Dear Commons Community,

The  U.S. Supreme Court yesterday rejected a Republican-led challenge to a Biden administration policy that prioritizes the deportation of immigrants who are deemed to pose the greatest risk to public safety or were picked up at the border.

The justices voted 8-1 to allow the long-blocked policy to take effect, recognizing there is not enough money or manpower to deport all 11 million or so people who are in the United States illegally.

The case was one of two immigration cases decided yesterday, the other upholding a section of federal law used to prosecute people who encourage illegal immigration..

In the deportation case, Louisiana and Texas had argued that federal immigration law requires authorities to detain and expel those in the U.S. illegally even if they pose little or no risk.

But the court held that the states lacked the legal standing, or right to sue, in the first place.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote in his opinion for the court that the executive branch has no choice but to prioritize enforcement efforts.   As reported by the Associated Press.

“That is because the Executive Branch invariably lacks the resources to arrest and prosecute every violator of every law and must constantly react and adjust to the ever-shifting public-safety and public welfare needs of the American people,” Kavanaugh wrote.

At the center of the case is a September 2021 directive from the Department of Homeland Security that paused deportations unless individuals had committed acts of terrorism, espionage or “egregious threats to public safety.” The guidance, issued after Joe Biden became president, updated a Trump-era policy to remove people who were in the country illegally, regardless of criminal history or community ties.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas applauded Friday’s decision, saying it would allow immigration officers “to focus limited resources and enforcement actions on those who pose a threat to our national security, public safety and border security.”

The case displayed a frequently used litigation strategy by Republican attorneys general and other officials that has succeeded in slowing Biden administration initiatives by going to Republican-friendly courts.

Texas and Louisiana claimed in their lawsuit that they would face added costs of having to detain people the federal government might allow to remain free inside the United States, despite their criminal records.

Last year, a federal judge in Texas ordered a nationwide halt to the guidance and a federal appellate panel in New Orleans declined to step in.

A federal appeals court in Cincinnati had earlier overturned a district judge’s order that put the policy on hold in a lawsuit filed by Arizona, Ohio and Montana.

But 11 months ago, when the administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene, the justices voted 5-4 to keep the policy on hold. At the same time, the court agreed to hear the case, which was argued in December.

In Friday’s decision, Kavanaugh’s opinion spoke for just five justices, including Chief Justice John Roberts and the three liberals. Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the outcome for other reasons.

Justice Samuel Alito filed a solo dissent, writing that the decision improperly favors the president over Congress. “And it renders states already laboring under the effects of massive illegal immigration even more helpless,” Alito wrote.

Good decision!

Tony

Yevgeny Prigozhin

Dear Commons Community,

Russian mercenary chief Yevgeny Prigozhin said yesterday that the official Kremlin-backed version of why Moscow invaded Ukraine was based on lies concocted by the army’s top brass. 

Prigozhin has for months been accusing Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu and Russia’s top general, Valery Gerasimov, of rank incompetence, but yesterday for the first time, rejected Russia’s core justifications for invading Ukraine on Feb. 24 last year in what it calls a “special military operation”.  As reported by Reuters.

“… the Defence Ministry is trying to deceive society and the president and tell us a story about how there was crazy aggression from Ukraine and that they were planning to attack us with the whole of NATO,” Prigozhin said in a video clip released on Telegram by his press service, calling the official version “a beautiful story”.

“The special operation was started for different reasons,” he said. “The war was needed … so that Shoigu could become a marshal … so that he could get a second ‘Hero’ [of Russia] medal. The war wasn’t needed to demilitarise or denazify Ukraine.”

He also said the war had been needed to acquire “material assets” to divide among the ruling elite.

Prigozhin portrays his Wagner private militia, which spearheaded the capture of the city of Bakhmut last month, as Russia’s most effective fighting force, and has enjoyed unusual freedom to publicly criticise Moscow, albeit not President Vladimir Putin, on whose support he ultimately depends.

Yet his latest assertion runs directly counter to the rationale for the war espoused by Putin, who said when sending his armed forces into Ukraine that it was to demilitarise and denazify a country that posed a threat to Russia.

The Kremlin leader casts the conflict as an existential struggle against a Western alliance that wants to use Ukraine as a platform to destroy Russia.

Late reporting yesterday also indicated that Prigozhin claimed that his forces had crossed into Russia from Ukraine and had reached Rostov-on-Don, a city in southern Russia, saying they faced no resistance from young conscripts at checkpoints and that his forces “aren’t fighting against children.”

“But we will destroy anyone who stands in our way,” he said in one of a series of angry video and audio recordings posted on social media beginning late Friday. “We are moving forward and will go until the end.”

He claimed that the chief of the General Staff, Gen. Valery Gerasimov, scrambled warplanes to strike Wagner’s convoys, which were driving alongside ordinary vehicles. Prigozhin also said his forces shot down a Russian military helicopter that fired on a civilian convoy, but there was no independent confirmation.

Tony

Church converted to an ice skating rink in Gouda, the Netherlands

Dear Commons Community,

The Associated Press has an article this morning featuring the repurposing of Roman Catholic churches across Europe as attendance and religious participation dwindles.  Here is an excerpt.

Across Europe, the continent that nurtured Christianity for most of two millennia, churches, convents and chapels stand empty and increasingly derelict as faith and church attendance shriveled over the past half century.

“That is painful. I will not hide it. On the other hand, there is no return to the past possible,” Mgr. Johan Bonny, bishop of Antwerp, told the Associated Press. Something needs to be done and now, ever more of the once sacred structures are repurposed for anything from clothes shops and climbing walls to night clubs.

It is a phenomenon seen over much of Europe’s Christian heartland from Germany to Italy and many nations in between. It really stands out in Flanders, in northern Belgium, which has some of the greatest cathedrals on the continent and the finest art to fill them. If only it had enough faithful. A 2018 study from the PEW research group showed, in Belgium, that of the 83% that say they were raised Christian, only 55% still consider themselves so. Only 10% of Belgians still attended church regularly.

On average, every one of the 300 towns in Flanders has about six churches and often not enough faithful to fill a single one. Some become eyesores in city centers, their maintenance a constant drain on finances.

Mechelen, a town of 85,000 just north of Brussels is the Roman Catholic center of Belgium. It has two dozen churches, several huddled close to St. Rumbold’s cathedral with its UNESCO World Heritage belfry tower. Mayor Bart Somers has been working for years to give many of the buildings a different purpose.

“In my city we have a brewery in a church, we have a hotel in a church, we have a cultural center in a church, we have a library in a church. So we have a lot of new destinations for the churches,” said Somers, who as Flemish regional minister is also involved in repurposing some 350 churches spread across the densely populated region of 6.7 million.

A landmark repurposing project in Belgium was Martin’s Patershof hotel in Mechelen, where the interior of the church was gutted to create rooms where the beds have headboards resembling organ pipes and a breakfast room next to the altar where wafers of gold leaf hover overhead. “We often hear that people come here to relax and enjoy the silence of its former identity,” said hotel manager Emilie De Preter.

With its understated luxury, it offers contemplation, and more.

“In the hotel, people sleep in a church, maybe have sex in a church. So you could say: ethically, is it a good idea to have a hotel in a church? I don’t have so many hesitations,” said Somers. “I am more concerned about the actual architectural value.”

The design value is especially clear at St. Anthony of Padua church in Brussels, also known as Maniak Padoue climbing club these days, where the multicolored hand and footholds on the wall now compete with the stained glass as the prime multicolored attraction.

“The stained glass brings a real shimmering and warm light to the venue when the sun goes through it, so we can really feel the presence of the remains of the church,” said Kyril Wittouck, the co-founder of the club. “The altar is still in place, so we are surrounded by remains and it reminds us where we actually are.”

Also in Brussels, the Spirito night club has taken over a deconsecrated Anglican church and has a drawing of a priest kissing a nun as its logo.

It is not exactly what Bishop Bonny had in mind.

Tony

Kendra Kingsbury

Dear Commons Community,

Kendra Kingsbury, a former FBI intelligence analyst charged with the same violation of the Espionage Act as former President Donald Trump, was sentenced this week to nearly four years in prison by a Missouri federal judge.

Kingsbury admitted in 2017 to having more than 380 classified documents in her home in digital and physical formats while she was employed by the FBI’s Kansas City division, court records show. She held the highest level of security clearance available during her more than 12 years at the agency.

Kingsbury was indicted in May 2021 on two counts of having willfully retained national defense information — a violation of Title 18 U.S.C., Section 793(e) — and pleaded guilty last October.

Trump is currently facing 31 counts of violating Title 18 U.S.C., Section 793(e); he faces a total of 37 charges.

Judge Stephen R. Bough  sentenced Kingsbury to three years and 10 months behind bars. 

“I cannot fathom why you would jeopardize our nation by leaving these types of documents in your bathtub,” Bough told her in court, according to the Kansas City Star.

Prosecutors had asked for four years and nine months, while Kingsbury’s attorney, Marc Ermine, asked only for probation, citing problems in his client’s personal life that allegedly contributed to her poor judgment.

Court records show that Kingsbury had been assigned to a series of “different FBI ‘squads,’ each of which had a particular focus, such as illegal drug trafficking, violent crime, violent gangs and counterintelligence.”

The records she was accused of keeping improperly related to “specific open investigations across multiple field offices,” “sensitive human source operations in national security investigations,” “intelligence gaps regarding hostile foreign intelligence services and terrorist organizations,” including information about al Qaeda, and “the technical capabilities of the FBI against counterintelligence and counter-terrorism targets.”

Prosecutors said that an investigation into “what uses the defendant put to the classified documents she illegally removed from the secure workspace,” revealed “more questions and concerns than answers.”

Trump has pleaded not guilty to the dozens of charges against him, claiming in an interview after his arraignment that he was allowed to have the documents. Photographs included in his indictment showed how the former president kept stacks of banker’s boxes in various rooms of his Florida golf resort, including an ornate bathroom.

Interesting comparison!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The Chronicle of Higher Education has an article this morning entitled, “The Haves and Have Nots – Colleges Enrollments Are Becoming Increasingly Unequal.”   It is a good review of the current state of the enrollment issues in our colleges and universities.  Essentially, well-endowed private colleges and flagship public universities are doing fine while tuition-driven private colleges, public colleges that are not flagships, for-profit colleges, and community colleges are hurting for students. Here is an excerpt from The Chronicle article.

“Higher education’s enrollment challenges are by now well known. The demographic cliff — a sharp decline in the number of high-school graduates nationwide — has been forecast for years and is already underway in the Northeast and Midwest.

..

But while nearly every sector of higher education has seen declines in enrollment, some colleges are doing quite well. As Brian Rosenberg described before the pandemic, higher education is in a Gilded Age, with a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots. There are two groups of colleges in the haves category right now. One is made up of the few dozen highly rejective private colleges with enormous endowments. Unsurprisingly, they are in a stronger position than ever.

The other group is made up of flagship public universities, many of which are vacuuming up students while their regional-university and community-college counterparts struggle for enrollment.

It’s not just regional publics that are struggling. Many private colleges without billion-dollar endowments are also significantly down in enrollment. DePaul University, in Chicago, is facing a $56.5-million budget deficit as enrollment has fallen by 6.8 percent since 2018. And plenty has been written about the challenges facing very small private colleges, even though the resiliency of these colleges leads me to expect only a modest uptick in closures.

This is a difficult period for many of our colleges and universities.  It will likely only get worse!

Tony

Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, center, and hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer, right, hold king salmon with another guest. Credit: ProPublica

Dear Commons Community,

Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. took the unusual step late Tuesday of responding to questions about his travel with a billionaire who frequently has cases before the Supreme Court hours before an article detailing their ties had even been published.

Justice Alito defended himself in a pre-emptive article in the opinion pages of The Wall Street Journal before the news organization ProPublica posted its account of a luxury fishing trip in 2008.

His response comes as the justices face mounting scrutiny over their ethical obligations to report gifts and to recuse themselves from cases involving their benefactors. The latest revelations are sure to intensify calls for the court to adopt more stringent ethics rules.

The justices have taken differing approaches to explaining their actions and attempting to protect their institution. Justice Clarence Thomas has been largely silent in the face of revelations of gifts from Harlan Crow, a wealthy Republican donor. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. turned down an invitation from Congress to testify about the court’s ethics practices and made vague statements about addressing them.

And Justice Alito has come out swinging.

The ProPublica article centered on a trip Justice Alito took to a remote part of Alaska, arriving on the private jet of Paul Singer, an immensely wealthy hedge fund manager and Republican donor. The flight would have cost more than $100,000 one way if the justice had chartered it himself, the outlet estimated, and his annual disclosures make no mention of the trip, in what many experts in legal ethics said was a violation of federal law. In the years afterward, Mr. Singer’s businesses were parties to a number of Supreme Court cases in which Justice Alito participated.

ProPublica had sought comment from the justice, who instead turned to The Journal to make two main points: that he was not required to recuse himself from those cases or to disclose the travel.

Justice Alito said he had spoken to Mr. Singer only a handful of times, including on two occasions when Mr. Singer introduced the justice before speeches. “It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially,” Justice Alito wrote.

He added that he did not know of Mr. Singer’s connection to the cases before the court, including one in which the court issued a 7-to-1 decision in favor of one of Mr. Singer’s businesses, with Justice Alito in the majority.

But Mr. Singer’s connection to the case, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, was widely reported. A Forbes article covering the decision bore the headline “Supreme Court Hands Billionaire Paul Singer a Victory Over Argentina.” An article in The New York Times noted that the parties to the case included “NML Capital, an affiliate of Elliott Management, the hedge fund founded by Paul Singer.”

Justice Alito said he was not required to disclose the trip on Mr. Singer’s private jet in “a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant.”

A federal law requires disclosures of gifts over a certain value but makes exceptions for “personal hospitality of any individual” at “the personal residence of that individual or his family or on property or facilities owned by that individual or his family.” Justice Alito wrote that a jet is such a facility, quoting from dictionary definitions.

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

Geraldo Rivera quit as one of the liberal voices on Fox News’ popular political combat show “The Five,” saying yesterday that “a growing tension that goes beyond editorial differences” made it no longer worth it to him.

The last scheduled appearance on “The Five” for the television veteran, whose 80th birthday is on July 4, is next week.

“It has been a rocky ride but it has also been an exhilarating adventure that spanned quite a few years,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press . “I hope it’s not my last adventure.”

Rivera said that it was his choice to leave “The Five,” but that Fox management “didn’t race after me to say, ‘Geraldo, please come back.’” There was no immediate comment from Fox.

Despite airing in the late afternoon instead of prime time, “The Five” has become Fox’s most-watched program, with an average of more than 3 million viewers last year. Its conceit is simple — five people, four of them conservative and one liberal — kick around the issues of the day.

Greg Gutfeld, Jesse Watters, Dana Perino and Jeanine Pirro are the regular conservatives. Rivera has rotated as the liberal voice with Jessica Tarlov and Harold Ford Jr., a former congressman from Tennessee.

Rivera said he planned to remain as a “correspondent at large” at Fox, with a contract that expires in January 2025.

He said he’d been suspended a handful of times, most recently in early May. He had tweeted shortly after Fox fired Tucker Carlson on April 24 that he found Carlson’s theories about the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection to be “bullshit,” leading Gutfeld to respond via tweet, “You’re a class act Geraldo, a real man of the people.” Carlson had downplayed the violence on Jan. 6, calling people who invaded the Capitol “sightseers.”

Rivera and Gutfeld had a handful of particularly contentious exchanges. In late April, Rivera told him “stop pointing at me” when they argued over electric vehicles. He called Gutfeld “an arrogant punk” on the air last year during a fight about abortion.

Rivera would not comment directly about Gutfeld.

“There has been a growing tension that goes beyond editorial differences and personal annoyances and gripes,” he said. “It’s not worth it to me.”

Rivera, once a friend of Donald Trump who split with him over the former president’s false claims of winning the 2020 election, said that “under no circumstances do I think Donald Trump should be president of the United States again and that’s an important message I am committed to bringing to the American people between now and November 2024.”

Although “The Five” and its large viewership would seem a prominent place for him to deliver that message, he said “you can imagine the friction that role by definition” would provoke.

“I’m 80 years old,” he said. “I don’t want the friction. ‘The Five’ is too intimate a place and it gets too personal.”

The argument over electric vehicles illustrated the challenge faced the liberal voice on “The Five.” As he talked, onscreen chyrons below him read “Biden pushing pricey electric cars on Americans” and “Americans not buying Biden’s EV hype.”

Rivera had a colorful syndicated talk show that aired from 1987 to 1998, and hosted an evening news and interview show at CNBC in the late 1990s. He was brought to Fox shortly by then-chairman Roger Ailes after the September 2001 to be a war correspondent at first and has remained. On Wednesday he expressed some regret, in retrospect, for not leaving the network after the killing of Osama bin Laden in 2011.

He said his relationship with his colleagues on “The Five” is “a reflection of what the country is going through. … It’s not an easy job if you take it as personally as I do.”

Good luck with whatever you do in the future, Mr. Rivera!

Tony

Sabai Tsho Lake, formed by the melting of Sabai Glacier in Nepal. Afripics / Alamy Photo

Dear Commons Community,

Glaciers are melting at unprecedented rates across the Hindu Kush Himalayan mountain ranges and could lose up to 80% of their volume this century if greenhouse gas emissions aren’t sharply reduced, according to a new report.

The report issued yesterday from Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development warned that flash floods and avalanches would grow more likely in coming years, and that the availability of fresh water could be curtailed for nearly 2 billion people who live downstream of 12 rivers that originate in the mountains.

Ice and snow in the Hindu Kush Himalayan ranges are an important source of water for those rivers, which flow through 16 countries in Asia and provide fresh water to 240 million people in the mountains and another 1.65 billion downstream. As reported by the Associated Press.

“The people living in these mountains who have contributed next to nothing to global warming are at high risk due to climate change,” said Amina Maharjan, a migration specialist and one of the report’s authors. “Current adaptation efforts are wholly insufficient, and we are extremely concerned that without greater support, these communities will be unable to cope.”

Various earlier reports have found that the cryosphere — regions on Earth covered by snow and ice — are among the worst affected by climate change. Recent research found that Mount Everest’s glaciers, for example, have lost 2,000 years of ice in just the past 30 years.

“We map out for the first time the linkages between cryosphere change with water, ecosystems and society in this mountain region,” Maharjan said.

Among the key findings from Tuesday’s report are that the Himalayan glaciers disappeared 65% faster since 2010 than in the previous decade, and that reducing snow cover due to global warming will result in reduced fresh water for people living downstream. The study found that 200 glacier lakes across these mountains are deemed dangerous, and the region could see a significant spike in glacial lake outburst floods by the end of the century.

The study found that communities in the mountain regions are being affected by climate change far more than many other parts of the world. It says changes to the glaciers, snow and permafrost of the Hindu Kush Himalayan region driven by global warming are “unprecedented and largely irreversible.”

Effects of climate change are already felt by Himalayan communities, sometimes acutely. Earlier this year the Indian mountain town of Joshimath began sinking and residents had to be relocated within days.

“Once ice melts in these regions, it’s very difficult to put it back to its frozen form,” said Pam Pearson, director of the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative, who was not involved with the report.

She added, “It’s like a big ship in the ocean. Once the ice starts going, it’s very hard to stop. So, with glaciers, especially the big glaciers in the Himalayas, once they start losing mass, that’s going to continue for a really long time before it can stabilize.”

Pearson said it is extremely important for Earth’s snow, permafrost and ice to limit warming to the 1.5 degrees Celsius agreed to at the 2015 Paris climate conference.

“I get the sense that most policymakers don’t take the goal seriously but, in the cryosphere, irreversible changes are already happening,” she said.

Key findings from the cited report are below.

Tony

Hunter Biden

Dear Commons Community,

Hunter Biden has struck a deal with federal prosecutors, agreeing to plead guilty for failing to pay his income taxes and reaching a pretrial agreement on a felony charge of illegally possessing a firearm as a drug user. The plea deal likely puts an end to the Justice Department’s multiyear investigation into President Biden’s 52-year-old second son, who as part of the agreement will receive probation and avoid jail time.  As reported by various media outlets.

“With the announcement of two agreements between my client, Hunter Biden, and the United States Attorney’s Office for the District of Delaware, it is my understanding that the five-year investigation into Hunter is resolved,” Chris Clark, attorney for Hunter Biden, said in a statement. “I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life. He looks forward to continuing his recovery and moving forward.”

In December 2020, the U.S. attorney’s office in Delaware announced it was investigating Hunter Biden for possible income tax violations.

The investigation was led by Delaware U.S. Attorney David Weiss, who was appointed by then-President Donald Trump in 2018.

Hunter Biden was the target of regular attacks by Trump during the 2020 campaign. The former president and his Republican allies criticized Hunter Biden’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company while Joe Biden was vice president, suggesting it had corruptly influenced U.S. foreign policy. Hunter Biden has acknowledged that he had “poor judgment” in taking the role

According to court filings made public on Tuesday, Hunter Biden has agreed to plead guilty to two federal tax offenses, both misdemeanors, for willfully failing to pay his federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018. He has also entered into a pretrial agreement to the felony charge that he possessed a handgun in October 2018 despite knowing that he was a drug user.

Hunter Biden has acknowledged struggling with addiction following the 2015 death of his brother, Beau Biden.

He has also since fully repaid back taxes and fines, including $2 million he reportedly paid to the federal government last year.

The White House issued a brief statement on Tuesday morning following the report of the deal.

“The President and First Lady love their son and support him as he continues to rebuild his life,” the statement read. “We will have no further comment.”

The president has largely avoided weighing in publicly on his son’s case.

“I love him,” Biden said last month following a report that the Department of Justice was on the verge of charging Hunter Biden. “He’s on the straight and narrow, and he has been for a couple years now. And I’m just so proud of him.”

While the legal case against Hunter Biden may soon be resolved, the political attacks will undoubtedly continue, as Trump and other Republican hopefuls try to use the episode to shine an unflattering spotlight on the president, his family and the Justice Department.

Congressional Republicans slammed the plea deal and vowed to forge ahead with investigations into the Bidens in the GOP-led House.

Tony