Editorial Roundup: United States

Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:

The Washington Post on the conditions for immigrant detainees

The state of New Jersey filed a lawsuit this week against the operator of a privately run immigration detention center in Newark, claiming that health inspectors were denied full access to the facility. It’s the latest reminder that the federal government’s immigration enforcement system desperately needs greater transparency and accountability.

The facility, called Delaney Hall, has become a flash point in recent weeks. Reports of unsanitary and inhumane conditions, which have become disturbingly common among detention facilities nationwide, have resulted in violent clashes outside the building between protesters and police. The situation has gotten so bad that Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) imposed a curfew around the center, and Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) deployed state troopers to manage the crowds.

Sherrill is correct to try to “lower the temperature” and stop agitators from contributing to the spectacle. People have every right to protest peacefully, but assaulting officers and lighting fires in the streets are crimes that warrant prosecution.

At the same time, the federal government has an obligation to ensure that detainees in its custody, even if they illegally entered the country, are not subject to cruel conditions. Immigration detention centers are not supposed to be punitive; their purpose is to temporarily house immigrants while courts review their cases.

For weeks, detainees and attorneys advocating for them have accused the Delaney facility of providing poor living conditions and inadequate medical care despite outbreaks of covid-19 and the flu. Some prisoners have joined a hunger strike, alleging that they have been served expired food and even meals containing live worms. Others have said they were subjected to solitary confinement.

Those reports prompted the state health department to send representatives to the facility, where they were allowed to inspect the food service department. But the state said in its complaint that the inspectors were denied access to the center’s medical unit, sleeping areas, showers and ventilation system.

The Department of Homeland Security called the state’s lawsuit “frivolous” and denied allegations of poor conditions. “No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been better treated than illegal aliens,” the department said on social media. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin was nominated for the job to deescalate tensions, but he’s scoffed at complaints about food, saying detainees refused to eat because they wanted “ethnic” food. “Well, they can go back to their country and get whatever food they want,” said Mullin.

There’s reason to be skeptical about the administration’s nothing-to-see-here attitude. Eighteen individuals have already died in the government’s custody this year, matching its count for all of 2020, at the height of the pandemic. Last year, 33 detainees died, and multiple facilities reported outbreaks of tuberculosis, a disease associated with poor living conditions.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration gutted watchdog agencies at DHS. Last year, it attempted to eliminate the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties, which once had about 140 full-time employees. DHS backtracked amid threats of lawsuits, but it still slashed the office’s headcount to about 40 people, most of them outside contractors. It also limited the way people can submit complaints, such as requiring that they are written in English.

It’s heartening to see New Jersey authorities take this seriously, but that’s not enough. As Congress takes up a reconciliation bill this week to provide additional funding for immigration enforcement, lawmakers have leverage to put a stop to cruelty in detention facilities.

The New York Times says Bill Pulte should not be in charge of national security

In the 20th century, Americans learned how government abuse of secrets can threaten liberty. It happened during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, the McCarthy era and J. Edgar Hoover’s long reign at the F.B.I. After the Watergate scandal, however, Democrats and Republicans joined forces to put in place new rules and procedures to prevent federal officials from using sensitive information to harass political opponents. That system, while never perfect, largely succeeded in preventing the politicization of law enforcement and intelligence.

President Trump has dismantled these safeguards and made clear that he considers even the government’s most intrusive powers to be tools for his personal advantage. On Tuesday he took a new step down this road, choosing Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence. Mr. Pulte, the head of a federal housing agency, is blatantly unqualified to oversee the nation’s spies. He has no known background in national security. Two senators with long backgrounds in intelligence — Susan Collins, Republican of Maine, and Mark Warner, Democrat of Virginia — have said they do not even know if he has been authorized to handle classified information.

Mr. Pulte’s one evident qualification is his eagerness to advance the president’s political revenge campaign. In his current job, Mr. Pulte is supposed to help alleviate the nation’s housing shortage. Instead, he used his platform to attack the president’s enemies.

On social media, he has mimicked Mr. Trump’s childish style and repeated his false accusations. Mr. Pulte posted more than 100 times last summer about Jerome Powell, who was then the Federal Reserve chair. Mr. Pulte wrote that Mr. Powell “should RESIGN” and that he “doesn’t like our Great President.”

Even more seriously, he has leveled accusations of mortgage fraud against people Mr. Trump considers to be his political enemies. Mr. Pulte asked the Justice Department to investigate Attorney General Letitia James of New York, Senator Adam Schiff, Democrat of California, and Lisa Cook, a Federal Reserve governor whom Mr. Trump sought to fire. To aid the inquiries, Mr. Pulte abused his authority by obtaining documents from Fannie Mae, the mortgage finance giant that he helps supervise. He then presided over the firing of Fannie Mae officials who tried to investigate his conduct.

It is chilling to think about how he might use his power as the director of national intelligence, a job that will give him access to secrets about Americans and foreigners alike. His appointment is a threat to the effective functioning of the intelligence community, national security and the rule of law.

Congress created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks to oversee and coordinate the work of agencies that at times refused to work together, including the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. At its best, the office has broken down institutional barriers and given the president a disciplined and apolitical view of threats, such as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s ambitions regarding Taiwan. The office has helped prevent catastrophic terrorist attacks since 2001.

But the Trump administration has repurposed the job into a tool of partisanship. Mr. Pulte’s predecessor, Tulsi Gabbard, was herself unqualified. She had a limited background in intelligence. She espoused conspiracy theories about the 2016 presidential election and other subjects. She made sympathetic comments about President Vladimir Putin of Russia.

Once in the job, Ms. Gabbard behaved inappropriately on several occasions. In January, she attended an F.B.I. raid in Atlanta in which government agents seized 2020 ballots to advance an investigation into bogus allegations of election fraud. A week later, her office said it had scrutinized voting machines used in Puerto Rico.

It is a sign of how much Mr. Trump has broken with post-Watergate norms that Ms. Gabbard almost seems qualified in comparison with Mr. Pulte. She, at least, served in the Army National Guard and in Congress. He is 38 years old and the grandson of the founder of a construction company. Much of his professional experience was at companies tied to his wealthy family. He worked his way into Mr. Trump’s orbit by posting friendly content online and befriending the president’s son Eric at the family’s Mar-a-Lago club. Along with his wife, Mr. Pulte contributed nearly $1 million to groups supporting Republican candidates in 2024 races.

The law that created the director of national intelligence position stipulates that the officeholder should “have extensive national security expertise.” Mr. Pulte clearly fails that test. Mr. Trump has appointed him in an acting role, which means that the Senate does not need to confirm him. Unless the president formally nominates him, he can serve in the job for only 210 days.

That is 210 days too many, and Congress should act to force Mr. Pulte’s immediate removal. The past week has demonstrated that congressional Republicans do have leverage over the president. They forced him to back off his plan to create a $1.8 billion fund to reward his political allies, including many who have broken the law. Republicans did so by threatening not to pass legislation that Mr. Trump wants passed.

They can do the same with Mr. Pulte. The House and the Senate should refuse to pass bills funding the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency and reauthorizing parts of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act until the White House removes him.

In Mr. Trump’s first term, principled appointees sometimes constrained him. In his second term, he has installed loyalists to expand his personal power. His efforts threaten American democracy, and the selection of the unqualified Mr. Pulte increases the threat.

The Wall Street Journal on John Bolton’s plea deal

President Trump may hate being the target of lawfare, but he sure knows how to wield it against anyone who crosses him. That’s the story of John Bolton, his former national security adviser, who is agreeing to a plea deal essentially for the sin of writing a critical book about his time advising Mr. Trump.

The President has been determined to seek revenge against Mr. Bolton, who wrote his well-regarded memoir, “The Room Where It Happened,” based on his 17 months running the National Security Council in Mr. Trump’s first term. Mr. Trump first tried and failed to block publication, then went to court to confiscate the royalties. He lost that fight too. But on Mr. Trump’s return to office, his Justice Department charged Mr. Bolton with a coercive 18-count indictment for keeping diary notes on a home computer that included “national defense information.”

Mr. Bolton has now decided to plead guilty to a single felony count for retaining classified information. He will pay a $2.5 million fine, which is best understood as an attempt to deny Mr. Bolton the earnings from the book.

Like most similar defendants, Mr. Bolton had little choice other than to negotiate a plea. A trial could cost as much as $3 million in legal fees and run the risk of greater punishment. He is 77 years old, and a guilty verdict could have meant a de facto life sentence. Mr. Trump’s prosecutors threatened more charges if Mr. Bolton didn’t submit to a plea. After a life devoted to public service or writing for think tanks, he isn’t a wealthy man.

Especially troubling and truly vindictive, therefore, is that Justice is still insisting that Mr. Bolton go to prison. The concession prosecutors have made is that they won’t ask for a sentence longer than five years. Mr. Bolton will instead ask the court for probation, which is far more suitable for the single offense, but a judge will decide.

Mr. Bolton isn’t pleading to transmitting classified information, and he didn’t bring documents home. He wrote diary notes based on his memory that informed his book. He submitted the book draft to the White House for vetting for classified material, and it was cleared for publication by Ellen Knight, the senior director at the time for pre-publication review.

Many officials have kept diaries or journals that they later used to inform their books, including Carter-era NSC adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski. The law expressly anticipates that pre-publication review could discover classified information. But under this Bolton standard, anyone who submits a book or article draft that contains classified material could potentially be charged with a crime.

Prison time would be especially unjust given the punishments for others who admitted to offenses dealing with classified information. Sandy Berger, Bill Clinton’s NSC adviser, hid documents from the National Archives in his socks but paid only a $50,000 fine and received two years of probation.

CIA director John Deutch had classified documents on his home computer. Mr. Clinton pardoned him before Justice could finalize an agreement in which he would plead guilty to a misdemeanor and pay a $5,000 fine. CIA director David Petraeus, who shared defense information with his biographer, received two years probation and a $100,000 fine. He pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor under the same provision, Section 793, that Mr. Bolton is pleading under as a felony.

Mr. Bolton continues to be under a death threat from Iran, and he must pay for his own security after Mr. Trump removed his government protection at the start of his second term. Iran hacked his AOL account in 2021, after he had left government, and Mr. Bolton voluntarily reported that to the FBI. Iran could have him killed by criminal mercenaries in prison for as little as a pack of cigarettes.

These pages have gladly published Mr. Bolton’s writing over the years, and we will again. As we said at the time of its publication, it was bad political form to publish his book while Mr. Trump was still in office.

But no one outside the Trump acclamation chorus believes that John Bolton would have been prosecuted had he written a book that was favorable to Donald Trump.

The Philadelphia Inquirer says boat strikes will cost the soul of the United States

From the start, the Trump administration’s boat strikes on alleged drug smugglers have been deemed illegal. But new evidence shows they are also costly and ineffective.

For nine months, the U.S. military has used fighter jets and missiles to destroy small boats in the waters off South America to supposedly stop the flow of illegal drugs into the United States.

But the bombing campaign has been a failure on many fronts. The cocaine keeps coming, and the tax dollars keep going.

It is just as easy to get drugs today as it was before the operation began, according to public health researchers and addiction specialists.

At the same time, a recent analysis by Brown University found just the cost of the munitions in the boat strikes topped $50 million — though the full cost to taxpayers is much higher.

Not to mention, the human cost: More than 200 people have been summarily executed under the Trump administration’s policy of shoot first and answer no legal questions.

Lost in the revelry and abuse of power has been any due process for those slain — as required by the Fifth and 14th Amendments in the Constitution.

No charges have been filed. No evidence has been presented to even demonstrate that the boats were transporting illegal drugs to the United States.

The family of Alejandro Carranza Medina, a 42-year-old Colombian man killed in a boat strike, said he was a lifelong fisherman with no ties to the drug trade who was trolling for marlin and tuna. They filed a complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights seeking compensation and an end to the attacks.

“The U.S. has really gone off the rails in terms of these killings,” said Dan Kovalik, a human rights attorney representing Medina’s family. “It has really destroyed its status in the world.”

The families of two Trinidadian men killed in U.S. boat strikes in October filed wrongful death lawsuits in federal court, accusing the government of extrajudicial killings in violation of the Death on the High Seas Act and the Alien Tort Statute.

More appalling, after two other men survived a boat strike, orders were given to go back and kill them — which may be a war crime.

Representatives from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Constitutional Rights, the International Crisis Group, and the United Nations argued at a hearing in March that the lethal strikes violated U.S. and international law.

The Trump administration is “responding with lawless violence that flagrantly violates human rights, in its phony war on so-called narco-terrorism,” said Ben Saul, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights and counterterrorism, who detailed the many wrongs of the United States.

Jamil Dakwar, the director of the ACLU Human Rights Program, was blunter: “These are premeditated and intentional extrajudicial killings that lack any plausible legal justification.” He added, “They were simply murders, ordered by individuals at the highest level of government.”

Trump claims those aboard the boats are “narco-terrorists” who are “affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization.”

But the administration has produced no evidence to back that claim, or support Trump’s false assertion that each boat strike saves 25,000 American lives.

Trump’s Justice Department prepared a memo to justify the boat strikes, but the contents remain secret. The memo reportedly relies on Trump’s invented claim that the U.S. is engaged in armed conflict with drug cartels.

However, under the Constitution, only Congress has the power to declare war. Congress has not authorized any armed conflict regarding the boat strikes, the invasion and arrest of Venezuela’s president, or the war in Iran.

In October, the Senate introduced a war powers resolution aimed at stopping the boat strikes, but the measure narrowly failed to pass.

Amid the lawlessness, killings, and financial cost of the boat strikes, something bigger has been lost. Under Trump, America has ceded its moral authority.

The country that once welcomed the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses is now kicking them out — while bombing boats in international waters.

This is a painful and sad admission, but it must be said: Trump has transformed the United States from a global protector to a global predator.

The Guardian says Donald Trump is commanding attention like a king

One of the surest signs of an authoritarian regime is the ubiquity of its leader. Mussolini’s face was plastered across fascist Italy. In North Korea, pictures of Kim Jong-un have appeared alongside those of his father and grandfather, which are present in every home and public building. The golden statue of Turkmenistan’s leader, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, perching on a marble cliff in the capital is one of a multitude of portrayals.

Thriving democracies spurn such displays, rightly judging it safer to laud leaders once they are out of power. The first US president, George Washington, refused to appear on currency, believing that redolent of European monarchs. The 47th has no such concerns. The administration wants a $250 bill depicting Donald Trump to commemorate the 250th anniversary of independence, though federal law does not currently allow banknotes to depict living people. His signature will soon appear on $100 bills: a first for a US president.

Immense banners with Mr Trump’s face went up at the departments of justice, labour and agriculture in Washington last year. He reportedly offered to release federal funds for infrastructure if Dulles airport and Penn station were renamed in his honour, and is on a monument-building spree, including the $1.4bn White House ballroom project. Not everything is going his way: last week, a judge ordered the removal of his name from the Kennedy Center, saying the arts venue could not be renamed without congressional approval.

In authoritarian states, the leader’s name and image are used to bolster legitimacy, perhaps associating him with national identity, or to coerce: omnipresence asserts omnipotence. For Mr Trump, a former reality TV star who has launched products including Trump steaks and Trump University, simple vanity and profitable brand-building may be key. Sycophantic attempts at ingratiation may spur other projects.

Set against the egregious cruelties and destruction of this administration, or the $1.8bn slush fund from which he is retreating, “toponymic narcissism” may seem merely absurd. But it matters as a statement of ambition: the actions of a king. Mr Trump runs a 21st-century feudal court where the ambitious compete for approval, the powerful trade favours, and the lines between political authority and personal interest and profit are blurred to the point of invisibility.

At their best, grandiose projections of leaders are Ozymandian in their futility, unlikely to outlive their subjects. It’s not clear how successful they are in the short term. One attempt to measure impact in the United Arab Emirates, by Sarah Sunn Bush, Aaron Erlich and others, did not find evidence that images of leaders increased compliance or support. Research on “hard” (crude) propaganda in China, by Haifeng Huang, suggested that it can backfire even if it initially deters dissent: “By eroding the legitimacy of the state and public satisfaction, it may aggravate the regime’s long-term prospects.”

Americans have already made their views clear. In Pew Center research last month, only 9% said it was acceptable to name government buildings after Mr Trump while he is in office; 50% opposed it. Meanwhile, polling by Quinnipiac suggested that 68% of voters felt he was not focusing enough on the problems facing them. A president who blithely declared that “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation” when considering his war with Iran might regret putting his name on banknotes and commissioning lavish construction projects as his voters struggle to pay the bills.

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