Trump's Immigration Clampdown Hurts the Heartland →

...That could choke off the flows of overseas tuition dollars and research funding that now power many local economies in the Midwest and South.
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Unlike local students, the international kids usually pay full sticker price -- about $13,000 in 2014, compared with an in-state price of about $4,500. That means foreign students aren’t taking away spots from the locals; they’re actually subsidizing their education, by tens of millions of dollars a year. Rich parents in places such as China and India, anxious for their kids to get an American degree, pay big bucks to send them to places like Fort Hays State. That money helps local Kansas kids get a good education for much less than they otherwise would. Most of those overseas students eventually go home, and the Kansas kids get a lifetime earnings boost.
And even more importantly, the local economy gains. It benefits from the dollars that those international students spend on meals, clothes and movies. It benefits from all the services the university buys from electricians, plumbers and construction companies. That’s why places where the U.S. government established land grant universities long ago have a big economic advantage today.
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As economist Adam Ozimek points out, educating international students is an export industry that brings in tens of billions of dollars a year. Want to decrease the U.S. trade deficit? Recruit more international students for U.S. colleges. Want to save the economies of places in the Rust Belt, and boost the growth of small cities and towns outside the thriving coasts? Attract international students. Want to help Trump’s small-town working-class voter base? Get more international students.

Iran Hawks Take the White House →

The United States is adding new sanctions on Iran over that country’s alleged misdeeds, and nearly all of those allegations are either out-and-out lies or half-truths. It has a familiar ring to it, as demonizing Tehran has been rather more the norm than not since 1979, a phenomenon that has included fabricated claims that the Iranians killed American soldiers after the U.S.’s armed interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This time around, the administration focused on the perfectly legal Iranian test of a non-nuclear-capable, medium-range ballistic missile and the reported attack on what was initially claimed to be a U.S. warship by allegedly Iranian-backed Yemeni Houthi fighters. The ship was later revealed to be a Saudi frigate.
Donald Trump’s national-security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, “officially” put Iran “on notice” while declaring that “The Trump Administration will no longer tolerate Iran’s provocations that threaten our interests. The days of turning a blind eye to Iran’s hostile and belligerent actions toward the United States and the world community are over.”
Ignoring the fact that Iran cannot actually threaten the United States or any genuine vital national interests, the warning and follow-up action from the White House also contradict Donald Trump’s campaign pledge to avoid yet another war in the Middle East, which appears to have escaped Flynn’s notice. The increase in tension and the lack of any diplomatic dialogue mean that an actual shooting war might now be a “false flag,” false intelligence report, or accidental naval encounter away.
If it all sounds like a reprise of the baseless allegations and intentionally unproductive negotiations that led to the catastrophic Iraq War, it should. What “belligerent actions against the United States” Flynn was referring to, generally speaking, were not completely clear, but that lack of precision may have been intentional, to permit instant vilification of anything Tehran attempts to do to counter the hostility coming out of Washington.
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Iran certainly exhibits assertive behavior regionally. But much of its maneuvering is defensive in nature; it is surrounded by a sea of enemies, most of whom are better armed and funded than it is. The nuclear agreement with Iran has considerably delayed any possible development of a nuclear weapon and is in everyone’s interest. It is not plausibly a delaying tactic to acquire a weapon somewhere down the road, as Flynn and Ledeen would have us believe.
Iran will be a very tough nut to crack if Flynn has his way and the Trump White House employs military force. Iran is roughly the same size as Alaska and has three times the population of Iraq, and the Iranian people have a strong national identity. They would fight hard, and using their sophisticated Russian-provided air defenses and Chinese missiles they could inflict major damage on U.S. air and naval units in the Persian Gulf region. They would also be able to unleash limited but nevertheless lethal terrorist resources. It would not be a “cakewalk,” and even if there were a military victory of some sorts, the world would be left with yet another power vacuum in the heart of Asia.
I believe that Flynn is a dangerous man, possibly even mentally unhinged on some issues. He thinks that the United States has the preemptive right to tell countries in the Middle East what is acceptable and what is not and is willing to exercise various repressive measures to compel good behavior. Iran, as a designated “problem state,” is consequently not allowed to act in support of its own national-security interests. Flynn justifies his hostility by claiming that Iran is the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism and instability, which is a self-serving lie. Absent diplomacy to resolve differences, the only interaction with Tehran from Washington has become the threat of economic sanctions backed up by military force. As Iran responds in kind this will become an escalatory cycle with no easy way out.

Republicans Are Moving To Scrap Rules That Limit Overdraft Fees →

The vast majority of prepaid debit cards don’t come with overdraft fees, but NetSpend’s do, and the fees accounted for 10-12% of its overall revenue in 2016, or $80-85 million, the company told investors in October. Its parent has spent big on lobbying and political donations in a bid to kill the rules: in the last three months of 2016 alone, it spent some $270,000 lobbying Congress.
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Because prepaid cards are used disproportionately by low-income consumers — NetSpend provides the prepaid cards sold by four of the country’s five largest payday loan companies — advocacy groups have pushed regulators to pay close attention to the industry, and to eliminate overdraft fees.
The rules also bring other features of traditional banking services to prepaid cards, like protection from unauthorized charges and requirements for clear descriptions of fees. An estimated 22.4 million people were using prepaid cards in 2014.
Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center, said reversing the rules will be an example of “members of Congress that support Wall Street and predatory lenders over working families.”

Strike tests Trump’s appeal to blue-collar workers →

One test of Trump's seriousness about helping the average worker will be how (or even if) he responds to labor disputes.

There’s no better example of those conflicting pressures than the strike outside the Momentive Performance Materials plant, where workers have been picketing for close to 100 days, protesting the latest round of givebacks demanded by the hedge fund managers who bought the plant when General Electric spun it off in 2006. That group of managers until recently included Steve Schwarzman, head of the private equity giant Blackstone — who chairs Trump’s advisory panel of CEOs known as the Strategy and Policy Forum. The panel’s mandate, Trump has said, is to “discuss all the things you think we can do to bring back our jobs.”
While Trump has been quick to rip companies on Twitter when they move jobs overseas, he hasn’t yet used his bully pulpit to take sides in a labor-management dispute...

The Supreme Court will examine partisan gerrymandering in 2017. That could change the voting map. →

Gerrymandering has helped give the Republican Party a significant advantage in Congress. Because Republicans had unified control of twice as many states as Democrats when the last congressional district maps were drawn, estimates suggest that gerrymandering before the 2012 elections cost Democrats between 20 and 41 seats in the House.
Partisan gerrymandering has become the norm in U.S. politics because the Supreme Court has declined to declare it unconstitutional. For three decades, a majority of justices have failed to identify manageable standards to determine when a plan rises to the level of an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander.
As a result, state legislators have come to believe that they can draw partisan gerrymanders so long as long as they satisfy two criteria: They do not violate one-person, one-vote standards and do not reduce the electoral fortunes of African Americans or other protected racial and ethnic groups. As a result, the 2010 round of redistricting saw partisan gerrymandering run amok in some states.
But change may be coming.
 
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Because recent computer-based partisan gerrymandering has been done very skillfully — mainly by wasting opposition votes in “packed” districts — and because increased partisanship has reduced the likelihood of split ticket voting, the results of most 2010 gerrymanders are unlikely to wear off. That gives Republicans a virtual lock on Congress for the rest of the decade. Moreover, the imbalance in unified control of states grew to a more than 4 to 1 Republican advantage following the 2016 elections, suggesting even more aggressive partisan gerrymandering is ahead of us in 2020 unless the Supreme Court acts.
If, in 2017, the court does not specify a manageable standard for identifying unconstitutional partisan gerrymandering, “partisanship gone wild” will continue indefinitely, leaving us with a never-ending political nightmare: congressional delegations whose partisan balance is frozen into place regardless of changes in the preferences of the voters.
Stopping egregious gerrymandering is not a partisan issue; it benefits Republicans right now, but in the past it has advantaged Democrats. Regardless of which political party gains, the loser is U.S. democracy.

The FBI Has Quietly Investigated White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement →

White supremacists and other domestic extremists maintain an active presence in U.S. police departments and other law enforcement agencies. A striking reference to that conclusion, notable for its confidence and the policy prescriptions that accompany it, appears in a classified FBI Counterterrorism Policy Guide from April 2015, obtained by The Intercept. The guide, which details the process by which the FBI enters individuals on a terrorism watchlist, the Known or Suspected Terrorist File, notes that “domestic terrorism investigations focused on militia extremists, white supremacist extremists, and sovereign citizen extremists often have identified active links to law enforcement officers,” and explains in some detail how bureau policies have been crafted to take this infiltration into account.
Although these right-wing extremists have posed a growing threat for years, federal investigators have been reluctant to publicly address that threat or to point out the movement’s longstanding strategy of infiltrating the law enforcement community.
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In a heavily redacted version of an October 2006 FBI internal intelligence assessment, the agency raised the alarm over white supremacist groups’ “historical” interest in “infiltrating law enforcement communities or recruiting law enforcement personnel.” The effort, the memo noted, “can lead to investigative breaches and can jeopardize the safety of law enforcement sources or personnel.” The memo also states that law enforcement had recently become aware of the term “ghost skins,” used among white supremacists to describe “those who avoid overt displays of their beliefs to blend into society and covertly advance white supremacist causes.” In at least one case, the FBI learned of a skinhead group encouraging ghost skins to seek employment with law enforcement agencies in order to warn crews of any investigations.
That report appeared after a series of scandals involving local police and sheriff’s departments. In Los Angeles, for example, a U.S. District Court judge found in 1991 that members of a local sheriff’s department had formed a neo-Nazi gang and habitually terrorized black and Latino residents. In Chicago, Jon Burge, a police detective and rumored KKK member, was fired, and eventually prosecuted in 2008, over charges relating to the torture of at least 120 black men during his decadeslong career. Burge notoriously referred to an electric shock device he used during interrogations as the “nigger box.” In Cleveland, officials found that a number of police officers had scrawled “racist or Nazi graffiti” throughout their department’s locker rooms. In Texas, two police officers were fired when it was discovered they were Klansmen. One of them said he had tried to boost the organization’s membership by giving an application to a fellow officer he thought shared his “white, Christian, heterosexual values.”