Trump surrenders, border crisis intensifies, U.S. pride drops, Libyan war crimes, Japan resumes whaling

By Robert A. Vella

President Trump has apparently surrendered on his attempt to add a controversial citizenship question to the 2020 census;  however, another report details insufficient security protocols in the new technology to prevent census data from being altered or destroyed by nefarious interests (e.g. the same interests which urged Trump to add the citizenship question).  The crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border is intensifying as inhumane conditions are being exposed at migrant detention facilities while the courts continue to rule against Trump‘s harsh anti-immigration policies.  A new opinion poll shows the pride Americans feel about their country dropping to a record low.  The volatile situation in Libya between warring factions has resulted in the perpetration of deadly war crimes.  Japan is again resuming commercial whaling despite declining consumer demand for whale meat among its people.

Trump surrenders

From:  2020 Census Won’t Have Citizenship Question as Trump Administration Drops Effort

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration said Tuesday that it had ordered the Census Bureau to start printing forms for the 2020 census without a question asking about citizenship, abandoning its quest to add the query after being blocked last week by the Supreme Court.

[…]

It was unclear what prompted the administration to walk away from its effort.

Word of the action came in a one-sentence email from the Justice Department to lawyers for plaintiffs in a New York lawsuit that sought to block the question’s inclusion in the head count.

From:  Hacking, Glitches, Disinformation: Why Experts Are Worried About the 2020 Census

In the run-up to the 2020 census, the government has embraced technology as never before, hoping to halt the ballooning cost of the decennial head count. For the first time, households will have the option of responding online, and field workers going door to door will be equipped with smartphones to log the information they collect.

To make it all work, the Census Bureau needed more computing power and digital storage space, so it turned to cloud technology provided by Amazon Web Services.

What the bureau didn’t realize — until an audit last year — was that there was an unsecured door to sensitive data left open. Access credentials for an account with virtually unlimited privileges had been lost, potentially allowing a hacker to view, alter or delete information collected during recent field tests.

Border crisis intensifies

From:  Doctors describe black box of medical care in detention facilities: ‘That is not medical care. That’s malpractice’

Pediatricians who have volunteered to work with migrants in El Paso, Texas, are walled off from any contact with “whoever is providing the medical care to these individuals” in government run migrant detention centers, pediatrician Dr. Carlos Gutierrez said Tuesday.

“That is not medical care. That’s malpractice,” said Gutierrez, who has helped treat families received by Annunciation House, a nonprofit that runs temporary residential centers that receives migrants released by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement or US Customs and Border Protection.

During a press conference on Tuesday in El Paso, the doctors said they know of dozens of additional doctors that would like to provide care, but the centers aren’t allowing any of them in, as they have in the past.

From:  Judge blocks Trump policy keeping asylum-seekers locked up

SEATTLE (AP) — A federal judge in Seattle on Tuesday blocked a Trump administration policy that would keep thousands of asylum-seekers locked up while they pursue their cases, saying the Constitution demands that such migrants have a chance to be released from custody.

U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman ruled Tuesday that people who are detained after entering the country illegally to seek protection are entitled to bond hearings. Attorney General William Barr announced in April that the government would no longer offer such hearings, but instead keep them in custody. It was part of the administration’s efforts to deter a surge of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Pechman said that as people who have entered the U.S., they are entitled to the Fifth Amendment’s due-process protections, including “a longstanding prohibition against indefinite civil detention with no opportunity to test its necessity.”

U.S. pride drops

From:  Proud to be an American? Gallup poll hits historic low of 45% ahead of Fourth of July holiday

American patriotism is ebbing ahead of the Fourth of July, according to a Gallup poll that showed fewer than half of U.S. adults are “extremely” proud to be Americans.

The poll’s findings, from a survey of 1,015 U.S. adults, show that pride in being American has dwindled in recent years, with the most recent number (45%) reflecting an all-time low since the firm began collecting data on the subject in 2001.

Libyan war crimes

From:  At least 44 killed as air strike hits Libya migrant detention center: U.N.

TRIPOLI, July 3 (Reuters) – An air strike hit a detention center for mainly African migrants in a suburb of the Libyan capital Tripoli late on Tuesday, killing at least 44 people and wounding more than 130, the U.N. mission to Libya said.

It was the highest publicly reported toll from an air strike or shelling since eastern forces under Khalifa Haftar launched a ground and aerial offensive three months ago to take Tripoli, the base of Libya’s internationally recognized government.

United Nations Libya envoy Ghassan Salame condemned the strike, saying it “clearly amounts to the level of a war crime.”

Japan resumes whaling

From:  Japan lifts whaling ban, as it tries to revive a dying industry

In 1986, the International Whaling Commission (IWC) announced a worldwide moratorium on commercial whaling. In late 2018, however, Japan decided to withdraw from the IWC — a move welcomed by its whale industry but condemned by environmental campaigners who believed it would threaten endangered species of whale.

[…]

Japan killed 596 whales in the 2017 and 2018 hunting season, according to the IWC. Most of those were harpooned in the Antarctic, although Japan also hunted in the North Pacific.

[…]

Now that Japan has withdrawn from the IWC, whalers will no longer hunt in international waters but will pursue them in an economic exclusion zone, which extends 200 nautical miles from the Japanese coast.

A hunting quota has been set at 227 between now and the end of the year, according to Japan’s Fisheries Agency. That breaks down to 150 bryde’s whales, 52 common minke whales and 25 sei whales.