Just before the holiday, Mother Jones ran a Q&A between me and reporter Noah Lanard about the Trump administration’s newly announced “Remain in Mexico” policy. At least until it’s struck down by the courts, this policy, agreed with Mexico’s new government, will let asylum-seekers from third countries await their immigration court hearing dates inside Mexico.
I voice my perplexity about why Mexico would have agreed to this. It could leave hundreds of thousands of people spending years on Mexican soil waiting for under-funded, undermanned U.S. immigration courts to get through their backlog.
[T]hese decisions are being made by Mexico’s foreign ministry more than the agencies that are actually in charge of dealing with migrants. The foreign minister is a former mayor of Mexico City who is a smart guy but I don’t think is well-versed in the ins and outs of migration.
>I can’t imagine they’ve reckoned with the sheer number of people they would be dealing with. I think maybe in their mind they thought they only would be taking 10,000 a year or something. But it will be many times that if this is fully implemented. In 2018 alone, 93,000 people had credible fear interviews [the first step in the asylum process], and just last month, more than 30,000 Central American kids and family members arrived at the border. I think they’re going to be backpedalling.
It’s Saturday. Christmas is approaching. The U.S. government is partially shut down, but there’s nothing we can do about that. Let’s go off-topic.
I listen to hours of music each day, mostly while working. I also like data. I have a system of adding new music and rating songs, which—if things slow down over the holidays—perhaps I’ll explain in a post. Using that, it took just a few minutes this morning to export, from iTunes to Excel, every song to which I gave a good rating in 2018, then add up the ratings to give each album a score. And then, to sort out the albums I liked best. The result looked right to me.
So here are the 60 albums I liked best in 2018. It wasn’t a good year for a lot of things, but it was a good year for music. May you discover something here that makes you happy.
1 Wild Pink, Yolk in the Fur (Heartland/indie rock from Brooklyn). My score: 479. Standout tracks: “Yolk in the Fur,” “Lake Erie,” “There Is a Ledger,” “The Seance on St. Augustine St.”
2 Deeper, Deeper (Rock from Chicago). My score: 444. Standout tracks: “Taxi,” Message Erased,” “Trust,” “Feels”
3 The Internet, Hive Mind (R&B/Soul from Los Angeles). My score: 365. Standout tracks: “Mood,” “Next Time / Humble Pie,” “La Di Da,” “Come Together”
4 The Beths, Future Me Hates Me (Indie pop/rock from Auckland, New Zealand). My score: 354. Standout tracks: “Less Than Thou,” “Great No One,” “River Run: Lvl 1,” “Little Death”
5 Soccer Mommy, Clean (Indie pop/rock from Nashville). My score: 328. Standout tracks: “Skin,” “Cool,” “Scorpio Rising.”
6 Flasher, Constant Image (Alternative/indie from DC). My score: 324. Standout tracks: “Pressure,” “Punching Up,” “Who’s Got Time?,” “Sun Come and Golden”
7 Ólafur Arnalds, re:member (Classical crossover/ambient from Mosfellsbær, Iceland). My score: 311. Standout tracks: “inconsist,” “ekki hugsa,” “re:member”
8 Teenage Wrist, Chrome Neon Jesus (Alternative/shoegaze from Los Angeles). My score: 311. Standout tracks: “Chrome Neon Jesus,” “Black Flamingo,” “Stoned, Alone”
9 The Hold Steady, singles released throughout the year: “Eureka,” “Confusion In The Marketplace,” “The Stove & The Toaster,” “Entitlement Crew” (Alternative/indie rock from Brooklyn). My score: 276.
10 Rolling Blackouts Coastal Fever, Hope Downs (Indie pop/rock from Melbourne, Australia). My score: 269. Standout tracks: “How Long?” “Talking Straight,” “An Air Conditioned Man,” “Mainland”
11 Kacey Musgraves, Golden Hour (Country/pop from Mineola, Texas). My score: 263. Standout tracks: “Slow Burn,” “Lonely Weekend,” “High Horse”
12 Dirty Projectors, Lamp Lit Prose (Indie/art rock from Brooklyn).My score: 218. Standout tracks: “Break-Thru,” “Right Now (feat. Syd),” “Zombie Conqueror (feat. Empress Of),” “That’s A Lifestyle”
13 Hatchie, Sugar and Spice EP (Dream pop from Brisbane, Australia). My score: 216. Standout tracks: “Sure,” “Sleep,” “Sugar & Spice”
14 Hop Along, Bark Your Head Off, Dog (Indie/folk rock from Philadelphia). My score: 213. Standout tracks: “Prior Things,” “One That Suits Me”
15 Snail Mail, Lush (Indie rock from Baltimore suburbs). My score: 213. Standout tracks: “Pristine,” “Heat Wave,” “Full Control”
16 Janelle Monáe, Dirty Computer (Funk/R&B from Atlanta). My score: 213. Standout tracks: “Crazy, Classic, Life,” “I Got The Juice (feat. Pharrell Williams)”
17 Mitski, Be the Cowboy (Indie rock from New York City). My score: 211. Standout tracks: “Me and My Husband,” “Geyser,” “A Pearl”
18 Jon Hopkins, Singularity (Electronic/IDM from UK). My score: 193. Standout tracks: “Everything Connected (Edit),” “Emerald Rush,” “Luminous Beings”
19 Death Cab for Cutie, Thank You for Today (Indie pop/rock from Bellingham, Washington). My score: 184. Standout tracks: “Gold Rush,” “When We Drive”
20 J Mascis, Elastic Days (Alternative rock from Amherst, Massachusetts). My score: 183. Standout tracks: “Sky Is All We Had,” “Everything She Said,” “See You at the Movies”
21 Roosevelt, Young Romance (Indie electronic synth-pop from Viersen, Germany). My score: 183. Standout tracks: “Getaway,” “Illusions,” “Losing Touch”
22 The Essex Green, Hardly Electronic (Indie pop/rock from Brooklyn and Vermont). My score: 174. Standout tracks: “The 710,” “Waikiki”
23 CHVRCHES, Love Is Dead (Indie synth-pop from Glasgow, Scotland). My score: 172. Standout tracks: “Deliverance,” “Graves.”
24 Aterciopelados, Claroscura (Latin alternative/rock en español from Bogotá, Colombia). My score: 171. Standout tracks: “Ay Ombe (Vamo’ a Relajar el Pony) [feat. Jorge Celedón],” “Soñemos un Bosque,” “Despierta Mujer.”
25 Israel Nash, Lifted (Indie rock from Dripping Springs, Texas). My score: 162. Standout tracks: “Sweet Springs,” “Rolling On,” “Looking Glass”
26 Lala Lala, The Lamb (Indie rock from Chicago). My score: 160. Standout tracks: “Destroyer,” “Dropout.”
27 Jenn Champion, Single Rider (Alternative from Seattle). My score: 159. Standout tracks: “Hustle,” “Time to Regulate (Gold Brother Remix).”
28 boygenius, boygenius EP (Alternative/folk rock from Memphis, Richmond, and Pasadena). My score: 150. Standout tracks: “Stay Down,” “Me & My Dog.”
29 lovelytheband, Finding It Hard to Smile (Indie pop/rock from Los Angeles). My score: 149. Standout tracks: “Your Whatever,” “Pity Party.”
30 Cumulus, Comfort World (Indie pop from Seattle). My score: 142. Standout tracks: “Retreat,” “Light & Sound”
31 Golden Drag, Pink Sky (Indie pop/rock from Toronto). My score: 142. Standout tracks: “’17 Til Infinity,” “Shoot the Breeze”
32 Oh Pep!I Wasn’t Only Thinking About You… (Pop from Melbourne, Australia). My score: 142. Standout tracks: “What’s the Deal With David?,” “Bleeding Hearts”
33 Bodega, Endless Scroll (Indie rock from Brooklyn). My score: 141. Standout tracks: “Jack in Titanic,” “Williamsburg Bridge”
34 Our Girl, Stranger Today (Indie pop/rock from Brighton, UK). My score: 141. Standout tracks: “I Really Like It,” “Our Girl”
35 Lori McKenna, The Tree (Americana/folk from Stoughton, Massachusetts). My score: 139. Standout tracks: “The Lot Behind St. Mary’s,” “Young and Angry Again”
36 Bad Moves, Tell No One (Indie power-pop from DC). My score: 128. Standout tracks: “Spirit FM,” “Cool Generator”
37 illuminati hotties, Kiss Yr Frenemies (Indie pop/rock from Los Angeles). My score: 118. Standout tracks: “Shape of My Hands,” “For Cheez (My Friend, Not the Food)”
38 Katie Ellen, Still Life EP (Indie pop/punk from Philadelphia). My score: 118. Standout tracks: “Lighthouse,” “City / Country”
39 The Decemberists, I’ll Be Your Girl (Indie folk/pop from Portland). My score: 118. Standout tracks: “Once In My Life,” “Everything Is Awful”
40 Yo La Tengo, There’s a Riot Going On (Indie pop/rock from Hoboken, New Jersey). My score: 118. Standout tracks: “For You Too,” “Polynesia #1”
41 Courtney Barnett, Tell Me How You Really Feel (Indie pop/rock from Melbourne, Australia). My score: 109. Standout tracks: “City Looks Pretty,” “Sunday Roast,” “Help Your Self”
42 Lawrence, Living Room (Soul/pop from New York City). My score: 108. Standout tracks: “More,” “Try”
43 Long Neck, Will This Do? (Indie rock from Jersey City, New Jersey). My score: 108. Standout tracks: “Elizabeth,” “Love Letters”
44 The Spirit of the Beehive, Hypnic Jerks (Indie rock from Philadelphia). My score: 108. Standout tracks: “(Without You) In My Pocket,” “Mantra Is Repeated”
45 Ovlov, Tru (Indie rock from Newtown, Connecticut). My score: 106. Standout tracks: “Baby Alligator,” “Grab It From the Garden”
46 Beach House, 7 (Dream pop from Baltimore). My score: 105. Standout track: “Dive”
47 Menace Beach, Black Rainbow Sound (Indie rock from Leeds, UK). My score: 105. Standout track: “Black Rainbow Sound (feat. Brix Smith)”
48 Let’s Eat Grandma, I’m All Ears (Art pop from Norwich, UK). My score: 96. Standout tracks: “I Will Be Waiting,” “Donnie Darko”
49 Amanda Shires, To the Sunset (Americana/alt-country from Lubbock, Texas). My score: 95. Standout track: “Leave It Alone”
50 Michael Rault, It’s a New Day Tonight (Indie power-pop from Montreal, Canada). My score: 95. Standout track: “I’ll Be There”
51 Deafheaven, Ordinary Corrupt Human Love (Post-metal from San Francisco). My score: 86. Standout tracks: “You Without End,” “Near”
52 Hilang Child, Years (Indie pop from London, UK). My score: 86. Standout tracks: “Sleepwalk,” “Rot”
53 Madeline Kenney, Perfect Shapes (Indie rock from Oakland). My score: 86. Standout tracks: “Perfect Shapes,” “Cut Me Off”
54 Anemone, Baby Only You & I (Psychedelic/dream pop from Montreal, Canada). My score: 85. Standout track: “Bout De Toi (Dub Remix #4)”
55 LCD Soundsystem, Some Remixes (Electronic/dance punk from Brooklyn). My score: 85. Standout track: “oh baby (lovefingers remix)”
56 Kamasi Washington, Heaven and Earth (Jazz from Los Angeles). My score: 83. Standout track: “Tiffakonkae”
57 Colleen Green, Casey’s Tape / Harmontown Loops (Indie pop-punk from Los Angeles). My score: 76. Standout tracks: “Disco,” “Here It Comes”
58 Paul White, Rejuvenate (Electronic from London, UK). My score: 76. Standout tracks: “Ice Cream Man (Gum & Ginoli Remix),” “Soul Reunion”
59 Shannen Moser, I’ll Sing (Folk from Philadelphia). My score: 76. Standout tracks: “The Ballad of Freddie Jones,” “Pleasentville”
60 S.Q.U.I.D., Waves EP (Dance/electronic from Wroclaw, Poland). My score: 76. Standout tracks: “33333,” “Stranger”
Moisés Castillo photo at Associated Press. Caption: “A Honduran migrant, left, talks with a Border Patrol agent as he tries to cross over the U.S. border wall to San Diego, California, from Playas in in Tijuana, Mexico, Saturday, Dec. 15, 2018.”
Directing 2 percent of royalties from offshore drilling to the military has been a national policy for some time, but previous governments have never fully applied it
The Army High Command had held an emergency meeting that afternoon to discuss the new decision that could see the release of Lula. The Armed forces intervened in a previous Supreme Court ruling to deny the former President habeas corpus
Brazil’s attorney general has accused President Michele Temer of sitting at the center of “an institutionalized system of corruption” and has asked the courts to charge him with crimes as soon as he leaves office
The actual wall — the sum of official and unofficial policy, of economic and family ties, of criminality and enforcement, of deprivation, and plenty — stretches much farther north to south
El colectivo llamó a los diputados de Morena a no perpetrar “el fallido modelo de seguridad de los últimos años, miren la evidencia, escuchen a las víctimas y digan no a la Guardia Nacional militarizada”
Mexico’s new leftist government announced Thursday that it will allow the United States to send asylum seekers who cross illegally back to its territory and provide them with work visas and humanitarian assistance while they wait
The head of Mexico’s immigration agency, which would be responsible for implementing the new policy, appeared to undercut the agreement during a news conference a few hours later
I just went through the outstanding appropriations bills and came up with this incomplete list of agencies that would be affected if parts of the U.S. federal government “shut down” at midnight tonight.
President Trump insists that he won’t sign a 2019 budget bill—not even a stopgap to keep the government open for a few weeks—unless it includes $5 billion to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Senate rules require 60 votes to stop debate and vote on such a bill. There are only 51 Republicans in this Senate, and 53 in the Senate that begins on January 1 (when the House becomes majority Democratic). So this “partial shutdown” could drag on for a very long time.
Many of the agencies listed here will continue to operate to some extent, by requiring “essential” staff to report for work (though who knows when they’ll be paid), by depending on fee-based revenue, or other means. But if this shutdown is prolonged, nearly all will find themselves unable to operate normally, if at all.
Department of Agriculture
Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service
Child Nutrition Programs
Food Safety and Inspection Service
Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC)
Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, formerly known as the food stamp program)
Department of Commerce
Bureau of the Census
National Institute of Standards and Technology
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
U.S. Patent and Trademark Office
Department of Homeland Security
Domestic Nuclear Detection Office
Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)
Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers
Transportation Security Administration
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services
U.S. Coast Guard
U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Border Patrol
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement
U.S. Secret Service
Department of Housing and Urban Development
Federal Housing Administration
Government National Mortgage Association
Department of the Interior
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Bureau of Land Management
Forest Service
National Park Service
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
U.S. Geological Survey
Department of Justice
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives
Drug Enforcement Administration
Federal Bureau of Investigation
Federal Prison System
U.S. Attorneys
Department of State
Export-Import Bank of the United States
Inter-American Foundation
Millennium Challenge Corporation
Overseas Private Investment Corporation
Peace Corps
U.S. African Development Foundation
U.S. Agency for International Development
U.S. Trade and Development Agency
Department of Transportation
Federal Aviation Administration
Federal Highway Administration
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
Department of the Treasury
Office of Foreign Assets Control
Office of Terrorism and Financial Intelligence
U.S. Mint
The White House
Council of Economic Advisers
Executive Office of the President
Homeland Security Council
National Security Council
Office of Management and Budget (OMB)
Office of National Drug Control Policy
The Judiciary
Courts of Appeals, District Courts, and Other Judicial Services
I’ll be reachable from late morning through the end of the day. (How to contact me)
The last few days before Christmas are usually some of the quietest of the year, a time for tying up loose ends and planning the next year amid a far calmer calendar and telephone. But this is 2018. We’ve got a fake aid package to Mexico, a border wall and government shutdown drama, a deal to force asylum-seekers to wait in Mexico, (and things I don’t work on but matter greatly, like the expulsion of CICIG workers from Guatemala and IACHR workers from Nicaragua)…
I’ll be in the office all day, with press interviews scheduled already at 9:00 and 10:00. This will be my last day in the office this year. Let’s all try and have a good holiday.
After the Trump administration announced a deal with Mexico that could force Central American asylum-seekers to spend years there, my colleague Elyssa Pachico and I quickly knocked out this statement. I seriously have no idea how Mexico plans to absorb what it has just committed to.
Forcing Asylum Seekers to Wait in Mexico Will Worsen Humanitarian Challenges on Both Sides of the Border By Adam Isacson and Elyssa Pachico
Today, the Department of Homeland Security and the Mexican government announced that under a new policy, non-Mexican asylum seekers will be required to wait in Mexico while their case moves through U.S. immigration courts. This applies to all applicants who pass initial “credible fear” interviews, regardless of whether they entered the United States at or between ports of entry.
The Trump administration is shirking its responsibilities under U.S. and international law by forcing people seeking asylum to wait in potentially dangerous and extremely over-crowded conditions along the border in Mexico, a country which just had its most violent year on record. Many asylum-seekers will face conditions similar to those that drove them to flee their homes.
This is not the way to create a more efficient and orderly migration process at the border. All this does is create a bureaucratic, legal and humanitarian nightmare for the U.S. and Mexican governments, and for vulnerable people seeking protection.
Someone who passes a credible fear interview today routinely faces a wait of three years or more for an asylum hearing. Because the U.S. Justice Department employs only 395 immigration judges, the current backlog in U.S. immigration courts has reached 800,000 cases. Asylum-seeking families will end up waiting in Mexico for years.At least 93,000 people claimed credible fear at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018: under the new system, Mexico would have had to absorb nearly all of them. Yet right now, Mexico’s government doesn’t even fund short-term migrant shelters, which are all run by private and religious charities (with some support from states and municipalities). How is Mexico suddenly going to support hundreds of thousands of non-Mexicans for years?
It’s highly likely that this new policy will end up getting challenged in U.S. courts. Not only does it go against U.S. and international law, it violates due process rights. How are asylum seekers supposed to access U.S.-based immigration lawyers to argue their cases before a U.S. judge, if they’re sleeping in shelters in Mexico? There’s no indication that either the U.S. or Mexico is prepared to create a system that ensures asylum seekers can access legal counsel. Asylum seekers who don’t have lawyers representing them are significantly less likely to win their cases, regardless of the legitimacy of their claims. This policy could very well see more people who otherwise qualify for asylum get deported to their deaths.
Today’s announcement leaves some other important questions unanswered:
Has the U.S. government committed to any steps to reduce asylum-seekers’ wait times? We see nothing in today’s announcement.
Has the U.S. government committed any funds to help Mexico defray asylum-seekers’ housing, medical, and other humanitarian costs? We see nothing in today’s announcement.
Will asylum-seekers from outside Latin America—including thousands of Chinese, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Nepalese—also be forced to wait in Mexico, where they don’t speak the language?
What will happen to asylum seekers who tell U.S. authorities and credible-fear interviewers, “I fear for my life inside Mexico?” (An official told Vox that those who “demonstrated to a U.S. official that they feared persecution in Mexico” won’t be sent to Mexico; Voxnotes that “It is not yet clear whether those claims would be held to the same standard that’s generally used to screen asylum seekers — a ‘credible fear’ of persecution.”)
Rio will finish the year with the highest number of police killings since the state started collecting that data in 1998. The previous record was 1,330 in 2007
Despite international support, Melendez has powerful opponents in the ruling leftist party. El Salvador’s lawmakers could make their decision as soon as this week
Morales has also been garnering support from none other than US President Donald Trump’s administration, which has come out in his support at critical moments in the situation with the commission
For migrants, remaining in northeastern Mexico while their asylum claims are adjudicated in the U.S. could have devastating consequences Reynosa might soon be home to hundreds or thousands of migrants waiting to seek refuge in the United States. No one is sure how they would survive here
In the past, Mexico hasn’t allowed the US to use this provision to return Central Americans and other non-Mexicans to Mexican soil. Now, they have relented
Individuals arriving in or entering the United States from Mexico—illegally or without proper documentation—may be returned to Mexico for the duration of their immigration proceedings
Las acciones que tomen los gobiernos de México y de Estados Unidos no constituyen un esquema de Tercer País Seguro, en el que se obligaría a las personas migrantes en tránsito a solicitar asilo en México
El escritor Sergio Ramírez (Premio Cervantes 2017) no ve una salida a la actual crisis nicaragüense. Ortega reprime, dice, pero no gobierna. Los dirigentes de las manifestaciones de abril y mayo están muertos, en el exilio o presos y hoy no hay líderes políticos
This afternoon I’m on a call with a foundation program officer, and then I’m off to the GAO to meet with a team working on a report about military training programs. Otherwise I’ll be in the office prepping for those meetings, doing some research, and keeping up on the border wall/shutdown situation.
If Trump did order the military to build a wall anyway, Democrats or landowners could file a lawsuit and seek an immediate injunction to halt the construction
Right now, the Trump administration’s immigration policy is focused on making it less appealing to try to come to the US — specifically, by reducing the chance that a migrant will ever be able to earn an American paycheck
In the Yuma sector, which stretches across 126 miles of border in southeastern Arizona and Southern California, agents spent more than 25% of their time, or about 9,000 man-hours, last year on tasks like feeding children and chauffeuring families
As of November 30, 2018, the number of pending cases on the court’s active docket topped eight-hundred thousand (809,041) cases. This is almost a fifty percent (49.1%) increase compared to the 542,411 cases pending at the end of January 2017 when President Trump took office
To avoid getting cases dismissed, the administration could not conduct the type of lightning-quick prosecutions that it practices elsewhere along the border
The Honduran Naval Force (FNH, in Spanish) bought two Multi-Mission Interceptor 35 (MMI 35) speedboats from Colombia’s Science and Technology Corporation for Naval, Maritime, and Riverine Industry Development
Lo que pasó en esas horas es la prueba más clara de que se rompió un pacto entre las bandas criminales La Empresa y La Local, que tenían repartido el control de la ilegalidad en las 12 comunas
At least seven massacres have been committed by myriad groups since March last year, while murders of human rights defenders and local activists have soared
The measure is the first approved by Congress related to heavily sanctioned Cuba in nearly two decades and represents a symbolic victory for the lobby favoring normalization of ties
El gobierno de López Obrador tiene que dejar de jugar una política que oscila entre avestruz y policía –a muchos se les deja pasar y otros tantos son deportados
His father, Pedro Joaquin Chamorro, was a crusading newspaper editor who was gunned down by an unknown assassin in 1978, triggering street riots amid charges that his killing was ordered by the country’s hated dictator Anastasio Somoza
Exiliados de sus redacciones, los periodistas de la revista Confidencial y el programa televisivo Esta Semana trabajan desde donde pueden para continuar denunciando a un régimen que hoy tiene más presos políticos que los que tenía el dictador Anastasio Somoza
Hay que intentar pararlos: ocuparse, por todos los medios posibles, de pararlos. Es necesario defendernos, juntarnos, solidarizarnos: no perder las pocas vías de expresión que van quedando
“Sale una noticia por ahí: Rusia prepara la instalación de una base militar en (la isla venezolana) La Orchila. Ojalá fuera verdad, no una, dos, tres, cuatro, diez”, dijo Cabello
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) will shortly introduce a simple bill keeping the still-unfunded part of the U.S. government funded, at 2018 levels, through February 8. This Continuing Resolution will avert a partial government shutdown on Friday December 21. It will not include new wall-building money.
Scheduling the next budget/shutdown deadline for February 8 “would give the new Democratic House time to organize,” said Senate Appropriations Committee chairman Richard Shelby (R-Alabama).
“A stopgap bill would essentially push the government spending fight into the new year, when Democrats will assume control of the House and Mr. Trump’s negotiating leverage — already on the wane — will be considerably weakened,” The New York Timesexplains.
Next steps, according to Reuters: “A Senate Democratic aide said the appropriations bill…was expected to pass the Senate either on Wednesday or Thursday. The House of Representatives would then have to pass the bill and hope that Trump signs it into law.”
If a February 8 Continuing Resolution reaches the White House, President Trump “will take a look at that certainly,” senior presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway told reporters December 19.
The House Appropriations Committee’s version of the 2019 Homeland Security Appropriations bill includes $5 billion for wall construction, as President Trump had demanded. The Senate Appropriations Committee includes $1.6 billion—the amount in the Trump administration’s original request, from February—for construction of fencing using existing designs, not a wall. Senate Democrats have since lowered to $1.3 billion the amount they say they’d be willing to fund. On December 18, Sen. McConnell suggested to Democrats a bill with $1.6 billion for fencing, plus an additional $1 billion for Trump to spend as he sees fit. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) rejected that as a “slush fund.”
On December 18 White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders gave a first strong indication of White House flexibility on the border-wall issue. She told Fox News that the White House would work with congressional leaders on a bill to get $1.6 billion for fencing, and would try to move money around within other government departments to cobble together additional wall funding. “There are certainly a number of different funding sources that we’ve identified that we can use, that we can couple with the money that would be given through congressional appropriations that would help us get to that $5 billion that the president needs in order to protect our border,” she said. During a White House briefing on the 18th, Sanders added that Trump has “asked every [federal] agency to look and see if they have money that can be used for that purpose.”
In a pair of December 19 tweets, President Trump reinforced the argument that other departments of the U.S. government could contribute to the wall. “The United States Military will build the Wall!” he declared. On the 18th, a Trump tweet backed off his insistence on a concrete wall design: “we are not building a Concrete Wall, we are building artistically designed steel slats, so that you can easily see through it….”
Democratic leaders have made clear that the president does not have the legal authority to move funds from other purposes into wall-building, without congressional approval. “If you’ve got that kind of cushion in your budget and you don’t need that money, use it to pay down the debt,” said Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Homeland Security Subcommittee. “We gave him what he wanted. He ought to take it.”
Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Bloomberg it is unclear what might give President Trump authority to shift money around for wall-building without congressional approval. “I think we’d all have to talk to our lawyers and figure out what his authority is and whether it requires Congress to approve it.”
A USA Today/Suffolk poll released December 17 had bad news for the White House. It found respondents widely opposing a partial government shutdown for border wall money, by a 54 percent to 29 percent margin. 43 percent said that the president and the Republicans would bear the blame for a shutdown. 24 percent would blame the Democrats, and 30 percent would blame both sides equally.
On December 16, White House advisor Stephen Miller, an immigration hawk, told CBS’s Face the Nation that President Trump was willing to undergo a partial government shutdown in order to get border-wall funding. “We’re going to do whatever is necessary to build the border wall to stop this ongoing crisis of illegal immigration,” he said.
This afternoon I’m speaking and facilitating a breakout group of regional military personnel at the OAS Inter-American Defense College, which is having its annual human rights and international humanitarian law conference. In the morning I’ll be in the office, mainly catching up on correspondence and trying to figure out if the government is going to avoid shutting down over the border wall on Friday.
Líderes de Puerto Cachicamo photo at Semana (Colombia). Caption: “La comunidad de Puerto Cachicamo decidió protestar ante el Ejército porque es la única Es la única figura de institucionalidad en la zona a la que pueden acudir con sus reclamos”
Army Col. Rob Manning told reporters at the Pentagon that 3,150 active-duty troops remain at the southern border, including 1,200 in California, 1,050 in Texas and 900 in Arizona
At nearly every turn, Trump has taken a hard-line position not only on the broad strokes of his immigration policy but on the specifics of building the wall that his supporters chant for
The statement by Jud Murdock, CBP’s acting assistant commissioner, contradicted official claims that the practice of “metering” — when officials limit the number of individuals who can make asylum claims at ports of entry on any given day — was due to resource constraints
El cambio debe empezar de abajo hacia arriba, conectando las comunidades —periodistas, sociedad civil y academia— para abordar esta dramática realidad de manera directa, no a través de percepciones o intereses
En momentos en que el gobierno anuncia su política integral contra las drogas y los ataques contra líderes de sustitución siguen en aumento, persisten las inquietudes de las comunidades que no ven el carácter integral en la nueva estrategia
La votación a favor en el Congreso que impediría que los delitos del narcotráfico y el secuestro sean amnistiables y, en esa vía, declarados conexos a los delitos políticos, sienta las bases para futuras negociaciones
El Gobierno de Venezuela denunció este mes que más de 700 “mercenarios” están siendo entrenados en Colombia para simular ataques venezolanos contra las fuerzas del orden en el país vecino
Mientras el gobierno nacional analiza diferentes opciones de químicos con los que podría entrar a erradicar cultivos ilícitos, expertos advierten sobre las consecuencias que estos herbicidas pueden acarrear para la salud humana y el medio ambiente
El congresista de la etnia nasa del norte del Cauca denunció que durante el 2018 han sido asesinados 92 comuneros, tres de ellos gobernadores de cabildos y muchos guardias ancestrales en todo el país
The heated conversations over constitutional reform and the government’s responsiveness to civil society voices, however belated and partial, have raised hopes: Maybe post-Castro Cuba will gradually evolve toward a more responsive governance
They said they were not going to strike a deal with the United States to keep asylum seekers on the Mexican side of the border. That would allow Mr. Trump to claim a victory Mexican officials are not willing to give him
Of the total $10.6 billion referenced in Tuesday’s announcement, it appears the only new figure is the $4.5 billion in potential loans, loan guarantees and related services through OPIC
Dos veinteañeros mantienen vivo desde un hotel de Managua el diario Confidencial mientras esperan que la policía del Gobierno de Daniel Ortega y Rosario Murillo los detenga en cualquier momento
Today the U.S. and Mexican governments announced what looks like a bombshell: a monster $10.6 billion package of new U.S. aid to address the root causes of migration. $5.8 billion of it for Central America, $4.8 billion for Mexico. “US pledges $10.6B aid for Central America, southern Mexico,” an AP headline gushes.
Not so fast. There’s almost nothing new here. And there’s no new grant aid here. The Washington Post’s Kevin Sieff and Mary Beth Sheridan get it right:
Of the total $10.6 billion referenced in Tuesday’s announcement, it appears the only new figure is the $4.5 billion in potential loans, loan guarantees and related services through OPIC. That money would facilitate private-sector activity and would be repaid, unlike traditional development assistance through USAID
“OPIC” is the Overseas Private Investment Corporation, a federal agency that provides loans and loan guarantees to private enterprises seeking to make investments in developing countries. The additional money is loans, not aid. It all has to be paid back.
And they’re loans to the private sector—which are not going to address root causes of mass migration from Central America. They won’t reform police, fight corruption, fix justice systems, or anything else that makes threatened people safer from gangs. Private sector loans are hugely unlikely to help struggling small farmers in the Northern Triangle’s countryside. (Unless they choose to leave the countryside and get low-wage jobs in OPIC-financed factories.) These loans will mainly help a tiny elite get wealthier in one of the most unequal regions on the planet.
Here’s how it breaks down:
The $2.1 billion in grant aid listed here is all old money, already committed for 2015 through 2018. Except for $180 million, which is what the Trump administration proposes here in grant aid to Central America for 2019. If approved, that would be a two-thirds cut in 2015-18 aid levels!
It won’t be: for 2019 the House approved $595 million for Central America, and the Senate $515.5 million. If Congress ever passes a 2019 foreign aid budget, it’ll end up giving Central America a multiple of the $180 million proposed here, to help address the causes of migration.
So this is an aid cut and a repackaging of already-given aid and loans, masquerading as a historically generous “Marshall Plan.” Don’t fall for it. And resist this level of cynicism.
I should be around in the morning and the late afternoon. (How to contact me)
I’ve got an internal meeting and a meeting with some grad students in the early afternoon. Otherwise I’ll be in the office writing a Colombia update and preparing a talk I’ll be giving tomorrow.
What a horrible three days for press freedom in the Americas.
On Friday, Nicaraguan police raided, and trashed, the offices of the investigative web publication Confidencial, which has been an indispensable and very credible source of coverage of the country’s slide into democracy. Confidencial has been around since 1996.
Over the weekend El Nacional, which was just about the last independent daily published newspaper in Venezuela, stopped issuing a print edition, moving to a web-only format that is unlikely to be able to sustain its 90-person staff. It was unable to obtain newsprint paper, which the government made deliberately scarce, among other obstacles. El Nacional has been around since 1943.
Not hard to imagine that the 1930s felt like this across Europe.
Much of the region is rugged and either privately-owned or under environmental protection and there are doubts about whether such a structure would make a significant difference
The head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection said he did not disclose the death of a 7-year-old girl at the border during his testimony to Congress because he wasn’t sure that the mother had been notified and because he didn’t want to “risk politicizing the death of a child”
Border life is marked not so much by violence — that tends to stay on the other side of the river — as by uneasiness, distrust and suspicion of just about everyone: law enforcement, smugglers, immigrants, even their own neighbor
O governo de Jair Bolsonaro terá mais ministros com formação militar no primeiro escalão do que no governo do general Castelo Branco (1964-1967), que inaugurou o ciclo de militares no poder após o golpe de 1964
Nothing has highlighted the scope of Paraguay’s security challenges and the weakness of its institutions more than the events set off by the detention last December of Marcelo Pinheiro Veiga, a Brazilian drug lord
For now, we see few official proposals to create a public safety policy based on data and best practices. Meanwhile, specialists — facing closed government doors — propose, among other ideas, coming together as a united group
Esa es una de las principales conclusiones del informe ‘¿Cuáles son los patrones? Asesinatos de líderes sociales en el Post Acuerdo’, elaborado por 9 organizaciones y centros de estudio
Reconoce que se enfrenta a una red corrupta formada por exmilitares, diputados y empresarios y que fue ingenuo al no medir su fuerza y tamaño. Sostiene que intentará volver en enero
En el caso de la Secretaria de la Defensa Nacional (Sedena), la propuesta enviada al Congreso para su análisis prevé un presupuesto total de 93 mil 670 millones 187 mil 410 pesos. En 2018 se asignaron al Ejército 81 mil 21 millones
Lopez Obrador has proposed what amounts to a Marshall Plan for Central America — $30 billion over five years in job-creating economic development assistance
Carlos F. Chamorro fundó ‘Confidencial’, el medio de periodismo de investigación más respetado de Nicaragua, que denuncia la corrupción y desmanes del Gobierno sandinista
La Policía —leal al dictador Daniel Ortega y su esposa Rosario Murillo— ha ocupado las instalaciones, ordenando el retiro de los guardas de seguridad e instalando media docena de policías armados dentro del edificio
No solo necesita repetir cien veces una mentira, también requiere dotarla de sentimentalismo, afectivizarla. Se trata de convertir la ignorancia en una virtud
During 3 weeks of travel to Colombia and Cuba, I often replied to people who wanted to meet, “I’m back on the 17th.” Now it’s the 17th, and today and tomorrow I’m sitting down with a variety of people. Today it’s the weekly staff meeting, a European diplomat, two graduate students, and then the office Christmas party. There’s not much space between these meetings on my calendar, so I may be hard to contact.
I’m back in Washington after three weeks of travels, and need to hit the ground running. The week before Christmas tends to be slower at work, but this time it also happens to be the last week of the 115th Congress. Unless Congress and the White House make another deal to postpone things, much of the U.S. government could shut down Friday over Trump’s demand for $5 billion in border-wall money, which we vehemently oppose.
So I expect to be working on that, doing some writing about Colombia, giving a talk at the Inter-American Defense College, and meeting with legislative-branch staff. All while wrapping presents and putting up decorations.
The United States has taken some important steps, including the Nicaraguan Investment Conditionality Act that was approved this week by Congress, a bill that would place conditions on the “approval of loans to the Ortega regime by international financial institutions,” and expand the Magnistky sanctions on people close to the regime (including Rosario Murillo, the vice president and first lady). The United Nations, however, seems to believe that democracy and the lives of thousands can be defended with press releases.
But only concrete actions can stop a dictator such as Ortega, a man who possesses an unquenchable thirst for power and is capable of anything to keep it.
…and the piece ends there, leaving the suggestion of “concrete actions” in the air.
The barbaric raids last week on CENIDH, IEEPP, Confidencial, and others have all of us casting about for new ways to help Nicaraguans end their dictatorship. So what did Vilchez mean here? Is the United States doing enough, but not the UN? If so, is she calling for worldwide NICA and Magnitsky sanctions? Or should the United States and the UN both be going even harder than they are against Ortega and Murillo?
All credit here goes to the Chile-based Latinobarómetro polling organization, which carries out an annual public-opinion survey in most of Latin America and the Caribbean. The 2018 poll (PDF) is a fascinating read.
For an upcoming presentation, I wanted to know what the poll said about how Latin Americans are viewing the three government institutions that have the most to do with defense and security: the military, the police, and the justice system. When citizens are asked whether they trust these institutions, the poll shows a huge variation across countries.
Also interesting is the gap, in percentage points, between trust in the armed forces and trust in the police.
Perhaps it makes sense that the police, which are in more regular contact with the population, would be consistently lower. But this is a big problem, because it feeds calls to send the military into the streets to perform crimefighting roles that should be up to civilians.
(“GCS” are the ground control stations communicating with the border drones. “NASOC” are National Air Security Operations Centers, managing manned and unmanned border surveillance flights, located at Sierra Vista, Arizona; Corpus Christi, Texas; and Grand Forks, North Dakota.)
Windows XP came out in 2001. So incredibly, a sensitive Predator-B surveillance program flying over the U.S.-Mexico border, recording images of U.S. citizens going about their daily lives on U.S. soil, is running a 17-year-old OS on its computers.
Unsurprisingly, the Inspector-General is a bit concerned about how secure these drone-gathered images of U.S. citizens are, and how this affects their privacy.
I’m back from Havana. This is the second time I’ve participated in an annual “series of conversations” between U.S. and Cuban scholars and diplomats—the last time was 2013. It was an honor to be on the list of invited Americans, most of whom—unlike me—are Cuba specialists. It was a lot of panels, and I learned much about the sad state of U.S.-Cuba relations right now.
View of central Havana. A few more photos at the bottom of this post.
I did run off for several hours yesterday just to walk around Havana, to see what’s different. My sample size was small—about seven miles of wandering with eyes and ears wide open. But I came away with these superficial impressions:
Almost everybody seemed to have a smartphone. One popular thing among teenage boys (that’s who I saw doing it anyway) was to walk around playing music from a hand-held bluetooth speaker connected to one’s phone, 1980s boombox style.
About two weeks ago, the government started offering 3G data access. Until now, internet was mainly available at wifi hotspots. Like the hotspots, the 3G will be very expensive for any without access to dollars. Still, it will multiply the number of Cubans who are able to access reasonably fast internet.
The middle class neighborhoods of Havana (like Vedado, where I walked about 30 blocks) were in better shape than the last time I’d visited. Lots of improvements to houses and apartment buildings, only a few abandoned. Lots of “room for rent” signs.
In between those neighborhoods and the fancy, renovated/touristy “old Havana” on the eastern end of town, covering what must be four square miles, is the poorer part of the city’s central core, which looks exactly as grim and shabby as it did when I visited in 2000 and 2013. Central Havana is falling down, and the rot seems to be accelerating. It remains very densely populated, though. From their worn clothing, and from the things they were queuing up for—I saw a block-long bread line—residents of this area aren’t getting remittances from relatives in the United States. They’re firmly in the Cuban peso economy. This is hard: a young cab driver told me his mother, a full-time grocery employee, earns the equivalent of $15 per month—and her water bill alone is $2 per month.
Still, I didn’t see people who looked malnourished—in fact, overweight was more common. But fresh fruit and vegetables, and protein sources, are still scarce for those without access to dollars.
Neighborhoods are dotted with well-stocked public food markets and a few privately run stores (identified as running on “cuenta propia” basis). There were noticeably more of these than the last time I visited. But again, if you’re only earning pesos, these places are hard to afford.
The state-run stores continue to have bare shelves; I peeped into a couple whose entire inventory I probably could’ve bought for about $20 or $30. It’s so strange to see a store window featuring just a few bottles of laundry detergent stacked on top of each other.
Signs and murals from Cuba’s extensive network of neighborhood-watch associations, the “Committees in Defense of the Revolution,” are everywhere. I also saw a lot more images of Fidel Castro posted around the city. In 2013, before he died, it was unusual to see Fidel’s likeness on billboards and murals. You still don’t see Raul’s face often, and I didn’t see a single posted image of the new president, Miguel Díaz-Canel.
Cuban officials talked a lot about an ongoing, neighborhood-by-neighborhood effort to get input on a new constitution. Apparently, people at these meetings are being encouraged to voice critical opinions. The input will somehow be taken into account as the government drafts a new constitution, which it will then put up to a referendum. There actually does seem to be real doubt about this referendum’s outcome. There’s some internal debate about whether to put gay-rights provisions into the draft constitution. Some fear that doing so might cause socially conservative and religiously fundamentalist Cubans to vote against the document, perhaps leading to its overall rejection.
Signs for neighborhood watch groups (“Committees in Defense of the Revolution”) are everywhere. A sports car makes its incongruous way down a street in central Havana’s crumbling core. The U.S. embassy, its staff depleted by the U.S. response to the so-called “sonic attack” health issues, looms in the background. Charlie Cook of the Cook Political Report (center, speaking) led off the first panel at the event in which I participated, analyzing the 2018 midterm elections.
I’m traveling to Havana today for a series of conversations between U.S. and Cuban scholars. Haven’t been to Cuba in 5 years and I’m very interested in seeing what has changed. I don’t know a lot of people in Cuba, and may have some dead time with no internet access. If so, I look forward to doing a lot of writing.
I’ll be in the Miami airport for a couple of hours in the early afternoon. Otherwise, I’ll be hard to contact. I look forward to posting here when I’m able.
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