outside the White House, flanked by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, in a scripted statement, in which each word had clearly been carefully chosen.

Second, speaker. We have become accustomed to Trump’s remarks being contradicted by members of his administration, or by his own subsequent statements. But not so with Mattis, who is one of the most highly respected military officers of his generation. When Mattis speaks, you listen to each word. And the two key words in Mattis’ statement were “will be”: Not “might be”, but will be. That tells us that if North Korea makes a threat that meets the administration’s definition, the next step is a U.S. strike, rather than more diplomacy. [Continue reading…]

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