U.S. President Donald Trump walks through the White House on his way to nominate Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, Jan 31, 2017. (photo: Brendan Smialowski / AFP)
It’s an inconceivably scary thought that the Trump administration is simply winging it without a plan. But here’s the even scarier possibility — that there is, in fact, a plan.
“We’re now, I believe, at the beginning stages of a global war against Islamic fascism.” — Steve Bannon, White House Chief Strategist
It’s an inconceivably scary thought that the Trump administration is simply winging it, breakneck, disrupting and detonating and taking America apart — and all of it without a plan.
But here’s the even scarier possibility — that there is, in fact, a plan.
A plan which would dramatically concentrate and expand Donald Trump’s power, inflame and mobilize his base, whip up and and leverage racism, Islamophobia and, at a later stage, if needed, anti-Semitism, in order to slough all shortcomings onto scapegoats.
Nickolay Mladenov, the U.N.’s coordinator for the Middle East peace process, said the legislation “opens the floodgates to the potential annexation of the West Bank.” . . . It also marked the first time that the Israeli parliament has imposed Israeli law on Palestinian inhabitants of the West Bank. The area, captured by Israel in 1967, is not sovereign Israeli territory and Palestinians there are not Israeli citizens and do not have the right to vote.
The United Nations’ Mideast envoy on Tuesday said a new Israeli law legalizing dozens of unlawful West Bank settler outposts crossed a “very thick red line,” while Israeli rights groups said they would fight to overturn the measure in the Supreme Court.
The explosive law, approved by Israeli lawmakers late Monday night, was the latest in a series of pro-settler steps taken by Israel’s hard-line government since the election of Donald Trump as U.S. president. It is expected to trigger a number of challenges in the Supreme Court, while members of the international community have already begun to condemn it.
The law legalized dozens of outposts home built unlawfully on private Palestinian land in the occupied West Bank. According to the law, Palestinian landowners would be compensated either with money or alternative land, even if they did not agree to give up their property.
Outside a home in Avondale Estates, GA, on Monday. (photo: Erik S. Lesser / European Pressphoto Agency)
We Americans should now condemn our own extremist.
By Nicholas Kristof / The New York Times
February 2, 2017
My dream is of the day when Jews protest Islamophobia, Muslims denounce the persecution of Christians and Christians stand against anti-Semitism. That’s why I apologize to Muslims, and it’s why ALL of us, not just Muslims, should stand up to condemn extremism in our midst.
Whenever an extremist in the Muslim world does something crazy, people demand that moderate Muslims step forward to condemn the extremism. So let’s take our own advice: We Americans should now condemn our own extremist.
In that spirit, I hereby apologize to Muslims. The mindlessness and heartlessness of the travel ban should humiliate us, not you. Understand this: President Trump is not America!
I apologize to Nadia Murad, the brave young Yazidi woman from Iraq who was made a sex slave — but since escaping, has campaigned around the world against ISIS and sexual slavery. She has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, yet is now barred from the United States.
I apologize to Edna Adan, a heroic Somali woman who has battled for decades for women’s health and led the fight against female genital mutilation. Edna speaks at American universities, champions girls’ education and defies extremists — and she’s one of those inspiring me to do the same.
Editor’s note: Since this piece was published, Dr. Amer Al Homssi has been cleared to enter the U.S. On Wednesday evening, his lawyers said that he had boarded a flight in Abu Dhabi.
Early on Sunday morning, Dr. Amer Al Homssi walked into Abu Dhabi International Airport with a ticket for a 4 a.m. flight to Chicago. He had flown in from Chicago, eleven days earlier, to get married. Now Al Homssi, who is twenty-four and a resident in internal medicine, needed to get back to his job, at the University of Illinois College of Medicine/Advocate Christ Medical Center, in Oak Lawn, Illinois. When he arrived at the airport, he had an Illinois driver’s license and valid J-1 visa to work in the United States. But he was born in Syria and carries a Syrian passport. Al Homssi was not permitted to board the airplane.
A lawsuit, filed on his behalf in federal court in Illinois yesterday, states that, at the Etihad Airways counter, an airline representative noticed his Syrian passport and made a call. The representative checked his luggage, but told him to go to U.S. pre-clearance to receive approval to leave the country. At U.S. pre-clearance, a security officer “took his passport, his form DS-2019 (a supplementary document to his J-1 visa), and his boarding pass,” according to the complaint. “The officer took his fingerprints and then ordered him to a secondary security check room.”
There, another officer searched his phone, wallet, and luggage, and reviewed his school transcript and work contract. The officer asked a few questions, “but no questions about whether Dr. Al Homssi was affiliated in any way with a designated terrorist organization.” Finally, a third officer told Al Homssi that he was being refused entry because of President Trump’s executive order, which bars citizens of Syria and six other Muslim-majority countries for the next ninety days. Al Homssi was escorted out, allowed to get his luggage, and given his passport back. According to his lawsuit, “When Dr. Al Homssi looked at his passport, he noticed that the J-1 visa page had been marked diagonally with a fat black marker pen drawn through it, and in blue pen along that black mark, it was written: ‘Cancelled E.O. 59447v.8.’ ”
Meryem Yildirim, 7, left, sitting on the shoulders of her father, Fatih, and Adin Bendat-Appell, 9, sitting on the shoulders of his father, Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Apell, protesting President Donald Trump’s immigration and refugee order at O’Hare International Airport, Jan 30, 2017. (photo: Nuccio DiNuzzo / Chicago Tribune)
The story behind the viral photo of Muslim and Jewish children protesting at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.
“Our tradition is not ambiguous about remembering our history for the sake of acting out in this world today.” — Rabbi Jordan Bendat-Apell
A Muslim and a Jewish father had never met before bringing their children to O’Hare International Airport Monday to join in a protest of President Donald Trump’s immigration ban. But after a photograph showing their son and daughter interacting went viral, they decided to bring their families together next week for dinner to celebrate peace.
As of midday Tuesday, the photograph taken by Chicago Tribune photographer Nuccio DiNuzzo and shared on Twitter by @ChiTribPhoto had been retweeted by other Twitter users more than 16,000 times. The two fathers said they have fielded calls from friends, acquaintances and national news outlets wanting to hear their story.
During the Crusades, Saint Francis of Assisi risked his life by walking across enemy lines to meet the Sultan of Egypt, the Muslim ruler Al-Malik al-Kamil. This remarkable encounter, and the commitment to peace of the two men behind it, sucked the venom out of the Crusades and changed the relationship between Muslims and Christians for the better.
Featuring dramatic reenactments and renowned scholarship, this amazing story is brought to life. Scholars interviewed include Michael Cusato (St. Bonaventure University), Sr. Kathy Warren (Sisters of St. Francis), Suleiman Mourad (Smith College), Homayra Ziad, Institute for Christian & Jewish Studies, Paul Moses (The Saint and the Sultan), and others.
Join us for this film premiere to learn about the remarkable spiritual exchange between the Sultan and the Saint, and the great risks they took for peace.
Islamic Center of Eastside (ICOE) is one of the oldest masjids in the Seattle area and has been in operation for more than 20 years. On January 14, it was burnt down in an arson attack. The fire consumed the walls, the imam’s musallah, the sisters’ area, the roof, and other parts of the building. ICOE is a place of prayer, dawah, children’s classes, relief, youth and women activities. Hundreds of families live close to the masjid and hundreds of people attended the masjid every day. It is time to help one of our oldest institutions back on its feet. The community is rallying to rebuild the ICOE masjid and is requesting your assistance in this effort. Please attend the fundraiser if you can, and donate to their relief effort.
Protesters outside the White House on Sunday. (photo: Jim Lo Scalzo / European Pressphoto Agency)
What a difference a week makes.
By Charles M. Blow / The New York Times
January 30, 2017
Trump’s America is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s. Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation.
When Barack Obama was in office — remember the good old days, just over a week ago, when we didn’t wake up every morning and wonder what new atrocity was emanating from the White House — Republicans were apoplectic about his use of executive orders. They called them “unilateral edicts” and “power grabs.” As Iowa Senator Charles Grassley once said in a floor speech: “The president looks more and more like a king that the Constitution was designed to replace.”
What a difference a week makes.
Now many of those Republicans are as quiet as church mice as Donald Trump pumps out executive orders at a fevered pitch, doing exactly what he said he’d do during the campaign, for all of those who were paying attention: advancing a white nationalist agenda and vision of America, whether that be by demonizing blacks in the “inner city,” Mexicans at the border or Muslims from the Middle East.
Trump’s America is not America: not today’s or tomorrow’s, but yesterday’s.
Trump’s America is brutal, perverse, regressive, insular and afraid. There is no hope in it; there is no light in it. It is a vast expanse of darkness and desolation.
President Trump defended his executive order on Twitter, writing that there is “nothing nice about searching for terrorists before they can enter our country.” (photo: Jabin Botsford / The Washington Post)
President Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night, after Yates ordered Justice Department lawyers Monday not to defend his immigration ban.
By Matt Zapotosky, Sari Horwitz and Mark Berman / The Washington Post
January 30, 2017
Yates felt she was in an “impossible situation” and had been struggling with what to do about a measure she did not consider lawful. A Justice official confirmed over the weekend that the department’s office of legal counsel had been asked to review the measure to determine if it was “on its face lawful and properly drafted.”
President Trump fired Acting Attorney General Sally Yates Monday night, after Yates ordered Justice Department lawyers Monday not to defend his immigration order temporarily banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world.
In a press release, the White House said Yates had “betrayed the Department of Justice by refusing to enforce a legal order designed to protect the citizens of the United States.”
The White House has named Dana Boente, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, as acting attorney general. Boente told The Washington Post that he will agree to enforce the immigration order.
Earlier on Monday, Yates ordered Justice Department not to defend President Trump’s immigration order temporarily banning entry into the United States for citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries and refugees from around the world, declaring in a memo that she is not convinced the order is lawful.
Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general, during a news conference in June. (photo: Pete Marovich / Getty Images)
Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates ordered the Justice Department on Monday not to defend President Trump’s executive order on immigration in court.
“I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right. At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.”
Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates, a holdover from the Obama administration, ordered the Justice Department on Monday not to defend President Trump’s executive order on immigration in court.
“I am responsible for ensuring that the positions we take in court remain consistent with this institution’s solemn obligation to always seek justice and stand for what is right,” Ms. Yates wrote in a letter to Justice Department lawyers. “At present, I am not convinced that the defense of the executive order is consistent with these responsibilities nor am I convinced that the executive order is lawful.”
The decision is largely symbolic — Mr. Trump’s nominee to be attorney general, Senator Jeff Sessions, is likely to be confirmed soon — but it highlights the deep divide at the Justice Department and elsewhere in the government over Mr. Trump’s order.
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