Iran Strike Was a Triumph That Showed American Weakness
That debate has featured, in recent years, two warring camps. In the first are those who warn that the threat of war with China is rising and that interventions elsewhere make it harder to prepare for that fight. In the second are those who argue that the US has vital stakes outside the western Pacific and that a global power can't simply quit crucial regions such as the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Oddly, recent events show that both groups have a point.
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Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Justice Department, driven by Trump policy, plans to go after naturalized U.S. citizens
In his all-out war on illegal immigration, President Donald Trump has branded immigrants as 'criminals,' 'invaders' and 'predators,' as his administration targets millions of Haitians, Latin Americans, gang members and foreign college students for deportation. Now, the president has directed the Justice Department to bolster its resources in a major crackdown on naturalized citizens suspected of unlawfully obtaining their U.S. citizenship. According to a recent memo, the department plans to focus not only on individuals who may have lied about a crime or having done something illegal during the naturalization process. But authorities also plan to focus on others who may have committed a crime after becoming citizens — a generally untested legal frontier. Citing Trump's policy objectives in the June 11 memo, the head of DOJ's Civil Division instructed government lawyers to go after naturalized citizens who pose a potential danger to national security, such as acts of terrorism or espionage, violated human rights, engaged in international drug trafficking or committed felonies that were not disclosed during the naturalization application. The DOJ list of priority targets, backed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, even includes naturalized citizens who have been convicted of defrauding the U.S. government, such as Medicare, Medicaid and COVID-19 loan programs. 'These categories are intended to guide the Civil Division in prioritizing which cases to pursue; however, these categories do not limit the Civil Division from pursuing any particular case,' Assistant Attorney General Brett A. Shumate wrote in the memo, pointing to an expansive interpretation of laws on the revocation of naturalization. A range of critics, including immigration and defense attorneys, say the Justice Department's new 'priorities for denaturalization cases' are extremely broad and vague — allowing the Trump administration to target any number of naturalized citizens for various offenses that may fall outside the scope of the law, before trying to deport them to their native country. Ultimately, a federal judge must decide on any government bid to revoke the status of a naturalized citizen, a long process involving likely appeals. 'Traditionally, the law was intended to apply to individuals who committed an unlawful act before becoming naturalized citizens—particularly if that act was not disclosed during the naturalization process or if there was a material misrepresentation on the application,' Miami immigration attorney Steven Goldstein told the Miami Herald. 'What appears to be happening now is an effort to broaden the law's scope, targeting conduct that occurs at any point after naturalization, based on interpretations laid out in the memo,' said Goldstein, a former federal prosecutor with the now-defunct Immigration and Naturalization Service. 'This administration has aggressively expanded the reach of immigration enforcement — and they've shown they're unafraid to defend these expansions in court.' The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers condemned the Justice Department's new directive. 'The Trump Administration's push to revoke citizenship is alarming, and raises serious Fourteenth Amendment concerns,' group president Christopher Wellborn said in a statement. 'Although the memo purports to target concealment of earlier offenses, the language suggests that any offense, at any time, may be used to justify denaturalization,' he said. 'This is particularly concerning given the administration's reliance on vague claims of gang affiliation in deportations.' The impact of the new DOJ policy aimed at U.S. citizens who were born in a foreign country is unclear. According to the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, the United States has about 24.5 million naturalized citizens, a little more than half of the country's immigrant population. Historically, the Justice Department has zeroed in on Nazi collaborators, Communist party members and spies for denaturalization if they 'illegally procured' their U.S. citizenship, including 'by concealment of a material act or by willful misrepresentation,' according to federal law. Denaturalization was commonly used during the McCarthy era of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and expanded during the Obama administration and Trump's first term in office. The country's latest denaturalization case occurred in mid-June when a federal judge revoked the citizenship of Elliott Duke, an American military veteran from the U.K. who was convicted a decade ago of receiving and possessing child-porn images while stationed in Germany — a crime he did not disclose on his naturalization application before becoming a U.S. citizen in 2013. The issue became even more heated after the Trump administration raised the possibility of stripping Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic mayoral candidate for New York City, of his U.S. citizenship as part of the crackdown against foreign-born citizens convicted of certain offenses. The spurious allegation, known to be false, is that Mamdani may have concealed his support for 'terrorism' during the naturalization process. Mamdani, 33, who calls himself a Democratic socialist, was born in Uganda to ethnic Indian parents, became a U.S. citizen in 2018 and has attracted widespread media attention over his vocal support for Palestinian rights. Trump, during a visit last week to the new Everglades detention facility called Alligator Alcatraz, was asked about Mamdani's pledge to 'stop masked' Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents 'from deporting our neighbors.' Trump responded: 'Well, then, we'll have to arrest him.' Mamdani posted a statement on X: 'The President of the United States just threatened to have me arrested, stripped of my citizenship, put in a detention camp and deported. Not because I have broken any law but because I will refuse to let ICE terrorize our city.' Longtime North Miami immigration attorney Andre Pierre, who toiled for years on a landmark denaturalization case, said he has seen both Democratic and Republican administrations pursue aggressive immigration policies — but no president has made the issue as controversial and visible as Trump. Pierre said Trump ran for re-election on the campaign promise of ridding the country of illegal immigrants who have been convicted of committing crimes, along with gang members from El Salvador and Venezuela. But as soon as he was sworn in as president for a second term, he said, Trump started going after everyday, working-class Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans and other immigrants with temporary protected status or humanitarian parole. 'A lot of people in these communities voted for for him and didn't think he was going to go that far,' Pierre told the Herald. Pierre said it was only a matter of time before the Trump administration would zero in on naturalized foreign-born citizens in the United States. But after reviewing the Justice Department's list of priorities for denaturalization cases, he came away dismayed. 'This memo is shocking,' Pierre said. 'But I don't see a lot of evidence supporting the kind of cases they want to go after.' Decades ago, Pierre represented a Haitian restaurant owner in Miami who applied for naturalization in November 1994, was approved in February 1996 and took the oath of allegiance and became a naturalized citizen in April 1996. But that fall, Lionel Jean-Baptiste was arrested on cocaine distribution charges, convicted at trial and sentenced to eight years in prison. Evidence showed that Jean-Baptiste committed the crime in March 1995 while his application for naturalization was still awaiting approval by the U.S. government — a fact that would ultimately undo his citizenship. After his conviction, government lawyers moved to revoke his naturalization status in what was considered to be a 'test' case, claiming he illegally procured his citizenship because he failed to show 'good moral character' during the application process. A federal trial judge agreed — a decision affirmed in 2005 by a federal appeals court in Atlanta. The key issue was whether the mere allegation of criminal activity against the Haitian immigrant demonstrated a lack of good moral character, a requirement for naturalization. 'The case dragged on for years,' Pierre said. 'It went all the way up to the Supreme Court.' After Jean-Baptiste, 77, lost his naturalization status, Immigration and Customs Enforcement was then able to take the next step of deporting him to Haiti. The Justice Department's new memo on denaturalization policies suggests that government lawyers might be able to pick ripe cases and expedite naturalized citizens as part of the Trump administration's aggressive goal of deporting millions of illegal immigrants. But a historic South Florida case that lasted for years suggests otherwise, because of the extraordinary due process afforded the defendant: Feodor Fedorenko, a former guard at the infamous Treblinka death camp in Poland, where the Nazis killed about 900,000 Jews during the Holocaust. When the Ukrainian-born Fedorenko applied for a visa to enter the United States in 1949, he lied about his activities during the war. He was granted a visa and lived in the U.S. under the radar for about 20 years. He then applied for U.S. citizenship and once again lied about his activities during the war and failed to disclose his collaboration with the Nazis in carrying out war crimes. He became a naturalized U.S. citizen and continued with his life working at a factory in Connecticut — until his retirement in Miami Beach. Authorities caught up with him. In 1978, federal prosecutors moved to strip Fedorenko of citizenship at trial before U.S. District Judge Norman Roettger in Fort Lauderdale. Fedorenko's case, which was cited several times in the Jean-Baptiste ruling by the appeals court, featured dramatic testimony by a half-dozen Jewish survivors of Treblinka who were living in Israel, by Fedorenko himself and by character witnesses. When asked about the gas chambers at the camp, Fedorenko testified that he never went near them, though he could see them from the guard tower where he was stationed occasionally, according to 2014 book, 'Forgotten Trials of the Holocaust.' Fedorenko, who considered himself a 'prisoner of war' even though he worked as a private in the German army, acknowledged that the Germans gave him a gun. But he denied that he ever whipped or shot an inmate. The lead Justice Department lawyer, Jon Sale, who had been an assistant special Watergate prosecutor, was tasked with proving by 'clear and convincing' evidence that Fedorenko illegally procured his citizenship by hiding his past as a Nazi guard from U.S. immigration authorities. But in the end, Roettger rejected the testimony of the Treblinka survivors and spared Fedorenko from being denaturalized. Although Roettger was not entirely convinced of Fedorenko's 'do no evil' depiction of himself as a Treblinka guard, the judge never took the next step of finding that his denial of what witnesses said about him was also untrue. Sale's team appealed, and the judge's ruling was overturned in 1979. Two years later, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld that ruling, leading to the former Nazi guard's denaturalization. 'Even then, his due process rights continued to be honored when the Immigration and Naturalization Service afforded him administrative hearings and appeals,' Sale, a prominent defense lawyer in Miami, told the Herald. 'After all this due process, he was finally deported to the Soviet Union.' There, because of his commission of war crimes in Crimea, Fedorenko, 79, was tried, found guilty and executed in 1987, a year after his deportation.
Yahoo
27 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump says August 1 tariff deadline 'not 100% firm', open to proposals
STORY: :: Trump says an August 1 tariff deadline is 'not 100% firm' :: July 7, 2025 :: Washington, D.C. Trump: 'I would say firm, but not 100% firm. If they call up and they say would like to do something a different way, we're going to be open to that. But essentially that's the way it is right now.' 'We are always subject to negotiate something that's fair. But we've talked to most of the countries and pretty much they've had their way for many, many decades. As you know. And it was time that we just wanted fairness." "We've made a deal with United Kingdom, we've made a deal with China. We're close to making a deal with India. Others we've met with, and we don't think we're going to be able to make a deal. So we just send them a letter. If you want to play ball, this is what you have to pay. So, as far as I'm concerned, we're done with sending out letters to various countries telling them how much tariffs they have to pay. Some will maybe adjust a little bit, depending if they have a you know, cause. But we're not going to be unfair about it. And actually, it's a small fraction compared to what we should be getting. We should be, we could be asking for much more, but for the sake of relationships that we've had with a lot of really good countries, we're doing the way I do it.' Asked if the deadline was firm, Trump said: "I would say firm, but not 100% firm. If they call up and they say we'd like to do something a different way, we're going to be open to that." Trump began telling trade partners - from powerhouse suppliers like Japan and South Korea to minor players - that sharply higher U.S. tariffs would start August 1, marking a new phase in the trade war he launched earlier this year.
CNN
30 minutes ago
- CNN
Analysis: Natural-disaster blame games obscure the steps needed to keep Americans safe
America's endless natural-disaster blame game is thwarting answers to life-and-death questions over worsening extreme weather crises. Every time a hurricane, flood or wildfire strikes, political enemies heap knee-jerk blame on their foes – usually long before all the victims are accounted for. This pattern was back on display after a horrific tragedy in Texas, where floods killed more than 100 people after raging through summer camps and July Fourth celebrations. Some liberals whipped up viral social media posts claiming that Elon Musk's DOGE budget cuts were directly to blame for extreme weather alerts not reaching those in the torrent's way. President Donald Trump on Sunday seemed about to pin the disaster on President Joe Biden before backing away. But his Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who is dismembering the Federal Emergency Management Agency, went on Fox to criticize the last administration. And her department, now an arm of the MAGA movement, accused the media of lying about what really happened. The ugly partisan wars that broke out as parents face unfathomable loss are typical of a political culture that has severed itself from basic humanity. And they underscore that social media remains a Wild West of misinformation and spite that worsens malign political instincts. Natural disasters are always perilous for those in power. But recriminations intensified after Hurricane Katrina. The 2005 monster storm hit New Orleans and the Gulf Coast and, along with Iraq, destroyed President George W. Bush's second term. Beltway pundits now react to every act of God by predicting the current president's 'Katrina' is nigh. Questioning what happened in the wake of a natural disaster and whether political failings at the local, state or national levels contributed to deaths and devastation is perfectly appropriate. Victims deserve accountability untainted by politics. It's important to understand what went wrong in order to save lives in the future. But it's increasingly rare in an age of partisan media on the right and left for activists to wait for the facts, or to accept outcomes that don't fit their political goals. It's too early to say for sure whether Trump's budget cuts to agencies like FEMA and the National Weather Service made the Texas disaster worse. Investigations will probe communications of the federal government and Texas authorities and the actions of local officials. There will be a focus on whether weather warnings were sufficiently specific or clear and whether infrastructure in Kerr County is up to the job of extreme weather situations. Kerrville Mayor Joe Herring Jr., for instance, told CNN's Pamela Brown that he didn't receive an emergency alert in the predawn hours of Friday when floodwaters arrived. There will also surely be questions over why children's summer camps were sited in such a vulnerable area. Sometimes political choices do end up leading to disastrous outcomes. But not always. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted Monday that NWS offices in Texas made 'timely and accurate forecasts and warnings.' She said that the relevant NWS offices in New Braunfels had extra staff on duty for the storms despite claims to the contrary. Leavitt slammed what she said were 'depraved and despicable' efforts by some on the left to exploit the disaster politically 'especially when so many Americans are mourning the loss of their children.' It's hard to disagree. But there's a difference between social media users jumping to premature or outright false conclusions and politicians questioning whether Trump's efforts to stifle government research and to gut the federal government will make it harder to forecast disasters like the one in Texas in the future. Democratic Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer demanded an immediate investigation by the Commerce Department's inspector general into whether administration staff cuts made the tragic loss of life worth. He focused on vacancies at the San Angelo and San Antonio NWS offices. Leavitt accused Schumer of pushing 'falsehoods.' There's a whiff of hypocrisy in the White House's outrage, considering that Trump has politicized natural disasters for his own gain more than any modern president. Trump slammed Democrats including Biden and local leaders over fatal wildfires that charred swaths of residential areas in Los Angeles just before he took office in January; he made false claims about water supplies and FEMA aid. Trump also misrepresented federal relief efforts after storms hit North Carolina and Georgia last year. And he claimed that a collision between a civilian jetliner and military helicopter close to Washington's National Airport that killed everyone on both aircraft was due to diversity and inclusion policies at the Federal Aviation Administration. His track record raises the question of whether the White House would have been as keen to rush aid and to praise local officials if the holiday weekend's flooding had occurred in a Democratic-run state rather than Republican Texas under Gov. Greg Abbott, an outspoken Trump supporter. Prev Next There are lessons and warnings that the Trump White House might heed in the aftermath of the Texas floods – even if its statements about appropriate pre-disaster staffing and funding are ultimately validated. The disaster is a reminder that jobs like those of forecasters at agencies like NWS and experts contracted by FEMA may seem superfluous 364 days a year – but on one crucial day, they can save scores of people. Putting money into basic infrastructure like early flood warning signs might annoy taxpayers and be targeted by conservatives as examples of bloated public spending, but it can be critical. Benjamin Franklin is often quoted as having said that those who fail to prepare are preparing to fail. If the Trump administration continues to slash expertise, institutional experience and what it sees as redundancies in vital government agencies, it will lay the groundwork for botched disaster responses in future. CNN reported earlier this year that the administration had failed to staff a White House Office for Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy – an odd decision considering Trump's mismanagement of the Covid-19 emergency in his first term. The White House on Monday refused to say whether the president would push ahead with a plan to eliminate FEMA entirely by the end of the year. 'The president wants to ensure American citizens always have what they need during times of need,' Leavitt said. The White House is pushing to put far more of a burden on states to respond to disasters rather than relying on the federal government to step in. Relief and rebuilding after storms, wildfires and other natural disasters are likely to still require billion-dollar emergency appropriations from Congress. But wiping out FEMA's standing reserve of relief funds and its capacity, expertise and personnel could weaken rescue workers' capacity to prepare and position before forecastable natural disasters. And it could drain the store of accumulated knowledge that states can't match. 'We need to improve FEMA, not destroy it,' retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, who led National Guard troops into New Orleans after Katrina, told CNN. 'We need FEMA and we need them to do what they're doing and do it better, but not destroy FEMA. That's a bad idea.' More broadly, the Texas flooding catastrophe is the latest in a string of disasters – more intense storms, more ravenous wildfires, and sudden unusual rainfall – that promise to become more frequent as the global climate warms. Yet it's impossible to have a mature national debate about what America needs to do to protect its citizens from such extreme weather events. Trump denies the science that says climate change exists, bemoans the Democrats' 'Green New Scam' and has eviscerated the government's capacity to act against man-made climate change. He has even made it hard to conduct research on climate change with his attacks on science in his budgets, his new 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' law and through Musk at DOGE before his spectacular break-up with the Tesla electric vehicle pioneer. It's an indictment of a fractious public square that something as basic as weather – a naturally occurring force that affects all humanity – has become a bitter political issue on which a fractured nation can't find common ground. 'This was a once-in-a-century flash flood, a tragic natural disaster,' Leavitt said of the Texas floods on Monday. That may be true. But it's no basis for real policy that keeps Americans safe in years to come.
