ON THE evening of June 29th, five months after issuing his first executive order halting travel from several Muslim countries and suspending America’s refugee programme, Donald Trump’s restrictive border policy finally went into effect. The legality of Mr Trump’s revised order (issued on March 6th) will be on the Supreme Court’s docket in the autumn, but on June 26th, the justices let it go forward in the meantime—with significant caveats. Entry to America may be barred “with respect to foreign nationals who lack any bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States”, the court said. But the travel ban cannot apply to people with family connections in America. Until the Supreme Court has a chance to fully consider the matter, “foreign nationals who have a credible claim of a bona fide relationship with a person or entity in the United States” are to be exempted from Mr Trump’s executive order.
Just before the...Continue reading
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IN LATE 2014, Boris Nemtsov, a Russian opposition leader, wondered aloud about the consequences of allowing the head of the Chechen republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, to amass his own armed forces. “The contract between Kadyrov and Putin—money in exchange for loyalty—is ending. Where will Mr Kadyrov’s 20,000 men go?” he wrote. “When will they come to Moscow?” Just a few months later, Nemtsov was gunned down while walking with his girlfriend across a bridge in the shadow of the Kremlin. The killing rattled the Russian political world and horrified the liberal opposition that looked up to Nemtsov, a charismatic former deputy prime minister who had once seemed destined for the presidency.
On June 29th, after three days of jury deliberations, a Russian court convicted five Chechen men in connection with the assassination. Yet for Nemtsov’s supporters, the verdict brought little solace. Those convicted may have carried out the killing, but the Russian state has proved...Continue reading
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IRAQ’S prime minister, Haider al-Abadi, has claimed victory over Islamic State (IS), after his army captured the ruins of Mosul’s 12th-century al-Nouri mosque, where IS’s leader declared his “caliphate”. It has been an arduous campaign. Previous battles for the city have been short-lived. In 1918 and 2003 British and American forces marched into the city almost unopposed. But IS’s defence of Iraq’s second city against an overwhelmingly more powerful coalition has lasted for over eight months. Obstacles and trenches have cut up the approach roads into and all over the city. Even now two small pockets in the city remain, including several main streets in the heart of the Old City adjoining the Tigris River. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to remain under IS control.
The longer the fighting has continued, the more it appears to have intensified. With no escape routes, IS fighters scorched the earth as they retreated. With the same zeal they applied to...Continue reading
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THE tiny flat in northeast Washington, DC was damp and verminous but, after six months living in a hostel for the homeless, Sarah and her 10-year-old daughter loved it. Even with its defects, the flat was more than Sarah could afford; the rent is $900, which is roughly what she earns, as a part-time lollipop lady, helping schoolchildren across the road. Washington DC’s government covered half the cost—but, under the terms of its “rapid rehousing” programme, only for three years and now the family’s time is almost up. Sarah has been served with an eviction notice and worries she will soon have to move back to a hostel or a shelter.
Her story is a common one, according to a recent report published by Washington Legal Clinic for the Homeless. Washington has the highest rate of homelessness among America’s big cities. Among families it is particularly high. Between 2013 and 2017, according to an annual one-day count, the number of homeless families in the district rose by 23%, to almost 1,200. This year’s tally showed...Continue reading
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“I HAVE always told you that I will either renegotiate or terminate NAFTA,” said President Donald Trump at a recent rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He had been about to pull out of the North American Free-Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico, he explained. But then he got a nice call from Justin Trudeau, Canada’s prime minister, and another from the president (“good guy”) of Mexico asking him to negotiate: “and I am always willing to negotiate.” Even so, Mr Trump insisted, NAFTA has been very unfair to the United States, so he will renegotiate successfully—or pull out. The audience applauded, but rather hesitantly.
Of America’s top ten farm states by cash receipts from production, six are in the Midwest, and Iowa ranks second, after only California. Farmers have benefited from NAFTA more than other industries, which is why they are now fighting hard against messing about with the treaty. In 1993 America exported corn, soyabeans and other farm products worth $8.9bn to...Continue reading
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MANY conservatives worry that once an entitlement programme exists, it is all but impossible to pare back. They will be disheartened by the postponement, on June 27th, of a Senate vote on the Republicans’ health-care bill. The party’s moderates cannot tolerate the proposed cuts to Medicaid, the federal and state health-insurance programme for the poor. Under the bill, which will now be amended or rewritten, Medicaid’s budget would have been 26% lower in 2026 than currently forecast. “Medicaid cuts hurt [the] most vulnerable Americans,” noted Senator Susan Collins of Maine, announcing her opposition. Conservative justifications for cuts—that Medicaid has grown too big, and is ineffective—must compete with the fact that one in five of Ms Collins’s constituents use the programme. But are the right’s complaints about Medicaid justified?
When Medicaid began in 1965, it served two groups: those who also received cash welfare from the government, and whomever states deemed to be “medically needy”. That mostly meant elderly residents of nursing homes. But it could be much broader. New York included almost half its population. Because the federal government picked up over half the tab, in 1976 Congress tried to control costs by limiting coverage to the poor and nearly-poor.
In the 1980s, however, Washington oversaw a gradual broadening of...Continue reading
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More than 2m live animals are transported by air every year in America. Those going through John F. Kennedy Airport in New York have the best of it, thanks to the Ark, which claims to be America’s first 24-hour privately-owned airport terminal for animals. So far it has hosted dogs, horses, cats, baby goats, parrots and a giant rat. Penguins and other water fowl have a bed-sized water basin and a frozen floor. Italian opera, usually Luciano Pavarotti, is piped into the Ark’s equine centre. The handlers say the music has a calming effect on the horses as they await departure for racing, dressage, show-jumping and polo events. Meanwhile humans trudge through security and then board planes with narrower seats and less legroom than they had in the 1970s—doggone it.
WHEN the justices took their chairs last October, Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in for the presidency and Antonin Scalia’s seat seemed destined for a jurist who would anchor a liberal Supreme Court majority for the first time in almost five decades. Nine months later, as the justices wrapped up a largely uncontentious term, Neil Gorsuch, Donald Trump’s pick for Mr Scalia’s seat, seems poised to cement the court’s conservative tilt for the foreseeable future. “Conservatives have to be clinking their champagne glasses,” says Elizabeth Wydra, president of the Constitutional Accountability Centre.
Justice Gorsuch joined the court in mid-April, taking part in only 13 of the 60-odd cases handed down by the end of June. That is enough to confirm that he mimics his predecessor’s jurisprudence. Indeed, he seems to be even more conservative: his votes are in lockstep with those of the right-most justice, Clarence Thomas. In the eyes of Ian Samuel of Harvard Law School, who...Continue reading
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IN MARCH 2016, at a dismaying moment in the election campaign (there were a few), the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, urged a gathering of congressional interns to recall the “beautiful” experiment that created America. This, Mr Ryan told the youngsters, is the only nation founded not on an identity but on an idea, namely: “that the condition of your birth does not determine the outcome of your life.” Conceding that modern politics might seem consumed with “insults” and “ugliness”, the Speaker insisted that this was not the American way. The Founders determined that their noble idea could be upheld only with reasoned debate, not force. Mr Ryan cited the first of the Federalist Papers, and Alexander Hamilton’s counsel that in politics it is “absurd” to make converts “by fire and sword”.
He was drawing on a rich rhetorical tradition. Browse through school history books, with names like “Liberty or Death!”,...Continue reading
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