Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

The Wall Street Journal on an advancing civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia

No U.S. President has done more to confront Iran ’s nuclear program than Donald Trump, and one reason is to avert a nuclear arms race in the world’s most volatile region. Vice President JD Vance made that case recently, yet the Trump Administration is simultaneously advancing a civil nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that would abandon long-held proliferation safeguards. Why?

A State Department letter to Sen. Ed Markey (D., Mass.) dated May 18 says the Saudi deal is undergoing “final review” before Mr. Trump can submit it to Congress, Reuters reports. The deal wouldn’t require Riyadh to sign the Additional Protocol for snap U.N. inspections or adhere to the “gold standard” of no domestic uranium enrichment and no reprocessing of nuclear waste. That has been the U.S. standard to ward off nuclear-weapons proliferation.

Saudi Arabia is a U.S. ally, but so is the neighboring United Arab Emirates, which committed to the gold standard in its 2009 civil nuclear deal with the U.S. There’s no legitimate reason for Riyadh to dodge those restrictions or the most effective method of inspections.

The State Department letter says the U.S. and Saudi Arabia instead would have to come to a “bilateral safeguards agreement.” Reuters reports that it would be less onerous than the tried-and-tested gold standard and Additional Protocol, and a central question is whether it will prohibit enrichment and reprocessing.

Each time these processes—keys to the world’s most dangerous weapons—are let out of the bag, the risk of something catastrophic increases. Mr. Trump understands this in the case of Iran’s regime, a rogue and an enemy, but decades of U.S. strategic thinking has recognized that it holds true for allies as well.

Regimes can change, and so can alliances. Technology and materials can be transferred or stolen. And once a country begins to enrich uranium, it is difficult to stop it. Even after U.S. and Israeli strikes in June halted Iran’s enrichment, the regime threatens to resume before long with a few essential materials and facilities and its accumulated know-how.

Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman has mused before about needing nuclear weapons. As we wrote during the Crown Prince’s November trip to Washington, “The better way to reassure the Saudis—and everyone else—is to keep Iran’s nuclear program in ruins.” No one can accuse Mr. Trump of inactivity there, which should decrease the risk of regional proliferation.

This deal would do the opposite by weakening safeguards and overturning a valuable precedent. If it advances, expect other allies to request the same treatment and the world to become that much more dangerous.

The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on AI data centers

We have some bad news for anyone still intent on sitting out the AI revolution: You’re too late. If you’re like most Americans today, you already rely on artificial intelligence for myriad activities and services without even necessarily knowing it.

Like any technological revolution, this one has brought societal upheaval with it. That can be seen in public meetings throughout Missouri and the U.S., where citizens are pushing back against construction of the large-scale data centers AI needs to function.

Some of this feels like classic NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard), but it would be a mistake for data center proponents to dismiss opposition as entirely that. Opponents raise real issues — environmental, energy, and quality-of-life issues, among others — that policymakers have so far failed to address, leaving a vacuum in which fear and uncertainty flourish.

Rather than trying to talk opponents out of their fears, proponents of the data centers (which include local government officials and business and civic interests across the political spectrum) should press their state and federal politicians for a regulatory structure that would mitigate those fears. Pending bipartisan federal legislation that would require data centers to supply their own power is just one of many good ideas out there that haven’t yet gotten political traction, but should.

It’s not just researchers, coders and geeks who use today’s ever-smarter artificial intelligence systems. Every time you search the internet, use a GPS map or visit the doctor, AI is involved. It’s fundamental today to online shopping, streaming entertainment, social media and countless other things people do every day.

It is as integral a part of America’s military defense today as are planes and tanks. In that sense, staying at the forefront of AI development is literally a national security issue.

All that ever-growing computer activity has to be powered from somewhere. AI systems rely on data centers — massive, energy-and-water-sucking facilities that house the servers, software and data storage needed to run those systems.

The U.S. currently hosts more than 4,000 functioning data centers, with almost as many more under development. Planned projects include one in Midtown St. Louis, near the Armory, that Mayor Cara Spencer’s office estimates would bring in more than $400 million in tax revenue over the next decade.

It also includes a project in Festus that has so infuriated local opponents that they ousted three city council members in the April elections and are currently targeting the mayor and two council members for recall votes.

Opponents fear the massive power use by these behemoth structures will drive up electricity rates for everyone else; that their massive water use will impact that utility; that noise and environmental issues will outweigh any tax-revenue gains local communities will see by letting data centers in.

These are legitimate concerns, but just reflexively opposing the construction of the data centers that AI needs to function isn’t the way to address them. This genie isn’t going back in the bottle — and it shouldn’t. Like it or not, AI is a crucial technology today. National security issues alone preclude any quaint notions of just abandoning that technology so that China & Co. can run the table.

Which makes it all the more important that legitimate concerns about data centers be addressed with transparent and consistent regulation.

A good template is federal legislation co-sponsored by U.S. Sens. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Ct. It would ensure that data center power usage won’t end up inflating the electric bills of regular ratepayers. It includes a provision to require that data centers ultimately migrate off the public power grids and provide their own power.

Other pending federal legislation would mandate that data centers not only provide their own power, but that that power must be primarily from renewable energy sources. Still other measures would force public transparency during negotiations between data companies and local officials, banning non-disclosure agreements and other practices that have no place in public policy debates.

The Missouri Legislature in its recently ended session also considered several legislative remedies, including requiring data centers to pay for grid upgrades and limiting their energy and water usage.

But because those measures failed this session, and the feds are still nibbling around the edges of the issue, we’re left with local officials making these decisions in the absence of any broader regulatory structure — and, arguably, without the technical knowledge that tends to come with regulations. No wonder the neighbors are nervous.

Ultimately, local residents should have the final say over what moves in next door. That may be NIMBY, but it’s also a valid principle in a free society. Data center proponents might convince opponents more successfully if they lobby for strong federal and state regulations and safeguards to actually address the concerns.

The Philadelphia Inquirer says New Jersey ICE detention center exposes Trump’s immigration policy

The immigrants held at Delaney Hall in Newark, N.J., are sadly emblematic of President Donald Trump ’s mass deportation efforts.

Most of the men and women inside the 1,000-bed facility will have no criminal record — let alone be the “ worst of the worst ” — and were detained while going to work, dropping their kids off at school, or out grocery shopping. Some of them may have shown up to court or a scheduled appointment with authorities and ended up behind bars.

They are now trapped in a detention system that has a long record of complaints of abuse, harsh living conditions, poor medical care, and limited accountability — even under presidents concerned with following the rule of law. Today, emboldened by an administration in which cruelty is the point, it is not unreasonable to consider that a difficult situation has likely become nightmarish.

That Delaney Hall sits less than five miles from the Statue of Liberty is the kind of irony that should deeply shame every American.

Detainees at Delaney have cited crowded conditions, lack of climate control, poor food quality, lack of access to clean water, and other issues. Many have no idea when their cases will be heard.

Last June, four people escaped from the facility after detainees were reportedly served slices of bread instead of a meal, the last straw in what were allegedly already deteriorating conditions. At the time, New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim questioned whether the facility was physically up to the job, noting that the outside wall the escapees broke through was “essentially just drywall with some mesh inside.”

The GEO Group, which runs the jail, said immigrants detained were treated well and claimed there was no widespread unrest.

A year later, Delaney remains a flashpoint, as crowds of protesters have surrounded the building in support of hunger-striking detainees. Lawyers for the immigrants and their families have alleged that the facility forces people to sleep on the floor and take showers with no heat, that detainees are sometimes not fed or given rotten food, and that people with medical conditions cannot consistently access the care they need.

In a statement, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security claimed otherwise, insisting it has higher standards than “ most U.S. prisons.”

Kim, who returned to tour the facility on Monday, spoke about some of what he saw inside. In a thread posted on social media, he wrote that Delaney Hall is home to a pregnant woman unable to access obstetric care, a woman who suffered a miscarriage without medical attention, and a mother who was prevented from seeing her 4-month-old baby for more than a few minutes at a time.

As he left the detention center, the senator was caught in the middle of a standoff between U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and protesters. Video shows him attempting to de-escalate the tense situation, only to be pelted by water bottles thrown by some in the crowd. Images later show Kim‘s eyes being washed out after he was pepper-sprayed by federal agents in the chaotic scene.

Kim, along with New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill, and U.S. Reps. LaMonica McIver and Rob Menendez have been at the forefront of opposition by elected state officials against the facility. U.S. Sen. Cory Booker visited Delaney Hall on Wednesday and said the scene inside was chilling.

“This is not who we are as a nation,” New Jersey’s senior senator said. “This is a moral stain on who we hope to be and profess to be.”

The conditions at Delaney Hall demand an immediate fix, and immigration requires a long-term solution by Congress. Neither is likely as long as a Trump-besotted GOP controls the House and the Senate — but the midterms are less than six months away.

Even closer is America’s 250th birthday.

It bears remembering that New Jersey is known as the Crossroads of the American Revolution, and while the clash at Delaney Hall is no Battle of Princeton, the principles at stake are much the same.

If, as Booker said, this is not who we are. If our national character demands we protect the most vulnerable among us, then Americans today must again stand up against tyranny and defend the rights the founders fought for.

The Houston Chronicle says messy deportations hurt American workers

Nearly every day, the young construction contractor braces for the inevitable.

One more coworker will disappear.

They just took another one of my guys, his boss will tell him.

According to Manuel, at least 20 of his colleagues have been detained or deported by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last 18 months. They’re all hard workers, Manuel lamented to an editorial board member outside a Montrose-area home in mid-construction. He briefly removed his straw cowboy hat to wipe the sweat from his brow.

Manuel is a first-generation American born to Mexican immigrant parents. (We’re only using his first name to protect his family from retaliation.) He grew up in Cypress — not too far from where some of his colleagues have been nabbed, he said. Most were driving through the region’s sprawling suburbs, in places like Spring, Conroe, Katy and New Caney.

A Chronicle analysis of deportation data collected through Freedom of Information Act requests shows that, within ICE’s Houston area of responsibility, ICE arrests have more than doubled — from 190 arrests per week under Biden, to about 434 arrests under Trump. Meanwhile, the share of ICE arrestees who are convicted criminals has fallen, from 73% under Biden to 44% under Trump.

The loss cuts deep personally, but it also bruises Manuel’s bottom line. The house they’re building will take longer to finish. That doesn’t mean more hours for Manuel, it means less.

The pay will be slower to come. That makes it much harder for the 22-year-old Houston native to buy the land he dreams of, to set up a yard for 18-wheelers and build a company to call his own.

“Trump is really f–ing this up,” Manuel said, shaking his head.

When President Donald Trump roared back into office promising to right a dilapidated economy through the biggest mass deportation operation in American history, it was a pledge a majority of voters chose to believe. The theory was simple and seductive: remove undocumented workers, and native-born U.S. citizens will step into those open positions.

If only it were that easy.

A new working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that indiscriminately removing hundreds of thousands of people through splashy, terror-inducing raids doesn’t protect American workers — it actively harms them.

Focusing on the first nine months of the Trump presidency, economists from the University of Colorado, Boulder analyzed areas in which ICE arrests doubled relative to their non-citizen population and compared employment changes to the rest of the country.

The results are stark. For every six immigrant workers removed by the administration, one American worker loses their job.

Yes, you read that right. Trump’s messy mass deportations hurt American workers.

That’s because the economy isn’t a zero-sum game. Jobs are often complementary. When a construction worker is deported, the project stalls. The American electrician, drywaller and local manager all lose hours, too.

To be clear, concerns over immigration’s impact on the workforce aren’t entirely baseless. Immigrants in the United States are overrepresented at both the highest and lowest levels of education, meaning new arrivals often end up competing directly for jobs with similarly educated American workers. They can act as substitutes rather than complements.

That can depress wages for Americans. During the Biden administration, millions of migrants were paroled into the country and granted work permits. At the time, employers were desperate for workers and low-wage Americans successfully demanded higher pay. These days fewer businesses are hiring.

This study measures the consequences of using cruelty as a blunt policy instrument — targeting long-term residents who have been embedded in our communities for years, and even detaining U.S. citizens — accidentally or otherwise — as collateral damage.

And the people most harmed by these chaotic enforcement efforts?

They’re the same working-class Americans Trump claims to champion. While U.S.-born men with college degrees saw no negative impact, American men with a high school degree or less saw their employment fall by 1.3% in areas with high ICE arrests.

Yet the effect during Trump 2.0 is twice as severe as during the Obama-era deportation spikes, said East. Largely because today’s raids are more indiscriminate. Fewer convicted criminals are being targeted — more handyman dads, roofers and gardeners are being swept away.

In his paint-splattered jeans and work boots white with drywall dust, Manuel knows he, too, could be a target even though he’s a U.S. citizen. On Houston Latinos Unidos, a local social media page he follows, the feed is an endless, dystopian scroll of daily sightings: men, brown-skinned like him, handcuffed and detained by masked agents on the side of the road.

Manuel loves building homes. He’s been doing it since he was a teenager, spending spring and summer breaks learning to install brick by his dad’s side. Though he’s tried other jobs — as a security guard, a mechanic and an electrician — nothing gives him the same thrill, even though the work is exhausting.

But this, this is a different kind of exhaustion. A breathless sprint to pay the rising rent, stay ahead of bills and eke out a living under a cloud of constant anxiety.

What hope does he have to get ahead?

The truth is that our economy depends on both working-class American citizens like Manuel and their foreign-born counterparts. The lesson is clear. We need immigration reform that secures the border and balances enforcement with more legal pathways for people already here and contributing to our society. The bipartisan Dignity Act, re-introduced in Congress last year, would be a start.

It recognizes what every Houstonian knows, deep in their bones: You simply can’t tear out the foundation without bringing the house down on native-born workers, too.

The Guardian says Gaza faces further catastrophe

“He’ll do whatever I want him to do,” said Donald Trump, addressing his discussions with Benjamin Netanyahu over their illegal war on Iran. The US president said on Friday that he was making his final determination on a deal – of sorts – with Tehran. As chief ally, funder and arms supplier for Israel, the US can rein in its prime minister. But with his hands tied on Iran, Mr Netanyahu seems bent on rekindling war elsewhere. Israel’s brutal escalation in Lebanon may be an attempt to gain ground while it can, or perhaps to destabilise the Iran peace initiative. The prospects for Gaza are grimmer.

As Mr Trump talks up a new peace deal in the Middle East, Mr Netanyahu is trashing Mr Trump’s last effort. Israel this week killed another Hamas military chief, but this war has failed in its stated aim of destroying the group, while visiting untold horror on civilians. Israeli forces have expanded far beyond the half of territory they agreed to hold, attack Palestinians in an undefined zone around their positions and carry out airstrikes deeper into Gaza. Yet Nickolay Mladenov, the top diplomat for the Trump-appointed Board of Peace, has blamed Hamas for the stalling of the purported ceasefire. Now Mr Netanyahu says he has ordered the military to take control of 70% of Gaza. That would force more than 2 million Palestinians into less than a third of what was already overcrowded territory.

Meanwhile, his defence minister, Israel Katz, has reaffirmed Israel’s intent to expel Palestinians from Gaza. He terms it “voluntary migration”. But if people leave because their homes and essential infrastructure are in ruins, food and medicine are desperately short, and they remain under military assault, that’s not voluntary: it’s ethnic cleansing. A choice between human-made humanitarian catastrophe or exile is no choice at all.

Mr Netanyahu and his coalition partners are watching the polls anxiously ahead of October’s elections. It would be naive to think their remarks are unrelated to courting domestic political support. But given the devastation in Gaza, and Israel’s flouting of the ceasefire terms, it would be naive to regard them as merely rhetorical. Nor should such declarations of intent ever be acceptable.

Yet where is the reaction? Justified international outrage over the treatment of western activists in the Gaza flotilla by Itamar Ben-Gvir, the far‑right national security minister, is in grotesque contrast to the silence over the abuse of Palestinian detainees. On Friday, Israel’s ambassador to the UN complained that it had been added to a blacklist of actors credibly suspected of sexual violence in conflict zones. (Hamas was listed last year following the atrocities of 7 October 2023.)

There is a similar gulf between the anger after Russia struck a Romanian apartment block this week and the silence over attacks in Gaza – where five children were among those killed on the first day of Eid al-Adha. Germany voiced “concern” about the expansion of Israeli military control in Gaza, but Israel is unmoved by toothless criticism. European governments, with little sway over Russia, could put real pressure on an ally and trade partner.

If Mr Trump wants to be remembered as a peacemaker – admittedly unlikely, given his record – he should ensure that Israel complies with his Gaza plan, that Palestinians can live in peace, and that reconstruction begins. If Europe believes in its frequent invocation of rules-based order and moral decency, it must use its leverage with Israel and end its complicity in these crimes.

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