Thursday, November 29, 2018
The Trump and the Courts
— Felix Frankfurter, 319 U.S. 624 (1943)[A]s judges we are neither Jew nor Gentile, neither Catholic nor agnostic.
The Trump has been busy with so many things he didn’t notice that his right wing friend in Poland just took a left turn. Until that happened, they were like two peas in a pod.
Jaroslaw Kaczyński is to Poland, what Trump is to the United States. According to a report in The Guardian, he is considered the leader and driving force behind the Law and Justice party (PiS) in Poland, and in that capacity, has hand picked leaders of the country, and made decisions that affect its future. Among other things, he gave impetus to legislation that took control of the Constitutional Tribunal that is responsible for determining the constitutionality of legislation, and took over the agency responsible for selecting new judges.
In April 2018, at the urging of the PiS and Mr. Kaczyńsk, a law was passed that lowered the retirement age for judges to 65, and provided that all judges who reached that age by July 3, 2018, would have to retire. The PiS said that change was needed to rid the court of communist judges and improve its efficiency.
The Trump was understandably envious of Mr. Kaczynski’s ability to control the courts in Poland. The only thing the Trump could do with respect to the courts and judges he didn’t like in the United States, was to rail against them and he did that with great enthusiasm.
He referred to a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals with which he disagreed as a “ridiculous ruling.” A White House statement about another case in which a Trump policy was struck down said that the ruling was an example of “egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge.” When his approach to immigration was struck down by a judge of Mexican descent, he attributed his loss to the judge’s ancestry. Before he was elected, he said that Justice Ginsburg’s mind “was shot,” called her an “incompetent judge,” and said she should resign.
On November 20, 2018, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals struck down a proposed administration rule that said only people who entered the United States through an official port of entry could apply for asylum. A furious Trump called the decision “a disgrace” and described the judge who wrote the decision as an “Obama judge and I’ll tell you what, it’s not going to happen like this any more.”
The description of a judge as an “Obama judge” was too much for John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. In a statement released by the Court’s public information office, the Chief Justice said that the U.S. “doesn’t have Obama judges or Trump judges, Bush judges, or Clinton judges. What we have is an extraordinary group of dedicated judges doing their level best to do equal right to those appearing before them.”
The Chief Justice’s response was not well received by the Trump. It so angered him that after he’d had a pleasant afternoon of golf at Mar a Lago, playing with Jack Nicklaus, he took time out of his busy schedule to fire off a tweet contradicting the Chief Justice. He said that the country does have “Obama judges” and those judges have a much different point of view “than the people charged with the safety of our country.” The Trump went on to say that “It’s a disgrace what happens in the 9th Circuit.”
Throughout all these fits of tweeting the Trump almost certainly was envious of Mr. Kaczyński’s ability to get rid of judges who did not please the ruling party, and almost certainly wished that he could follow in Poland’s footsteps. Had he realized what happened in Poland, he would no longer have envied the Poles.
The European Commission is the executive arm of the European Union. It referred Poland’s action requiring judges to retire at age 65, to the European Court of Justice. In mid-October that court ordered Poland to suspend the application of the new law. On November 21, 2018, while the Trump was flying to Mar a Lago to play golf and say hi to the troops around the world, Poland reversed its law on removing judges. It reinstated all the judges it had forced out under the early retirement rules. The Law and Justice Party said the judges were being reinstated because the European Court of Justice, the EU’s top court ordered Poland to suspend the application of the mandatory retirement rules. The PiS said it was reinstating the judges because it respected the rulings of the European Court of Justice.
Respect for the courts is, of course, the difference between the Trump and the Poles. The Poles respect the ruling of the top court and acted accordingly. The Trump doesn’t respect anyone, not even the Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. So sad.
Wednesday, November 21, 2018
Birds of a Feather
The long arm of coincidence.— Haddon Chambers, Captain Swift
It’s just another one of those amazing coincidences and a harbinger of things to come in the United States. It was the news that Democracy’s greatest champion in Europe, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a Trump wannabe, was presiding over a parliament last June that was drafting anti-immigrant legislation.
The parliament’s efforts were preceded by the Hungarian parliamentary election, that took place on April 8, 2018. During that election, Mr. Orban ignored the problems in Hungary, such as corruption scandals, low wages, or the depressing state of health care. His campaign was focused exclusively on keeping immigrants out of Hungary. The choice, he said when campaigning, was (a) a national government over which he would preside, or (b) a government formed by George Soros.
The legislation that was drafted, following the election, was aimed at immigrants seeking asylum, and criminalized the activities of anyone giving them assistance. It was called the “Stop Soros Bill.”
Mr. Soros is the American-Hungarian billionaire who has had a large presence in Hungary. The government was, however, accusing him of encouraging refugees to go to Hungary. According to Mr. Orban’s acolytes, NGOs financed by Mr. Soros operate as “a network to facilitate illegal migration.” In mid-June the Hungarian parliament passed the Stop Soros legislation.
The bill creates a crime called “promoting and supporting illegal migration.” It bans organization and individuals from giving any help to undocumented immigrants. It is drafted in such a way that, as simple an act as providing food or shelter to an immigrant, would be a violation of the law.
Following the passage of the bill, the Hungarian Helsinki Committee issued a press release that said in part: “The primary aim of this legislation is to intimidate by means of criminal law those who fully, legitimately, assist asylum seekers or foreigners. It threatens to jail those who support vulnerable people.”
Passage of the “Stop Soros” law was not Mr. Orban’s only anti-Soros triumph. On October 25, 2018, the Central European University (CEU) which is considered the best English language university in Budapest and, indeed, in the heart of Europe, will be moving most of its operations to Vienna, Austria.
CEU was founded more than 30 years ago by George Soros. As its website explains, it is a graduate level “crossroads” university where “faculty and students come to engage in interdisciplinary education. . . . With approximately 1,400 students. . . from more than 130 countries, CEU is one of the most densely international universities in the world. . . .” CEU has been in Budapest since its creation in 1991. Beginning in the 2019-2020 academic year, incoming students for the masters and doctoral programs will study at a new campus in Vienna. As the trustees of CEU explained, CEU is moving because of the Hungarian “government’s crackdown on academic freedom including a government ban on gender studies programs, the forced suspension of research related to migration, and punitive tax measures.” It is a great victory for Viktor Orban. And it is a wonderful model for the Trump who not only shares Mr. Orban’s hatred of immigrants, but his dislike for George Soros.
The Trump’s fear of immigrants is well known and is attested to by the deployment of troops to the border which, the Trump says, is designed to keep out the caravan that is filled with terrorists and other unsavory sorts intent on causing havoc in the United States as soon as they get in.
According to a report in the Wall Street Journal on November 20, the Trump has been almost as successful in keeping out immigrants as Mr. Orban. According to the report, at the border crossing in Yuma, Arizona, until very recently, 30 or more families were permitted entry every day. In the last two weeks, at most one family a day has been permitted to enter. As one immigration counsellor said: “It really seems like they are trying to discourage people from crossing to seek asylum legally . . . . It’s been bad for a couple weeks.”
As noted above, hostility towards immigrants is not the only tie that binds Messrs. Orban and Trump. Dislike of Mr. Soros is the other.
During the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, one of the Republican senators conducting the hearings was confronted by two women in the Senate Office Building as he was entering the elevator. They were expressing their dismay over the prospect of Kavanaugh’s confirmation. Commenting on the confrontation, the Trump tweeted: “The very rude elevator screamers are paid professionals only looking to make Senators look bad. Don’t fall for it! Also, look at all of the professionally made identical signs. Paid for by Soros and others. These are not signs made in the basement from love.”
On another occasion, in response to a question posed by a reporter who asked whether the Trump thought Soros was funding the migrant caravan whose advent the Trump warned of before the election, the Trump said: “I wouldn’t be surprised. A lot of people say yes.”
Mr. Orban may wonder why the Trump has never expressed the sort of love for him that he has for Messrs. Kim or Putin. I want to reassure him that it is not for want of affection. Indeed, it is nothing more than an oversight and on behalf of the United States I want to offer my apologies to Mr. Orban for the Trump’s rudeness. He is not its only victim.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Feeding the Swamp
The swamp of Styx by which the gods take oath.
— Aeneid, bk 6
It is a fact of political life that in the United States, what Michelle Goldberg in a recent New York Times article referred to as the “bottomless depravity” of Donald Trump, can also be applied to at least three members of Congress who emerged triumphant from the recent election. One of them, to his credit, was not an indicted criminal.
The re-elected, but unindicted congressman, was Steve King of Iowa. He was re-elected for the 9th time on November 6, 2018. Mr. King almost certainly takes great pride in the fact that he has not been charged with any criminal activity-only racism and fascism. He is credited over the years with countless racist rants. In one of his many tweets he said: “We can’t restore our civilization with somebody else’s babies.” Commenting on the activities of illegal immigrants, he said that for every illegal immigrant who becomes a valedictorian of his or her class, there are 100s of others who “weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”
In a recent back and forth with a supporter in an Iowa restaurant, he repeatedly referred to people he needed to hire as farm workers as: “dirt from Mexico” and, referring to the caravan that has bedeviled Trump, Mr. King said: “It’s the most dirt we’ve ever seen.” In other events he has compared immigrants to dogs, endorsed a white nationalist mayoral candidate who questioned whether immigration is causing “white genocide,” and attacked the National Republican Congressional Committee for backing a gay candidate. Voters in Iowa were not deterred. He has been reelected. And, as observed above, he has not been indicted for any criminal activity. The same cannot be said for his New York and California reelected colleagues.
August 2018 had proved to be a bad month for each of those men. Although Chris Collins was re-elected to represent New York’s 27th Congressional District, the path to his actively seeking to retain his seat was tortured. In early August 2018, after he had announced his intention to run for re-election, a strange thing happened. He was charged with insider trading. Following the indictment, he announced that he was suspending his campaign, saying: “After extensive discussions with my family. . . over the last few days, I have decided that it is in the best interests of the constituents of NY-27, the Republican party, and President Trump’s agenda, for me to suspend my campaign for re-election to Congress.” That all happened because he apparently had pangs of conscience and concluded that it was unseemly for someone under criminal indictment to seek to be elected to Congress. He went on to say that he would, however, serve the remainder of his term.
Suspending his candidacy showed he had a sense of decency. It had a short shelf life. Only a few days more than a month after announcing that he would not seek reelection, he announced that he had had a change of heart and would indeed seek re-election, his earlier statement to the contrary notwithstanding. True to his word, he ran, and as a result, won.
Mr. Collins was not the only criminally indicted congressman who was a victor in that election. California’s Duncan Hunter of the 50th Congressional District in California, was another. Mr. Hunter did not permit something as trivial as a criminal indictment to adversely affect his reelection campaign.
Mr. Hunter made Mr. Collins look like a wimp. Whereas Mr. Collins was indicted for securities fraud, his offense was the relatively unimaginative one of insider trading. Mr. Hunter was far more creative. His criminal activities made him eligible for a 48-page indictment. The indictment suggested that Mr. Hunter and his wife had not realized that money that had been raised for his campaigns was intended to be used in connection with his effort to be reelected, and was not a piggy bank that could be used for whimsical purchases.
According to Adam Braverman, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of California, the indictment alleges “that Congressman Hunter and his wife repeatedly dipped into campaign coffers as if they were personal bank accounts.” They “falsified F.E.C. campaign finance reports to cover their tracks.” The indictment recited that they used campaign funds for dental bills, private family trips to Hawaii and Italy, and their children’s private school tuitions. Probably most egregious, and yet, displaying a soft side of the Congressman and his wife, $600 of the campaign funds were spent on an airplane ticket for the family’s pet rabbit so that it could accompany the family on one of their trips, and would not be left alone in the house while the family was gone.
Mr. King was re-elected with 50.4 % of the vote. Mr. Collins was re-elected with 49.5% of the vote. Mr. Hunter was reelected with 63.5% of the vote. Getting reelected was not the greatest of their respective achievements. Becoming prime examples of the sorts of swamp-like creatures who occupy the Trump created swamp filled that role.