Former president Barack Obama called on universities and law firms to stand up to intimidation from President Trump’s administration and urged Americans to prepare to “possibly sacrifice’’ in support of democratic values.
In a speech Thursday night at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., Obama also accused Trump’s government of working to destroy the international order created after World War II.
Obama painted a picture of a postwar political environment in which disagreements happened within a shared respect for certain rules and norms, such as free speech and an independent judiciary, which he said was now eroding. “It is up to all of us to fix this,’’ he said, including “the citizen, the ordinary person who says, no, that’s not right.’’
The former president said that he disagreed with some of Trump’s economic policies such as widespread new tariffs, but that he is “more deeply concerned with a federal government that threatens universities if they don’t give up students who are exercising their right to free speech.’’
Obama called for universities to be prepared to lose government funding to defend academic freedom and other core values, or dip into their endowments — though endowments are sometimes funded with restrictions from donors on how that money can be spent.
“If you are a university, you may have to figure out, are we in fact doing things right? Have we in fact violated our own values, our own code, violated the law in some fashion?’’ he said. “If not, and you’re just being intimidated, well, you should be able to say, that’s why we got this big endowment.’’
Obama did not specifically mention the campus protests or conflicts in the Middle East in his remarks, but said, “It has been easy during most of our lifetimes to say you are a progressive or say you are for social justice or say you’re for free speech and not have to pay a price for it.’’
“Now we’re at one of those moments where, you know what? It’s not enough just to say you’re for something; you may actually have to do something,’’ he added.
Washington Post
Trump fires quake-relief workers in disaster zone
WASHINGTON — Trump administration officials have fired workers for the main US aid agency who were sent to Myanmar to assess how the United States could help with earthquake relief efforts, three people with knowledge of the actions said.
The firings, done Friday while the workers were in the rubble-strewn city of Mandalay, raise doubts about Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s stated commitment to continuing some humanitarian and crisis aid even as the aid organization, the US Agency for International Development, is dismantled by the administration.
More than 3,300 people were killed and more than 4,800 injured in Myanmar, according to Burmese government estimates. A tropical storm was lashing much of the country Saturday, with heavy rain and winds leading to flooding. The Trump administration has been criticized by Democratic lawmakers and others for what they called its paltry response.
The three experienced aid workers got termination emails addressed specifically to them just days after arriving in Myanmar, said the three people with knowledge of the situation, who are current and former USAID officials. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.
One of the aid workers had flown in from Washington, and the other two from Bangkok and Manila, Philippines, where the aid agency has regional operations.
Other aid agency employees said they were furious over the way the workers in Myanmar had been fired.
Employees at the aid agency heard about the latest firings during a meeting of its Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance on Friday. The move shocked employees in Washington, and soon word of it spread across the agency. Although senior agency officials had sent out an email to all employees on March 28 alerting them to mass terminations effective this summer, as the State Department absorbs the aid agency, the fact that the three workers in Myanmar got their notices while in the quake zone was seen as especially cruel.
It is unclear what they will now do in Myanmar and when they will leave their jobs.
The State Department and USAID did not answer requests for comment.
New York Times
NSA head, called disloyal by conspiracy theorist, fired
WASHINGTON — As soon as word spread that President Trump had fired General Timothy D. Haugh, the head of the National Security Agency and US Cyber Command, current and former administration officials began floating theories about why he had been let go.
Had Haugh opposed one of Trump’s initiatives, perhaps moved too slowly on purging officers who had worked on diversity issues? Or was he a casualty of the administration’s shifting priorities to counter narcotics?
Whether any of that was true, it had little, if anything, to do with why he was fired.
Haugh was ousted because Laura Loomer, a far-right wing conspiracy theorist and Trump adviser, had accused him and his deputy of disloyalty, according to US officials and Loomer’s social media post early Friday. He was one of several national security officials fired this past week on her advice.
“I predict you are going to see some nonsense statement about some policy difference or something General Haugh wasn’t doing, but we all know what happened,’’ said Senator Angus King, Independent of Maine, who is on the intelligence and armed services committees.
“Laura Loomer said it. She is the one who told Trump to fire him.’’
Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, a former majority leader, lamented that the Trump White House had ousted Haugh and was appointing people to Pentagon posts who were skeptical of America’s engagement with allies and the world.
“If decades of experience in uniform isn’t enough to lead the NSA but amateur isolationists can hold senior policy jobs at the Pentagon, then what exactly are the criteria for working on this administration’s national security staff?’’ McConnell said. “I can’t figure it out.’’
The criteria Loomer appears to be using as she looks to oust people she sees as disloyal is their connections to critics of the Trump administration.
New York Times
Whistle-blowers awarded $6m in Texas AG case
A district court judge has awarded more than $6 million combined to four whistle-blowers in their lawsuit against Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton who were fired shortly after they reported him to the FBI.
“By a preponderance of the evidence,’’ Travis County Judge Catherine Mauzy said in her judgment, the plaintiffs proved liability, damages, and attorney’s fees in their complaint against the attorney general’s office.
“Because the Office of the Attorney General violated the Texas Whistleblower Act by firing and otherwise retaliating against the plaintiff for in good faith reporting violations of law by Ken Paxton and OAG, the court hereby renders judgment for plaintiffs,’’ Mauzy said.
The court found that the four Paxton aides were fired in retaliation for reporting allegations that he was using his office to accept bribes from an Austin real estate developer who employed a woman with whom he was having an extramarital affair. Paxton has denied accepting bribes or misusing his office to help Nate Paul, the real estate developer.
The judgment also stated that the employees made their reports to law enforcement “in good faith’’ and that Paxton’s office did not dispute any claims or damages in the lawsuit.
In a statement to the media, Paxton called the ruling “ridiculous’’ and “not based on the facts or the law.’’ He also said that his office intends to appeal the ruling.
Associated Press
Trump fights judge’s order over man deported in ‘error’
WASHINGTON — A federal judge didn’t have the authority to order the Trump administration to broker the return of a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported from the United States to a notorious El Salvador prison, government attorneys argued Saturday as they urged an appeals court to suspend the ruling.
On Friday, US District Judge Paula Xinis ordered the administration to “facilitate and effectuate’’ Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s return to America by late Monday night. Justice Department lawyers asked the 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals to immediately pause the judge’s order.
“A judicial order that forces the Executive to engage with a foreign power in a certain way, let alone compel a certain action by a foreign sovereign, is constitutionally intolerable,’’ they wrote.
The appeals court asked Abrego Garcia’s lawyers to respond to the government’s filing by Sunday afternoon.
Abrego Garcia, a 29-year-old Salvadoran national, was arrested in Maryland and deported last month despite an immigration judge’s 2019 ruling that shielded him from deportation to El Salvador, where he faced likely persecution by local gangs.
His mistaken deportation, described by the White House as an “administrative error,’’ has outraged many and raised concerns about expelling noncitizens who were granted permission to be in the United States.
Dozens of supporters gathered at the Greenbelt, Md., federal courthouse for Friday’s hearing. A cheer erupted in the courtroom when Xinis ruled in favor of Abrego Garcia, whose wife, a US citizen, was in attendance.
Xinis, who was nominated by President Obama, said there was no legal basis for Abrego Garcia’s detention and no legal justification for his removal to El Salvador, where he has been held in a prison that observers say is rife with human rights abuses.
Abrego Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, said the government has done nothing to get his client back, even after admitting its errors.
Associated Press
