Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
___
Oct. 26 – The Washington Post on the slippery slope that is gerrymandering
The gerrymandering doom spiral is gaining downward momentum, exactly as expected.
Virginia is poised to become the second state, after California, where Democrats will seek to unravel reforms that took redistricting out of the hands of partisans. That’s in response to similar Republican power grabs in other states – especially Texas, where the GOP kicked off the nationwide partisan warfare this summer in a shortsighted attempt to protect its slim House majority.
Democrats currently control six of Virginia’s 11 congressional seats, accurately reflecting the commonwealth’s evenly divided electorate. By calling a special session, Democrats hope to nab an additional two or three districts by aggressively redrawing the map in their favor.
California’s redistricting effort will go before voters as a special ballot initiative on Nov. 4. Democrats there, who congratulate themselves as defenders of democracy, say the only acceptable response to Texas’s “election rigging” is to rig their own elections, too. Polls show that more than 60 percent of likely voters have embraced that backward logic, so Proposition 50 appears poised to pass.
Last week, North Carolina Republicans muscled through a map that they expect will help their party pick up one more seat in next year’s midterms. Missouri Republicans did the same last month.
Despite the overly confident proclamations from partisan analysts about how such redistricting will change the balance of Congress, nobody knows how things will play next November. It was never certain that Texas’s efforts would win Republicans enough seats to stem the tide of a potential Democratic wave in the midterms. Nor has it ever been guaranteed that a Democratic wave would emerge, even if that’s the historical pattern. Anybody who has paid attention to the last decade of American politics should be wary of making firm predictions, especially amid a realignment in which young Hispanic and African American men have drifted toward Republicans.
As it looks now, Texas’s mid-decade gerrymandering could very well end up backfiring on the GOP like an exploding cigar; after all, California is far bluer than Texas is red. It could also end up as a wash, with broader political trends playing a more important role. It’s also very possible that there could a backlash to such raw displays of partisanship. This could boost Democrats statewide in the Lone Star State, where there may be a competitive gubernatorial or Senate race next year.
The guaranteed losers in all of these changes will be voters. By the time the midterms roll around a year from now, the country will have fewer competitive districts where politicians will have to work hard to win over Americans, especially independents. Credit goes to the Republican legislators of Indiana and Kansas who have admirably withstood intense pressure from national leaders to gerrymander their state’s map, at least so far. It’s a pity that so many others, including Democrats in Virginia, are willing to compromise their principles for perceived, short-term partisan advantage.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/26/gerrymandering-virginia-california-texas-prop50/
___
Oct. 27 – The New York Times says illegal immigration crackdown has become discrimination against Latinos
The Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration has become a campaign of discrimination against Latinos. Federal agents are rounding up people with brown skin, catching both U.S. citizens and legal immigrants in their dragnet. Some Latinos are now afraid to speak Spanish or listen to Spanish music in public. Some are missing Mass and staying home on Sundays, or asking friends to pick up their children from school. American citizens are living in fear of a government that is sworn to protect their liberties and keep them safe.
They have reason to fear. In President Trump’s anti-immigration blitz, federal agents have repeatedly violated civil liberties and humiliated people. Masked officials have shattered car windows and pulled out drivers, leaving children sobbing in back seats. In the middle of the night in Chicago, agents with rifles swarmed an apartment building, broke down doors and dragged people from their homes in handcuffs. Dozens of those taken away were U.S. citizens. Nationwide, immigration officials have detained more than 170 American citizens, including 20 held for more than 24 hours without the ability to make a phone call, ProPublica reported.
These actions are undermining the public trust that is necessary for effective enforcement of the nation’s immigration laws. The behavior of federal agents is provoking an angry backlash in many of the communities that Mr. Trump claims he is trying to help. If all of this is supposed to convey a sense of renewed law and order, it is not working.
As is typical for Mr. Trump, he has identified a real problem – illegal immigration – but responded with a destructive solution. For decades, the United States tolerated a level of illegal immigration that fostered a sense of lawlessness at the border and frustrated many Americans, including many Latinos. The Biden administration’s porous policies worsened the situation, making possible the largest immigration surge in American history, with most of the arrivals lacking legal permission to enter the country. Mr. Trump campaigned on a promise to reverse those policies, and he has an electoral mandate to do so. At the border, he has succeeded at reducing illegal entries to the lowest levels in decades.
Yet he does not have a mandate to treat people cruelly or to break the law himself. Polls show that most Americans disapprove of his handling of the issue. The country does not need to choose between the chaos of the Biden approach and the chaos of the Trump approach. The best solution remains a comprehensive law that secures the border, deters future illegal entries, expands legal immigration and provides a pathway to citizenship for unauthorized migrants who have made their lives in the United States and are otherwise law-abiding members of society. Short of that – and Congress shows no signs of passing such a law – Mr. Trump can address illegal immigration in ways that are both more humane and effective. This country needs to enforce its laws without terrorizing innocent Americans and abandoning its values.
Of the many problems with Trump immigration policies, two themes stand out: the brutality toward immigrants who are here illegally and the unfairness toward citizens and legal immigrants.
People who entered this country illegally often did so at great risk to themselves, seeking a better life in the United States. They violated the law, yes, but the response should be proportional to their crimes. It should be both firm and humane. Instead, the Trump administration has reveled in harshness. Masked, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have tackled and body slammed people on the streets. Officials have launched raids into homes, destroying people’s property.
In one video, a federal agent said to a group of Latinos, including a U.S. citizen: “You got no rights here. You’re an amigo, brother.” After that encounter, one agent told another, referring to the immigrants, “We’re going to end up shooting some of them.” In another video, an agent yelled “adios” to the concerned wife of a detained migrant before he shoved her into a wall and she collapsed. Other disturbing videos have filled social media.
The tactics violate both the law and human decency. On the legal side, recent court decisions have emphasized that people accused of being here without permission have a constitutional right to some due process. That right is to all of our benefit: If the federal government could simply say that someone is in the country illegally without having to prove the claim, it could deport anyone with impunity. On the human side, a vast majority of these migrants have done nothing worse than come to the country illegally, in search of a better life. Federal agents should respond appropriately, not with the expectation that violence is necessary.
The second problem with the Trump approach is that its breadth inevitably sweeps up U.S. citizens and other legal residents. Federal officials are relying on racial profiling in a country where 20 percent of the population is Latino, most of whom are legal residents or citizens. The administration is able to do so because of Congress’s acquiescence on the topic and a wrongheaded ruling that the Supreme Court issued last month, upholding the use of racial profiling in the raids.
The use of racial discrimination in law enforcement should be an affront to all Americans. Videos show that many federal agents believe that the burden of proof is on Latinos to show they are here legally, not on the government officials who are accusing them of a crime. During a raid in California, officials yanked George Retes, a U.S. citizen who served in Iraq, from his car and held him for three days. Mr. Retes said he had a government ID in his vehicle, but officials did not let him show it to them. Similar treatment befell Javier Ramirez in California, Julio Noriega in Illinois and an unnamed military veteran in New Jersey, among others.
Americans have responded to these problems with protests. As if to prove the protesters’ point, federal agents have reacted with more abuses of power, using tear gas and pepper balls on peaceful demonstrators. Even after a federal judge demanded an end to these practices, they have continued.
Federal agents’ masks exacerbate the problems. Agents with masks know they are more likely to get away with violence and abuses of power because they are anonymous. To the community, masks signal that the government cares more about protecting its agents’ identities than democratic accountability. They create a sense that the government is sending faceless storm troopers to terrorize families.
Despite its aggressiveness, the crackdown has not even been effective at dealing with the millions of people who are in this country without legal permission. The administration is missing its own deportation benchmarks. It is on pace to deport fewer people than the Obama administration did in some years. The Obama administration’s approach made sense. It focused on people who arrived recently and on those who had committed crimes since arriving in this country – and it typically respected people’s rights to due process. It did not resort to masked agents and violent raids.
What separates democracy from authoritarianism, the rule of law from lawlessness and a decent society from an indecent one is not just the goal but the process. The government can, and should, reduce illegal immigration, but it should do so in a way that upholds American ideals.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/27/opinion/immigration-enforcement-latino-discrimination.html
___
Oct. 24 – The Wall Street Journal on tariffs and inflation
Is “three” the new “two?” Consumer prices notched another 3% year-on-year increase in September, according to data published Friday from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. No one in Washington seems bothered that this remains well above the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation target.
The headline measure of consumer-price inflation rose 0.3% from August to September, with so-called core prices excluding food an energy increasing 0.2%. But core inflation also hit 3% year-on-year, a signal that households’ purchasing power continues to drop at a rapid pace. The White House press office hailed this as an anti-inflation triumph.
There’s always some excuse or explanation that politicians and Wall Street offer to say this is no big deal. One month it was healthcare costs, another month shelter, and so on. This month the blame goes to energy prices, which rose 1.5% from August to September. But at some point you have to admit all these add up to a persistent inflation problem. At a 3% inflation rate, the value of a dollar today would be 73.74 cents in 10 years.
There’s plenty of blame to go around. It’s obvious now that Chairman Jerome Powell ‘s declaration of mission-accomplished in September 2024 was premature when he began the Fed’s interest-rate cuts this cycle. Fed economists believed, and still believe, that the tightening the central bank already has done will yield slower inflation if households and businesses will wait a little longer.
Maybe it will, but not so far. Plenty of evidence from credit and equity markets suggests that financial conditions haven’t been tight for some time-from record equity valuations to unusually tight credit spreads for junk debt, to (until this week) the surging gold price and more. Yet the Fed seems poised for another 25-basis point cut in its target short-term interest rate when its Open Market Committee meets next week.
President Trump also bears some responsibility. Many of his policies, such as extending the 2017 tax reform and deregulation, should be disinflationary as they encourage more supply. But his tariffs are contributing to higher prices in many goods.
The longer the tariffs last, the more households pay, no matter how much the Administration claims companies or foreigners will eat the cost. New research from the St. Louis Fed finds tariffs account for 0.5 percentage point of the 2.85% annual inflation from June to August, using the Fed’s preferred personal-consumption-expenditure index, and about 0.4 percentage point of 2.9% core inflation.
Economists will debate whether this constitutes general inflation or merely a one-time bump in the price level. Voters will notice only that they’re paying more for the goods and services they buy.
Meanwhile, for all the controversy over Mr. Trump’s attempts to meddle with the Fed, he and Mr. Powell both seem to want lower interest rates. It makes us wonder if 3% is Washington’s new de facto inflation target. We doubt this is what anyone voted for in 2024.
___
Oct. 24 – The Boston Globe on the implications of new US sanctions against Russia
Like the one-sided bromance it always was, the Trump-Putin relationship is officially on the rocks – for now at least – with the US president declaring the first sanctions of his administration on Russia’s two largest oil companies.
It’s a new and important milestone in the nearly four-year-old war of aggression launched by Russia against Ukraine.
How effective those sanctions on Russia’s two major oil companies will be largely depends on US follow-through, including the possibility of secondary sanctions long threatened by President Trump against countries continuing to do business with Russia, thus funding its war machine.
The Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday against Rosneft and Lukoil and their nearly three dozen subsidiaries, declaring in a statement that the action was being taken “as a result of Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”
The action followed a week of fits and starts in those peace negotiations, including the cancellation of a planned summit meeting between Trump and President Vladimir Putin in Budapest, a sign that Trump may, at long last, have realized the Russian leader had long been playing him like a fiddle.
“I don’t want to have a wasted meeting. I don’t want to have a waste of time here. I’ll see what happens,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office after the meeting’s cancellation.
But nothing says “we really mean it” like the kind of punishing sanctions designed to further squeeze the Russian economy. The sale of oil and gas accounts for about a quarter of the Russian budget, and Russia produces about 11 percent of the world’s oil supply.
Oil prices increased nearly 5 percent worldwide Thursday in response to the move. India, among Russia’s largest buyers of oil, was planning to at least reduce, if not end entirely, imports of Russian crude.
“Recalibration of Russian oil imports is ongoing,” a spokesperson for the privately held Indian refiner told Reuters, noting the company intended to abide by whatever government rules were put in place.
Of course, evading restrictions has become a way of life for Russian tankers and bankers, and the current sanctions will be no different unless the United States remains vigilant in enforcing these most recent rules. Some, including Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky have in addition urged so-called secondary sanctions aimed at third-party countries and entities, like China and Chinese banks, for helping that evasion.
The European Union also moved this week to target the “shadow fleet” that carries Russian oil and liquified natural gas in obvious violation of sanctions.
But wars are not halted by sanctions alone.
And while Ukraine has made remarkable strides in building up its own drone industry and deploying those effectively on the battlefront, and European allies have pitched in buying American-made weaponry for Ukraine’s use, there are gaps in Ukraine’s ability to take the fight to Russia.
Zelensky has most recently petitioned for long-range Tomahawk missiles, something he didn’t get from the US administration this week.
“There is a tremendous learning curve with the Tomahawk,” Trump said Wednesday following a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. “It’s a very powerful weapon, very accurate weapon, and maybe that’s what makes it so complex. But it will take a year. It takes a year of intense training to learn how to use it, and we know how to use it, and we’re not going to be teaching other people. It will be too far out into the future.”
However, The Wall Street Journal reported this week that Trump did lift a restriction on Ukraine’s use of other long-range missiles, the British-supplied Storm Shadow. That allowed Ukraine to use the missiles to strike a Russian plant in Bryansk that produces explosives and rocket fuel.
Trump has called that report fake news on social media, adding, “The US has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them.” But as the Journal reported, the missiles do use US targeting data – a nicety the president has wisely decided to overlook it seems.
Ukraine in recent days has paid the price in a very real way for the breakdown of cease-fire negotiations and for Trump’s newly found realism on dealing with Putin. Shortly after the Budapest summit was canceled, Russian drones hit a preschool in Kharkiv, and while the 48 children attending it were safely evacuated, one adult was killed, seven people were wounded, and the school and an apartment building were destroyed.
A Russian drone strike Thursday killed two Ukrainian journalists- bringing to 135 the number of media workers killed during the war.
Such is life – and death – in this continuing war.
Whatever the United States can do to bring the war to Putin’s doorstep – with sanctions and the easing of needless limitations on Ukraine’s ability to fight its own battles – is the only way to bring a ruthless tyrant to the bargaining table.
ONLINE: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/10/24/opinion/trump-russia-sanctions/
___
Oct. 26 – The St. Louis Post-Dispatch on Trump’s $230 million suit against the DoJ
A great many Americans today wonder, with good reason, whether America’s democracy can survive Donald Trump’s presidency.
Now it’s becoming increasingly clear that another question we should all be asking is whether America can afford Trump’s presidency.
The latest stunt from the most corruptly self-dealing president in U.S. history is astonishing even from him: Trump is suing the Justice Department for $230 million as compensation for the federal investigations into his campaign’s relationship with Russia before his first term and his hoarding of classified documents after that term.
This even as regular Americans are reeling under Trump’s cruel funding cuts and obtuse tariff policies.
Trump’s unprecedented, outlandish bid for personal compensation, as reported last week by The New York Times, stems in part from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian influence in the 2016 election. It’s a foundational myth of the MAGA movement that the investigation was always baseless and that it fully exonerated Trump. Both claims are false.
In fact, Mueller’s probe, while it found no evidence of personal collusion by Trump, established that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to Trump’s benefit and that Trump’s campaign eagerly welcomed that interference, doing what they could to leverage it. Multiple Trump insiders were criminally charged for lying about their Russian contact.
As for the classified documents case: There’s no question that Trump improperly squirrelled away hundreds of documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate, lied about some of what he had, refused multiple attempts by the government to get them back and shared some of the documents with people who had no clearance to see them. It was only Trump’s election to a second presidential term that ultimately ended the prosecution.
The very notion that Trump is entitled to such massive (or any) compensation because he was subjected to two perfectly justified investigations is galling even before you get to the punchline: The ultimate decision on whether to agree to a settlement with Trump will fall to the obedient lickspittles of Trump’s Justice Department – including the lawyer who represented him in the documents case.
Trump, grievance-driven as always, whined last week that he was “damaged very greatly” by the two investigations. That’s nonsense, but even people who truly have been victimized by weaponized federal prosecution (Trump critics James Comey and John Bolton are two current examples) seldom are able to win compensation.
Trump acknowledges it will probably be easier for him. “You know that decision would have to go across my desk,” he said last week, adding, in a rare moment of apparent self-awareness: “It’s awfully strange to make a decision where I’m paying myself.”
Actually, it’s not strange at all for this particular president. Self-dealing is nothing new for Trump, who has been blatantly violating the constitutional prohibition on presidential profiteering since practically the first day of his first term.
Whether it’s steering foreign dignitaries to his hotels, hawking cryptocurrency from the Oval Office, cutting real estate deals with countries seeking to influence U.S. policy, or getting similarly motivated top American CEOs to chip in for his vulgar new White House ballroom, Trump always plays all the angles to his own benefit – Emoluments Clauses be damned.
Trump says he will donate any settlement money he gets to charity. How big of him, considering that money will be coming from some of the same taxpayers who are suffering financially under Trump’s policies.
Trump’s spastic and unnecessary tariff wars are driving up American consumer prices. His announced $40 billion bailout for Argentina’s oppressive right-wing government is hurting the same American farmers and ranchers who make up much of his political base. Poor families all over the nation are suffering from cuts to food programs and health care as Trump and his GOP cohorts prioritize welfare for the wealthy.
North St. Louis alone recently lost a $200 million federal grant for a job-creating battery plant for no reason but Trump’s retrograde hostility toward clean energy.
Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe – fresh from carrying Trump’s water with his congressional district re-gerrymandering scheme – says he will lobby Trump to restore the grant. Good luck with that. As so many who have prostrated themselves for Trump have learned, loyalty is a one-way street with him.
Perhaps Kehoe can gently suggest that Trump’s potential Justice Department settlement alone could more than fund the battery plant to create those St. Louis jobs. Either way, it would be taxpayers footing the bill.
ONLINE: https://www.stltoday.com/opinion/editorial/article_05a62480-cac4-4c28-95ae-72f15089fc2e.html
°C
20
Min
