Hassan Hassan writes: Three years ago, then Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter attributed Iran’s growing dominance to its being “in the game, on the ground.” He urged its regional rivals to do the same, thus expressing a widely shared sentiment in policy circles at the time: Arab Gulf states needed to rely less on the United States and play a greater role in their neighborhood. In many ways, that is exactly what these countries have been attempting to do since…
Jonathan Chait writes: At a weekend rally, President Trump launched a riff that, even by the feverish standards of his closing campaign argument, stands out for its brutal authoritarian overtones. The president mocked Antifa demonstrators: “You see these little arms, these little arms,” he shouted, forming his fingers into tiny circles to illustrate their puny biceps. And then he invited his supporters to imagine these weaklings having to fight against Trump’s own militant cadres. “Where are the Bikers for Trump?…
CNBC reports: President Donald Trump’s move to deploy troops to the U.S.-Mexico border is so far shaping up to have a cost of $220 million, according to two U.S. defense officials who were not authorized to speak publicly. The initial cost estimate, a figure that could change based on the ultimate size and scope of the mission, comes as nearly 4,000 troops moved to the border Saturday as Trump has repeatedly warned of a caravan of migrants from Central America….
Adam Serwer writes: The Democrats’ defeat in 2016 ushered in a parade of pundits who argued that the party had failed because it had assumed demographics were destiny, and had relied too strongly on what they labeled “identity politics.” The truth is closer to the reverse. In Texas and other states, Republicans have sought to engineer the demographics of the electorate to be whiter and older, the better to run culture-war campaigns that scapegoat religious and ethnic minorities for the…
Jamelle Bouie writes: “Trumpism” is a politics of racial demagoguery. America in the age of Donald Trump is more permissive of explicit racism than it’s been at any point since the civil rights era. And because bigotries rarely dance alone, the president’s nativism is accompanied by anti-black racism—first seen in his “birther” crusade against Barack Obama—anti-Muslim prejudice, and anti-Semitism. These ideologies exist on a continuum, with casual prejudice on one end and virulent hatred on the other. But common to…
Andrew Sullivan writes: Whatever else it will be, Tuesday will be a relief. We will finally find out where we are in the surreal dystopia of the last two years. We will see, in a tangible way, what America now is. These years have been overwhelmed and saturated by a single figure with no political experience, who won almost 3 million fewer votes than his opponent, has had consistently lower approval numbers than any of his recent predecessors, and speaks…
The New York Times reports: The Nigerian Army, part of a military criticized for rampant human rights abuses, on Friday used the words of President Trump to justify its fatal shootings of rock-throwing protesters. Soldiers fired this Monday on a march of about 1,000 Islamic Shiite activists who had blocked traffic on the outskirts of the capital, Abuja. Videos that circulated on social media showed several protesters hurling rocks at heavily armed soldiers who then shot fleeing demonstrators in the…
The Washington Post reports: Gun-carrying civilian groups and border vigilantes have heard a call to arms in President Trump’s warnings about threats to American security posed by caravans of Central American migrants moving through Mexico. They’re packing coolers and tents, oiling rifles and tuning up aerial drones, with plans to form caravans of their own and trail American troops to the border. “We’ll observe and report, and offer aid in any way we can,” said Shannon McGauley, a bail bondsman…
Robert F Worth reports: In March 2015, Saudi Arabia unleashed a full-scale military campaign against the Houthis, who had captured most of Yemen a few months earlier. The Saudis had assembled a coalition of nine states, and they made clear that they considered the Houthis, who are allied with Iran, a mortal threat on their southern border. The war has turned much of Yemen into a wasteland and has killed at least 10,000 civilians, mostly in errant airstrikes. The real…
The New York Times reports: As Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia charmed Goldman Sachs bankers and Silicon Valley executives on an American tour this spring, some of his most trusted lieutenants were taking care of business in Washington. In a low-key ceremony two blocks from the White House, Saudi officials signed an agreement with Booz Allen Hamilton, the American consulting company, to help train the kingdom’s growing ranks of cyberfighters. The agreement would “open great horizons” by…
Vox reports: The Tallahassee shooting was the third crime in a single week that was apparently preceded by a trail of online hate. Robert Bowers, the man suspected of killing 11 people and wounding six others in a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue last Saturday, appears to have posted threatening language about Jewish people and HIAS National Refugee Shabbat, a refugee aid group formerly known as the Hebrew Immigration Aid Society, on Gab, a social network that has become a…
The New York Times reports: In the final months of the Obama administration, Walmart was under pressure from federal officials to pay nearly $1 billion and accept a guilty plea to resolve a foreign bribery investigation. Barclays faced demands that it pay nearly $7 billion to settle civil claims that it had sold toxic mortgage investments that helped fuel the 2008 financial crisis, and the Royal Bank of Scotland was ensnared in a criminal investigation over its role in the…
The Guardian reports: The world must thrash out a new deal for nature in the next two years or humanity could be the first species to document our own extinction, warns the United Nation’s biodiversity chief. Ahead of a key international conference to discuss the collapse of ecosystems, Cristiana Pașca Palmer said people in all countries need to put pressure on their governments to draw up ambitious global targets by 2020 to protect the insects, birds, plants and mammals that…
Janet Reitman writes: White supremacists and other far-right extremists have killed far more people since Sept. 11, 2001, than any other category of domestic extremist. The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism has reported that 71 percent of the extremist-related fatalities in the United States between 2008 and 2017 were committed by members of the far right or white-supremacist movements. Islamic extremists were responsible for just 26 percent. Data compiled by the University of Maryland’s Global Terrorism Database shows that the…
The Wall Street Journal reports: The Congress of El Salvador agreed in April to extend the authority of jailers to keep gang leaders in solitary confinement. Over the next five days, the two reigning street gangs killed more than 100 people. With the highest homicide rate of all countries in the world, El Salvador is a nation held hostage. Law-enforcement officials estimate that one gang, MS-13, operates an extortion racket with little pressure from authorities in 248 of the 262…
The New York Times reports: A federal judge in Maryland on Friday ordered evidence-gathering to begin in a lawsuit accusing President Trump of violating the Constitution by maintaining a financial interest in his company’s Washington hotel. The plaintiffs are seeking records that could illuminate potential conflicts of interest between Mr. Trump and foreign leaders or state officials who patronize Trump International Hotel, blocks from the White House. The judge, Peter J. Messitte of the United States District Court in Greenbelt,…