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Politics

The Political Calculations Behind DeSantis’s Migrant Flights North

The Political Calculations Behind DeSantis’s Migrant Flights North

Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, this week surpassed his Texas counterpart Greg Abbott by sending two planeloads of migrants to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts — the culmination of a months-long campaign to troll essentially liberal cities and states by displacing many asylum seekers into these communities.

The airlift, a DeSantis spokeswoman said in a statement, “was part of the state’s relocation program to transport illegal immigrants to places of refuge.”

She added, “States like Massachusetts, New York and California will better facilitate the care of these individuals whom they have invited to our country by encouraging illegal immigration through their designation as ‘protected states’ and supporting the policies of the create an open border for the Biden administration.”

Of course, there is no such “open border”. Many of these migrants apply US asylum laws, which give them the opportunity for a court hearing to determine whether they are eligible to remain in the United States, as thousands did during the Trump administration and the Obama administration before that. And in most cases, they were arrested by federal law enforcement officers or turned themselves in so DeSantis was able to put them on planes in the first place.

“Playing politics with people’s lives is what governors like George Wallace did during segregation,” said Rep. Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat. “Ron DeSantis is trying to earn George Wallace’s legacy.” Moulton was referring to the “Reverse Freedom Rides” of 1962, when segregationists made false promises of jobs and housing to entice black Southerners to move north. Moulton, who briefly ran for president in 2020, generally accused Republicans of using immigration as “political football.”

The deeper problem is this: Congress has spent decades failing to revise the country’s immigration laws, which both parties recognize are utterly inconsistent with what is happening along the US-Mexico border. They differ greatly only in the proposed remedies.

But the political calculations for DeSantis and Abbott are pretty straightforward. Immigration is a powerful motivational issue for Republican-based voters, nationally, and particularly in border states like Arizona and Texas.

My colleague Astead Herndon discusses this topic on the latest episode of his podcast, The Run-Up. It’s a deep dive on the 10th anniversary of the so-called Republican autopsy of the 2012 election, in which GOP insiders called for a complete rethink of their party’s strategy on immigration and Latino voters.

As DeSantis surely knows — and he’s by all accounts a shrewd politician who tuned his ear to the GOP base’s id — Donald Trump basically did the opposite of what that autopsy recommended. During his 2016 presidential bid and long after, he made frequent and aggressive political use of Latino migrants, labeling many of them “criminals” and “rapists” during his presidential announcement at Trump Tower.

And DeSantis, who is likely to roll for re-election in the fall, is busy amassing an impressive war chest for purposes that remain both obscure and obvious. For months he’s been quietly courting Trump donors on the pretense of including her in his campaign for governor, while making sure never to stick his head too far over the parapet — lest Trump tries to steal him from his proverbial ones to slap shoulders.

Rick Tyler, a former adviser to Senator Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, said the DeSantis flights to Martha’s Vineyard were “maybe” smart politics in the context of a Republican primary, but he added, “I find it cynical to use real people as political.” Stunt figures for positioning in a presidential chess game.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre slammed the Texas and Florida governors for deliberately trying to create “chaos and confusion” in a way that was “disrespectful of humanity.” She said Fox News was notified in advance, but the White House was not.

“It’s a political ploy,” she said. “That’s what we’re seeing from governors, especially Republican governors. It’s a cruel, inhumane way of treating people who are fleeing Communism, people who are – and we’re not just talking about people, we’re talking about children, we’re talking about families.”

A report in The Vineyard Gazette, a local newspaper, reports how the migrants arrived on the island and were greeted by “a coalition of emergency management officials, faith groups, nonprofit organizations and county and city officials” who organized food and shelter for the new arrivals.

Other Democrat-run enclaves like Washington, DC and New York City have asked the federal government for help processing and housing the thousands of migrants that DeSantis and Abbott have theatrically foisted on them. Last week, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser declared a state of emergency for the nearly 10,000 migrants busted there from Texas. Eric Adams, her counterpart in New York, said Wednesday that the city’s emergency shelter system “is nearing breaking point.”

On Thursday morning, two buses dropped off a group of 101 migrants outside Vice President Kamala Harris’ home – a poisoned political chalice sent by Abbott, who tweeted, “We’re sending migrants into their backyard to ask the Biden administration to do its job.” & secure the border.”

How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times employees are allowed to vote, they are not allowed to endorse candidates or campaign for political causes. This includes attending marches or rallies in support of a movement, or donating or raising funds for political candidates or electoral causes.

As an indicator of how strongly Republicans believe this issue is among their constituents, even Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, a relatively dovish man who has taken a stand against Trump over his bogus stolen election claims in 2020, is now chiming in. Ducey, who rejected strong pressure from Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, to run for the Senate, is said to harbor presidential ambitions of his own.

The Massachusetts press described DeSantis’ move as a challenge to Governor Charlie Baker, a Republican whose future plans remain in flux. Baker, a moderate Northeast in the mold of previous Bay State GOP governors like Mitt Romney and Bill Weld, would have little hope of a presidential primary against DeSantis or, for that matter, Trump.

Trolling is a novel political tactic. But the general phenomenon of migrant distribution around the country is not entirely new, as my colleague Zolan Kanno-Youngs has written. As the Obama administration faced a tide of unaccompanied minors flooding facilities along the border in places like McAllen, Texas, the Department of Health and Human Services housed thousands of the children in cities across the country.

And after the protest movement in Syria turned into a vicious civil war in 2011, many Republican governors began opposing the housing of refugees in their states.

Trump also seized on this issue, calling for “a total and complete ban on the entry of Muslims into the United States until our country’s officials can figure out what’s going on” — and then attempted to implement that policy in one of his first steps as president .

Gil Kerlikowske, a former Customs and Border Protection Commissioner in the Obama administration, woke up Thursday morning to find border officials following him to his home on Martha’s Vineyard.

Kerlikowske learned that migrants had been dropped off on the island when he went to the barber’s on Thursday morning and overheard people asking why the United States was unable to secure the Southwest border.

He reminded other customers that even during the George W. Bush administration, thousands of migrants crossed the border.

“It just shows the ignorance of DeSantis,” Kerlikowske said, advising the governor to pressure members of Florida’s congressional delegation to pass new immigration laws instead. “If he wanted to highlight where the problem is, he should have sent her home to Marco Rubio and Rick Scott.”

President Biden has been pushed back from his left because some stakeholders say he is continuing Trump’s immigration policies. On Wednesday, the American Civil Liberties Union criticized Biden after a Reuters report revealed the government had asked Mexico to take in more migrants from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela as part of a policy introduced during the coronavirus pandemic.

Christina Pushaw, a DeSantis campaign spokeswoman, said, “The governor has spoken publicly for months about transporting illegal migrants to sanctuaries.” She pointed out that in this year’s state budget, DeSantis received $12 million from the Florida Legislature for the transfers had requested.

“But what we didn’t know in the campaign was that the goal was going to be Martha’s Vineyard or that it was going to happen yesterday,” Pushaw said. “We learned that from media reports.”

Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Peter Baker contributed coverage.

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Politics

North Carolina Should Enable Former Felons to Vote, Panel Guidelines

North Carolina Must Allow Former Felons to Vote, Panel Rules

North Carolina must immediately allow offenders who are on parole, parole, or supervised release to register for election, a three-person panel in a state court said Monday.

The 2: 1 ruling in a State Superior Court in Raleigh restores the voting rights to a disproportionately black group of approximately 56,000 people who are not in prison but are under some sort of supervision. Black North Carolinians make up 21 percent of the state’s population, but 42 percent of those released on parole or under custody.

The judges said they would later issue a formal decision explaining their decision. Both the Republican-controlled state general assembly and the state electoral committee, which had defended the law in court, said they would await the court’s written opinion before deciding whether to appeal the decision.

The North Carolina State Conference of the NAACP and Forward Justice, a group that campaigns for the equal treatment of minorities in the judicial systems of the South, had overturned the law with three local groups working with former felons.

The judgment “provides a pledge of justice from the North Carolina NAACP half a century ago that all people who live in communities across the state deserve their votes to be heard in elections,” said Stanton Jones of the Arnold & Porter law firm. the senior attorney of the plaintiffs. “And now, 50 years later, the voices of these 56,000 people are finally being heard.”

But State Senator Warren Daniel, Republican chairman of the Senate Electoral Committee, said the judges were ignoring a clause in the state constitution that would bar convicted felons from voting unless their rights were restored under state law. “These judges may think they are doing the right thing by rewriting laws at their own discretion (without bothering to explain their judgment),” he said in a statement. “But each of these rulers tears away the idea that the people make laws through their legislature.”

The decision followed a process that revealed the history of the state’s disenfranchisement of blacks in sometimes shocking detail.

The law that went into effect on Monday, enacted in 1877, expanded in response to the 15. But for the previous decade, local judges had responded to the civil war’s liberation of blacks by condemning them en masse and publicly whipping them, thereby causing them they were placed under a law denying the vote to anyone convicted of a crime for which whipping was a punishment.

A handful of black MPs in the General Assembly attempted to repeal the 1877 Act in the early 1970s, but only achieved procedural changes such as restricting judges’ discretion to extend probation or judicial oversight.

In legal disputes, neither side denied the racist origins of the law. Attorneys for the General Assembly and the Electoral Committee argued, however, that the changes in the early 1970s removed that racist aftertaste, even if the consequences – the disenfranchisement of former felons – had not changed.

Mr Daniel also argued Monday that the procedural changes approved in the 1970s established the legal path for ex-offenders – who had served their sentences and no longer under any form of oversight – to regain voting rights, and that the court did not Power to change it.

Plaintiffs said the law violated parts of the state constitution that guaranteed citizens of the state essentially equal voting rights and stated that “all elections should be free”. Both clauses should apply to all felons who had served their sentences regardless of race, they argued. But the law’s apparent discriminatory effect on blacks, they said, was reason enough to put it down.

Monday’s verdict was not entirely unexpected. The same three-judge panel had temporarily blocked enforcement of part of the law ahead of the November general election, stating that most people who have served their sentences cannot be excluded from voting if the only reason is for theirs continued surveillance consists of owing fines or court fees. The judges said it was an unconstitutional poll tax.

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Entertainment

Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union Take pleasure in North Fork Trip

Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union Enjoy North Fork Vacation

Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union are currently enjoying a relaxing North Fork vacation on Long Island, New York, and we couldn’t be more jealous. From family time with 2-year-old daughter Kaavia to dinner with friends, the couple made sure to document their entire trip on Instagram. Gabrielle’s best friend, Deirdre Maloney, and her family join the duo for the vacation, which makes for some excellent “shady baby” content from Kaavia.

The two all smiled as they took a short boat ride before visiting Croteaux Vineyards. There, Gabrielle did her best to teach Dwyane what a “trot” is and took full advantage of the vineyard’s rosé. While Gabrielle can say, “It’s like a panther” on Dwyne’s Instagram Story, our best guess is that it moves much like a horse. Regardless, Dwyane has taken his duty as an “Instagram Husband” very seriously – he knows ALL of Gabrielle’s best angles. See some of the couple’s best vacation photos ahead of time, including some precious family moments.

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Politics

North Dakota Sues the Biden Administration Over Oil and Gasoline Leases

North Dakota Sues the Biden Administration Over Oil and Gas Leases

The state of North Dakota has sued the Biden government for suspending new state and waterway oil and gas leases, claiming that doing so has cost the state nearly $ 5 billion in lost revenue and more than half a billion barrels of oil in the ground will hold.

President Biden ordered the suspension days after he took office as part of his climate change agenda – but the move was blocked in federal court in June so states can proceed with new leases.

North Dakota joins 14 other states with Republican attorneys general who have filed lawsuits over the moratorium on new leases.

The Interior Ministry, the federal agency that oversees oil and gas leases, declined to comment.

In the lawsuit filed Wednesday in the US District Court for the North Dakota County, the state called the moratorium illegal and said the Home Office had exceeded its powers to suspend the sale of leases.

It also alleged that the suspension of two North Dakota leases, originally scheduled for March and June, has already cost the state tens of millions in lost revenue.

North Dakota is the second largest producer of oil and gas in the United States, and more than half of the state government’s revenue comes from oil and gas taxes.

“This significant damage to North Dakota will increase rapidly,” the lawsuit said, as the “illegal federal government moratorium may continue”.

If the moratorium continues next year, the lawsuit said, leases on nearly 150,000 acres of North Dakota would be blocked, preventing the construction of more than 1,000 oil and gas wells and the production of 555 million barrels of oil. The estimated total loss of revenue is $ 4.77 billion.

“I took these steps to protect the North Dakota economy, the jobs of our hardworking citizens, and North Dakota’s right to control its own natural resources,” said Wayne Stenehjem, the North Dakota attorney general, in a Explanation.

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World News

North Korea’s meals state of affairs is ‘tense,’ Kim Jong Un says

North Korea's food situation is 'tense,' Kim Jong Un says

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un speaks in this undated photo released by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on March 7, 2021, about the first short course for chief secretaries of city and county party committees in Pyongyang, North Korea.

KCNA | via Reuters

North Korea’s ruler Kim Jong Un has reportedly admitted that the food situation in the secret country is worrying amid reports of food shortages and inflated staple prices.

North Korea’s authoritarian leader said the food situation is now “strained” after the country’s agricultural sector “failed to meet its grain production schedule due to typhoon damage last year,” state media reported in Pyongyang.

Speaking at a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim said, “Having a good harvest is a militant task that our party and our state must fulfill as the top priority in order to enable people to live stable lives and to successfully advance in building socialist construction “reported the Pyongyang Times.

Comments at the plenary session, which began on Tuesday and lasts all week, mark a rare admission of problems with the communist regime, which traditionally does not publicly admit problems in the country.

In North Korea there are no independent media in which state media serve as the mouthpiece of the regime. Instead, the media extol the virtues and wisdom of Kim Jong Un, the “Supreme Leader” and the Kim Dynasty. All comments from Kim are carefully recorded and reported.

Kim’s comments come amid reports of rising food and staple food prices in North Korea amid the crisis exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic and typhoon in 2020. NK News (an independent North Korean news service not based in the country) has reported the price hike, with a source in the country reporting examples of shampoos for $ 200 a bottle and a kilogram of bananas for $ 45 a bottle.

North Korea has few allies in the world and has relied on China (its largest trading partner) for much of its imports, but the closing of its border with China during the pandemic has resulted in food and fuel shortages. North Korea’s agricultural sector has always been vulnerable to the typhoon season in the region and has experienced regular flooding in recent years.

Kim chaired the Labor Party’s plenary session this week, alluding to the economic troubles but insisting that things get better.

Kim said that “the conditions and environment for the revolutionary struggle have deteriorated since the beginning of this year, but the country’s economy as a whole has improved,” the state-run Pyongyang Times reported.

Kim put items on the Central Committee’s agenda, saying “to direct all efforts this year towards agriculture” and to deal with the “protracted nature” of the pandemic, to analyze the “current international situation” and “the issue of stabilization and improving people’s living standards ”. “And the party’s childcare policy is a top priority, state media said.

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World News

Manitoba is now the worst sizzling spot in North America, with its hospitals overwhelmed.

Manitoba is now the worst hot spot in North America, with its hospitals overwhelmed.

The coronavirus is now spreading faster in Manitoba than any other province or state in Canada, the United States, or Mexico. Indigenous and colored people are disproportionately affected.

Figures released on Wednesday show that the Prairie Province of central Canada has reported an average of 35 new cases per 100,000 per day over the past two weeks. Canada as a whole averages 10 per 100,000 per day; the United States 7 per 100,000; and Mexico 2 per 100,000. The next higher states or provinces are Alberta with 16 and Colorado with 15.

Dr. Marcia Anderson, the leader of the Manitoba First Nation Pandemic Response Coordination Team for public health, told reporters Wednesday that from the beginning of the month through May 19, 61 percent of the cases in Manitoba were indigenous and other non-white people, despite being 37 Make up percent of the province’s population.

People of Southeast Asian descent are most disproportionately affected at 146 per 1,000 people, 13 times the rate among whites.

The surge in Covid-19 cases has overwhelmed intensive care units at Manitoba hospitals, forcing some patients to be evacuated by air to other provinces. Eighteen patients were flown to neighboring Ontario, including some to Ottawa, about 1,000 miles away. Saskatchewan, the province to the west, was due to receive an evacuated patient from Manitoba on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, a group of doctors urged the province to follow the example of Ontario and others by introducing a stay-at-home order and closing non-essential businesses. These steps have allowed other provinces to contain their recent waves of infections.

Shops in Manitoba were limited to 10 percent of capacity, and gyms and hair salons have been closed for several weeks. On Tuesday, Provincial Prime Minister Brian Pallister extended the restrictions on outdoor gatherings held last weekend. They now last until the end of this week.

Mr Pallister suggested Tuesday that the worsening situation in the province was not caused by too few restrictions, but rather by people not complying with the restrictions already in place.

“I no longer have much sympathy for people who knowingly and willingly violate public health rules,” he said.

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World News

Biden rejects Trump’s strategy to North Korea

Biden rejects Trump's approach to North Korea

U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korea’s President Moon Jae-in hold a joint news conference after a day of meetings at the White House, in Washington, U.S. May 21, 2021.

Jonathan Ernst | Reuters

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Friday rejected his predecessor’s approach to North Korea and said his goal as president was to achieve a “total denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula.

Speaking at a joint press conference with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, Biden used the example of former President Donald Trump’s high-profile meetings with North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un to illustrate what he, Biden, would never do.

“If there was a commitment on which we met, then I would meet with [Kim],” said Biden. “And the commitment has to be that there is discussion about his nuclear arsenal.”

“What I would not do is what has been done in the recent past,” the president said. “I would not give him all he’s looking for, international recognition as legitimate, and give him what allowed him to move in a direction of appearing to be more serious about what he wasn’t at all serious about.”

Trump held three high-profile meetings with Kim, one in Singapore in June of 2018, another in Hanoi the following February, and the last one in June of 2019. During their third meeting, Trump took several steps onto North Korean soil, becoming the first American president to do so.

All three meetings between Trump and Kim were ostensibly focused on denuclearization. Yet rather than reduce his stockpile, Kim doubled his country’s arsenal of nuclear weapons during the four years Trump was president.

Biden and Moon pledged to work together to continue the effort to denuclearize North Korea.

As part of this process, Biden announced Friday that Ambassador Sung Kim will serve as the U.S. special envoy for North Korea.

Sung Kim is a career diplomat and a former ambassador to South Korea. He was recently nominated to be the assistant secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs.

Another important topic during Biden and Moon’s meeting on Friday was their countries’ ongoing response to Covid-19.

South Korea is currently experiencing a shortage of coronavirus vaccines. Approximately 7% of South Koreans have received at least one shot of the vaccine, according to data by the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency.

By contrast, more than 48% of Americans have received one shot, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

During the press conference, Moon and Biden announced that the United States would provide 550,000 Korean service members with Covid-19 vaccines.

Biden and Moon’s press conference followed an afternoon of meetings and ceremonies, including the awarding of the Presidential Medal of Honor to a U.S. veteran of the Korean War.

The visit was Biden’s second time as president hosting a foreign leader at the White House. And it offered the president an opportunity to showcase that, in his words, “America is back.”

After four years of Trump’s isolationist approach to foreign policy, Moon welcomed the new tone.

“The world is welcoming America’s return and keeping their hopes high for America’s leadership more than ever before,” Moon said Friday.

But foreign policy is not where Biden has devoted the lion’s share of his attention as president.

Aides to the president say he is chiefly focused on enacting his domestic agenda: two massive proposals, to rebuild the nation’s infrastructure and to fund a range of family and social services.

As the past week has shown, however, events on the ground can quickly force any White House to shift its attention overseas.

Most recently, renewed fighting between Israel and the Islamic militant group Hamas in Gaza consumed much of the attention of the world during the past 11 days.

Biden said Friday that a two-state solution between Israel and the Palestinian Authority is “the only answer.”

And despite pressure from some Democrats to take a harder line on Israel’s airstrikes, Biden emphasized that nothing in his approach to the longtime U.S. ally has changed.

“There is no shift in my commitment to the security of Israel. Period.”

He also praised Egypt’s president, Abdel Al-Sisi, for doing what Biden said was a “commendable job” securing the cooperation of Hamas on a cease-fire that began early Friday morning.

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Business

Nikole Hannah-Jones Denied Tenure at College of North Carolina

Nikole Hannah-Jones Denied Tenure at University of North Carolina

Nikole Hannah-Jones, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times Magazine writer, was denied employment at the University of North Carolina after the university’s board of trustees took the highly unusual step of not approving the journalism department’s recommendation.

The decision was criticized on Wednesday by faculty members who said the last two people in the position that Ms. Hannah-Jones will hold will be granted a term following her appointment.

In late April, the university announced that Ms. Hannah-Jones had been appointed Knight Chair of Racial and Investigative Journalism at the UNC’s Hussman School of Journalism and Media. She will start as a professor in July and continue writing for The Times Magazine. In lieu of tenure, Ms. Hannah-Jones was offered a five-year professorial contract with the option of review.

In the April announcement, the School of Journalism Dean Susan King said, “Now one of America’s most respected investigative journalists will work with our students on projects that will advance their careers and stimulate critical conversations.”

The hiring of Ms. Hannah-Jones, who received a master’s degree from the university in 2003 and a MacArthur scholarship in 2017, sparked backlash from conservative groups concerned about her involvement in Times Magazine’s 1619 project, which came after the The year was named Slavery began in the colonies that were to become the United States. (Ms. Hannah-Jones won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for her introductory essay.)

The 1619 project sparked a Continuing the debate on the legacy of slavery, however, it has been criticized by some historians over certain allegations and by conservatives who have termed them “propaganda”. Republican-controlled North Carolina legislation appoints the university system’s board of governors, which has significant control over the university’s board of trustees.

The NC Policy Watch website reported Wednesday that the UNC Board of Trustees had declined to approve Ms. Hannah-Jones’ application for tenure. A spokeswoman for the university, Joanne Peters Denny, said in a statement that “details of the hiring processes of individual faculties are personal information”.

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May 20, 2021, 11:00 a.m. ET

Ms. Hannah-Jones declined to comment. On Wednesday evening she wrote on Twitter: “I stayed away from here today, but I just know that I can see you all and I am grateful.”

Almost 40 faculty members of the journalism school signed an online statement Wednesday calling for the decision to be overturned. She said that Ms. Hannah-Jones did not grant tenure, “moves the goalposts unfairly and violates long-standing norms and established processes.” The statement added, “This failure is particularly disheartening because it occurred despite the support for Hannah-Jones’ tenure by the Hussman dean, the Hussman faculty and the university.”

It continued, “Hannah-Jones’ remarkable record of more than 20 years in journalism exceeds expectations for a permanent position as a Knight Chair in Race and Investigative Journalism.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Ms. King, the school’s dean, said of Ms. Hannah-Jones: “While I am disappointed that the appointment is without tenure, there is no doubt that she will be a star faculty member. “

Alberto Ibargüen, the president of the Knight Foundation, said that while the foundation funds the position of the Knight Chair at UNC, it has no role in the appointment. The agreement provides for a five-year appointment with a tenure review within that period, he said.

“It is not our job to tell UNC or UNC / Hussman who to appoint or who to give a term of office,” Ibargüen said in a statement. “However, we understand that Hannah-Jones is eminently qualified for the appointment and we urge the University of North Carolina Trustees to reconsider their decision within the timeframe of our agreement.”

Ms. Hannah-Jones’ editors expressed their support on Wednesday. “Nikole is a remarkable investigative journalist whose work has helped transform the national conversation about race,” said Dean Baquet, editor-in-chief of the New York Times.

Jake Silverstein, editor of Times Magazine, strongly defended her and her work.

“Nicole’s journalism, whether it’s about school segregation or American history, has always been brave, unwavering, and dedicated to telling awkward truths that some people just don’t want to hear,” said Silverstein. “It doesn’t always make her popular, but it’s part of why her voice is necessary.”

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World News

South Korean Chief Urges Biden to Negotiate With North Korea

South Korean Leader Urges Biden to Negotiate With North Korea

SEOUL – President Moon Jae-in of South Korea has a message for the United States: President Biden must now deal with North Korea.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Moon urged the American leader to start negotiations with the government of Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, after two years of stalling diplomatic progress were even reversed . Denuclearization is a “question of survival” for his country, said the South Korean president.

He also called on the United States to work with China on North Korea and other issues of global concern, including climate change. The deteriorating relations between the superpowers could undermine any negotiations on denuclearization.

“If tensions between the United States and China intensify, North Korea can benefit and capitalize on it,” said Moon.

It was partly a plea, partly a sales pitch, from Mr. Moon, who sat down with The Times as the United States tried to rebuild ties in the region to counter China’s influence and North Korea built its nuclear arsenal. Mr. Moon, who will meet Mr. Biden in Washington next month, seemed ready to take on the role of mediator between the two sides again.

Interviewed, Mr. Moon prided himself on his skillful diplomatic maneuvering in 2018 as he led the two unpredictable leaders of North Korea and the United States for a face-to-face meeting. He was also pragmatic, tacitly admitting that his work to achieve denuclearization and peace in the Korean Peninsula has since disintegrated.

President Donald J. Trump stepped down without removing a single North Korean nuclear warhead. Mr. Kim has resumed weapon testing. .

“He beat the bush and didn’t manage to pull it off,” said Mr. Moon of Mr. Trump’s efforts on North Korea. “The most important starting point for both governments is to have the will to dialogue and to meet face to face early on.”

Now, in his final year in office, Mr. Moon is determined to start over – knowing that in Mr. Biden he is facing a very different leader.

Mr. Moon relied on Mr. Trump’s style and emphasized the personality-driven “top-down diplomacy” through one-on-one interviews with Mr. Kim. Mr Biden, he said, is going back to the traditional “bottom-up” approach, where negotiators haggle over details before getting approval from their bosses.

“I hope that Biden will go down as a historic president who has made substantial and irreversible progress towards full denuclearization and peace settlement on the Korean Peninsula,” Moon said in an interview with Sangchunjae, a traditional hanok on the grounds of the Executive Residence, Blue House.

Mr. Moon’s visit to Washington comes at a crucial time. The Biden administration completes its month-long policy review regarding North Korea, one of the most pressing geopolitical issues facing the United States.

Mr Biden has begun to reverse many of his predecessor’s foreign policy decisions. But Mr Moon warned that it would be a mistake to kill the 2018 Singapore Accord between Mr Trump and Mr Kim, which set broad goals for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. .

“I believe if we build on what President Trump has left, we will make these efforts a reality under Biden’s leadership,” he said.

Mr. Moon urged the United States and North Korea to take “incremental and gradual” steps towards denuclearization, while “at the same time” exchanging concessions and incentives. It was a well-worn script for Mr. Moon who occasionally paused during the interview to refer to his notes and underscored his speech with small but determined hand gestures.

Some past American negotiators and Mr. Moon’s conservative critics oppose such a strategy, saying North Korea would stall and undermine international sanctions, the best leverage Washington has on the impoverished country. In his annual threat assessment released last week, the director of national intelligence for the United States said that Mr. Kim “believes that over time he will gain international acceptance and respect as a nuclear power.”

However, Mr. Moon’s team argues that the step-by-step approach is the most realistic, even if it is not perfect. According to his administration, North Korea would never give up its arsenal in a single step lest the regime lose its only negotiating chip with Washington.

The key, Mr. Moon said, is that the United States and North Korea work out a “mutually trustworthy roadmap.”

American negotiators under Mr. Trump never made it to this point. Both sides could not even agree on a first step for the north and what reward Washington would get for doing so.

Mr. Moon is not only trying to save his “Korean Peninsula Peace Process”, but also arguably his greatest diplomatic legacy.

When his North Korea policy stalled, critics called him a naive pacifist who relied too much on Mr Kim’s unproven commitment to denuclearization.

“His good intentions had dire consequences,” said Kim Sung-han, a professor at Korea University. “His mediation has not worked, nor have we made any progress on denuclearization. His time is running out. “

Since negotiations stalled, Mr. Moon’s problems at home have increased. Its approval ratings have fallen to hit lows amid real estate and other scandals. This month, angry voters brought his Democratic Party devastating defeats in the mayoral elections in South Korea’s two largest cities.

This is a sharp turn from the start of his term in office when Mr. Moon turned a hair-raising geopolitical crisis into a political initiative.

“When I took office in 2017, we were very concerned about the possibility of another outbreak of war on the Korean peninsula,” he said.

Four days after his tenure, North Korea launched its medium-range ballistic missile Hwasong-12, which could attack Hawaii and Alaska. Then the north tested a hydrogen bomb and three ICBMs. In response, Mr. Trump threatened “fire and anger” when carrier groups from the American Navy steamed onto the peninsula.

Mr. Moon’s first diplomatic victory came when Mr. Kim accepted his invitation to send a delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Shortly afterwards, Mr. Moon met with Mr. Kim at the heavily armed inter-Korean border.

During that meeting, Mr. Moon said the North Korean dictator had hinted that disarmament was a real possibility. “If security can be guaranteed without nuclear weapons, why should I have difficulty holding them at the expense of sanctions?” Mr. Moon remembered Mr. Kim.

He said he pitched Mr. Trump and asked him to meet Mr. Kim. At their television summit in Singapore, Trump promised “security guarantees” for North Korea, while Mr. Kim pledged to “work towards a full denuclearization of the Korean peninsula”.

“It is clearly an achievement for President Trump to hold the first North Korea-United States summit,” he said.

But Mr. Moon also lamented that Mr. Trump never got through after declaring that “there is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea”. When Mr Kim and Mr Trump met again in Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2019, negotiations were going nowhere and the men left without reaching an agreement on how to move forward with the Singapore deal.

While Mr. Moon was keen to praise Mr. Trump, he also appeared frustrated with the former president’s erratic behavior and Twitter diplomacy. Mr. Trump canceled or downsized the annual joint military exercises the United States conducts with the South, demanding an “excessive amount” to keep 28,500 American troops in South Korea.

Mr Moon said he had decided to suspend negotiations on the so-called defense cost sharing agreement during Mr Trump’s final months in office. South Korea was willing to pay more given its growing economic size, but Mr Trump’s demands went against the very foundation of the two countries’ relations.

“His request lacked a reasonable and rational calculation,” said Moon.

The fact that Washington and Seoul could strike a deal within 46 days of Mr Biden’s inauguration is “clear evidence of the importance President Biden attaches to the alliance.”

Mr. Moon is confident of the progress the new American leader can make in North Korea, although a major breakthrough may be unrealistic given the deep distrust between Washington and Pyongyang.

Mr Biden said last month that he was “prepared for some form of diplomacy” with North Korea, but that “it must be made contingent on the end result of denuclearization”.

North Korea has come up with ideas for a step-by-step approach that begins with the demolition of its only known nuclear test site, followed by the dismantling of a rocket engine test facility and the nuclear complex in Yongbyon north of Pyongyang.

Mr Moon said he believes such steps, when combined with American concessions, could result in the removal of the North’s more valuable assets such as ICBMs. In this scenario, the step towards complete denuclearization becomes “irreversible”.

“This dialogue and this diplomacy can lead to denuclearization,” he said. “If both sides learn from the failure in Hanoi and put their heads together on more realistic ideas, I am confident that they can find a solution.”

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North Korea Bows Out of Tokyo Olympics, Citing Covid-19

North Korea Bows Out of Tokyo Olympics, Citing Covid-19

North Korea announced on Tuesday that it had decided not to participate in the 32nd Summer Olympics in Tokyo because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The decision was made when the National Olympic Committee of the North met in Pyongyang on March 25th and decided that a delegation would skip the Tokyo Olympics, scheduled for July 23rd to August 8th, “to our athletes protect from the global health crisis caused by the malignant viral infection, “said the government-run sport in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

It’s the first Summer Olympics the North has skipped since boycotting the Seoul Olympics in 1988.

North Korea, which has a rundown public health system, has taken tough measures against the virus since the beginning of last year, including closing its borders. The country officially claims there are no Covid-19 cases, but outside health experts remain skeptical.

North Korea’s decision robs South Korea and other nations of a rare opportunity to make official contact with the isolated country. Officials in the south had hoped the Olympics could provide a venue for high-level delegates from both Koreas to discuss issues beyond the sport.

The 2018 Winter Olympics in the South Korean city of Pyeongchang provided such an opportunity. Kim Yo-jong, the only sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, attracted worldwide attention when she became the first member of the Kim family to cross the border into South Korea to attend the opening ceremony.

Mr. Kim used the North’s participation in the Pyeongchang Olympics as a signal to begin diplomacy after a series of nuclear and long-range missile tests. The inter-Korean dialogue soon followed, leading to three summit meetings between Mr. Kim and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea. Mr. Kim also met three times with President Donald J. Trump.

Since the collapse of Mr Kim’s diplomacy with Mr Trump in 2019, North Korea has avoided official contact with South Korea or the United States. The pandemic has deepened its diplomatic isolation and economic difficulties amid concerns over its nuclear ambitions. North Korea launched two ballistic missiles in its first such test in a year on March 25 to challenge President Biden.

The Tokyo Games, which start in July, were originally scheduled for 2020 but have been postponed for a year due to the pandemic. The Tokyo Organizing Committee has made efforts to develop security protocols to protect both attendees and local residents from the virus. Concern is high in Japan, with large majorities in polls saying the Games shouldn’t be held this summer.

A number of health, economic and political challenges have besieged the Games. Even when the organizers decided last month to exclude international viewers, Epidemiologists warn that the Olympics could turn into a superspreader event. Thousands of athletes and other participants will come to Tokyo from more than 200 countries while much of the Japanese public remains unvaccinated.