by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : US President Donald Trump’s administration has rescinded seven Obama-era policy guidelines that called on universities to consider race as a factor in diversifying their campuses.
In a joint letter, the Education and Justice Departments said on Tuesday that the guidelines “advocate policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution”, reports The New York Times.
“The executive branch cannot circumvent Congress or the courts by creating guidance that goes beyond the law and, in some instances, stays on the books for decades,” said Devin M. O’Malley, a Justice Department spokesman.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos wrote in a separate statement: “The Supreme Court has determined what affirmative action policies are constitutional, and the court’s written decisions are the best guide for navigating this complex issue.
“Schools should continue to offer equal opportunities for all students while abiding by the law.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the guidelines, published by former President Barack Obama’s administration between 2009 and 2016, were “unnecessary, outdated, inconsistent with existing law, or otherwise improper”, reports Efe news.
He said his decision was based on an executive order that Trump signed in February 2017 and which required the creation of committees within government agencies to identify, revoke or modify regulations they considered unnecessary.
The Supreme Court ruled in favour of affirmative action in 2016, but it has been a controversial issue in the United States for decades.
The Trump administration’s move comes a few months before a court is expected to rule in October on a highly anticipated case which is pitting the Harvard University against Asian-American students.
The students have accused Harvard of systematically excluded some Asian-American applicants to maintain slots for students of other races.
Democrats and civil rights organisations denounced the administration’s decisions.
Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the House Democratic leader, said the “rollback of vital affirmative action guidance offends our nation’s values” and called it “yet another clear Trump administration attack on communities of colour”.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
By Arul Louis,
New York : Indian American federal appeals court judge Amul Thapar has emerged as a “serious” contender for a spot in the US Supreme court and has been interviewed for the position by President Donald Trump, according media reports.
He was one of four judges interviewed for the position on the nation’s highest court by Trump on Monday, according to The Washington Post and other media outlets that quoted unnamed sources who had been briefed about the meetings.
Trump’s Spokesperson Sarah Sanders confirmed that he met for 45 minutes with four candidates, but would not identify them.
Trump has said he would announce his pick next Monday.
Thapar was appointed by Trump last year to the federal Sixth Circuit Appeals Court based in Cincinnati, Ohio, that covers four states including his home state of Kentucky.
Considered a conservative, Thapar, 49, had served as a federal prosecutor before President George W. Bush appointed him a judge of the federal court for Eastern Kentucky by in 2007.
Thapar has the backing of Mitch McConnell, the influential Senate Majority Leader from Kentucky, for the Supreme Court vacancy caused by the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy last month.
“I think he’s absolutely brilliant, with the right temperament,” McConnell said on Saturday.
The Washington Post said Trump’s meeting with Thapar “was described by several White House aides as both a gesture of respect for the Senate GOP leader and evidence that he is in serious contention”.
He is the second Indian-American judge to be a leading contender for the Supreme Court showing the community’s reach across both parties and its influence.
Washington Appeals Court Judge Sri Srinivasan was among the top choices considered by then President Barack Obama for the Supreme Court in 2016.
Obama ultimately picked Merrick Garland but McConnell blocked the nomination refusing to take it up for Senate’s consideration citing the presidential election coming up later that year.
Earlier on Monday, Trump appointed his Deputy Principal Press Secretary Raj Shah to a key role in the difficult process of getting his nominee for the Supreme Court approved by the Senate.
“Raj Shah will oversee communications, strategy and messaging coordination with Capitol Hill allies,” Sanders said in a statement.
Legalised abortion that many countries like India take for granted is looming over the selection of the next Supreme Court judge, with many Senators making it the litmus test to vote for or against a nominee.
It is likely that a case involving abortions may come up before the Supreme Court leaving open the possibility a conservative majority bench could overturn its 1973 ruling legalising it.
During his election campaign Trump changed his stance and came out as an opponent of abortions and said that he would appoint judges with the same view.
But he said last week that he would not discuss with candidates their views on abortion.
The Republicans have slender two-vote lead in the 100-member Senate and at least one Senator from the party, Susan Collins, has said that keeping abortions legal would be a requirement for supporting the Trump nominee and another, Lisa Murkowski, has previously opposed efforts to overturn the 1973 ruling.
The 49 Democrats and the two independents are all expected to oppose any Trump nominee and Shah will have to work with Republicans in Congress to get a majority backing for the candidate.
However, other factors such as immigration, the powers of the president and any possible litigation involving the 2016 election of Trump and the alleged Russian interference are at play.
Thapar is widely considered to conservative in his approach, which aligns him with Trump and his base.
His father, Raj Thapar, told Courier Journal that his son is so conservative that he “nearly wouldn’t speak to me after I voted for Barack Obama.”
Thapar was born in Detroit and his family wanted him to become a doctor, but he chose law instead, the newspaper said.
Raj Thapar told the newspaper that his son’s only dream was to become a Supreme Court Justice.
Amul’s maternal grandfather had impressed on him how Mahatma Gandhi had defeated the British using non violence, Raj Thapar told the newspaper.
According his father, Amul had converted to Catholicism when he married Kim Schulte, a real estate agent, Courier Journal reported.
Thapar’s mother Veena Bhalla sold a successful restaurant after 9/11 to work as a civilian clinical social worker to help soldiers returning from the battlefield, the newspaper reported quoting McConnell.
According to Thapar’s bio for a convention of the National Asian Pacific American Bar Association his father had come to the US to study and after graduating went to work for Ford Motor Company.
Later, he bought a share of a heating and air conditioning company.
(Arul Louis can be reached at arul.l@ians.in)
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | Muslim World
Washington : US President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz, has agreed to increase the Arab kingdom’s oil production significantly in order to stop the price of crude from rising.
“Just spoke to King Salman of Saudi Arabia and explained to him that, because of the turmoil and disfunction in Iran and Venezuela, I am asking that Saudi Arabia increase oil production, maybe up to 2,000,000 barrels, to make up the difference,” Trump wrote on Twitter.
“Prices to high! He has agreed!” Trump added in reference to the Saudi king.
Last week, Trump urged members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to boost their crude production “substantially” to keep the price down, Efe reported.
OPEC and its allies decided last June 22 to raise crude production by a million barrels a day, a volume that, in the medium term, could be more like 600,000 barrels, as a way to control prices that are at their highest since 2014.
It’s not yet clear if the increase with which, according to Trump, Saudi Arabia has agreed is in addition to the amount agreed with OPEC, though as Bloomberg reported this week, the state-run oil company Saudi Aramco plans to increase production starting in July to some 10.8 million barrels per day under pressure from the US.
Trump is concerned about the hike in gasoline prices in the United States, where a gallon costs an average of $2.85, which is 63 cents more than last year, according to estimates of the American Automobile Association (AAA).
The Democratic opposition has blamed part of that increase on Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, while Republicans fear that rising gasoline prices will dull Americans’ enthusiasm for the US economy as they approach next November’s legislative elections.
The US government has threatened with sanctions all the companies in the world that starting next November 5 continue doing business with Iran, which includes oil purchases.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Washington : Thousands of Americans from all walks of life took to the streets of cities across the US and chanted “families belong together”, nearly two months after President Donald Trump implemented the “zero tolerance” policy toward undocumented immigrants, prompting the separation of thousands of children from their parents.
The main rally on Saturday was in Washington, D.C., but hundreds of marches, protests and rallies took place across the country in major cities like New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Milwaukee, Denver, Miami, St. Louis, San Francisco and Los Angeles, where crowds called for the immediate reunification of migrant families and an end to family detentions and separations, reports CNN.
According to organisers, the protesters called for three demands: they want separated migrant families to be reunited immediately; they want the government to end family detentions; and they want the Trump administration to end its zero tolerance policy.
Attendees in Washington marched from Lafayette Square to the White House — though the President is at his golf resort in New Jersey — and down Pennsylvania Avenue, past the Trump Hotel, where chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” broke out.
In Atlanta, demonstrators carried cages with dolls inside, and marchers in Chicago encouraged each other to “fight back”.
In New York, protesters overflowed Foley Square in Lower Manhattan and filled the surrounding sidewalks. Crowds also inched across the Brooklyn Bridge for more than two hours.
Protesters in Houston chanted, “No baby jails”, outside City Hall. Crowds gathered in McAllen, Texas, the border town where one of the Customs and Border Protection agency’s processing detention centres sits.
Several celebrities joined the rallies, including singer-songwriter John Legend, who sang his song “Preach” at a demonstration in Los Angeles, veteran singer Cher who encouraged people to vote in November, actresses Kerry Washington and Amy Schumer marched in New York while singer Alicia Keys performed in Washington.
Many attendees carried signs, some demanding a change to the administration’s policy, others celebrating the contributions that immigrants make to the country.
There were also plenty of signs and shirts declaring, “I really do care, do u?” — a dig at the jacket First Lady Melania Trump wore while departing for a trip to the southwest border last week.
Event organisers said Saturday’s protests were about addressing an ethical issue.
“This is not left or right,” Anna Galland, Executive Director of MoveOn.org, one of the organisations leading Saturday’s protests, told CNN.
“It is right and wrong.”
Galland said she and Indian American Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal put out a call for protests less than two weeks ago and they were “overwhelmed” by the response.
Jayapal, who was also arrested during a similar protest at the Senate office building last week, said: “This is beyond politics… You don’t put kids in cages. You don’t separate breastfeeding babies from their mothers. You don’t put asylum-seekers in prison, and we’re calling for an end to that today.”
More than 2,500 undocumented children were separated from their parents in the weeks since the zero-tolerance policy took effect, reports CNN.
Under the policy, any adult caught crossing the border illegally faced prosecution and their children were sent to federal shelters all over the US.
There were widespread outrage over the separations which prompted Trump to sign an executive order on June 20 reversing the family separation policy.
Six days after that order was signed, only six children had been reunited with their parents — meaning more than 2,000 children were still in limbo.
—IANS
by admin | May 25, 2021 | World
Moscow : Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart Donald Trump are set to discuss a number of “very complex” issues, including the situation in Syria, the Kremlin said on Friday.
“A rather detailed discussion on Syria is anticipated,” Xinhua quoted Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov as saying.
He said “serious preparations” are being made for the summit slated for July 16 in Helsinki.
Peskov said Moscow is ready to follow the path of normalizing Russia-U.S. relations to the extent Washington is ready to do.
On Thursday, the CNN quoted unnamed sources as saying that Trump believes he can strike a deal with Putin on a so-called exclusion zone in southwest Syria that will allow the United States to “get out ASAP”.
Peskov said Moscow is unaware of Trump’s plans.
—IANS
