Politics
Obama-era hawk Samantha Power reportedly tapped as US foreign aid body head. Critics ask: Libya, Syria & Yemen legacy, anyone?
Critics of the hawkish Obama-era official were quick to conclude that if she is appointed to head the USAID, she would be dealing with the very same problems she “helped create.”
Joe Biden reportedly considers picking Samantha Power to head the relief agency USAID in his administration. If selected, she’ll be tackling humanitarian disasters that she “helped” create during Obama era, critics claim.
If she gets to be the next head of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), Power would “signal the Biden administration plans to revitalize foreign assistance and use it as an instrument of soft power and to achieve humanitarian goals”, according to the Axios news website, which reported her possible nomination. The decision is said not to be final yet.
Power served in the previous Democratic administration first as a member of the National Security Council and later as US envoy to the UN. The story of her banding together with then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and then-UN ambassador Susan Rice to lobby President Obama for a military intervention in Libya was widely circulated across the media.
The outcome of the 2011 NATO operation was utter devastation that persists today. Open slave markets popped up in the country, which is engulfed in a civil war and serves as a major route for the smuggling of people into Europe after Muammar Gaddafi was toppled.
Libya is considered to be one of the biggest failures of ‘Responsibility to Protect’ (R2P), a concept that Power helped to formulate, and which advocates the global use of force by powerful nations to protect human rights. She was also a strong supporter of US involvement in Syria and Yemen, two other places hit by terrible humanitarian disasters.
Critics of the hawkish Obama-era official were quick to conclude that if she is appointed to head the USAID, she would be dealing with the very same problems she “helped create.”
Power herself however appears to believe that the Biden administration should have other priorities.
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs magazine, Power lamented that the US is no longer seen as “indispensable” and increasingly perceived as “incompetent”, blaming the Trump presidency for it. She suggested that the Biden administration must “pursue foreign policy initiatives that can quickly highlight the return of American expertise and competence” and do so in a “highly visible” way.
This means less rhetorical emphasis on the abstract cause of ‘the liberal international order’ and more practical demonstrations of the United States’ distinctive ability to deliver.
She wrote that such opportunities will be offered by Covid-19 vaccine distribution, inviting foreign students to study in the US and fighting corruption at home and abroad. Libya, Syria and Yemen were not mentioned in the article.
Then again, her expressed sympathies are still with whoever resists foreign governments considered to be on the ‘bad side’ of Washington, as indicated by one of her latest tweets. In it she saluted the “courage” of anti-government opposition in Belarus, who are presumably becoming an “underground resistance.”
Politics
Biden Wants To Give Separated Illegal Immigrants $450,000 Per Person
The average amount sought through the courts is roughly $3.4 million per family, according to the report.
The Biden administration is mulling a plan to offer immigrant families separated during the Trump administration $450,000 per person in compensation, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the matter.
The payments – part of an inter-agency solution to several lawsuits filed on behalf of separated parents and children claiming lasting psychological trauma could amount to nearly $1 million per family, though ‘the final numbers could shift,’ according to the report.
According to sources, most of the families crossing into the US from Mexico included one parent and one child. Depending on circumstances, many families could get smaller payouts.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which represents families in one of the lawsuits, has identified about 5,500 children separated at the border over the course of the Trump administration, citing figures provided to it by the government. The number of families eligible under the potential settlement is expected to be smaller, the people said, as government officials aren’t sure how many will come forward. Around 940 claims have so far been filed by the families, the people said. -WSJ
In total, the potential payout could reach $1 billion or more.
Throughout the Trump administration, thousands of children were separated from their parents (and coyotes paid to bring them into the country) after they had crossed illegally into the country from Mexico. The lawsuits allege some of the children suffered various ailments – including malnutrition, heat exhaustion, and were kept in freezing cold rooms with little medical attention. Some claim lasting mental health problems due to the trauma of being without their parents for several months.
The average amount sought through the courts is roughly $3.4 million per family, according to the report.
“President Biden has agreed that the family separation policy is a historic moral stain on our nation that must be fully remedied,” said ACLU deputy director, Lee Gelernt. “That remedy must include not only meaningful monetary compensation, but a pathway to remain in the country.”
Senate Republicans slammed the plan on Thursday afternoon following the WSJ‘s report.
“The Biden administration’s promises of citizenship and entitlement programs have already caused the worst border crisis in history—a huge cash reward will make it even worse,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR).
The discussions about the payouts have taken place over the past few months among a group of dozens of private lawyers representing the families and government lawyers. Some government lawyers have viewed the payouts as excessive for people who had violated the law by crossing the border, the people said. One government lawyer threatened to remove his name from the case out of disagreement with the potential settlement offer, the people said. -WSJ
“It is a complicated, complex piece of litigation” – trying to resolve hundreds of separate lawsuits at the same time, and “sometimes even more complex to try the cases” said Margo Schlanger, who ran the civil-rights office during the Obama administration at the Department of Homeland Security and now teaches at the University of Michigan law school.
What will the reparations crowd think of this?
Politics
White House To America: ‘We’re Coming Door To Door…With Shots!’
Will CDC soon recommend a nation-wide re-count of Covid deaths?
White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said at the daily press conference yesterday that President Biden’s strategy to get everyone a Covid shot – whether they want it or not – is to start going “door-to-door” to those not yet jabbed. So…they have a list? Also today: bomb-maker Raytheon goes “woke.” Capitol Hill Cops set up shop in California. Will CDC soon recommend a nation-wide re-count of Covid deaths?
Politics
Half A Million Illegals Crossed Since Harris Named Border ‘Czar’
By the time June’s figures are reported in the coming days, the combined number is expected to be over half a million, more than the entire population of Miami, Florida or Cleveland, Ohio.
According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection figures, around 500,000 illegal immigrants have crossed the southern border since Kamala Harris was named border ‘czar’.
The Washington Free Beacon reported the findings, noting that only three months has passed since Harris took on the responsibility, and that the half a million figure is just those that have been apprehended.
The CBP says around 180,000 immigrants are being caught per month. In April agents arrested 178,854 illegal immigrants, the highest monthly figure for 21 years. That figure was then surpassed in May as agents apprehended 180,034 illegals.
By the time June’s figures are reported in the coming days, the combined number is expected to be over half a million, more than the entire population of Miami, Florida or Cleveland, Ohio.
Harris only bothered to visit the border when President Trump announced he was making a trip. Even then Harris visited El Paso, some 1000 miles away from where the crisis is taking place.
Previous to this, Harris lied and claimed she had been to the border, telling NBC’s Lester Holt “This whole thing about the border. We’ve been to the border. We’ve been to the border.”
When Holt pushed back and said she had not, Harris snapped “I—and I haven’t been to Europe. And I mean, I don’t—I don’t understand the point that you’re making,” then again laughed maniacally:
On Tuesday, Republican Senator Ron Johnson argued that Harris’ trip to El Paso was designed to distract the media and keep them away from the real crisis hit areas of the border.
“They took her to a point in the border where she wouldn’t see the crisis and so the press wouldn’t report on the crisis,” Johnson said.
The Senator added, “You just simply can’t understand what this administration is doing. We literally are apprehending now about 6,000 people per day. That’s I mean, that’s a large caravan every day being processed, some of them being returned, others are being dispersed. But this crisis is not going away. It’s just under everybody’s radar because the press isn’t covering it.”


