blog

September 10, 2018

Brett Kavanaugh is a Threat to Racial Justice and Voting Rights

Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s record on racial issues and his answers to questions posed by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee this week raise red flags about how he would rule on voting rights if confirmed to the Supreme Court.

During his confirmation hearing to become a Supreme Court justice, Kavanaugh bragged about hiring people of color as law clerks and decried the use of the “n” word. But this proved mere window dressing as his answers to the senators’ questions brought his racist views into sharp focus.Read more

August 22, 2018

US Leaders Aid and Abet War Crimes in Yemen

US leaders who provided military support to the Saudi-led coalition that bombed civilians in Yemen this August could be charged with aiding and abetting the commission of war crimes under customary international law, which is part of US law.

The 500-pound laser-guided MK 82 bomb, which the coalition dropped on August 9, killed 51 people, including 40 children. The bombing constituted a war crime.

“They came to the hospital in cars and ambulances. Dozens of children with an array of grisly wounds,” Marta Rivas Blanco, a nurse from the International Committee of the Red Cross who works at the Al Talh hospital, wrote in the Guardian. “Some were screaming, some were scared, many went straight to the morgue.”

Lockheed Martin, one of the leading US defense contractors,manufactured the bomb, which was part of a US-Saudi arms deal last year.Read more

August 14, 2018

Will Trump Be Charged With Conspiracy to Violate Federal Election Law?

In addition to the case for Donald Trump’s obstruction of justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, evidence is mounting that the president participated in a conspiracy to violate the federal election law. Mueller could either ask a grand jury to indict Trump as a co-conspirator or to name the president as an unindicted co-conspirator.Read more

August 7, 2018

Did Trump Break the Law by Ordering Sessions to End Mueller Investigation?

Since the appointment of Robert Mueller as special counsel to investigate ties between Russia and the Trump campaign, Donald Trump’s fury has steadily mounted. Trump has railed against Mueller’s investigation, repeatedly calling it a “witch hunt.” But last week, as Paul Manafort’s trial got underway and Trump expressed fear that his son, Donald Trump Jr., may be criminally implicated, the president’s rage boiled over.

Was Trump’s tweeted order that Attorney General Jeff Sessions “should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further” permissible under the “unitary executive” doctrine, or is it evidence of obstruction of justice by the president?Read more

August 1, 2018

Trump Threatens Iran to Distract From Russia Criticism and Appease Israel

Donald Trump’s all-caps tweet threatening Iran with “CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE” sounds much like his warning last fall that North Korea would be “met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.”

Will Trump deliver on his threats against Iran, but not against North Korea? There is a striking disconnect between his policies toward the two countries.Read more

July 25, 2018

Israel Illegally Enshrines Apartheid in Its “Basic Law”

On July 19, 2018, the Israeli Knesset enacted a law that illegally enshrines a system of apartheid. The legislation, which has the force of a constitutional amendment, strips away any pretense that Israel is a democracy. Moreover, it violates customary and treaty-based international law.

The “Basic Law: Israel as the Nation-State of the Jewish People” says, “The State of Israel is the national home of the Jewish people, in which it fulfills its natural, cultural, religious and historical right to self-determination.” It continues, “The right to exercise national self-determination in the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people.”

Absent is any guarantee of self-determination for the 1.8 million Arabs who comprise 20 percent of Israel’s population. But, “we refuse to be second-class citizens,” said Ayman Odeh, chairman of the Joint List, the Palestinian parties in the Knesset. Odeh added that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s regime is “digging a deep pit of fear, racism and authoritarianism to divide us from each other. But they can never erase us from the homeland we share.”Read more

July 2, 2018

In Upholding Muslim Ban, the Supreme Court Ignored International Law

The Supreme Court’s opinion in Trump v. Hawaii, affirming Donald Trump’s Muslim ban, allows the United States to act in flagrant violation of international law.

Under the guise of deferring to the president on matters of national security, the 5-4 majority disregarded a litany of Trump’s anti-Muslim statements and held that the ban does not violate the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which forbids the government from preferring one religion over another. Neither the majority nor the dissenting opinions even mentions the US’s legal obligations under international human rights law.Read more

June 29, 2018

North Korea Agreed to Denuclearize, but When Will the US?

A powerful economic incentive continues to drive the nuclear arms race. After the Singapore Summit, the stock values of all major defense contractors — including Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and General Dynamics — declined.

Given his allegiance to boosting corporate profits, it’s no surprise that Donald Trump is counterbalancing the effects of the Singapore Summit’s steps toward denuclearization with a Nuclear Posture Review that steers the US toward developing leaner and meaner nukes and lowers the threshold for using them.

The United States has allocated $1.7 trillion to streamline our nuclear arsenal, despite having agreed in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1968 to work toward nuclear disarmament.Read more

June 12, 2018

Dissecting Trump’s Efforts to Place Himself Above the Law

“Nobody is above the law,” Donald Trump declared during the 2016 campaign. But as special counsel Robert Mueller zeroes in on him, the president is carving out an exemption for himself. Trump and his attorneys are claiming absolute power for the president.

Trump’s attorney and mouthpiece Rudy Giuliani told HuffPost that Trump could not be indicted even if he “shot” former FBI director James Comey in the Oval Office.

A confidential January 29, 2018, memo written by Trump lawyers John Dowd and Jay Sekulow contends that Trump essentially is above the law. As the French King Louis XIV said, “L’etat c’est moi” (I am the state). All political power resides in the king. Trump’s attorneys are arguing that the president is immunized against legal consequences for his actions.Read more