Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 115, No. 67, Ed. 1 Monday, October 8, 2018 Page: 3 of 14
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NATIONAL
Denton Record-Chronicle
Monday, October 8, 2018
3A
Kavanaugh impartiality to be tested
Cases from blue
states coming up
in Supreme Court
I
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By Geoff Mulvihill
Associated Press
Brett Kavanaugh’s confirma-
tion to the U.S. Supreme Court
has put a spotlight on the doz-
ens of federal cases pitting the
Trump administration against
Democratic-leaning states, on
issues including auto emission
standards, immigration and a
free-flowing internet.
He lashed out against ‘left-
wing opposition groups” and
others during the recent Senate
hearing over a high school-era
sexual assault allegation, rais-
ing questions about whether he
can be impartial deciding cases
that revolve around Democratic
policies or that directly involve
Democratic officials.
Kavanaugh already was
known as a conservative judge.
But his partisan rhetoric creat-
ed new worries for some who
will bring or support cases that
eventually could come before
the nation’s highest court.
“I have even greater concerns
about his judicial temperament
and his ability to independent-
ly weigh cases that may involve
the Trump administration,” said
Oregon Attorney General Ellen
Rosenblum, a Democrat who
has joined more than a dozen
lawsuits against the administra-
tion.
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\
L3 Technologies/The Washington Post
A C-Worker 7 unmanned surface vehicle developed by
ASV Global LLC and recently acquired by L3 Technol-
ogies.
Defense contractors
race to build subs
that can clear mines
Fred Schilling, Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States/AP
Retired Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, right, administers the Judicial Oath to Judge Brett Ka-
vanaugh in the Justices’ Conference Room of the Supreme Court Building. Ashley Kavana-
ugh holds the Bible. At left are their daughters, Margaret, background, and Liza.
By Aaron Gregg
The Washington Post
Over the past two decades
unmanned aerial drones
have transformed how the
U.S. Air Force wages war,
allowing it to surveil hostile
territory and neutralize en-
emy targets without putting
the lives of pilots at risk.
Next, the Navy is hop-
ing it can employ its own
unmanned vehicles to clear
mines, scout unfamiliar
territory or wage anti-sub-
marine warfare. And big-
name defense contractors
are eagerly buying the rights
to next-generation technol-
ogies that they think could
enable a revolution in sea-
based autonomy.
For years, Boeing and
Lockheed Martin have in-
vested in unmanned, auton-
omous drones of their own.
And the New York-based
defense contractor L3 Tech-
nologies is building out an
entire business unit focused
on sea-based autonomy, pre-
paring for a future in which
the Navy buys fewer aircraft
carriers and more robots.
“I would predict there
will come a time when every
manned vessel has an auton-
omous capability built into
it, might even be required by
regulation,” said Bill Toti, a re-
tired Navy submarine captain
and now an executive at L3.
Overseeing it all is Sean
Stackley, a former Navy offi-
cial who joined the compa-
ny in January. In the Navy,
Stackley served as assistant
secretary for research, de-
velopment and acquisition,
playing a lead role in setting
the service’s technology ac-
quisition priorities.
His hiring is part of a
broader reorganization at L3,
a publicly traded company
whose most visible product
has been 360-degree scan-
ners that commercial fliers
pass through at the airport.
He says the technology
enabling such systems has
only recently become avail-
able. For now, the approach is
based mainly around teaming
manned ships with robots,
delegating dangerous or me-
nial tasks like mine-clearing
to unmanned submarines.
“When you use manned
mine countermeasure ships,
it is an extremely laborious
process, and it means you’ve
got a manned ship in a mine-
field,” Stackley said.
lar federal requirement.
“The California legislature
has enacted an extreme and
illegal state law attempting to
frustrate federal policy,” U.S.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions
said in a statement announcing
a lawsuit against the state.
California has sued — and
been sued — multiple times
since Trump took office. Its at-
torney general, Democrat Xavier
Becerra, declined to comment, as
did several other attorneys gen-
eral involved in lawsuits against
the administration.
Similar questions over state vs.
federal authority are in play in the
Trump administration challenge
of a law that set up California as a
“sanctuary state” unwilling to co-
operate with federal authorities in
certain immigration matters.
Thomas Saenz, president of
MALDEF, a Latino civil rights
organization, said Kavanaugh’s
hearing reinforced what he be-
lieved after studying the judge’s
previous rulings that touched on
immigration.
“The concern is that partisan
ideology came first and then
judicial philosophy, rather than
the other way around,” he said.
runs counter to actions taken by
the administration.
Questions about Kavana-
ugh’s ability to remain impartial
and give a fair hearing to such
cases escalated after his defiant
statement Sept. 27 to the Senate
Judiciary Committee.
He railed against the sexu-
al assault accusations as being
orchestrated by Democrats,
saying: “This whole two-week
effort has been a calculated and
orchestrated political hit, fueled
with apparent pent-up anger
about President Trump and the
2016 election, fear that has been
unfairly stoked about my judi-
cial record, revenge on behalf of
the Clintons and millions of dol-
lars in money from outside left-
wing opposition groups.”
Kavanaugh, who denied the
assault allegation, also said that
“in the United States political
system of the early 2000s, what
goes around comes around”
— a statement some observers
took to be a threat. But Kava-
naugh also said he would not
be “swayed by public or political
pressure.”
Since then, he wrote in a Wall
Street Journal op-ed that “an
independent and impartial judi-
ciary is essential” and that he will
“keep an open mind in every case.”
Pat Gallagher, director of
the legal program at the Sierra
Club, said he expects Kavana-
ugh would oppose environmen-
tal regulation regardless of who
calls for it — as he has often
done as an appeals court judge.
With his confirmation, Gal-
lagher said, “we’re going to have
to find ways to keep cases away
from the Supreme Court.”
Despite questions about Ka-
vanaugh’s objectivity, many of
the lawsuits involving blue states
do not align neatly with partisan
ideology. The core question is
who has the power to regulate in
that area — the federal govern-
ment or the states?
California’s newly signed in-
ternet neutrality law is a prime
example. It prohibits internet
service providers from favor-
ing specific websites or online
content by cutting access or
charging more for some than
others. The state adopted the
law last month in response to
a Federal Communications
Commission policy change ear-
lier this year that ended a simi-
Democratic states are in
scores of legal battles with the
Trump administration over
health care, the environment,
consumer protections, immi-
gration and other issues. Mar-
quette University political sci-
entist Paul Nolette has tallied
61 times that states have banded
together in lawsuits against the
Trump administration.
Trump’s Department of Jus-
tice also has initiated legal ac-
tion against blue states. Most
recently, the department sued
California just hours after Gov.
Jerry Brown signed a law re-
quiring internet neutrality that
Historically low levels of refugees enter US
a
Trump policy on
refugees leaves
thousands behind
:
W.
By Susannah George
and Colleen Long
Associated Press
WASHINGTON
/T
Death
threats drove Hadi Mohammed
out of Iraq and to a small apart-
ment in Nebraska, where he and
his two young sons managed to
settle as refugees. But the dan-
ger hasn’t been enough to allow
his wife to join them.
Mohammed, who worked
as a security guard for the U.S.
military in Baghdad, says he
was initially told his wife would
be reunited with him and the
boys within a month. The wait
has now dragged on for more
than a year as she goes through
stricter screening imposed by
the Trump administration.
Mohammed says it’s been an
agonizing wait, especially for his
9-year-old son. “Every night he
cries about mom, I need mom,”
he said in halting English as he sat
on a couch with the boy in their
apartment in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Tens of thousands of people
are experiencing similar an-
guished waits as the number of
refugees entering the U.S. falls
to historic lows because of tight-
er scrutiny that administration
officials say is necessary for secu-
rity. Critics say it amounts to an
abandonment of the country’s
historic humanitarian role and
discriminates against certain
groups, particularly Muslims.
The U.S. admitted 22,491
refugees in the budget year that
ended Sept. 30. That’s one-quar-
ter of the number allowed to en-
ter two years ago and the lowest
since Congress passed a law in
1980 creating the modem reset-
tlement system.
It was less than half the max-
imum that the administration
had said it would allow, even
with millions of people seek-
ing to escape war and famine
around the world.
“It’s unfortunate for the ref-
ugees who could have come this
year and didn’t,” said Jen Smyers
with Church World Service, an
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Nati Harnik/AP
Hadi Mohammed gestures as he sits with his 9-year-old son Mohammed Ghaleb, on Sept.
29 in their Lincoln, Neb., apartment. Death threats drove Hadi Mohammed out of Iraq and
to a small apartment in Nebraska, where he and his two young sons managed to settle as
refugees. But the danger hasn’t been enough to allow his wife to join them.
organization that supports refu-
gees and immigrants. “But these
low numbers also show the U.S.
turning away from a global lead-
ership role on this issue.”
Last month, the cap was set
even lower, at 30,000, for the
new budget year. Secretary of
State Mike Pompeo said at the
time the U.S. remained “the
most generous nation in the
world when it comes to protec-
tion-based immigration” but
that the government needed
to work through a backlog of
pending asylum cases and sup-
port efforts to resettle people
closer to home, so they can even-
tually return.
Behind the reduction are
more stringent security proto-
cols for citizens of 11 countries
designated by the administra-
tion as presenting the greatest
potential threat. People from
four of them — Iraq, Iran, Syr-
ia and Somalia — made up 41
percent of refugees allowed into
the U.S. in 2016 and 2017. Now,
they make up just 2 percent as
people such as Mohammed’s
wife, whose name he does not
want to publicize out of fear for
her safety, face much lengthier
background checks.
Mohammed, 52, provided
The tighter screening of ref-
ugees reflects one of the signa-
ture issues for President Donald
Trump, who imposed a travel
ban on people from seven ma-
jority Muslim countries as one
of his first actions upon taking
office in January 2017.
The Department of Home-
land Security has since made it
harder to enter the U.S. entirely,
with more rigorous interviews
and background checks. Ad-
ministration officials say refugee
applicants are now subject to
strictest, most comprehensive
background check process for
any group seeking to come to
theU.S.
Officials collect more data on
refugee applicants and conduct
higher-level security vetting. Of-
ficers have been given training
on how to determine credibility.
Fraud detection and national
security officers now come over-
sees with U.S. Citizenship and
Immigration Services teams
who are processing refugees.
Officials say the security
changes may lead to tempo-
rary slowdowns in admissions
but it wouldn’t be permanent
and the U.S. continues to help
the world’s most vulnerable
people.
security at American military
bases in central Baghdad and
just north of the Iraqi capital
from 2008 to 2014. After a five-
year wait, he received word that
he had been approved to come
to the U.S. as a refugee in June
2017 with his sons. The family
was told the wife would be ap-
proved soon. In correspondence
from the State Department, his
wife was told that her applica-
tion was undergoing “additional
administrative processing” but
gave little other information.
“Unfortunately, we cannot pre-
dict how long this administra-
tive review will take.”
Another Iraqi, who worked
as a translator for the U.S. mil-
itary and now lives in Utah,
said he has been waiting for
two years to get his mother and
brothers to join him. “If my
brother is killed ... I will spend
the rest of my life blaming my-
self for putting my family in
harm’s way,” said the 41-year-old
man, who spoke on condition of
anonymity because he fears for
his family’s safety in Iraq.
The State Department ac-
knowledges that the screening
and vetting procedures have
resulted in fewer refugee admis-
sions in 2018.
r
Virginia N. Hammerle
Please See Virginia Hammerle’s
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Tuesday in the Dallas Morning News
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McCrory, Sean. Denton Record-Chronicle (Denton, Tex.), Vol. 115, No. 67, Ed. 1 Monday, October 8, 2018, newspaper, October 8, 2018; Denton, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1138076/m1/3/: accessed June 25, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; .