It's Time for Travel Ban v2.0

One of the "signature" policies of the first Trump administration was its partly successful attempts to ban all travel to the United States by people from shithole selected countries. In case you were wondering what happened to this aspect of Trumpian governance, wonder no more, because yesterday the administration announced a complete ban on citizens of 12 countries, and a partial ban on citizens of 7 others.

During Trump v1.0, the White House issued its first travel ban within days of the inauguration, and saw that and a second travel ban get tied up in court. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the president has fairly broad discretion to discriminate against visitors from foreign countries, if doing so protects national security. With that ruling in hand, the first Trump White House barred entrants from Chad, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Somalia, Syria, Venezuela and Yemen, though Chad was eventually removed from the list. In 2021, Joe Biden lifted the restrictions, shortly after taking office.

This time around, the administration did some homework, so as to increase the chances that the ban will survive the inevitable court challenges. Apparently, State Department employees have been working tirelessly to identify which nations are full of Muslims, but not full of oil a threat to the United States. The 12 nations that are completely blocked, as of yesterday, are Afghanistan, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Myanmar, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The 7 nations that are partially blocked are Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela. There are some complicated conditions for the partially blocked nations, and there are even a few exceptions for some people from the 12 completely blocked nations. That said, if you've been having trouble sleeping at night because you were worried you might be assaulted by someone from Equatorial Guinea, you can probably rest easy now.

There is little doubt that the timing here is very much related to the attack in Colorado; in announcing the new ban, Trump said, "In my first term, my powerful travel restrictions were one of our most successful policies, and they were a key part of preventing major foreign terror attacks on American soil." True he did not specify an particular "foreign terror attack on American soil," but Fox and the other right-wing media were there to connect the dots for anyone who could not do it themselves.

As to what is really going on here, we'll go with the Occam's razor explanation: It's political theater meant to "show" the base that the administration is doing something about those teeming hordes of dangerous foreigners. And by making headline news out of blocking travel from a bunch of countries that are not even in the top 50 among the nations that send the most visitors to the U.S., it does serve to distract attention from the administration's lack of success along the Mexican border, and from myriad other embarrassments that are unfolding right now (like the squabbling about the budget bill).

And now, get ready for the lawsuits to start flying. (Z)

Trump: Gosh, Xi Won't Just Roll over and Beg

Donald Trump could conceivably have two purposes levying tariffs on China. First, to bring manufacturing jobs back to the U.S. Second, to make deals and get wins. The first strategy would require going on a TACO-free diet until Jan. 20, 2029. The second would require getting Chinese President Xi Jinping to make concessions to him. Trump is now whining on his boutique social media site:

I like President XI of China, always have, and always will, but he is VERY TOUGH, AND EXTREMELY HARD TO MAKE A DEAL WITH!!!

So, we have a pretty good clue which strategy Trump is pursuing.

Xi may be a dictator, but he is a Chinese patriot and definitely not stupid. He understands that Trump wants a quick "win" to brag about, so he is not budging on the things Trump cares about. After all, Xi doesn't have to worry about his image or elections next year. He also knows that the longer he holds out, the more desperate Trump will become and the smaller the crumbs needed to satisfy him will be. Maybe in 2 weeks, Trump will be so desperate that he he will be satisfied with China agreeing to buying some unspecified additional amount of soybeans some time in the future, will then call that a phenomenal victory, and then will move on.

On May 12, the U.S. and China reached a deal in Switzerland that included a 90-day suspension of the absurd tariffs both had imposed. Now they are accusing each other of violating the deal. Trump reneges on deals all the time and has done so for years. In particular, Trump was expecting Xi to loosen the restrictions on the export of rare earth materials and Xi has not done so. Whether that was actually part of the deal or merely something Trump was hoping for is not at all clear. It could be that Xi may have said he would consider it and Trump interpreted that as he would do it, rather than he would merely think about it. The rare earths are needed in many products made in the U.S. and the makers of those products may now be leaning on Trump fix the problem.

Of course, if Trump were actually a good negotiator, he would be talking to Volodymyr Zelenskyy and making him an acceptable deal for Ukraine's rare earth minerals. That would be something like more weapons in exchange for an agreement to give some U.S. mining company the right to extract Ukraine's minerals at the standard royalty rate used in other extraction industries. That would make Xi nervous, but Trump can't plan ahead in tic tac toe, let alone checkers.

Trump has repeatedly said he wants to talk to Xi on the phone. This is really stupid on many fronts. First, telegraphing that you are desperate about something gives power to your opponent. Second, Trump couldn't tell a rare earth from the new dwarf planet just discovered in Pluto's neighborhood, and won't be bothered to learn, while Xi will be sure to be briefed by his experts on the subject of rare earths before taking the call. Third, it is well known that Xi never makes deals on his own. He expects his team of experts to knock heads with the other side's team of experts first, and then when they have made an agreement his experts like, they present it to Xi for a yes or no.

In short, there is little doubt that if Xi takes a call from Trump, it will be to eat his lunch. We predict a meal of moo shu pork, which is basically the Chinese version of tacos. (V)

The Government Is Censoring Government Reports

Guess what? Trump officials are censoring government reports that Donald Trump might not like. In a way, this is hardly news. OF COURSE they are censoring standard government reports that Trump might not like. This is definitely "dog bites man" territory, but Politico had it as the lead story yesterday, so it is probably worth discussing.

Specifically, a routine quarterly report about agricultural trade was accompanied by a forecast that the trade deficit in farm products will increase later this year. Trade deficits are anathema to Trump. That is especially the case now that Trump is claiming that his beautiful tariffs will reduce trade deficits, not increase them. So officials killed the forecast.

This is symptomatic of Trump's view of the "truth." To him, the truth is what he wants to hear and what advances his personal goals. Unfortunately, this incident brings up the unpleasant (but likely) possibility that when some department or agency has produced a fact-based report whose conclusions differ from Trump's wishes, it will be quashed. Or worse yet, some high-level official will simply edit it to change the conclusions. In this case, Politico noticed it and raised an alarm, but we may not be so lucky in the future.

The results could be disastrous. Joe Glauber, a former USDA chief economist, said: "Objectivity is really key here and the public depends on it. To lose that trust would be terrible." Farmers and commercial buyers of agricultural products depend on USDA reports and make major decisions based on them. If these players stop trusting the reports, the result could be chaos in some industries that depend on them. All in all, we may be getting to a point where no one takes any government reports or statistics seriously anymore, which could cause a great deal of uncertainty and unnecessary economic harm. Maybe someone could get the cable stations in south Florida to broadcast the movie Trading Places a bunch of times. Now, there's a movie that shows what happens when people make unwise investment decisions based on inaccurate USDA reports. (V)

Trump's Crusade against Universities Shifts into Overdrive

Yesterday, when he wasn't busy banning people from various, mostly African, nations, Donald Trump was firing bazooka shots at two of the Ivy League universities he has decided are the enemy. One of the shots was kind of nutty, while the other was downright insane.

We'll start with the kind of nutty one, which is that he announced that he is canceling the approval that allows Harvard to enroll international students. "Wait," you might be saying, "I thought we already went through this." We did, and the first attempt, which was executed by the Department of Homeland Security, is still in court, and is still being stayed by a temporary restraining order from Judge Allison Burroughs.

For this new effort, Trump is not bothering with the federal bureaucracy, and is drawing on his own (alleged) power as president to protect national security. Readers can see Trump's order here; it's rambling and only semi-coherent, and not only talks about national security, but also accuses Harvard of hiding information about foreign students who have committed criminal acts, and says that not only will foreign students not be allowed into the U.S., but the ones who are already here may have their visas revoked. If that's not enough, there's also a digression about Harvard's use of affirmative action, and its discrimination against "non-favored races." Obviously, this will end up in court, too, and it's hard to see how it could turn out any better for the White House than the OTHER attempt to ban foreign students from attending Harvard.

And now, let's move on to the absolutely insane move, this one directed at Columbia University. Decreeing that the school has not done enough to combat antisemitism, and that it's been failing to protect Jewish students since the day that the current war in Gaza began, Trump wants to revoke the school's accreditation, on the basis that it has violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Now, this is very weedy, and would normally be of interest only to academic administrators. However, while the government can use its various powers (like the granting of student aid) to influence the accreditation process (e.g., we won't give Pell Grants to schools that do not meet [X] standard), the government doesn't actually control the process or the agencies that oversee the process. In Columbia's case, accreditation is granted by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), also known as the Mid-Atlantic Region Commission on Higher Education, which is a private, non-profit entity. And so, what Trump's threat really boils down to is a letter, sent by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon, asking the MSHCE to take a look at Columbia, and to consider revoking accreditation on the basis of civil rights violations.

Because the administration's argument is laughable, the MSCHE is not going to prioritize the request. Rawan Abbasi, a spokesperson for the MSCHE, was reached by reporters, and noted that the organization was aware of "the press release issued today by the United States Department of Education." In academic-speak, describing a request for investigation as a "press release" is some pretty serious shade.

Assuming MSCHE does launch an investigation (and it might decline to do so), it's very likely to take its sweet time, and it's even more likely to reach a conclusion of "there's no problem here." But even if MSCHE's conclusion is adverse to Columbia, the whole process is set up so as to allow a university to correct whatever is wrong, with multiple chances to do so, spready out over years, before the axe actually falls. And that's not even including the fact that, in this particular situation, there are going to be lawsuits that drag things out even more. Put another way, even if the administration had a real argument (as opposed to a fantasy argument), and there was at least some substance to the claims that Trump is making, it would probably take a decade for Columbia to be in real peril. And in case you don't have a calendar right at hand, June 2035 is rather well after January 2029.

And of course Columbia is going to fight this tooth and nail, with every tool at its disposal. It's one thing to lose hundreds of millions, or even billions, in research funding. But to lose accreditation? Without that, there's no university. There's a reason that people sell degrees from non-accredited universities for $50 ($100 for a Ph.D.!), and that is because they are worthless. Columbia literally has no choice but to push back with all its might.

The unbelievable overreach here is part of the insanity, but it's not the entirety. Remember, unlike Harvard, Columbia was actually kowtowing to Trump and trying to do his bidding. And what was their reward? Now their entire existence is being threatened. The lesson, which has also been learned by a bunch of white-shoe law firms, couldn't be clearer: You can never give Trump enough. If you give an inch, he'll take a mile. If you give him a mile, he'll take a light year. If you give him a light year, he'll take a parsec. If you give him a parsec, he'll take 12 parsecs (presumably to make the Kessel Run).

It's hard to imagine that any university (or any law firm) will be willing to play ball going forward, because in the end, they're going to end up in court anyhow, very possibly fighting for their very existence. There's no value in appeasing him, because he can't be appeased. So, in service of this one battle, and a few headlines about owning the (Columbia) libs, Trump has probably made his overall war a lot harder.

And on that point, even before the latest shots at Harvard and Columbia, Thomas Edsall had a long piece about Trump's war on the universities, a war that is nominally about antisemitism, but in reality is clearly about something else. Edsall believes that Trump hates higher education in toto, and especially the elite institutions, and wouldn't mind destroying a few of them as an example to the others. In an April 30 cabinet meeting, he justified (illegally) cutting off grants to Harvard because "the students they have, the professors they have, the attitude they have, is not American." In other words, they don't swallow his BS whole.

It is possible that Trump, himself an Ivy League grad, has been egged on by ungrateful Yale Law School graduate J.D. Vance. In 2021, in an address to the National Conservatism Convention, Vance said: "Universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth. Universities do not pursue knowledge and truth. They pursue deceit and lies." He also said that people have to attack the universities. He ended his speech quoting Richard Nixon: The press is the enemy. The professors are the enemy." In short, anyone who is critical of the administration is the enemy.

McMahon recently told CNC: "Universities should continue to be able to do research as long as they're abiding by the laws and in sync, I think, with the administration and what the administration is trying to accomplish." In other words, research that shows the administration is wrong should not be allowed. For example, if epidemiological research shows that vaccines save lives and the party line is that vaccines are bad, then that research should be banned and not funded or published.

What is probably triggering Trump and Vance is that universities generally tolerate a fair amount of free speech from the left and less from the right. When someone has a history of saying things the students and faculty like to hear, he or she is welcomed. When the speaker or author has things to say that they don't like, there are often boycotts, protests, and other attempts to suppress them. This has been true for a long time. When (V) was at Berkeley, Prof. Arthur Jensen did research that purported to show that IQ was largely genetic and immutable. Since Black people generally scored lower than white people on IQ tests, the implied conclusion was that they were inferior and nothing could be done about it. Rather than carefully examining Jensen's research methods to see whether the test groups were equal in educational level, income, socio-economic background, and other factors that could have affected and possibly invalidated the conclusions, there was a general freakout because people didn't like the conclusions. If his results had been the opposite, it is likely Jensen would have been praised as a brilliant researcher.

This is not to endorse Jensen or his conclusions (which remain hotly debated), it's just to illustrate the general bent of large universities. Trump may not understand all the details, but he knows that the elite universities skew fairly liberal and thus should be destroyed and rebuilt from the ground up on conservative principles. In other words, replacing a disfavored bias with a favored one. That much of America's prosperity has been built on research done at elite universities doesn't interest him one whit.

Edsall also cites Prof. Sean Westwood at Dartmouth, who notes the irony of Trump trying to kill off DEI programs because they take factors other than merit into hiring, with an open call for hiring more conservative professors—which is an order to hire based on factors other than merit.

Edsall also cites The Wall Street Journal, which wrote:

The Trump administration has frozen billions in federal grants to Harvard University, threatened its tax-exempt status, and sought to dictate its curriculum and hiring. Now the government seems bent on destroying the school for the offense of fighting back.

Trump is clearly trying destroy all sources of opposition. He has already got several media outlets and a dozen top law firms to kowtow to him. Universities are next on the list and whatever story he gives is just an excuse. The goal is simply to crush all opposition and Harvard is a good target because it is very visible and already disliked by many people for being "snobby." But, as of yesterday, the President may definitely have bitten off more than he can chew. And keep reading for more. (V & Z)

Ex DoJ Lawyers Form Group to Help People Trump Attacks

Whereas Donald Trump's attacks on universities are about stifling dissent and "owning the libs," his attacks on law firms would seem to have a different purpose. A lot of what his administration does is lawless, or at least arguably so, and won't stand up in a court of law. However, if there are no attorneys available to get the matter INTO a court of law, then that's not a problem. For example, the firing of an FBI agent due to Trump thinking the agent is insufficiently Trumpy is going to result in a long, complicated case that solo practicioners are not likely to want to take on. If the big law firms don't dare, many people Trump goes after won't have any recourse at all. Needless to say, there will be no justice at all soon and Trump can run rampant.

Stacey Young, a former lawyer at the DoJ, has decided to do something about this. She is putting together a network of volunteer lawyers who are willing to help Trump's targets and who are willing to absorb his slings and arrows. All of the lawyers in the network have worked for the DoJ and have deep experience with how it works. Not only does this give them expertise in the various cases they will soon handle, but the people targeted are likely to have faith in them given their DoJ backgrounds.

One of the volunteer lawyers, Melanie Proctor, who used to coordinate civil rights cases for the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco, said: "Something I took pride in as a DoJ attorney was that no one ever expected me to do anything that would violate my oath. The law was the law. Justice wasn't being served if we were doing things unjustly. We stood for something. But I think people will be targeted for doing the right thing, not taking a stance that is contrary to law."

One group of people that Young is especially worried about is DoJ attorneys who worked on the Jan. 6 prosecutions. Trump has promised to fire them all and this is one promise he is likely to keep. They will all need attorneys to fight their dismissals. However, the legal forum they need to go to before it gets to the courts is the Merit Systems Protections Board. Since Trump fired the chair, Cathy Harris, the Board doesn't have a quorum, so it can't handle cases. The Supreme Court declined to reinstate her while her own legal case is pending. As a consequence, fired employees need to go to the MSPB but it is not functioning. This spells trouble for anyone Trump fires. Given the Court's ruling on reinstating Harris, this problem could last for a while.

Not everyone is giving up, though. Former DoJ employee David Laufman, who investigated the Russian government's interference in the 2016 election, is part of Young's network. He said: "The Justice Department is a cornerstone of the rule of law in America, and the administration has taken a sledgehammer to that. The men and women who have dedicated themselves to pursuing justice without fear or favor in a completely nonpolitical manner now see their careers in danger or even shattered. So I feel a moral obligation as an alumnus to do anything I can to help them." (V)

Trump Wins Election Case

Early in his term, Donald Trump signed an XO asserting that all executive branch agencies must obey legal opinions issued by the attorney general. It also said that could not advance any legal position that contradicts the AG or the president. In the past, they had only to obey the law and court decisions, not whatever the AG thought up one fine morning. Democrats were worried that AG Pam Bondi might issue some opinion about elections that helped the Republicans, and the Federal Election Commission would then be bound by it, so they sued.

On Tuesday, Judge Amir Ali, a Joe Biden appointee, threw out the Democrats' lawsuit on the grounds that they had no standing to sue because they could not show they had already been damaged by the XO. Generally, people can sue the government only if they can show how the government has damaged them in some way. Amir wasn't convinced that any such damage had already occurred. The Democrats argued that they are now making decisions in such a way as to avoid having the FEC make rulings on them, because the FEC is now obligated to due whatever the AG tells it to do. The judge didn't buy it. He wanted a concrete example of the damage the XO has already done to the party and the blue team didn't have one.

However, he did note that should circumstances arise in which they could show actual damages, then they were welcome to refile the case. (V)

Appeals Court Hears Birthright Citizenship Case

Donald Trump thinks nothing of signing XOs that blatantly contradict the Constitution. The most egregious example is the one limiting U.S. citizenship to people born in the U.S. of at least one citizen parent. He even signed that one on Day 1 of Trump v2.0. Needless to say, there was a lawsuit about this. Trump lost the first round when Judge John Coughenour ruled that the XO violated the Constitution.

Yesterday, the appeal was heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in Seattle. The DoJ lawyer, Eric McArthur, argued that taking the Constitution literally encourages "birth tourism," where foreign pregnant women come to the U.S. in their ninth month for the explicit purpose of giving birth to an American citizen and then trying to stay themselves based on the family relationship. McArthur said that the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to women who are "domiciled" in the U.S. McArthur also said that the congressional debate at the time showed that the only intention of the Amendment was to give the newly freed slaves citizenship. Judge Ronald Gould, a Bill Clinton appointee, said: "I don't see any language in there textually that says they have to be domiciled. Scratch that vote.

Judge Michael Hawkins, also a Clinton appointee, said that an argument based on a congressional debate would have earned nothing but scorn from the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who was a strong textualist. Doesn't sound like McArthur is going to get Hawkins' vote either. Since there are only three judges on the panel, it doesn't look good for Trump. The third judge, Patrick Bumatay, a controversial Trump appointee, was not as skeptical as the other two. If he votes to uphold the XO, then when the case gets to the Supreme Court, the justices could try to latch onto his argument. Basically, he referred to the 1898 Supreme Court decision Wong Kim Ark in which the Court held that Wong was a citizen by virtue of being born in the U.S. even though his parents were not citizens. However, they were legally in the country so Bumatay supposed that the legality of the parents' residence is the key, even though nothing in the decision suggested that the parents' immigration status mattered. (V)

The Special Election for the Seat of the Late Gerry Connolly is Sept. 9

When Gerry Connolly died in May, the Democrats lost a vote from a deep blue (D+18) district in Fairfax County. Unlike Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX), who scheduled the special election for another deep blue district in November, Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) didn't play political games with the election date. He scheduled the special election for Sept. 9, even knowing some Democrat was sure to win it. The filing date in July 11 and many Democrats are expected to file but it is not clear how the Democrats will pick their nominee.

Youngkin didn't try to play games because he has presidential ambitions for 2028. Doing something overtly partisan would make it harder for him to run in the "moderate" lane then. If Donald Trump's approval rating is down in the weeds in 2028, a moderate Republican like Youngkin might have a chance and he probably didn't want to do something that would brand him as very partisan to moderate Republicans. (V)

The Dutch Government Falls

Yesterday, we had a story about South Korean politics. Today we have one about Dutch politics. On Tuesday, the Dutch government, which is a coalition of four very different parties with little in common, fell apart, despite having spent 7 months negotiating their program after the 2023 general election and 11 months trying to carry it out. The election resulted in the party of Geert Wilders (PVV), a populist who resembles Donald Trump in some ways but not in others, getting 37 seats in the dominant 150-seat lower chamber of the parliament and becoming the largest faction by far. At first, none of the other parties wanted to talk to him, but when all other combinations failed, they were forced to. The other three parties are the traditional conservatives (VVD), a farmer party (BBB), and a new centrist party (NSC) that tries to embrace the most popular ideas of both left and right.

Normally, the leader of the biggest party in the coalition is the prime minister, but that was a bridge too far for the other three parties, so they agreed on a professional nonpartisan technocrat, Dick Schoof, as prime minister. But Wilders, whose main issue is stopping immigration by any means, still runs the show from Parliament. Wilders also supports banning the Q'uran as well as closing mosques and Islamic schools. He doesn't like Muslims much. We've heard that before somewhere.

The collapse was precipitated when Wilders got tired of the other parties stalling about banning asylum seekers from entering the country. He produced a list of demands about stopping them and ordered the three other leaders to sign it as is. They all refused and Wilders withdrew from the coalition, forcing new elections, probably in October. Here is a statement by Wilders (with voiceover translation into English):

Making the immigration issue more complicated is that immigrants require housing, health care, language training, education for their children, and more. All this costs money. A lot of it. And at a time when the European Union wants every member to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP, in some cases doubling it, because it doesn't believe the U.S. will defend it from a Russian attack. So social spending will have to be gutted and Wilders does not want to spend what is left of it on foreigners.

The Netherlands is not the only European country that does not want any more immigrants. While some governments are tolerant of them, it would be hard to find a country where the people want more immigrants, many of them from Africa, Syria, and other places where there is unrest. In the recent German elections, for example, the extremely far-right AfD Party got 21% of the vote.

To make things worse, NATO leaders are meeting in The Hague later this month, and the head of NATO is Mark Rutte, who was the Dutch prime minister for a record-breaking 14 years. Slightly embarrassing.

The current Dutch government will muddle along until the election, but it is supposed to merely carry out policy items that have already been approved by Parliament, not introduce new ones. In practice, that is impossible. Suppose things go south in Ukraine and Volodymyr Zelenskyy goes to every country begging for help. There is overwhelming support for Ukraine in the Netherlands, but is the government supposed to say: "We'd love to help you, but please come back next May, by which time we might have formed a new government"?

As an aside, (V) was once involved in Dutch elections, as an ICT consultant. The Parliament voted to make the voting software open source and the election commission had to write a tender to allow companies to bid on it. The commission is staffed mostly by lawyers, who couldn't tell a COBOL program from a Python program if their lives depended on it, and had zero idea what open source meant and how to word a tender to make sure the bidder did not retain any legal rights to the software after it was paid. It didn't go smoothly, even though the software in question was the software that added up the totals from the precincts. Actual voting is by huge paper ballots with as many as 28 parties, each with as many as 50 candidates. With hundreds of candidates to choose from, no one ever complains "I don't like any of them." As far as (V) knows, the plan hasn't been implemented yet. (V)

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