Five Things You May Have Missed in the US and Americas This Week
(1) New court ruling to protect DACA.
On Tuesday, US District Judge John Bates ruled against the Trump administration’s September 2017 decision to end the policy of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). President Obama signed an executive order in 2012 to create DACA and protect ‘Dreamers’ — undocumented individuals who were brought to the US before the age of 18 — from deportation. The policy allowed ‘Dreamers’ to apply for short-term legal status that they could re-apply for every two years. Bates wrote in his final opinion that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) failed to provide an adequate legal argument for their decision to end DACA.
While the ruling reinstates the DACA programme, it gives the US government 90 days to reformulate their argument on the illegality of DACA and reissue a new memorandum to end the policy with a more detailed description of its unconstitutionality.
Bates is the third district judge to rule in favour of DACA, but this decision is notable in that it would require the government to reopen the DACA programme to new applicants. Two previous court rulings, in January and February 2018, only required the federal government to reinstate DACA in a limited capacity to applicants who had previously received DACA. However, the restoration of the programme will depend on the DHS’s ability to defend the illegality of DACA in a new memorandum.
(2) Mike Pompeo is the new US secretary of state.
Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, emerged from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with a favourable recommendation on Monday and the US Senate voted 57–42 to approve him on Wednesday afternoon. Pompeo would have likely been the first presidential nominee for secretary of state to receive a negative recommendation from a committee had Senator Rand Paul not changed his vote, but after a personal appeal from the president and assurances from Pompeo, Paul declared his support for the nomination. Paul had previously resisted the nomination of Pompeo who he considered too hawkish.
Pompeo will take charge of the State Department during a critical phase in US foreign affairs, as the North Korean summit approaches as well as a 12th May deadline for a final decision from the White House to continue — or withdraw — from the Iran nuclear deal.
(3) Political demonstrations in Nicaragua turn violent.
Nicaraguans have been protesting since last week in response to President Daniel Ortega’s proposed changes to the country’s social security system. The protests have grown over the following days and turned deadly. Nicaraguan security forces were accused of using excessive force against what were originally peaceful demonstrations. Human rights groups believe around 27 people have been killed in the subsequent violence.
The Nicaraguan government blamed violent agitators among the protestors for the escalation. In response, the White House released a statement condemning ‘the repugnant political violence by police and pro-government thugs against the people of Nicaragua’. Ortega has since backtracked on the controversial measures, but the protests have morphed into broad anti-government demonstrations, as protestors fear an antidemocratic trend following Ortega’s elimination of presidential term limits in 2014.
(4) Trump wavers on a new Iran deal.
French President Emmanuel Macron visited Washington DC this week. One of his key objectives is to convince President Trump to supplement, rather than scrap, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) agreed in 2015. Macron’s intervention appears to have had some success, as Trump expressed openness to the possibility in a joint press conference. But Trump’s position on the 2015 agreement remains unchanged, as he again argued that it was a ‘bad deal’. However, he also stated that ‘we will have a great shot at doing a much bigger maybe deal, maybe not deal’ and that any new deal would be built on ‘solid foundations’.
Ultimately, Trump is maintaining an intentionally ambiguous position, saying ‘nobody knows what I’m going to do on the 12th…but we’ll see’.
(5) Ronny Jackson withdraws his nomination to be Department of Veterans Affairs secretary.
On Thursday, Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson announced his decision to withdraw his nomination as secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs following a week in which his proposed appointment was confronted with numerous complications. Jackson lacked the support of both Republican and Democratic Senators and faced a growing list of serious allegations, including drinking on duty, overprescribing medicine and creating a hostile workplace environment. Jackson, currently the White House physician, faced deep scepticism among the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee due to his inexperience of managing a large organization. The Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) provides healthcare services to veterans across America and is the second-largest federal department, employing almost 380,000 people. Trump has proposed increasing the VA budget to $198.6 billion for the 2019 fiscal year.
The White House sent inconsistent signals about Jackson’s nomination throughout the week, with Trump saying at one point ‘if I were him, I wouldn’t do it,’ while other officials continued to issue statements of support.
