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Biden has been trying to rewrite his Iraq War history, with only sporadic and halfhearted media pushback. (Photo: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
For pundits, what makes a politician strong on foreign policy? Apparently doing something for a long time matters more than honesty and good judgment--and it helps if the bad choices made are the same ones corporate media have cheered.
With Donald Trump's recent assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, foreign policy has taken the spotlight in the presidential race. But despite Democratic candidate Joe Biden's prominent role in leading the US into the disastrous Iraq War, and his recent stream of lies and equivocations about why he supported it and when he began to reverse his position, many pundits continue to uncritically paint Biden as "mature" or a "steady hand" on foreign policy.
It shouldn't exactly come as a surprise: When Barack Obama tapped Biden as his running mate in 2008, pundits lauded the choice as "shoring up" Obama's "weakness" on foreign policy. It was precisely because of Biden's initial support for the Iraq War (which Obama had opposed) that media observers saw him as a serious foreign policy thinker, given that those same media observers likewise initially supported the war (FAIR.org, 8/27/08).
In recent days on the campaign trail, Biden has touted his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while Bernie Sanders has hammered Biden on his Iraq vote. (Sanders voted against the war authorization.) On NBC's Meet the Press (1/5/20), Chuck Todd contrasted Biden and Sanders, wondering if
voters are going to look at this on the Democratic side of the aisle and say, "Steady hand, Joe Biden," or, how about the guy who was always against the interventions here? I don't think we know how Democratic voters are going to react.
Perhaps not--though more Democratic voters are troubled by Biden's past support for the Iraq War than reassured by it. But by uncritically labeling Biden--who changed both his position on the Iraq War and his story about that position--as a "steady hand" on foreign policy, Todd certainly boosts the narrative Biden is hoping for.
That same sort of uncritical framing of experience as strength came out on the PBS NewsHour (1/6/20), where the New York Times' Lisa Lerer opined:
But I do think this could strengthen the hand of two men that have been leading the polls for a while, that have been rising in the limited data we have since the holidays, which is Joe Biden, who can run very strongly on his experience in foreign policy, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's really staked out ground as the liberal messenger, sort of the anti-interventionist face of the party.
Later in the show, when Judy Woodruff asked David Brooks and Mark Shields which candidates benefit from the escalation with Iran, both named Biden; Shields argued that Biden "offers stability and maturity and knowledge."
On MSNBC (1/3/20), Steve Kornacki asked Mieke Eoyang of the centrist think tank Third Way:
Is there an advantage, perhaps, for Joe Biden, just given his depth of experience in the United States Senate and as vice president, compared to, say, Pete Buttigieg, who's only been the mayor of South Bend, which hasn't necessarily dealt with these many foreign policy issues?
Teed up nicely, Eoyang took the shot for Biden:
He's actually been very thoughtful about how American national security policy can target people who are bad while not trying to get us dragged into full-on wars. I don't think there are other candidates who have that kind of experience. And so if the American electorate is really concerned about the president's reckless moves, and are looking for someone who's a steadying, grown-up hand on foreign policy, that's Joe Biden. That's, frankly, why Barack Obama picked him as his vice president.
How Iraq--arguably the biggest foreign policy issue of his career--fits into Biden's thoughtfulness about not getting us "dragged into full-on wars" is far from clear.
The problem with the media coverage of Biden on foreign policy isn't limited to thoughtless boosting; since at least July, Biden has been trying to rewrite his Iraq War history, with only sporadic and halfhearted media pushback. In the July debate, Biden was asked about his October 2002 vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq; he responded with an outlandish claim: "From the moment 'shock and awe' started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress."
It was an obvious falsehood; Biden continued to defend his vote until more than three years later (Meet the Press, 11/27/05), when he first called it a "mistake"--and even then, not because the war itself was wrong, but because "we went too soon. We went without sufficient force. And we went without a plan." (At that point, support for the war had tanked to the point where people who believed the Iraq War wasn't worth it outnumbered those who thought it was by 2-to-1.)
But the media silence was remarkable. In one of the few post-debate references to the Iraq discussion, the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum (8/4/19) complained that Iraq was old news:
The glancing references to the Middle East mostly involved posturing about the past--specifically about how the candidates did or didn't support the Iraq War more than 16 years ago.
Biden upped the ante on his tall tales in interviews in early September (e.g., RealClearPolitics, 9/11/19; NPR, 9/3/19), and brought the even more brazen revision to the national stage in the September debate, claiming he only voted for the war authorization "to allow inspectors to go in to determine whether or not anything was being done with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons."
That finally prompted a few media factchecks (e.g., Washington Post, 9/9/19; Slate, 9/4/19) that challenged Biden's blatant fabrication (though the Post generously suggested that Biden "would be on more solid ground if he simply called himself a war critic.") In fact, Iraq had announced in September 2002 its willingness to allow in inspectors without conditions--almost a month before Biden cast his vote. Inspections began in November, and the inspectors were not pulled out until March, when Bush announced he was about to launch his war.
But Biden was also never interested in letting inspectors do their work; when former chief UN inspector Scott Ritter testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1998 about his work--telling the committee that the US was undermining inspections--Biden scoffed:
I think you and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam's at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam's program relative to weapons of mass destruction. And you and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it's a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein, is we're going to end up having to start it alone.
It's difficult, of course, for corporate media to scrutinize Biden too carefully on the inspectors issue--with a long record of garbling the inspection story (Extra! Update, 10/02), of letting politicians lie about inspections (FAIR.org, 12/2/08) and of hiding behind the inspectors to excuse their own role in leading the country into war (Extra! Update, 10/06).
The occasional media factchecks fail to substantially shift the coverage, as media outlets seem to view factchecking as relieving journalists of the obligation to routinely test the veracity of sources' statements (Extra!, 11-12/04). To the New York Times (1/6/19), Biden's changing stories don't get in the way of their judgment that he "is perhaps at his most fluent and comfortable when discussing international affairs"; near the very end, the paper allowed that Biden's "remarks about when his opposition to the [Iraq] war began" were found by CNN to "be misleading."
In a piece headlined "Biden Touts His Foreign Policy Credentials, but Faces Doubts," the Washington Post (1/6/20) only meekly challenged Biden's claim to have opposed the Iraq War "from the very moment" it started, noting that "the record suggests he supported it initially." The article went on to take at face value Biden's recent claim about Bush promising Biden he only wanted to get authority to send in inspectors, though labeling it an answer that "seemed to undercut his argument about how savvy he is on the international stage."
The Post was not alone: the Associated Press (1/7/20) and LA Times (1/8/20) also repeated that recent Biden claim without challenge.
If journalists were consistently calling out Biden's Iraq War lies--not to mention reminding viewers and readers that the war cost hundreds of thousands of human lives, aside from a financial cost in the trillions of dollars--their worn-out tropes about Biden's foreign policy "steadiness" would be incredibly difficult to sustain.
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For pundits, what makes a politician strong on foreign policy? Apparently doing something for a long time matters more than honesty and good judgment--and it helps if the bad choices made are the same ones corporate media have cheered.
With Donald Trump's recent assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, foreign policy has taken the spotlight in the presidential race. But despite Democratic candidate Joe Biden's prominent role in leading the US into the disastrous Iraq War, and his recent stream of lies and equivocations about why he supported it and when he began to reverse his position, many pundits continue to uncritically paint Biden as "mature" or a "steady hand" on foreign policy.
It shouldn't exactly come as a surprise: When Barack Obama tapped Biden as his running mate in 2008, pundits lauded the choice as "shoring up" Obama's "weakness" on foreign policy. It was precisely because of Biden's initial support for the Iraq War (which Obama had opposed) that media observers saw him as a serious foreign policy thinker, given that those same media observers likewise initially supported the war (FAIR.org, 8/27/08).
In recent days on the campaign trail, Biden has touted his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while Bernie Sanders has hammered Biden on his Iraq vote. (Sanders voted against the war authorization.) On NBC's Meet the Press (1/5/20), Chuck Todd contrasted Biden and Sanders, wondering if
voters are going to look at this on the Democratic side of the aisle and say, "Steady hand, Joe Biden," or, how about the guy who was always against the interventions here? I don't think we know how Democratic voters are going to react.
Perhaps not--though more Democratic voters are troubled by Biden's past support for the Iraq War than reassured by it. But by uncritically labeling Biden--who changed both his position on the Iraq War and his story about that position--as a "steady hand" on foreign policy, Todd certainly boosts the narrative Biden is hoping for.
That same sort of uncritical framing of experience as strength came out on the PBS NewsHour (1/6/20), where the New York Times' Lisa Lerer opined:
But I do think this could strengthen the hand of two men that have been leading the polls for a while, that have been rising in the limited data we have since the holidays, which is Joe Biden, who can run very strongly on his experience in foreign policy, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's really staked out ground as the liberal messenger, sort of the anti-interventionist face of the party.
Later in the show, when Judy Woodruff asked David Brooks and Mark Shields which candidates benefit from the escalation with Iran, both named Biden; Shields argued that Biden "offers stability and maturity and knowledge."
On MSNBC (1/3/20), Steve Kornacki asked Mieke Eoyang of the centrist think tank Third Way:
Is there an advantage, perhaps, for Joe Biden, just given his depth of experience in the United States Senate and as vice president, compared to, say, Pete Buttigieg, who's only been the mayor of South Bend, which hasn't necessarily dealt with these many foreign policy issues?
Teed up nicely, Eoyang took the shot for Biden:
He's actually been very thoughtful about how American national security policy can target people who are bad while not trying to get us dragged into full-on wars. I don't think there are other candidates who have that kind of experience. And so if the American electorate is really concerned about the president's reckless moves, and are looking for someone who's a steadying, grown-up hand on foreign policy, that's Joe Biden. That's, frankly, why Barack Obama picked him as his vice president.
How Iraq--arguably the biggest foreign policy issue of his career--fits into Biden's thoughtfulness about not getting us "dragged into full-on wars" is far from clear.
The problem with the media coverage of Biden on foreign policy isn't limited to thoughtless boosting; since at least July, Biden has been trying to rewrite his Iraq War history, with only sporadic and halfhearted media pushback. In the July debate, Biden was asked about his October 2002 vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq; he responded with an outlandish claim: "From the moment 'shock and awe' started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress."
It was an obvious falsehood; Biden continued to defend his vote until more than three years later (Meet the Press, 11/27/05), when he first called it a "mistake"--and even then, not because the war itself was wrong, but because "we went too soon. We went without sufficient force. And we went without a plan." (At that point, support for the war had tanked to the point where people who believed the Iraq War wasn't worth it outnumbered those who thought it was by 2-to-1.)
But the media silence was remarkable. In one of the few post-debate references to the Iraq discussion, the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum (8/4/19) complained that Iraq was old news:
The glancing references to the Middle East mostly involved posturing about the past--specifically about how the candidates did or didn't support the Iraq War more than 16 years ago.
Biden upped the ante on his tall tales in interviews in early September (e.g., RealClearPolitics, 9/11/19; NPR, 9/3/19), and brought the even more brazen revision to the national stage in the September debate, claiming he only voted for the war authorization "to allow inspectors to go in to determine whether or not anything was being done with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons."
That finally prompted a few media factchecks (e.g., Washington Post, 9/9/19; Slate, 9/4/19) that challenged Biden's blatant fabrication (though the Post generously suggested that Biden "would be on more solid ground if he simply called himself a war critic.") In fact, Iraq had announced in September 2002 its willingness to allow in inspectors without conditions--almost a month before Biden cast his vote. Inspections began in November, and the inspectors were not pulled out until March, when Bush announced he was about to launch his war.
But Biden was also never interested in letting inspectors do their work; when former chief UN inspector Scott Ritter testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1998 about his work--telling the committee that the US was undermining inspections--Biden scoffed:
I think you and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam's at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam's program relative to weapons of mass destruction. And you and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it's a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein, is we're going to end up having to start it alone.
It's difficult, of course, for corporate media to scrutinize Biden too carefully on the inspectors issue--with a long record of garbling the inspection story (Extra! Update, 10/02), of letting politicians lie about inspections (FAIR.org, 12/2/08) and of hiding behind the inspectors to excuse their own role in leading the country into war (Extra! Update, 10/06).
The occasional media factchecks fail to substantially shift the coverage, as media outlets seem to view factchecking as relieving journalists of the obligation to routinely test the veracity of sources' statements (Extra!, 11-12/04). To the New York Times (1/6/19), Biden's changing stories don't get in the way of their judgment that he "is perhaps at his most fluent and comfortable when discussing international affairs"; near the very end, the paper allowed that Biden's "remarks about when his opposition to the [Iraq] war began" were found by CNN to "be misleading."
In a piece headlined "Biden Touts His Foreign Policy Credentials, but Faces Doubts," the Washington Post (1/6/20) only meekly challenged Biden's claim to have opposed the Iraq War "from the very moment" it started, noting that "the record suggests he supported it initially." The article went on to take at face value Biden's recent claim about Bush promising Biden he only wanted to get authority to send in inspectors, though labeling it an answer that "seemed to undercut his argument about how savvy he is on the international stage."
The Post was not alone: the Associated Press (1/7/20) and LA Times (1/8/20) also repeated that recent Biden claim without challenge.
If journalists were consistently calling out Biden's Iraq War lies--not to mention reminding viewers and readers that the war cost hundreds of thousands of human lives, aside from a financial cost in the trillions of dollars--their worn-out tropes about Biden's foreign policy "steadiness" would be incredibly difficult to sustain.
For pundits, what makes a politician strong on foreign policy? Apparently doing something for a long time matters more than honesty and good judgment--and it helps if the bad choices made are the same ones corporate media have cheered.
With Donald Trump's recent assassination of Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, foreign policy has taken the spotlight in the presidential race. But despite Democratic candidate Joe Biden's prominent role in leading the US into the disastrous Iraq War, and his recent stream of lies and equivocations about why he supported it and when he began to reverse his position, many pundits continue to uncritically paint Biden as "mature" or a "steady hand" on foreign policy.
It shouldn't exactly come as a surprise: When Barack Obama tapped Biden as his running mate in 2008, pundits lauded the choice as "shoring up" Obama's "weakness" on foreign policy. It was precisely because of Biden's initial support for the Iraq War (which Obama had opposed) that media observers saw him as a serious foreign policy thinker, given that those same media observers likewise initially supported the war (FAIR.org, 8/27/08).
In recent days on the campaign trail, Biden has touted his years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, while Bernie Sanders has hammered Biden on his Iraq vote. (Sanders voted against the war authorization.) On NBC's Meet the Press (1/5/20), Chuck Todd contrasted Biden and Sanders, wondering if
voters are going to look at this on the Democratic side of the aisle and say, "Steady hand, Joe Biden," or, how about the guy who was always against the interventions here? I don't think we know how Democratic voters are going to react.
Perhaps not--though more Democratic voters are troubled by Biden's past support for the Iraq War than reassured by it. But by uncritically labeling Biden--who changed both his position on the Iraq War and his story about that position--as a "steady hand" on foreign policy, Todd certainly boosts the narrative Biden is hoping for.
That same sort of uncritical framing of experience as strength came out on the PBS NewsHour (1/6/20), where the New York Times' Lisa Lerer opined:
But I do think this could strengthen the hand of two men that have been leading the polls for a while, that have been rising in the limited data we have since the holidays, which is Joe Biden, who can run very strongly on his experience in foreign policy, and Sen. Bernie Sanders, who's really staked out ground as the liberal messenger, sort of the anti-interventionist face of the party.
Later in the show, when Judy Woodruff asked David Brooks and Mark Shields which candidates benefit from the escalation with Iran, both named Biden; Shields argued that Biden "offers stability and maturity and knowledge."
On MSNBC (1/3/20), Steve Kornacki asked Mieke Eoyang of the centrist think tank Third Way:
Is there an advantage, perhaps, for Joe Biden, just given his depth of experience in the United States Senate and as vice president, compared to, say, Pete Buttigieg, who's only been the mayor of South Bend, which hasn't necessarily dealt with these many foreign policy issues?
Teed up nicely, Eoyang took the shot for Biden:
He's actually been very thoughtful about how American national security policy can target people who are bad while not trying to get us dragged into full-on wars. I don't think there are other candidates who have that kind of experience. And so if the American electorate is really concerned about the president's reckless moves, and are looking for someone who's a steadying, grown-up hand on foreign policy, that's Joe Biden. That's, frankly, why Barack Obama picked him as his vice president.
How Iraq--arguably the biggest foreign policy issue of his career--fits into Biden's thoughtfulness about not getting us "dragged into full-on wars" is far from clear.
The problem with the media coverage of Biden on foreign policy isn't limited to thoughtless boosting; since at least July, Biden has been trying to rewrite his Iraq War history, with only sporadic and halfhearted media pushback. In the July debate, Biden was asked about his October 2002 vote authorizing the use of force in Iraq; he responded with an outlandish claim: "From the moment 'shock and awe' started, from that moment, I was opposed to the effort, and I was outspoken as much as anyone at all in the Congress."
It was an obvious falsehood; Biden continued to defend his vote until more than three years later (Meet the Press, 11/27/05), when he first called it a "mistake"--and even then, not because the war itself was wrong, but because "we went too soon. We went without sufficient force. And we went without a plan." (At that point, support for the war had tanked to the point where people who believed the Iraq War wasn't worth it outnumbered those who thought it was by 2-to-1.)
But the media silence was remarkable. In one of the few post-debate references to the Iraq discussion, the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum (8/4/19) complained that Iraq was old news:
The glancing references to the Middle East mostly involved posturing about the past--specifically about how the candidates did or didn't support the Iraq War more than 16 years ago.
Biden upped the ante on his tall tales in interviews in early September (e.g., RealClearPolitics, 9/11/19; NPR, 9/3/19), and brought the even more brazen revision to the national stage in the September debate, claiming he only voted for the war authorization "to allow inspectors to go in to determine whether or not anything was being done with chemical weapons or nuclear weapons."
That finally prompted a few media factchecks (e.g., Washington Post, 9/9/19; Slate, 9/4/19) that challenged Biden's blatant fabrication (though the Post generously suggested that Biden "would be on more solid ground if he simply called himself a war critic.") In fact, Iraq had announced in September 2002 its willingness to allow in inspectors without conditions--almost a month before Biden cast his vote. Inspections began in November, and the inspectors were not pulled out until March, when Bush announced he was about to launch his war.
But Biden was also never interested in letting inspectors do their work; when former chief UN inspector Scott Ritter testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1998 about his work--telling the committee that the US was undermining inspections--Biden scoffed:
I think you and I believe, and many of us believe here, as long as Saddam's at the helm, there is no reasonable prospect you or any other inspector is ever going to be able to guarantee that we have rooted out, root and branch, the entirety of Saddam's program relative to weapons of mass destruction. And you and I both know, and all of us here really know, and it's a thing we have to face, that the only way, the only way we're going to get rid of Saddam Hussein, is we're going to end up having to start it alone.
It's difficult, of course, for corporate media to scrutinize Biden too carefully on the inspectors issue--with a long record of garbling the inspection story (Extra! Update, 10/02), of letting politicians lie about inspections (FAIR.org, 12/2/08) and of hiding behind the inspectors to excuse their own role in leading the country into war (Extra! Update, 10/06).
The occasional media factchecks fail to substantially shift the coverage, as media outlets seem to view factchecking as relieving journalists of the obligation to routinely test the veracity of sources' statements (Extra!, 11-12/04). To the New York Times (1/6/19), Biden's changing stories don't get in the way of their judgment that he "is perhaps at his most fluent and comfortable when discussing international affairs"; near the very end, the paper allowed that Biden's "remarks about when his opposition to the [Iraq] war began" were found by CNN to "be misleading."
In a piece headlined "Biden Touts His Foreign Policy Credentials, but Faces Doubts," the Washington Post (1/6/20) only meekly challenged Biden's claim to have opposed the Iraq War "from the very moment" it started, noting that "the record suggests he supported it initially." The article went on to take at face value Biden's recent claim about Bush promising Biden he only wanted to get authority to send in inspectors, though labeling it an answer that "seemed to undercut his argument about how savvy he is on the international stage."
The Post was not alone: the Associated Press (1/7/20) and LA Times (1/8/20) also repeated that recent Biden claim without challenge.
If journalists were consistently calling out Biden's Iraq War lies--not to mention reminding viewers and readers that the war cost hundreds of thousands of human lives, aside from a financial cost in the trillions of dollars--their worn-out tropes about Biden's foreign policy "steadiness" would be incredibly difficult to sustain.
"President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice," said the head of one watchdog group.
With preparations to refit a Qatari jet to be used as Air Force One "underway," a press freedom group sued the U.S. Department of Justice in federal court on Monday for failing to release the DOJ memorandum about the legality of President Donald Trump accepting the $400 million "flying palace."
The Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), represented by nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, filed the lawsuit seeking the memo, which was reportedly approved by the Office of Legal Counsel and signed by U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who previously lobbied on behalf of the Qatari government.
FPF had submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for the memo on May 15, and the DOJ told the group that fulfilling it would take over 600 days.
"How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
"It shouldn't take 620 days to release a single, time-sensitive document," said Lauren Harper, FPF's Daniel Ellsberg chair on government secrecy, in a Monday statement. "How many flights could Trump have taken on his new plane in the same amount of time it would have taken the DOJ to release this one document?"
The complaint—filed in the District of Columbia—notes that the airplane is set to be donated to Trump's private presidential library foundation after his second term. Harper said that "the government's inability to administer FOIA makes it too easy for agencies to keep secrets, and nonexistent disclosure rules around donations to presidential libraries provide easy cover for bad actors and potential corruption."
It's not just FPF sounding the alarm about the aircraft. The complaint points out that "a number of stakeholders, including ethics experts and several GOP lawmakers, have questioned the propriety and legality of the move, including whether acceptance of the plane would violate the U.S. Constitution's foreign emoluments clause... which prohibits a president from receiving gifts or benefits from foreign governments without the consent of Congress."
Some opponents of the "comically corrupt" so-called gift stressed that it came after the Trump Organization, the Saudi partner DarGlobal, and a company owned by the Qatari government reached a deal to build a luxury golf resort in Qatar.
Despite some initial GOP criticism of the president taking the aircraft, just hours after the Trump administration formally accepted the jet in May, U.S. Senate Republicans thwarted an attempt by Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to pass by unanimous consent legislation intended to prevent a foreign plane from serving as Air Force One.
"Although President Trump characterized the deal as a smart business decision, remarking that it would be 'stupid' not to accept 'a free, very expensive airplane,' experts have noted that it will be costly to retrofit the jet for use as Air Force One, with estimatesranging from less than $400 million to more than $1 billion," the complaint states.
As The New York Times reported Sunday:
Officially, and conveniently, the price tag has been classified. But even by Washington standards, where "black budgets" are often used as an excuse to avoid revealing the cost of outdated spy satellites and lavish end-of-year parties, the techniques being used to hide the cost of Mr. Trump's pet project are inventive.
Which may explain why no one wants to discuss a mysterious, $934 million transfer of funds from one of the Pentagon's most over-budget, out-of-control projects—the modernization of America's aging, ground-based nuclear missiles...
Air Force officials privately concede that they are paying for renovations of the Qatari Air Force One with the transfer from another the massively-over-budget, behind-schedule program, called the Sentinel.
Preparations to refit the plane "are underway, and floor plans or schematics have been seen by senior U.S. officials," according to Monday reporting by CBS News. One unnamed budget official who spoke to the outlet also "believes the money to pay for upgrades will come from the Sentinel program."
Chioma Chukwu, executive director of American Oversight, said Monday that "President Trump's deal to take a $400 million luxury jet from a foreign government deserves full public scrutiny—not a stiff-arm from the Department of Justice."
"This is precisely the kind of corrupt arrangement that public records laws are designed to expose," Chukwu added. "The DOJ cannot sit on its hands and expect the American people to wait years for the truth while serious questions about corruption, self-dealing, and foreign influence go unanswered."
The complaint highlights that "Bondi's decision not to recuse herself from this matter, despite her links to the Qatari government, adds to a growing body of questionable ethical practices that have arisen during her short tenure as attorney general."
It also emphasizes that "the Qatari jet is just one in a list of current and prospective extravagant donations to President Trump's presidential library foundation that has raised significant questions about the use of private foundation donations to improperly influence government policy."
"Notably, ABC News and Paramount each agreed to resolve cases President Trump filed against the media entities by paying multimillion-dollar settlements to the Trump presidential library foundation, with Paramount's $16 million agreed payout coming at the same time it sought government approval for a planned merger with Skydance," the filing details. "On July 24, the Federal Communications Commission announced its approval of the $8 billion merger."
"The Trump regime just handed Christian nationalists a loaded weapon: your federal workplace," said one critic.
The Trump administration issued a memo Monday allowing federal employees to proselytize in the workplace, a move welcomed by many conservatives but denounced by proponents of the separation of church and state.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memo "provides clear guidance to ensure federal employees may express their religious beliefs through prayer, personal items, group gatherings, and conversations without fear of discrimination or retaliation."
"Employees must be allowed to engage in private religious expression in work areas to the same extent that they may engage in nonreligious private expression," the memo states.
Federal workers "should be permitted to display and use items used for religious purposes or icons of a religiously significant nature, including but not limited to bibles, artwork, jewelry, posters displaying religious messages, and other indicia of religion (such as crosses, crucifixes, and mezuzahs) on their desks, on their person, and in their assigned workspaces," the document continues.
"Employees may engage in conversations regarding religious topics with fellow employees, including attempting to persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views, provided that such efforts are not harassing in nature," OPM said—without elaborating on what constitutes harassment.
"These shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing."
"Employees may also encourage their coworkers to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer, to the same extent that they would be permitted to encourage coworkers participate in other personal activities," the memo adds.
OPM Director Scott Kupor said in a statement that "federal employees should never have to choose between their faith and their career."
"This guidance ensures the federal workplace is not just compliant with the law but welcoming to Americans of all faiths," Kupor added. "Under President [Donald] Trump's leadership, we are restoring constitutional freedoms and making government a place where people of faith are respected, not sidelined."
The OPM memo was widely applauded by conservative social media users—although some were dismayed that the new rules also apply to Muslims.
Critics, however, blasted what the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF) called "a gift to evangelicals and the myth of 'anti-Christian bias.'"
FFRF co-president Laurie Gaylor said that "these shocking changes essentially permit workplace evangelizing, but worse still, allow supervisors to evangelize underlings and federal workers to proselytize the public they serve."
"This is the implementation of Christian nationalism in our federal government," Gaylor added.
The Secular Coalition for America denounced the memo as "another effort to grant privileges to certain religions while ignoring nonreligious people's rights."
Monday's memo follows another issued by Kupor on July 16 that encouraged federal agencies to take a "generous approach" to evaluating government employees who request telework and other flexibilities due to their religious beliefs.
The OPM directives follow the U.S. Supreme Court's 2023 Groff v. DeJoy ruling, in which the court's right-wing majority declared that Article VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 "requires an employer that denies a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting an accommodation would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business."
The new memo also comes on the heels of three religion-based executive orders issued by Trump during his second term. One order established a White House Faith Office tasked with ensuring religious organizations have a voice in the federal government. Another seeks to "eradicate" what Trump claims is the "anti-Christian weaponization of government." Yet another created a Religious Liberty Commission meant to promote and protect religious freedom.
Awda Hathaleen was described as "a teacher and an activist who struggled courageously for his people."
A Palestinian peace activist has been fatally shot by a notorious Israeli settler who was once the subject of sanctions that were lifted this year by U.S. President Donald Trump.
In June, Awda Hathaleen—an English teacher, activist, and former soccer player from the occupied West Bank—was detained alongside his cousin Eid at the airport in San Francisco, where they were about to embark on an interfaith speaking tour organized by the California-based Kehilla Community Synagogue.
Ben Linder, co-chair of the Silicon Valley chapter of J Street and the organizer of Eid and Awda's first scheduled speaking engagement told Middle East Eye that he'd known the two cousins for 10 years, describing them as "true nonviolent peace activists" who "came here on an interfaith peace-promoting mission."
Without explanation from U.S. authorities, they were deported and returned to their village of Umm al-Khair in the South Hebron Hills.
On Monday afternoon, the activist group Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) reported on social media that Awda Hathaleen had been killed after Israeli settlers attacked his village and that a relative of his was also severely injured:
Activists working with Awda report that Israeli settlers invaded Umm al-Kheir with a bulldozer to destroy what little remains of the Palestinian village. As Awda and his family tried to defend their homes and land, a settler opened fire—both aiming directly and shooting indiscriminately. Awda was shot in the chest and later died from his injuries after being taken by an Israeli ambulance. His death was the result of brutal settler violence.
Later, when Awda's relative Ahmad al-Hathaleen tried to block the bulldozer, the settler driving it ran him over. Ahmad is now being treated in a nearby hospital.
The Israeli newspaper Haaretz later confirmed these events, adding:
An eyewitness reported that the entry of Israeli settlers into Palestinian private lands, riding an excavator, caused a commotion, and the vehicle subsequently struck a resident named Ahmad Hathaleen. "People lost their minds, and the children threw stones," he said.
A friend and fellow activist, Mohammad Hureini, posted the video of the attack online. The settler who fired the gun has been identified by Haaretz as Yinon Levi, who has previously been hit—along with other settlers—with sanctions by former U.S. President Joe Biden's administration and other governments over his past harassment of Palestinians in the West Bank.
As the Biden State Department wrote at the time:
Levi consistently leads a group of settlers who attack Palestinians, set fire to their fields, destroy their property, and threaten them with further harm if they do not leave their homes.
The sanctions were later lifted by U.S. President Donald Trump. However, they'd already been rendered virtually ineffective after the intervention of far-right Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who has expressed a desire to ethnically cleanse Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians to make way for Jewish settlements.
Brooklyn-based journalist Jasper Nathaniel, who has covered other cases of settler violence for Zeteo described Levi as "a known terrorist who's been protected by the Israeli government for years," adding that, "One of the only good things Biden did for Palestine was sanction him."
Violence by Israeli settlers in the illegally-occupied West Bank has risen sharply since the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas and the subsequent 21-month military campaign by Israel in Gaza.
Nearly 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by settlers during that time. More than 6,400 have been forcibly displaced following the demolition of their homes by Israel, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The killing of Awda Hathaleen—who had a wife and three young children—has been met with outpourings of grief and anger from his fellow peace activists in the United States, Israel, and Palestine.
Issa Amro, the Hebron-based co-founder of the grassroots group Youth Against Settlements, described Awda as a "beloved hero."
"Awda stood with dignity and courage against oppression," Amro said. "His loss is a deep wound to our hearts and our struggle for justice."
Israeli journalist and filmmaker Yuval Abraham, who last year directed the Oscar-winning documentary No Other Land about the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, described Awda Hathaleen as "a remarkable activist," and thanked him for helping his team shoot the film in Masafer Yatta.
"To know Awda Hathaleen is to love him," said the post from JVP announcing his death. "Awda has always been a pillar amongst his family, his village and the wider international community of activists who had the pleasure to meet Awda."
Israeli-American peace activist Mattan Berner-Kadish wrote: "May his memory be a revolution. I will remember him smiling, laughing, dreaming of a better future for his children. We must make it so."