Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Nov. 19
The New York Times says the U.S. shouldn't provide cover for the misdeeds of our allies
The realities of geopolitics have long required the United States to ally itself with foreign leaders who commit terrible deeds. Defeating foreign threats often requires the help of countries that fall far short of being liberal democracies that respect human rights. Saudi Arabia is a classic example of such a country today. It both has a disturbing human rights record and is a legitimately valuable American partner in countering Iran’s aggressions and building a more stable Middle East.
But working with imperfect partners does not mean that the United States should cover up and lie about their misdeeds, as President Trump did when receiving Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler, in the Oval Office on Tuesday. It was a fawning, cringe-worthy performance that belied America’s more powerful status. It was absolution rather than realpolitik.
Mr. Trump embraced the prince’s implausible claim of innocence in the 2018 murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi citizen and journalist, and berated Mary Bruce, of ABC News, for asking about the killing. The C.I.A. has concluded that the crown prince almost certainly ordered the killing of Mr. Khashoggi, a critic of the prince who was living in self-imposed exile in the United States and was murdered while visiting a Saudi consulate in Turkey. A United Nations investigator and a coalition of nongovernmental organizations reached similar conclusions.
These inquiries noted that Saudi officials offered conflicting accounts of the killing and concealed information about it. Eventually, the kingdom investigated several members of Prince Mohammed’s inner circle for the killing.
The president’s performance was alarming for three main reasons. One, it suggested that the truth was irrelevant, and it discarded the hard work of American intelligence in trying to determine that truth. It continued a long pattern of Mr. Trump lying when it suits his interests.
Two, he whitewashed a brutal human-rights violation — a killing by strangulation, followed by the dismembering and disposal of the body, committed by a team of Saudi operatives. The United States does not have the power to rid the world of human-rights abuses. At its best, though, this country has successfully nudged allies toward better behavior. Mr. Trump, by contrast, signaled this week that foreign despots can eliminate bothersome critics without worry of American disapproval.
Three, the president showed open disdain for the principles of press freedom enshrined in the Constitution. Traditionally, foreign leaders who visit the White House understand that they will not be able to avoid hard questions, as authoritarian leaders can at home. Ms. Bruce, the ABC correspondent, lived up to this tradition with a two-part question about the Trump family’s business dealings in Saudi Arabia and the prince’s role in Mr. Khashoggi’s killing.
Mr. Trump unpersuasively waved away his conflicts of interest before demeaning Mr. Khashoggi — “a lot of people didn’t like that gentleman that you’re talking about” — and defending Prince Mohammed. “He knew nothing about it, and we can leave it at that,” Mr. Trump said. “You don’t have to embarrass our guest by asking a question like that.”
The role of the news media in our democracy is not to flatter foreign leaders or, for that matter, American ones. It is to pose important and sometimes challenging questions and publish the facts. As president, Mr. Trump repeatedly shows contempt for this principle. Over the past week alone, he called Ms. Bruce “a terrible person” and told another female reporter, “Quiet, piggy.” His behavior suggests that he would prefer an American news media that behaves more like Saudi Arabia’s largely muzzled and obsequious media.
The prince is a complicated dictator. He has pushed his country to become more modern and open in important ways, including by expanding women’s rights, reducing the influence of religious hard-liners and diversifying the economy. He also remains an authoritarian. In addition to evidently masterminding the savage killing of Mr. Khashoggi, he regularly jails critics and has overseen a sharp increase in executions for low-level drug offenses. The appropriate role for the United States is to make him uncomfortable about his abuses and push Saudi Arabia toward a freer future.
Nov. 24
The Washington Post says Trump's immigration policies are over the top
The Trump administration has named New York City the next target in its deportation tour. White House border czar Tom Homan revealed last week he is planning a widespread dragnet across the Big Apple “in the near future,” in addition to enforcement sweeps already happening.
The administration sees this as the obvious next step in its pressure campaign against “sanctuary” policies in blue cities and states. But these actions are not without cost. In fact, the administration’s mass deportation campaign is already backfiring.
Securing the border and deporting illegal immigrants who have committed crimes are some of President Donald Trump’s most popular policies. The latter has support among 79 percent of Americans — including 69 percent of Democrats — in the latest Harvard-Harris poll. Despite this, approval for Trump’s immigration agenda has dropped nine points since February.
The president’s over-the-top approach to deportations is almost certainly the reason why. While Homan has vowed to prioritize going after the “worst of the worst,” the administration has rounded up more than just hardened criminals. Americans can see the difference between carting off a rapist and deporting the neighborhood gardener who pays taxes.
The Trump administration blames “collateral arrests” — picking up people who weren’t the target of an operation — on sanctuary policies. Todd M. Lyons, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has said they wouldn’t feel compelled to be so aggressive if localities willingly turned over “violent criminal aliens.”
Lyons raised a valid public safety concern. Some progressive states and cities limit local law enforcements’ ability to honor ICE detainers, or requests for law enforcement to hold people past their release date, unless a serious crime has been committed. And some cities, such as New York, require a conviction for a serious crime or a judicial warrant. Sanctuary jurisdictions often argue that holding someone for a civil ICE detainer amounts to unlawful detention. This means that some migrants with criminal charges have been released back into the community in defiance of a detainer.
It’s reasonable to debate how local law enforcement can cooperate with ICE to track down potentially dangerous criminals. But that isn’t an excuse for the government to round up just anyone, nor is it a particularly effective way to convince moderates to rethink sanctuary policies. “Bringing hell” to Boston, as Homan promised to cheers at the Conservative Political Action Conference in February, hasn’t gotten Massachusetts to change its policy on honoring ICE detainers, but it did make Boston’s defiant mayor, Michelle Wu, a progressive hero. Some states, such as Colorado, have even strengthened their sanctuary laws since Trump took office.
Meanwhile, mass deportations — and Trump’s broader anti-immigration policies — are threatening key industries like construction and agriculture. In October, Trump’s own Labor Department released a document that “the near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce” is disrupting production costs and “threatening the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S consumers. ”For a moment, Trump seemed to understand this, briefly directing immigration officers in June to stop arresting agriculture and hospitality workers before reversing that policy a week later.
New Yorkers have already been through a roller-coaster of immigration policies. In 2022, Republican governors in border states bused migrants to the city to test the sincerity of its sanctuary laws. In time, Mayor Eric Adams (D), once a defender of those laws, changed his tune. In April, his administration issued an executive order allowing ICE into New York’s Rikers Island prison complex to investigate transnational gang members, just days after federal prosecutors dismissed corruption charges against the mayor. His order was blocked in September by the New York State Supreme Court because of an “impermissible appearance of a conflict of interest.”
At his chummy news conference with Trump on Friday, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani said New York’s laws allow the city to coordinate with ICE on some serious crimes, but that these have “very little to do” with the deportation of women and children whose only crime is being in the country illegally. Some members of the Trump administration don’t care about that distinction, but the American people seem to.
Nov. 21
The Wall Street Journal on what Trump's latest peace offering means for Russia and Ukraine
The Trump Administration is making another run at ending the war in Ukraine, and a lasting peace with honor would be a laudable achievement. But for three years the only peace on offer has been Ukraine’s surrender, and the latest American offer—really, an ultimatum—is merely another dressed-up version.
The 28-point plan that was mooted in the press but became public on Thursday includes a reduction in Ukraine’s military and a cap on its manpower at 600,000, from about 900,000 now. It isn’t clear if foreign peace-keeping troops would be allowed on Ukraine’s soil or if it could maintain long-range weapons.
The deal hands Mr. Putin all of the Donbas in the east. He’d pocket the territory he’s already seized there—and get the rest that Ukraine still holds despite nearly four years of Russian assaults.
Ukraine would forfeit its right to join a defensive Western alliance in NATO. Oh—and the U.S. and Ukraine would recognize Russian control of Crimea, which Mr. Putin took by force in 2014. Mr. Putin has made these demands since 2022 after his failed storming of Kyiv.
This managed capitulation would be a bitter pill in Ukraine. “Now is one of the most difficult moments in our history,” Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday. Ukraine must choose between “dignity, or the risk of losing a key partner.”
That bracing remark underscores that Mr. Trump is essentially saying Ukraine must agree to his terms or he will stop U.S. weapons and intelligence support. Mr. Zelensky is in a weakened domestic position amid the embarrassment of a fresh corruption scandal in Kyiv. But after Mr. Putin’s brutalities, it will be hard for any Ukrainian patriot to sell this settlement to the Ukrainian public.
Trump officials will say that Mr. Trump is for the first time offering an explicit U.S. security guarantee, albeit details unknown. The decision for Ukraine is whether to believe this guarantee. A parchment promise does not mean Mr. Putin has abandoned his designs to control Ukraine. For him it is an ideological and historical mission that is part of his legacy. “If Vladimir Putin lives up to a cease-fire or peace treaty with Ukraine,” as Sen. Roger Wicker put it this year, “it will be the first time ever.”
Then there are the questions for the United States. Mr. Putin’s method is to push against red lines and probe the will of his opponents. Mr. Trump will have handed Mr. Putin favorable terrain in the east that helps the Russian make a direct run for Kyiv when he’s rearmed and ready.
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Mr. Trump’s offer would defang a fighting ally in Ukraine—the kind the Administration says it wants—and expose the U.S. to a greater risk of a direct confrontation with Russia. Where are the supposed realists and restrainers who run this Administration? We are supposed to believe that the same President who won’t sanction China for buying Russian oil and assisting its war machine will go to war for Kyiv?
And assume for a moment that Mr. Trump is prepared to back up his promise to Ukraine with the lives of the men and women of the U.S. military. What about a President JD Vance or President Gavin Newsom?
Also extraordinary is the offer to rescue and rehabilitate Mr. Putin financially. “Russia will be reintegrated into the global economy,” the document says, and return to make the G7 again the G8 group of nations. Russia would be the only dictatorship in that group.
The U.S. will enter some “long-term economic cooperation agreement” with Russia, an outgrowth of the Trump delusion that Mr. Putin can be wooed with commerce. The plan floats working with Russia on—we are not making this up—artificial intelligence. Mr. Trump might as well skip the middle man and surrender the U.S. tech advantage to China directly.
Mr. Trump insists the war in Ukraine is Europe’s problem, but then why not first consult those who live in Mr. Putin’s backyard? The deal looks like an echo of Trump’s first term freeze out of the Afghan government while Zalmay Khalilzad negotiated with the Taliban in Doha. That set the stage for President Biden’s abandonment of Afghanistan.
Mr. Trump may figure he can finally wash his hands of Ukraine if Europe and Ukraine reject his offer. He’s clearly sick of dealing with the war. But appeasing Mr. Putin would haunt the rest of his Presidency. If Mr. Trump thinks American voters hate war, wait until he learns how much they hate dishonor.
Mr. Trump can tarnish his legacy if he wants, but the bigger risk here is to the United States. A bad deal in Ukraine would broadcast to U.S. enemies that they can seize what they want with force or nuclear blackmail or by pressing on until America loses interest. The odds of a Pacific crisis will go up.
European capitals and the last adults in Congress will now scramble to try to talk Mr. Trump off this plan—and don’t rule out Mr. Putin still overplaying his Trump hand. These are the forces that can save the U.S. President from appeasement he’ll regret.
Nov. 21
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch hope the GOPs defiance Trump on Epstein files is an indicator of things to come
America doesn’t yet know, and will probably never know, what if any role Donald Trump played in Jeffrey Epstein’s sick world of child sex trafficking. Whatever this president says, there’s zero chance that his compliant Justice Department will allow anything damning or even unflattering about him to emerge when they finally release the long-awaited, heavily redacted Epstein files.
What we have learned, however, is that Trump doesn’t always, in every instance, hold similar sway over the usually subservient Republicans who control Congress. On this issue, the GOP lapdogs rebelled, making clear they were ready to defy Trump’s resistance to releasing the files — to the point that he finally had to lurch to the head of that parade and pretend he was leading it, lest he get trampled by it.
Which raises an encouraging question: If congressional Republicans can finally find the grit to actually carry out their duty of checking presidential power on this one issue, might there theoretically be others? After all, on topics ranging from tariffs to government service cuts to domestic militarization, Trump’s rogue policies are burdening their constituents in ways far more relevant than a dead pedophile.
Epstein, of course, was the wealthy financier who hung himself in his jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges of sex trafficking minors in New York and Florida. His long history of hobnobbing with powerful people — including Trump and former President Bill Clinton — made revelations of his twisted double life politically explosive.
Trump himself helped light that fuse with his usual reckless conspiracy-mongering, such as retweeting an allegation shortly after Epstein’s death that Epstein “had information on Bill Clinton & now he’s dead.”
It was largely Trump’s drumbeat on the issue, starting in his first presidential term, that convinced his MAGA movement to treat the release of the Epstein files as a holy quest. Which made it all the more interesting that, in his current term, Trump did an about-face and became the chief obstructionist to that crusade.
This cannot be said emphatically enough: Through the entire Epstein saga this year, Trump has always had the authority to simply order all the Epstein records in the federal government’s possession released. Yet it took the recent action by Congress to force the issue.
Before those bipartisan, nearly unanimous congressional votes in the past week, Trump and his people, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, had been trying to douse the issue, claiming (in a reversal of their own previous claims) that the much-speculated-upon Epstein “client list” of fellow pedophiles didn’t actually exist.
It wasn’t the only suspicious movement by the administration. Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s imprisoned co-conspirator, was recently moved to a lighter-security facility, allegedly is getting preferential treatment there, and is reportedly preparing to petition Trump for clemency.
At the same time, multiple media outlets have reported that the Justice Department has been scouring hundreds of thousands of Epstein documents on orders to redact any mention of Trump. Trump himself, with a typically ham-handed diversionary tactic, is again regurgitating unsupported claims that Clinton has been implicated.
None of this should be taken as evidence of criminality by Trump. We all know his fragile ego and bottomless self-regard well enough to consider that he was merely trying to avoid embarrassing accounts of his time as an Epstein insider.
In any case, Trump had lobbied for months to prevent congressional Republicans from taking up legislation to force release of the files, dismissing as a “Democrat hoax” the very conspiracies he used to promote.
It was only when it became clear that congressional Republicans were on a path to defy him anyway and demand the files that Trump again pirouetted and publicly backed the legislation. He subsequently signed the bill sent to him.
Again, we’re not holding our breath (and no one should) for evidence implicating Trump in Epstein’s crimes. If that evidence exists, it won’t see the light of day regardless of the legislation. This we know because we know Trump and we know his administration.
But now we also know that congressional Republicans are, when properly motivated by public opinion, capable of pulling on their big-boy pants and doing their jobs.
As Americans of every political persuasion watch their president driving up prices with spastic, rogue tariff policies, violating the Constitution left and right with unauthorized spending cuts and personal enrichment, scuttling due process and the rule of law, militarizing our streets, and threatening the American project in so many other ways — all while Congress generally sits by, whistling — here’s hoping they take this as a lesson in the politics of the possible.
ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_03bc2585-d726-4947-a7d8-fb54f52dcc0f.html
Nov. 20
The Guardian on the destruction in Gaza
The declaration of a ceasefire in Gaza in October brought initial relief to its inhabitants. Yet officials there said Israeli strikes killed 33 people, including 12 children, on Wednesday; Israel said its troops had come under fire. Another five Palestinians were killed on Thursday. Hundreds have died since the ceasefire was declared. Even if the shelling stops, the destruction of Palestinian life will carry on as Israel continues to throttle aid, and the consequences of two years of war unfold. The World Health Organization warned last month that the health catastrophe would last for generations.
Food remains in short supply. While displaced families shiver in flooded makeshift shelters, with many facing a third winter of homelessness, aid organisations say they cannot deliver stockpiles of tents and tarpaulins. Israel, which denies blocking aid, has designated tent poles as “dual-use” items that could potentially be used for a military purpose. Save the Children reports children sleeping on bare ground in sewage-soaked clothing.
The Guardian last week revealed US plans for the long-term division of Gaza into a “green zone” under Israeli and international control, to be redeveloped, and a “red zone” left in ruins; a US official described reunion of the strip as “aspirational”. This vision – with international troops essentially propping up Israeli occupation, and Palestinians drawn to those areas to escape squalor and chaos elsewhere – echoes disastrous US policies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
This is the grim underpinning of the UN security council resolution this week, endorsing Donald Trump’s peace proposals. The “board of peace” looks like a colonial authority overseen by Mr Trump, and perhaps anchored by Tony Blair. Palestinian technocrats, somehow both domestically credible and acceptable to the US and Israel – a notable feat – would work beneath it. All this would be possible thanks to an international stabilisation force that the US hopes to see deployed by January. That would be a stretch even if countries prove truly willing to commit troops.
The resolution improved on a draft text and won backing from the Arab world – and angry rejection from the Israeli right – by including references to a Palestinian state and Israeli withdrawal. Yet those references are couched in the vaguest terms, as an unguaranteed reward for sufficiently good behaviour, rather than as a recognition of inalienable Palestinian rights. If all goes according to plan, “conditions may finally be in place for a credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood”. Israeli withdrawal would be based on standards and timeframes agreed by the military itself as well as the US and others. Countries have backed not what this text does mean but what it might conceivably mean or become.
Some believe that this is the best that can be salvaged from current circumstances, given Mr Trump’s presidency; others hope that it is just possible that this unpromising start could allow something better to be forged. But it is hard not to conclude that for some governments, this is more about conscience-salving and reputation-laundering than the best interests of Palestinians. Germany has already announced that it will resume weapons exports to Israel. For Palestinians, “what looked like a forever war may be metamorphizing into forever misery”, the political scientist Nathan Brown has warned. Countries that were complicit in a genocidal war have all the more duty to demand better.
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