Newsletter: 9th Circuit proves our courts still work, thank God
Good morning. I’m Paul Thornton, the Los Angeles Times’ letters editor, and it is Saturday, Feb. 11, 2016. It might be wet at times this weekend, but here’s a helpful reminder that 25 million Californians still live in drought conditions. Let’s take a look back at the week in Opinion.
The White House is a shell of an administration, our one-party dominated Congress has shown little interest in holding the ethically challenged president accountable, and our courts … well, how about those courts?
For all the trash talk it has endured from the world’s most powerful man since it started reviewing President Trump’s ban on travel to the U.S. by the citizens of seven predominantly Muslim counties, the American judiciary has functioned as it should — which is to say, remarkably better than the other two branches of government since Jan. 20. A case in point is the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals refusing on Thursday to reinstate Trump’s travel ban, a decision that prompts an approving editorial in The Times:
Thank God that at least part of the government is functioning as it ought to. On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary freeze on the president’s misguided ban on travel from seven mostly Muslim countries and his suspension of refugee resettlements.
Ostensibly, President Trump wants to suspend the refugee program and freeze immigration from the seven countries in order to give his administration time to review how the government vets visa and asylum requests. It would be foolish not to assess how such programs are working on a regular basis — that’s basic governmental accountability.
But absent evidence that the nation faces heightened risk under the current system, it should continue letting people who qualify for visas to receive them, and provide asylum for refugees who deserve it. That the nation has not suffered a fatal terror attack by an immigrant from those seven countries since the vetting processes were tightened after 9/11 puts the lie to Trump’s panicky assertion that we face a great and imminent peril. Further, as the Cato Institute reported, only 20 of 154 people identified as foreign-born terrorists between 1975 and 2015 came from among the 3.3 million refugees settled here during that time. Those individuals caused the deaths of three victims; although any murder is to be decried, those statistics hardly support the level of alarm we see from our anguished president.
The damage Trump’s polices would cause exceeds whatever bit of good he can claim. Islamic State recruits in part by saying the West is at war with Islam, and Trump plays right into that group’s hands first with his rhetoric, and then with a travel ban affecting only majority-Muslim countries. His policy strains relations with allies and disrupts the lives of countless people involved with businesses, universities, cultural programs and other endeavors that rely on international travel. And putting the refugee program on hiatus adds a layer of cruelty and frustration to the lives of people who have already been uprooted from their homes and forced to live as squatters in refugee camps or foreign cities while waiting to find a new place to call home.
The other Trump outrage of the week: Betsy DeVos. His secretary of Education pick received Senate confirmation by the slimmest of majorities, with Vice President Mike Pence casting the tie-breaking vote. A Times editorial wondered how the congressional Republicans can possibly hold Trump accountable if they cannot even reject the obviously incompetent DeVos. In an op-ed article, education journalist Barbara Miner worries that DeVos’ full-throated support for vouchers and private schools will undermine public education in America.
The Trump administration’s nihilism is much worse than your garden-variety hypocrisy. Politicians lie and shamelessly flip-flop based on political expediency, so charges of hypocrisy are not unusual. In a way, writes political scientist Jacob T. Levy, they’re actually reassuring in that accusing someone else of hypocrisy suggests an awareness of political principles and morals. The Trump administration’s refusal to acknowledge even the existence of truth, on the other hand, is on a whole different level of dangerous nihilism. L.A. Times
Stop comparing Trump to foreign leaders; he was made in America. Foreignizing the new president has become something of its own genre in journalism and politics, with Trump being compared to everyone from Venezuelan socialists to, of course, a certain German dictator responsible for World War II. Media analyst Adam H. Johnson offers a reality check: “The groundwork for Trump was laid by Rush Limbaugh, Lou Dobbs, Glenn Beck, Fox News and the Drudge Report. All pushed the limits of ‘post-truth,’ all spent years stoking white grievance, demonizing immigrants, spreading ‘black on white crime’ panic. Trump is a raw, unfiltered expression of American nativism and white grievance.” L.A. Times
“The largest resistance movement to federal policy in more than a century” is right in our backyard. The federal government lurches right, and the West Coast turns decisively to the left. Protests erupt almost daily at airports and in civic centers. Immigrants are welcome. It was a case brought by Washington state that halted Trump’s immigration order. Mayors, police chiefs, and state leaders in California, Washington and Oregon are leading the push against Trump. The Nation
We may live in a post-truth era, but nature does not. Americans have tried to defy and deny natural phenomena for centuries, pushing west despite scientific warnings that there wasn’t enough water and attempting to spin their way out of the 1930s Dust Bowl with PR. Similarly, climate-change deniers insist the Earth either isn’t warming or that humans are not responsible, even as droughts worsen and sea levels rise. “Like an earthquake rattling fracked Oklahoma, nature’s truths are bluntest in times when the nation has ignored its best scientists, quashed reports to benefit industries and been awash in fake news,” warns environmental journalist Cynthia Barnett. L.A. Times
Reach me: paul.thornton@latimes.com
