Expect 4 years of pitched battles between Trump and Democratic-run states

Expect 4 years of pitched battles between Trump and Democratic-run states

Donald Trump’s return to the Oval Office has officials in Democratic jurisdictions preparing to defend against a barrage of presidential executive orders, angry social media posts and legislation from a Republican-controlled Congress that could run counter to their own policy preferences.

Some are even forming loose alliances to push back against what they see as possible “threats of autocracy” from the incoming administration.

In his first presidential term, Trump and Democratic politicians at the state and even local level engaged in typical debates stemming from differing liberal and conservative viewpoints on a range of issues.

But at other times, as Atlantic writer and CNN analyst Ron Brownstein has argued, Trump and others in his administration “sought to use national authority to achieve factional ends to impose the priorities of red America onto Democratic-leaning states and cities.”

California Attorney General Rob Bonta recently said the state filed 120 lawsuits in opposition to Trump administration actions in his first term, while Gov. Gavin Newsom wants to hold a special legislative session next month to, in the words of an office spokesperson, “Trump-proof” California.

Newsom previously moved to shore up abortion access protections for California women after the landmark 2022 Supreme Court decision.

Trump and New York’s Gov. Kathy Hochul are also on opposite sides of a number of issues, including planned vehicle tolls to ease Manhattan congestion.

Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, Trump vowed to “take over” Washington and usurp local government authority in the District of Columbia.

“We just have to do our best and hold on for another few years. We have to figure out how to make it work,” said Christina Henderson, a member of city council in D.C., told the Associated Press. “Unlike millions of voters around the country, I actually believe the man when he speaks. He said what he’s going to do.”

Here’s a look at some of the issues that could lead to friction between the White House and blue states.

Deportations

During his first campaign and term, Trump railed against so-called sanctuary cities, where local police don’t always see eye-to-eye with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials on removing individuals not accused of serious crimes. ICE raids and Trump’s flip-flop on the fate of the Dreamers living in the U.S. left some communities on edge.

Trump and expected members of his administration like Tom Homan have made no secret of plans to deport undocumented immigrants, possibly at a level not seen since a 1950s operation that saw many U.S. citizens erroneously sent to Mexico. If the undocumented are detained, will there be equitable numbers across the blue and red states that contain tens of thousands of people in this category?

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis said any removal actions not involving gang members or felons would be intolerable.

“Obviously, it would devastate our economy and our society if someone were to come in and forcibly take our neighbours away from us,” he recently told Colorado Public Radio.

Protests

After the May 2020 police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, Trump raged as protests continued for weeks across the country, and he sent troops to several locations. While one study estimated that the vast majority of demonstrations were peaceful, violence and significant property damage occurred in Minneapolis, Seattle and Portland, Ore.

Then-attorney general Bill Barr officially declared those cities “anarchic jurisdictions,” a move that according to David Rohde’s recent book Where Tyranny Begins: The Justice Department, the FBI, and the War Against Democracy was at the behest of Trump.

The Department of Homeland Security under Trump was also accused of collecting data on Portland protesters, and of apprehending some individuals off the street in unmarked vans.

In the nation’s capital, a few D.C. National Guard helicopters — which are under the auspices of the Pentagon — flew dangerously close to the ground, buzzing protesters.

This October, Trump suggested that “radical left lunatics” could be “easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard or really necessary by the military.”

Weather events and disaster aid

Storms and disaster aid are not free from politicization in contemporary American life. Some North Carolina Republicans. recently pleaded with national figures from their own party to stop spreading misinformation about Hurricane Helene; Trump falsely stated Joe Biden’s administration was deliberately withholding aid for political reasons.

Trump has been more credibly accused of doing just that in his first term. According to a recent Politico series of investigative pieces, he withheld wildfire aid to Washington state, due to animus toward Gov. Jay Inslee, and was hesitant to approve aid for 2018 wildfires in California, until being reminded of potential negative political implications.

During his first term, and in this year’s campaign, he made claims about California’s frequent wildfires that largely run counter to the views of forest management experts and even a firefighters’ association.

Public health and climate science

When COVID-19 hit, Trump initiated Operation Warp Speed to get vaccines into arms as soon as possible. But in spring 2020, he posted a tweet to “liberate” Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia, states he viewed as having implemented onerous restrictions on daily life. Armed protesters upset about those restrictions descended on the legislature in Lansing, Mich., days later and throughout the year.

Trump’s vow to defund school systems that have vaccine mandates — not just for COVID-19 — appears impossible without congressional approval, but experts worry continued statements like that could depress child vaccination uptake.

A confirmation of vaccine and fluoridation skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary could also lead to battles with some states and cities over immunizations and other public health issues.

Trump also has expansive plans to undo many of Biden’s climate initiatives. During his first term, Trump clashed with California over emissions and auto mileage standards.

Legal issues

There are still outstanding legal issues and cases involving Trump and his allies that could roil the 47th president.

Steve Bannon, a onetime Trump White House adviser, faces a New York state trial beginning Feb. 25 over an alleged border wall fundraising scam.

While Georgia is not a blue state, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is a Democratic official in Atlanta, which has long had Democratic mayors. Willis has overseen a racketeering case that led to indictments for Trump and associates like Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani.

A legal consensus about sitting presidents means Trump won’t be in an Atlanta courtroom anytime soon. But since her own re-election on Nov. 5, Willis has promised to pursue justice against defendants “no matter who they are.”

Published at Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:00:00 +0000

COP29 host Azerbaijan guilty of ‘ethnic cleansing’ during 2023 attacks in Nagorno-Karabakh: report

Azerbaijan carried out “ethnic cleansing” against the Armenian population 14 months ago in attacks on the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh, a new report by the Washington-based non-profit organization Freedom House has concluded.

The comprehensive report, released on the first day of COP29, the United Nations climate conference that took place this month in Azerbaijan, draws upon interviews with more than 300 Karabakh Armenians. The summit, which began on Nov. 11, wrapped up this weekend in Baku, the country’s capital, under the auspices of the same government that’s accused of committing crimes against humanity.

Human rights groups, environmental activist Greta Thunberg and politicians in Canada and the United States were among those expressing disappointment and alarm that the conference was being held in a major oil-producing country with a dubious record of upholding rights — a charge that Azerbaijan’s political leaders called “disgusting” and a “smear campaign.”

The Freedom House report includes accounts from survivors of last fall’s military action, including from this woman about the start of the assault: “On September 19, [2023], I came home at noon to have lunch. My child came and told me they had heard an explosion. I saw through the window that they were shooting at the residential area.”

Less than two weeks later, the interviewee, her child and more than 100,000 other ethnic Armenians would be refugees, part of a campaign of violent forced displacement that ended more than a millennium of Armenian settlement there.

The report, titled Why Are There No Armenians In Nagorno-Karabakh?, is an exhaustive indictment of Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and his government.

Conducted by researchers from Freedom House and six partner organizations — four Armenia-based groups experienced in field research, a Ukrainian NGO focused on Russian war crimes, and a Brussels-based group — its conclusions do not mince words.

The final 24-hour offensive by Azerbaijani troops on the territory last year was “the culmination of an intensive, years-long campaign,” in which the perpetrators “willfully killed civilians and enjoyed absolute impunity” in doing so, the report said. “The Azerbaijani state’s actions,” it concludes, “constitute ethnic cleansing using forced displacement as a means.”

Exodus of almost entire population

The conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh was one of the former Soviet Union’s longest-running disputes. Local Armenians in the region, backed by Armenia itself, fought a successful war to secede from newly independent Azerbaijan in the early 1990s. Azerbaijan struck back in 2020, conquering three-quarters of the territory in a 44-day war.

Russian peacekeepers entered the territory following the war’s end but proved helpless to stop either Azerbaijan’s nine-month blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh or its military offensive on Sept. 19, 2023 — the latter of which resulted in its complete capture and the exodus of nearly its entire population.

The hundreds of testimonies on these events gathered in Freedom House’s new report make for a harrowing read.

“People were starving and were fainting in the lines for bread,” one interviewee states, describing the famine-like conditions during Azerbaijan’s blockade, which cut off all access to the outside world — including crucial food supplies. “It was very difficult to survive. We were thinking that at the end we would really starve.”

The testimonies on the final Azerbaijani offensive and subsequent exodus paint an even worse picture. “I was surrounded by children and tried to prevent panic,” says one woman, from the village of Sarnaghbyur. “I told them not to be afraid and suggested they pray. And right at that moment we heard an explosion near us,” she says, describing how Azerbaijani shelling killed five civilians, including three children.

Others detail Azerbaijani servicemen mocking and harassing them — sometimes even beating them or stealing their jewelry — as they made the perilous journey to Armenia. “[The Azerbaijanis] turned up their music loud, yelled something at us, insulted us with finger gestures and told us: ‘Leave, leave!'” says another local.

The intensity of these stories made even producing the report a difficult experience, researchers say.

“There are chilling testimonies from Karabakh Armenians that were hard to read, even for us,” said Andranik Shirinyan, Freedom House’s country representative for Armenia. “Mentally and psychologically, working on this report has been difficult for everyone involved.”

Evidence in report a ‘call to action’

The sum total of the Azerbaijani government’s actions, and the unlivable environment created by them in Nagorno-Karabakh, was the basis of Freedom House’s declaration of ethnic cleansing in the region.

“‘Ethnic cleansing’ is not a defined legal term — it’s a political term that is used to stress the gravity of the atrocities that have happened in a given territory,” Shirinyan said.

“We analyzed three periods — the post-2020 war period, the blockade and the exodus. While analyzing these, we came across findings of extrajudicial killings, of torture, of human rights violations, of grave human rights violations. We realized that Azerbaijan created an environment in Nagorno-Karabakh that wouldn’t allow the ethnic Armenian community there to stay and live in dignity.”

Freedom House based its assessment in part on legal conclusions from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, a United Nations body that prosecuted war crimes committed during the conflicts in the Balkans in the 1990s.

The similarities between war crimes there and the Azerbaijani government’s actions in Nagorno-Karabakh make the term “ethnic cleansing” entirely appropriate, other human rights experts say.

“Freedom House’s in-depth investigation demonstrates how Azerbaijani authorities’ September 2023 offensive is in line with similar crimes of forced displacement [that] international courts have examined,” said Steve Swerdlow, a human rights lawyer and international relations associate professor at the University of Southern California.

“These include the former Yugoslavia, as well as more recent cases, such as Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya. The damning evidence in this report is a call to action to international courts against impunity.”

Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs had not responded to a request for comment by the time of publication.

‘Now I truly have nowhere to return’

Amid the brutality, the nearly 2,000-strong Russian peacekeeping contingent stationed in Nagorno-Karabakh merely stood by and watched, the report says. It’s replete with anecdotes describing their passivity and refusal to confront Azerbaijani violence.

“We saw so many instances where Russian soldiers just stood by while Azerbaijani soldiers were threatening the livelihoods of Nagorno-Karabakh Armenians,” Shirinyan said. “It is safe to say that the Russian peacekeepers were unable or unwilling to fulfil their duties.”

Shirinyan said he hopes that the report will help to bring about some sort of accountability for the Azerbaijani government, at least in the long term, despite the fact that Baku is  presently engaged in erasing all traces of Armenian presence in the region.

Most Karabakh Armenians have long since lost such hope.

“Until recently, I had a tiny little hope, fuelled by international calls for the return of Armenians to Nagorno-Karabakh,” said Lilit Shahverdyan, a journalist from Stepanakert, the now-empty capital of the region.

“A few days ago, our house was demolished, along with the entire neighbourhood where I grew up. Countless other residential buildings are being ransacked daily,” she said.

“I firmly believe that Aliyev’s intention is to crush any hope we have of going back…. Now I truly have nowhere to return.”

Published at Sun, 24 Nov 2024 09:00:22 +0000