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
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
Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh has nothing but contempt for international law. But he has shown uncritical deference to executive power, particularly in the so-called war on terror cases.Read more
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
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
“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
In a little noticed but potentially monumental development, the House of Representatives voted unanimously for an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2019 (H.R. 5515) that says no statute authorizes the use of military force against Iran.
The amendment, introduced by Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minnesota), states, “It is the sense of Congress that the use of the Armed Forces against Iran is not authorized by this Act or any other Act.”
A bipartisan majority of the House adopted the National Defense Authorization Act on May 24, with a vote of 351-66. The bill now moves to the Senate.
If the Senate version ultimately includes the Ellison amendment as well, Congress would send a clear message to Donald Trump that he has no statutory authority to militarily attack Iran.Read more
After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration created a secret “kill list” to step up the targeting of alleged terrorists for assassination. The criteria for inclusion on the list have apparently morphed over three presidential administrations, yet they remain elusive.
Last year, two journalists filed a federal lawsuit against Donald Trump and other high government officials, asking to be removed from the kill list until they have a meaningful opportunity to challenge their inclusion. Both men claim to have no association with al-Qaeda or the Taliban, to have no connection to the 9/11 attacks, and to pose no threat to the United States, its citizens, residents or national security.Read more
The Senate voted 55-45 to confirm Gina Haspel as CIA director on May 17, despite the fact that her facilitation of torture should disqualify her from assuming the role.
In her testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee on May 9, Haspel insisted that the CIA’s interrogation program during the Bush administration was legal. Haspel, a 33-year CIA veteran, argued that it could not be determined whether torture was effective to gain intelligence. She refused to state categorically that torture is immoral. And she never condemned the torture program in which she participated.Read more
Under the guise of exercising supervisory power over the president’s ability to use military force, Congress is considering writing Donald Trump a blank check to indefinitely detain US citizens with no criminal charges. Alarmingly, this legislation could permit the president to lock up Americans who dissent against US military policy.
The bill that risks conveying this power to the president is the broad new Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), S.J.Res.59, that is pending in Congress. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chair Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) and Democratic committee member Tim Kaine (Virginia) introduced the bipartisan bill on April 16, and it has four additional co-sponsors.Read more