Parental Agreement Revised July 15 2010: Fill & Download for Free

Interesting that you should ask. Just a week or so ago, I ran across a list of Trump’s accomplishments in just 24 months in office. Just to compare, I also looked up Joe Biden’s record of accomplishments made in 44 years of service.I’ll list Joe’s first…1960: “[O]ne of the best pass receivers I had in 16 years as a coach.” — E. John Walsh, football coach at Archmere Academy.1965: Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Delaware in Newark, with a double major in history and political science and a minor in English.1968: Graduated from Syracuse University College of Law with a law degree.1969: Admitted to the Delaware bar.1970-72: Served on New Castle County Council.1972-77: Single parent to two sons, commuting on Amtrak 75 minutes each way between his home in Wilmington, Delaware and Washington, D.C.Joe Biden: Senate accomplishments1973-2009: U.S. Senator from Delaware, initially focussing on consumer protection, environmental issues, government accountability, and arms control. In his 6 terms as a senator, Joe Biden sponsored or co-sponsored 348 pieces of legislation that became law.1981-97: Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee for 17 years.1986: Introduced his Global Climate Protection Act, one of the first bills aimed at addressing climate change.1990s: Authored every major piece of crime legislation this decade, including the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.1992-1995: Strongly guided Balkans policy in the mid-1990s during the Bosnian War, producing a successful NATO peacekeeping effort.1994: Spearheaded the Violence Against Women Act, criminalizing violence against women and creating unprecedented resources for survivors of assault, which was followed by a 64% drop in domestic violence from 1993 to 2010.1997-2009: Chairman or Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for 12 years, leading legislation related to terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, post-Cold War Europe, the Middle East, and Southwest Asia.1997: Led the Senate to approve ratification of the Chemical Weapons Convention.1998: Led the Senate to approve NATO enlargement and passage of bills to streamline foreign affairs agencies and punish religious persecution overseas.1999: Co-sponsored the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on President Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront Milošević over Yugoslav actions in Kosovo.2000: Sponsored the Kids 2000 Act, establishing a public-private partnership to provide computer centers, teachers, Internet access, and technical training to young people, particularly low-income and at-risk youth.Joe Biden: Vice President accomplishments-2017: Vice President of the United States.2009: Implemented and oversaw the $840 billion stimulus package in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.2009: Chaired the Middle Class Working Families Task Force.2010: Fought for Congressional approval of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which inserted accountability into the financial sector and fortified the stability of the financial system.2011: Led negotiations between Congress and the White House in resolving federal spending levels for the rest of the year and avoiding a government shutdown. Negotiated with Mitch McConnell to agree on deficit-reducing Budget Control Act of 2011.2012: Headed the Gun Violence Task Force in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.2012: Negotiated a deal with Mitch McConnell that led to the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012, averting a fiscal cliff and implementing the largest middle-class tax cut in history.2014: Co-chaired White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault.2014: Served as the Obama administration’s emissary to Eastern European governments like Poland, Lithuania, and Ukraine worried over Vladimir Putin’s ambitions in the region.Here’s Trumps list…..Economic Growth4.2 percent growth in the second quarter of 2018.For the first time in more than a decade, growth is projected to exceed 3 percent over the calendar year.Jobs4 million new jobs have been created since the election, and more than 3.5 million since Trump took office.More Americans are employed now than ever before in our history.Jobless claims at lowest level in nearly five decades.The economy has achieved the longest positive job-growth streak on record.Job openings are at an all-time high and outnumber job seekers for the first time on record.Unemployment claims at 50 year lowAfrican-American, Hispanic, and Asian-American unemployment rates have all recently reached record lows.African-American unemployment hit a record low of 5.9 percent in May 2018.Hispanic unemployment at 4.5 percent.Asian-American unemployment at record low of 2 percent.Women’s unemployment recently at lowest rate in nearly 65 years.Female unemployment dropped to 3.6 percent in May 2018, the lowest since October 1953.Youth unemployment recently reached its lowest level in more than 50 years.July 2018’s youth unemployment rate of 9.2 percent was the lowest since July 1966.Veterans’ unemployment recently hit its lowest level in nearly two decades.July 2018’s veterans’ unemployment rate of 3.0 percent matched the lowest rate since May 2001.Unemployment rate for Americans without a high school diploma recently reached a record low.Rate for disabled Americans recently hit a record low.Blue-collar jobs recently grew at the fastest rate in more than three decades.Poll found that 85 percent of blue-collar workers believe their lives are headed “in the right direction.”68 percent reported receiving a pay increase in the past year.Last year, job satisfaction among American workers hit its highest level since 2005.Nearly two-thirds of Americans rate now as a good time to find a quality job.Optimism about the availability of good jobs has grown by 25 percent.Added more than 400,000 manufacturing jobs since the election.Manufacturing employment is growing at its fastest pace in more than two decades.100,000 new jobs supporting the production & transport of oil & natural gas.American IncomeMedian household income rose to $61,372 in 2017, a post-recession high.Wages up in August by their fastest rate since June 2009.Paychecks rose by 3.3 percent between 2016 and 2017, the most in a decade.Council of Economic Advisers found that real wage compensation has grown by 1.4 percent over the past year.Some 3.9 million Americans off food stamps since the election.Median income for Hispanic-Americans rose by 3.7 percent and surpassed $50,000 for the first time ever in history.Home-ownership among Hispanics is at the highest rate in nearly a decade.Poverty rates for African-Americans and Hispanic-Americans have reached their lowest levels ever recorded.American OptimismSmall business optimism has hit historic highs.NFIB’s small business optimism index broke a 35 year-old record in August.SurveyMonkey/CNBC’s small business confidence survey for Q3 of 2018 matched its all-time high.Manufacturers are more confident than ever.95 percent of U.S. manufacturers are optimistic about the future, the highest ever.Consumer confidence is at an 18-year high.12 percent of Americans rate the economy as the most significant problem facing our country, the lowest level on record.Confidence in the economy is near a two-decade high, with 51 percent rating the economy as good or excellent.American BusinessInvestment is flooding back into the United States due to the tax cuts.Over $450 billion dollars has already poured back into the U.S., including more than $300 billion in the first quarter of 2018.Retail sales have surged. Commerce Department figures from August show that retail sales increased 0.5 percent in July 2018, an increase of 6.4 percent from July 2017.ISM’s index of manufacturing scored its highest reading in 14 years.Worker productivity is the highest it has been in more than three years.Steel and aluminum producers are re-opening.Dow Jones Industrial Average, S&P 500, and NASDAQ have all notched record highs.Dow hit record highs 70 times in 2017 alone, the most ever recorded in one year.DeregulationAchieved massive deregulation at a rapid pace, completing 22 deregulatory actions to every one regulatory action during his first year in office.Signed legislation to roll back costly and harmful provisions of Dodd-Frank, providing relief to credit unions, and community and regional banks.Federal agencies achieved more than $8 billion in lifetime net regulatory cost savings.Rolled back Obama’s burdensome Waters of the U.S. rule.Used the Congressional Review Act to repeal regulations more times than in history.Tax CutsBiggest tax cuts and reforms in American history by signing the Tax Cuts and Jobs act into lawProvided more than $5.5 trillion in gross tax cuts, nearly 60 percent of which will go to families.Increased the exemption for the death tax to help save Family Farms & Small Business.Nearly doubled the standard deduction for individuals and families.Enabled vast majority of American families will be able to file their taxes on a single page by claiming the standard deduction.Doubled the child tax credit to help lessen the financial burden of raising a family.Lowered America’s corporate tax rate from the highest in the developed world to allow American businesses to compete and win.Small businesses can now deduct 20 percent of their business income.Cut dozens of special interest tax breaks and closed loopholes for the wealthy.9 in 10 American workers are expected see an increase in their paychecks thanks to the tax cuts, according to the Treasury Department.More than 6 million of American workers have received wage increases, bonuses, and increased benefits thanks to tax cuts.Over 100 utility companies have lowered electric, gas, or water rates thanks to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.Ernst & Young found 89 percent of companies planned to increase worker compensation thanks to the Trump tax cuts.Established opportunity zones to spur investment in left behind communities.Worker DevelopmentEstablished a National Council for the American Worker to develop a national strategy for training and retraining America’s workers for high-demand industries.Employers have signed Trump’s “Pledge to America’s Workers,” committing to train or retrain more than 4.2 million workers and students.Signed the first Perkins CTE reauthorization since 2006, authorizing more than $1 billion for states each year to fund vocational and career education programs.Executive order expanding apprenticeship opportunities for students and workers.Domestic InfrastructureProposed infrastructure plan would utilize $200 billion in Federal funds to spur at least $1.5 trillion in infrastructure investment across the country.Executive order expediting environmental reviews and approvals for high priority infrastructure projects.Federal agencies have signed the One Federal Decision Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) streamlining the federal permitting process for infrastructure projects.Rural prosperity task force and signed an executive order to help expand broadband access in rural areas.Health CareSigned an executive order to help minimize the financial burden felt by American households Signed legislation to improve the National Suicide Hotline.Signed the most comprehensive childhood cancer legislation ever into law, which will advance childhood cancer research and improve treatments.Signed Right-to-Try legislation, expanding health care options for terminally ill patients.Enacted changes to the Medicare 340B program, saving seniors an estimated $320 million on drugs in 2018 alone.FDA set a new record for generic drug approvals in 2017, saving consumers nearly $9 billion.Released a blueprint to drive down drug prices for American patients, leading multiple major drug companies to announce they will freeze or reverse price increases.Expanded short-term, limited-duration health plans.Let more employers to form Association Health Plans, enabling more small businesses to join together and affordably provide health insurance to their employees.Cut Obamacare’s burdensome individual mandate penalty.Signed legislation repealing Obamacare’s Independent Payment Advisory Board, also known as the “death panels.”USDA invested more than $1 billion in rural health care in 2017, improving access to health care for 2.5 million people in rural communities across 41 statesProposed Title X rule to help ensure taxpayers do not fund the abortion industry in violation of the law.Reinstated and expanded the Mexico City Policy to keep foreign aid from supporting the global abortion industry.HHS formed a new division over protecting the rights of conscience and religious freedom.Overturned Obama administration’s midnight regulation prohibiting states from defunding certain abortion facilities.Signed executive order to help ensure that religious organizations are not forced to choose between violating their religious beliefs by complying with Obamacare’s contraceptive mandate or shutting their doors.Combating OpioidsChaired meeting the 73rd General Session of the United Nations discussing the worldwide drug problem with international leaders.Initiative to Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand, introducing new measures to keep dangerous drugs out of our communities.$6 billion in new funding to fight the opioid epidemic.DEA conducted a surge in April 2018 that arrested 28 medical professions and revoked 147 registrations for prescribing too many opioids.Brought the “Prescribed to Death” memorial to President’s Park near the White House, helping raise awareness about the human toll of the opioid crisis.Helped reduce high-dose opioid prescriptions by 16 percent in 2017.Opioid Summit on the administration-wide efforts to combat the opioid crisis.Launched a national public awareness campaign about the dangers of opioid addiction.Created a Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis which recommended a number of pathways to tackle the opioid crisis.Led two National Prescription Drug Take Back Days in 2017 and 2018, collecting a record number of expired and unneeded prescription drugs each time.$485 million targeted grants in FY 2017 to help areas hit hardest by the opioid crisis.Signed INTERDICT Act, strengthening efforts to detect and intercept synthetic opioids before they reach our communities.DOJ secured its first-ever indictments against Chinese fentanyl manufacturers.Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement (J-CODE) team, aimed at disrupting online illicit opioid sales.Declared the opioid crisis a Nationwide Public Health Emergency in October 2017.Law and OrderMore U.S. Circuit Court judges confirmed in the first year in office than ever.Confirmed more than two dozen U. S. Circuit Court judges.Followed through on the promise to nominate judges to the Supreme Court who will adhere to the ConstitutionNominated and confirmed Justice Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.Signed an executive order directing the Attorney General to develop a strategy to more effectively prosecute people who commit crimes against law enforcement officers.Launched an evaluation of grant programs to make sure they prioritize the protection and safety of law enforcement officers.Established a task force to reduce crime and restore public safety in communities across Signed an executive order to focus more federal resources on dismantling transnational criminal organizations such as drug cartels.Signed an executive order to focus more federal resources on dismantling transnational criminal organizations such as drug cartels.Violent crime decreased in 2017 according to FBI statistics.$137 million in grants through the COPS Hiring Program to preserve jobs, increase community policing capacities, and support crime prevention efforts.Enhanced and updated the Project Safe Neighborhoods to help reduce violent crime.Signed legislation making it easier to target websites that enable sex trafficking and strengthened penalties for people who promote or facilitate prostitution.Created an interagency task force working around the clock to prosecute traffickers, protect victims, and prevent human trafficking.Conducted Operation Cross Country XI to combat human trafficking, rescuing 84 children and arresting 120 human traffickers.Encouraged federal prosecutors to use the death penalty when possible in the fight against the trafficking of deadly drugs.New rule effectively banning bump stock sales in the United States.Border Security and ImmigrationSecured $1.6 billion for border wall construction in the March 2018 omnibus bill.Construction of a 14-mile section of border wall began near San Diego.Worked to protect American communities from the threat posed by the vile MS-13 gang.ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations division arrested 796 MS-13 members and associates in FY 2017, an 83 percent increase from the prior year.Justice worked with partners in Central America to secure criminal charges against more than 4,000 MS-13 members.Border Patrol agents arrested 228 illegal aliens affiliated with MS-13 in FY 2017.Fighting to stop the scourge of illegal drugs at our border.ICE HSI seized more than 980,000 pounds of narcotics in FY 2017, including 2,370 pounds of fentanyl and 6,967 pounds of heroin.ICE HSI dedicated nearly 630,000 investigative hours towards halting the illegal import of fentanyl.ICE HSI made 11,691 narcotics-related arrests in FY 2017.Stop Opioid Abuse and Reduce Drug Supply and Demand introduced new measures to keep dangerous drugs out the United States.Signed the INTERDICT Act into law, enhancing efforts to detect and intercept synthetic opioids.DOJ secured its first-ever indictments against Chinese fentanyl manufacturers.DOJ launched their Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement (J-CODE) team, aimed at disrupting online illicit opioid sales.Released an immigration framework that includes the resources required to secure our borders and close legal loopholes, and repeatedly called on Congress to fix our broken immigration laws.Authorized the deployment of the National Guard to help secure the border.Enhanced vetting of individuals entering the U.S. from countries that don’t meet security standards, helping to ensure individuals who pose a threat to our country are identified before they enter.These procedures were upheld in a June 2018 Supreme Court hearing.ICE removed over 226,000 illegal aliens from the United States in 2017.ICE rescued or identified over 500 human trafficking victims and over 900 child exploitation victims in 2017 alone.In 2017, ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) arrested more than 127,000 aliens with criminal convictions or charges, responsible forOver 76,000 with dangerous drug offenses.More than 48,000 with assault offenses.More than 11,000 with weapons offenses.More than 5,000 with sexual assault offenses.More than 2,000 with kidnapping offenses.Over 1,800 with homicide offenses.Created the Victims of Immigration Crime Engagement (VOICE) Office in order to support the victims and families affected by illegal alien crime.More than doubled the number of counties participating in the 287(g) program, which allows jails to detain criminal aliens until they are transferred to ICE custody.TradeNegotiating and renegotiating better trade deals, achieving free, fair, and reciprocal trade for the United States.Agreed to work with the European Union towards zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsides.Deal with the European Union to increase U.S. energy exports to Europe.Litigated multiple WTO disputes targeting unfair trade practices and upholding our right to enact fair trade laws.Finalized a revised trade agreement with South Korea, which includes provisions to increase American automobile exports.Negotiated an historic U.S.-Mexico-Canada Trade Agreement to replace NAFTA.Agreement to begin trade negotiations for a U.S.-Japan trade agreement.Secured $250 billion in new trade and investment deals in China and $12 billion in Vietnam.Established a Trade and Investment Working Group with the United Kingdom, laying the groundwork for post-Brexit trade.Enacted steel and aluminum tariffs to protect our vital steel and aluminum producers and strengthen our national security.Conducted 82 anti-dumping and countervailing duty investigations in 2017 alone.Confronting China’s unfair trade practices after years of Washington looking the other way.25 percent tariff on $50 billion of goods imported from China and later imposed an additional 10% tariff on $200 billion of Chinese goods.Conducted an investigation into Chinese forced technology transfers, unfair licensing practices, and intellectual property theft.Imposed safeguard tariffs to protect domestic washing machines and solar products manufacturers hurt by China’s trade policiesWithdrew from the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).Secured access to new markets for America’s farmers.Recent deal with Mexico included new improvements enabling food and agriculture to trade more fairly.Recent agreement with the E.U. will reduce barriers and increase trade of American soybeans to Europe.Won a WTO dispute regarding Indonesia’s unfair restriction of U.S. agricultural exports.Defended American Tuna fisherman and packagers before the WTOOpened up Argentina to American pork experts for the first time in a quarter-centuryAmerican beef exports have returned to china for the first time in more than a decadeOK’d up to $12 billion in aid for farmers affected by unfair trade retaliation.EnergyPresidential Memorandum to clear roadblocks to construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline.Presidential Memorandum declaring that the Dakota Access Pipeline serves the national interest and initiating the process to complete construction.Opened up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge to energy exploration.Coal exports up over 60 percent in 2017.Rolled back the “stream protection rule” to prevent it from harming America’s coal industry.Cancelled Obama’s anti-coal Clean Power Plan and proposed the Affordable Clean Energy Rule as a replacement.Withdrew from the job-killing Paris climate agreement, which would have cost the U.S. nearly $3 trillion and led to 6.5 million fewer industrial sector jobs by 2040.U.S. oil production has achieved its highest level in American historyUnited States is now the largest crude oil producer in the world.U.S. has become a net natural gas exporter for the first time in six decades.Action to expedite the identification and extraction of critical minerals that are vital to the nation’s security and economic prosperity.Took action to reform National Ambient Air Quality Standards, benefitting American manufacturers.Rescinded Obama’s hydraulic fracturing rule, which was expected to cost the industry $32 million per year.Proposed an expansion of offshore drilling as part of an all-of-the above energy strategyHeld a lease sale for offshore oil and gas leases in the Gulf of Mexico in August 2018.Got EU to increase its imports of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the United States.Issued permits for the New Burgos Pipeline that will cross the U.S.-Mexico border.Foreign PolicyMoved the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.Withdrew from Iran deal and immediately began the process of re-imposing sanctions that had been lifted or waived.Treasury has issued sanctions targeting Iranian activities and entities, including the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods ForceSince enacting sanctions, Iran’s crude exports have fallen off, the value of Iran’s currency has plummeted, and international companies have pulled out of the country.All nuclear-related sanctions will be back in full force by early November 2018.Historic summit with North Korean President Kim Jong-Un, bringing beginnings of peace and denuclearization to the Korean Peninsula.The two leaders have exchanged letters and high-level officials from both sides have met resulting in tremendous progress.North Korea has halted nuclear and missile tests.Negotiated the return of the remains of missing-in-action soldiers from the Korean War.Imposed strong sanctions on Venezuelan dictator Nicholas Maduro and his inner circle.Executive order preventing those in the U.S. from carrying out certain transactions with the Venezuelan regime, including prohibiting the purchase of the regime’s debt.Responded to the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian regime.Rolled out sanctions targeting individuals and entities tied to Syria’s chemical weapons program.Directed strikes in April 2017 against a Syrian airfield used in a chemical weapons attack on innocent civilians.Joined allies in launching airstrikes in April 2018 against targets associated with Syria’s chemical weapons use.New Cuba policy that enhanced compliance with U.S. law and held the Cuban regime accountable for political oppression and human rights abuses.Treasury and State are working to channel economic activity away from the Cuban regime, particularly the military.Changed the rules of engagement, empowering commanders to take the fight to ISIS.ISIS has lost virtually all of its territory, more than half of which has been lost under Trump.ISIS’ self-proclaimed capital city, Raqqah, was liberated in October 2017.All Iraqi territory had been liberated from ISIS.More than a dozen American hostages have been freed from captivity all of the world.Action to combat Russia’s malign activities, including their efforts to undermine the sanctity of United States elections.Expelled dozens of Russian intelligence officers from the United States and ordered the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, WA.Banned the use of Kaspersky Labs software on government computers, due to the company’s ties to Russian intelligence.Imposed sanctions against five Russian entities and three individuals for enabling Russia’s military and intelligence units to increase Russia’s offensive cyber capabilities.Sanctions against seven Russian oligarchs, and 12 companies they own or control, who profit from Russia’s destabilizing activities.Sanctioned 100 targets in response to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and aggression in Eastern Ukraine.Enhanced support for Ukraine’s Armed Forces to help Ukraine better defend itself.Helped win U.S. bid for the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles.Helped win U.S.-Mexico-Canada’s united bid for 2026 World Cup.DefenseExecutive order keeping the detention facilities at U.S. Naval Station Guantanamo Bay open.$700 billion in military funding for FY 2018 and $716 billion for FY 2019.Largest military pay raise in nearly a decade.Ordered a Nuclear Posture Review to ensure America’s nuclear forces are up to date and serve as a credible deterrent.Released America’s first fully articulated cyber strategy in 15 years.New strategy on national biodefense, which better prepares the nation to defend against biological threats.Administration has announced that it will use whatever means necessary to protect American citizens and servicemen from unjust prosecution by the International Criminal Court.Released an America first National Security Strategy.Put in motion the launch of a Space Force as a new branch of the military and relaunched the National Space Council.Encouraged North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to increase defense spending to their agree-upon levels.In 2017 alone, there was an increase of more than 4.8 percent in defense spending amongst NATO allies.Every member state has increased defense spending.Eight NATO allies will reach the 2 percent benchmark by the end of 2018 and 15 allies are on trade to do so by 2024.NATO allies spent over $42 billion dollars more on defense since 2016.Executive order to help military spouses find employment as their families deploy domestically and abroad.Veterans affairsSigned the VA Accountability Act and expanded VA telehealth services, walk-in-clinics, and same-day urgent primary and mental health care.Delivered more appeals decisions – 81,000 – to veterans in a single year than ever before.Strengthened protections for individuals who come forward and identify programs occurring within the VA.Signed legislation that provided $86.5 billion in funding for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), the largest dollar amount in history for the VA.VA MISSION Act, enacting sweeping reform to the VA system that:Consolidated and strengthened VA community care programs.Funding for the Veterans Choice program.Expanded eligibility for the Family Caregivers Program.Gave veterans more access to walk-in care.Strengthened the VA’s ability to recruit and retain quality healthcare professionals.Enabled the VA to modernize its assets and infrastructure.Signed the VA Choice and Quality Employment Act in 2017, which authorized $2.1 billion in addition funds for the Veterans Choice Program.Worked to shift veterans’ electronic medical records to the same system used by the Department of Defense, a decades old priority.Issued an executive order requiring the Secretaries of Defense, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs to submit a joint plan to provide veterans access to access to mental health treatment as they transition to civilian life.Increased transparency and accountability at the VA by launching an online “Access and Quality Tool,” providing veterans with access to wait time and quality of care data.Signed legislation to modernize the claims and appeal process at the VA.Harry W. Colmery Veterans Educational Assistance Act, providing enhanced educational benefits to veterans, service members, and their family members.Lifted a 15-year limit on veterans’ access to their educational benefits.Created a White House VA Hotline to help veterans and principally staffed it with veterans and direct family members of veterans.VA employees are being held accountable for poor performance, with more than 4,000 VA employees removed, demoted, and suspended so far.Signed the Veterans Treatment Court Improvement Act, increasing the number of VA employees that can assist justice-involved veterans.

This list is not counting Trump threatening to nuke Iran or fast-tracking oil drilling in nature reserves in Alaska (which happened last week). Nor does it count his march against science, the environment nor any of his perverse sexual, unpatriotic, or just downright rude personal faux pas.No… this is simply a list of all of his human rights violations.Trump Administration Civil and Human Rights RollbacksSince Trump took office in January 2017, his administration has worked aggressively to turn back the clock on (y)our nation’s civil and human rights progress. Here’s how.2017On January 27, Trump signed an executive order – the first version of his Muslim ban – that discriminated against Muslims and banned refugees.On January 31, under new Chairman Ajit Pai’s leadership, the Federal Communications Commission refused to defend critical components of its prison phone rate rules in federal court – rules that were ultimately struck down in June.On February 3, Trump signed an executive order outlining principles for regulating the U.S. financial system and calling for a 120-day review of existing laws, like the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The order was viewed as Trump’s opening attack on consumer protection laws.On February 3, the FCC rescinded its 2014 Joint Sales Agreement (JSA) guidance, which had led to the only increase in television diversity in recent years.On February 3, FCC Chairman Pai revoked the Lifeline Broadband Provider (LBP) designations for nine broadband service providers, reducing the number of providers offering broadband and thus decreasing the competitive forces available to drive down prices.On February 7, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.J. Res. 57, a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to overturn a Department of Education accountability rule that clarifies states’ obligations under the Every Student Succeeds Act. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes this resolution.On February 9, Trump signed three executive orders “to fight crime, gangs, and drugs; restore law and order; and support the dedicated men and women of law enforcement.” The orders, though vague, were viewed suspiciously by civil rights organizations.On February 10, Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell of Washington wrote to Education Secretary Betsy DeVos after the centralized resource website for the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) became inaccessible to the public for more than a week. On February 17, DeVos issued a statement blaming the previous administration for neglecting the site.On February 21, the Department of Homeland Security issued a memo updating immigration enforcement guidance, massively expanding the number of people subject to detention and deportation. The guidance drastically increased the use of expedited removal and essentially eliminated the priorities for deportation.On February 22, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights jointly rescinded Title IX guidance clarifying protections under the law for transgender students.On February 23, Attorney General Sessions withdrew an earlier Justice Department memo that set a goal of reducing and ultimately ending the department’s use of private prisons.On February 27, the Department of Justice dropped the federal government’s longstanding position that a Texas voter ID law under legal challenge was intentionally racially discriminatory, despite having successfully advanced that argument in multiple federal courts. The district court subsequently rejected the position of the Sessions Justice Department and concluded the law was passed with discriminatory intent.On March 6, the Department of Justice withdrew its motion for a preliminary injunction against North Carolina’s anti-transgender HB 2 law.On March 6, Trump signed a revised executive order restricting travel to the United States by citizens of Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen and drastically cutting back refugee admissions.On March 6, a week after Trump called on lawmakers to repeal the Affordable Care Act during his address to Congress, House Republicans released a proposal to replace the ACA with a law that would end the Medicaid program as we know it and defund Planned Parenthood.On March 6, the Department of Health and Human Services proposed ending the collection of data on LGBTQ individuals with disabilities, removing questions on LGBTQ demographics from the Centers for Independent Living Annual Program Performance Report survey.On March 10, the Department of Housing and Urban Development withdrew a survey proposed in the Federal Register meant to assess the efficacy and replicability of HUD-funded programs to address LGBTQ youth homelessness. According to its own data, 40 percent of young people experiencing homelessness identify as LGBTQ, so ensuring that its programs are adequately meeting the needs of young LGBTQ people is critical to HUD meeting its own mission. After significant public outcry, the assessment survey was eventually reinstated.On March 13, the Department of Health and Human Services released a draft of the annual National Survey of Older Americans Act Participants, which gathers data on people who receive services funded through the Older Americans Act. HHS’s draft collection instrument omitted the questions on sexual orientation and gender identity asked on the previous year’s survey. After receiving nearly 14,000 comments on the data collection proposal and after facing bipartisan opposition from Congress, HHS restored the question on sexual orientation but omitted a question that yielded information on gender identity.On March 16, the Trump administration released a budget blueprint that proposed a $54 billion increase in military spending that would come from $54 billion in direct cuts to non-defense programs. The blueprint also proposed spending $4.1 billion through 2018 on the beginnings of construction of a wall through communities on the U.S.-Mexico border.On March 17, the Department of Housing and Urban Development removed links to four key resource documents from its website, which informed emergency shelters on best practices for serving transgender people facing homelessness and complying with HUD regulations.On March 22, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 1628, the American Health Care Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes. The White House issued a statement supporting the Senate’s motion to proceed to this legislation on July 24.On March 27, Trump signed a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which repealed a Department of Education accountability rule finalized last year that would clarify states’ obligations under the Every Student Succeeds Act.On March 27, Trump signed a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which repealed the Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces Executive Order. The order, signed by President Obama, represented a much-needed step forward in ensuring that the federal contractor community is providing safe and fair workplaces for employees by encouraging compliance with federal labor and civil rights laws, and prohibiting the use of mandatory arbitration of certain disputes.On March 29, the U.S. Census Bureau asserted that there was “no federal data need” to justify the collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data in the American Community Survey (ACS). The bureau’s original submission to Congress included a table suggesting that it planned to collect data on sexual orientation and gender identity in the ACS starting in the next iteration of the survey – but by the end of the day, the bureau hastily removed any reference to these topics in a revised submission. During the Obama administration, at least four federal agencies asked the bureau to add these questions.On March 29, The Washington Post reported that the Department of Education decided to terminate the Opening Doors, Expanding Opportunity grant program, which helps local districts devise ways to boost socioeconomic diversity within their schools.In a March 31 memo, Sessions ordered a sweeping review of consent decrees with law enforcement agencies relating to police conduct – a crucial tool in the Justice Department’s efforts to ensure constitutional and accountable policing. The department also tried, unsuccessfully, to block a federal court in Baltimore from approving a consent decree between the city and the Baltimore Police Department to rein in discriminatory police practices that the department itself had negotiated over a multi-year period.On April 3, Attorney General Jeff Sessions tried to back out of a consent decree to address civil rights violations by the Baltimore Police Department.On April 11, the administration proposed removing a question from the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH) regarding preschool suspension and expulsion. Without access to valid and reliable data, parents, advocates, educators, service providers, researchers, policymakers, and the public will not have the information they need to ensure early childhood settings are developmentally appropriate and nondiscriminatory.On April 13, Trump signed a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which overturned the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ final rule updating the regulations governing the Title X family planning program – a vital source of family planning and related preventive care for low-income, uninsured, and young people across the country.On April 14, the Department of Justice voluntarily dismissed its lawsuit challenging North Carolina’s anti-transgender HB 2 after the law was modified – although private challenges continued.On April 26, Trump released an outline of a tax reform plan that was viewed largely as a tax giveaway for the wealthy and big corporations.On April 26, Trump signed an executive order directing Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos to conduct a study on the federal government’s role in education.On May 2, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 1180, the Working Families Flexibility Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On May 4, Trump signed an executive order that he claimed overturned the Johnson Amendment (though it did not), which precludes tax-exempt organizations, including places of worship, from engaging in any political campaign activity and would curtail the contraception mandate of the Affordable Care Act.On May 11, Trump signed an executive order creating the so-called Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity headed by Vice President Mike Pence and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who has a history of trying to suppress the vote in Kansas.On May 12, Sessions announced in a two-page memo that DOJ was abandoning its Smart on Crime initiative that had been hailed as a positive step forward in rehabilitating drug users and reducing the enormous costs of warehousing inmates.On May 23, Trump released his fiscal year 2018 budget that included massive, unnecessary tax cuts for the wealthy and large corporations, which would be paid for by slashing basic living standards for the most vulnerable and by attacking critical programs like Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicaid, food assistance, and more.On May 23, Trump’s fiscal year 2018 budget proposed eliminating the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) and transferring its functions to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). This would have impeded the work of both the OFCCP and the EEOC as each have distinct missions and expertise, and would have thereby undermined the civil rights protections that employers and workers have relied on for almost 50 years.On June 5, Trump released an infrastructure plan that focuses on putting public assets into private hands, creating another giveaway to wealthy corporations and millionaires at the expense of working families and communities.On June 6, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued unclear new instructions on transgender student discrimination.On June 8, OCR’s acting head sent a memo to OCR staff discouraging systemic investigations in favor of individual investigations of discrimination.On June 14, DeVos decided to delay implementation of and to renegotiate the Borrower Defense to Repayment and Gainful Employment regulations – important regulations that had been designed to protect students from predatory conduct by for-profit schools.On June 14, the Department of Education withdrew, without explanation, a 2016 finding that an Ohio school district discriminated against a transgender girl.On June 15, the administration rescinded President Obama’s Deferred Action for Parents of Americans and Lawful Permanent Residents (DAPA) program, an initiative that – had it gone into effect – would have offered a pathway to citizenship for immigrant parents with children who are citizens or residents of the United States.On June 27, Labor Secretary Acosta requested information on the Obama-era overtime rule, signaling his intent to lower the salary threshold of the overtime rule.On June 27, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 3003, the No Sanctuary for Criminals Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On June 27, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 3004, Kate’s Law, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On June 28, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sent a letter to 44 states demanding extensive information on how they maintain their voter rolls. This request was made on the same day that President Trump’s so-called Commission on Election Integrity sent letters to all 50 states demanding intrusive and highly sensitive personal data about all registered voters.On July 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.J. Res 111, a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to overturn the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s final rule on forced arbitration clauses. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes the resolution. The White House issued a statement on October 24 opposing the Senate companion resolution.On July 26, Trump declared in a series of tweets that he was barring transgender people from serving in the military. He followed through with a presidential memo on August 25, though the issue is still being challenged in the courts.On July 26, the Department of Justice filed a legal brief arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation – a decision that contravened recent court decisions and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidance.On August 1, The New York Times reported that the “Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants.” In a move without recent precedent, this investigation and enforcement effort was planned to be run out of the Civil Rights Division’s front office by political appointees, instead of by experienced career staff in the division’s educational opportunities section.On August 2, Trump announced his support of Republican-backed legislation that would slash legal immigration in half over a decade.On August 7, the Justice Department filed a brief in the Supreme Court in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute arguing that it should be easier for states to purge registered voters from their rolls – reversing not only its longstanding legal interpretation, but also the position it had taken in the lower courts in that case.On August 28, Sessions lifted the Obama administration’s ban on the transfer of some military surplus items to domestic law enforcement – rescinding guidelines that were created in the wake of Ferguson to protect the public from law enforcement misuse of military-grade weapons.On September 5, Sessions announced that the administration was rescinding the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.On September 7, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the Supreme Court in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission arguing that businesses have a right to discriminate against LGBTQ customers.On September 12, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 3697, the Criminal Alien Gang Member Removal Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On September 15, the Department of Justice ended the Community Oriented Policing Services’ Collaborative Reform Initiative, a Justice Department program that aimed to help build trust between police officers and the communities they serve.On September 22, DeVos announced that the Department of Education was rescinding guidance related to Title IX and schools’ obligations regarding sexual violence and educational opportunity.On September 24, Trump issued the third version of his Muslim ban which, unlike the previous versions, was of indefinite duration.On September 27, the Trump administration and Republican leadership in Congress unveiled tax principles that would provide trillions in dollars of unnecessary tax cuts to millionaires, billionaires, and wealthy corporations.On October 2, DeVos rescinded 72 guidance documents outlining the rights of students with disabilities, though it wasn’t until October 21 until the public learned of the rescissions.On October 4, the Department of Justice filed a brief in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking the court to dismiss a lawsuit against the president’s transgender military ban.On October 5, Sessions reversed a Justice Department policy which clarified that transgender workers are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.On October 6, the Department of Justice issued sweeping religious liberty guidance to federal agencies, which will create a license to discriminate against LGBTQ individuals and others.On October 8, the White House released a list of hard-line immigration principles – a list of demands that included funding a border wall, deporting Central American children seeking sanctuary, and curbing grants to sanctuary cities, effectively stalling any possible bipartisan agreement on a bill to protect Dreamers.On October 12, Trump signed an executive order to undermine health care and, later that day, announced that he would end subsidies for certain health care plans.On October 27, the Department of Education announced it was withdrawing nearly 600 policy documents regarding K-12 and higher education.On November 1, Trump signed a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which repealed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s rule on forced arbitration. Overturning the rule will enable big banks, payday lenders, and other financial companies to force victims of fraud, discrimination, or other unlawful conduct into a “kangaroo court” process where their claims are decided by hired arbitration firms rather than by judges and juries – harming consumers and undermining civil rights and consumer protection laws.On November 6, the Trump administration announced it will terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for Nicaragua.On November 14, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 1, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes. The White House subsequently issued statements supporting this legislation on November 30 (the Senate version) and on December 18 (the conference report).On November 16, the Federal Communications Commission voted to gut Lifeline, the program dedicated to bringing phone and internet service within reach for people of color, low-income people, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities, with particularly egregious consequences for tribal areas. They also voted to eliminate several rules promoting competition and diversity in the broadcast media, undermining ownership chances for women and people of color.On November 20, the Trump administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation in 18 months for approximately 59,000 Haitians living in the United States.On November 24, Trump appointed Mick Mulvaney as acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As a member of Congress, Mulvaney supported abolishing the consumer bureau and has in the past referred to the CFPB as a “sick, sad” joke.On December 4, the Department of Labor proposed changing its longstanding position codified in regulation that prohibited employers from pooling together tips and redistributing them to workers who don’t traditionally earn tips.On December 12, the Department of Justice wrote to acting Census Bureau Director Ron Jarmin requesting a question about citizenship on the 2020 Census. It was an untimely and unnecessarily intrusive request that would destroy any chance for an accurate count, discard years of careful research, and increase costs significantly.On December 21, it was reported that Sessions rescinded 25 guidance documents, including a letter sent to chief judges and court administrators to help state and local efforts to reform harmful practices of imposing fees and fines on poor people.2018On January 4, Sessions rescinded guidance that had allowed states, with minimal federal interference, to legalize marijuana. This move will further reignite the War on Drugs.On January 8, Trump re-nominated a slate of unqualified and biased judicial nominees, including two rated Not Qualified by the American Bar Association.On January 8, the administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation for nearly 200,000 Salvadorans.On January 11, the Trump administration released new guidelines that allow states to seek waivers to require Medicaid recipients to work – requirements that represent a throwback to rejected racial stereotypes.On January 12, the Trump administration approved a waiver allowing Kentucky to require Medicaid recipients to work.On January 16, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under Mulvaney’s leadership announced it would reconsider the agency’s payday lending rule.On January 17, the administration announced its decision to bar citizens from Haiti from receiving H2-A and H2-B visas.On January 18, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposed rule to allow health care providers to discriminate against patients, and within the department’s Office for Civil Rights, a new division – the Conscience and Religious Freedom Division – to address related claims.On January 18, the CFPB abruptly dropped a lawsuit against four online payday lenders who unlawfully made loans of up to 950 percent APR in at least 17 states.On January 25, the Census Bureau announced that the questionnaire for the 2018 End-to-End Census Test will use race and ethnicity questions from the 2010 Census instead of updated questions recommended by Census Bureau staff. This suggests that the Office of Management and Budget will not revise the official standards for collecting and reporting this data, despite recommendations from a federal agency working group to do so.On February 1, The New York Times reported that the Department of Justice was effectively closing its Office for Access to Justice, which was designed to make access to legal aid more accessible.On February 1, reports surfaced claiming Trump’s Labor Department concealed an economic analysis that found working people could lose billions of dollars in wages under its proposal to roll back an Obama-era rule – a rule that protects working people in tipped industries from having their tips taken away by their employers.On February 1, multiple sources reported that acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney had transferred the consumer agency’s Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity from the Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending division to the director’s office. The move essentially gutted the unit responsible for enforcing anti-lending discrimination laws.On February 2, the Trump administration approved a waiver allowing Indiana to require some Medicaid recipients to work.On February 12, the Trump administration released its Fiscal Year 2019 budget proposal, which would deny critical health care to those most in need simply to bankroll the president’s wall through border communities. The proposal would also eliminate the Community Relations Service – a Justice Department office established by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 – which has been a key tool that helps address discrimination, conflicts, and tensions in communities around the country.On February 12, the Trump administration released an infrastructure proposal that would reward the rich and special interests at the expense of low-income communities and communities of color and leave behind too many American communities and those most in need.On February 12, BuzzFeed News reported that the U.S. Department of Education would no longer investigate complaints filed by transgender students who have been banned from using the restrooms that correspond with their gender identity. On the same day, the department released a statement saying Trump’s budget “protects vulnerable students” – a dubious claim.On February 26, the U.S. Department of Education proposed to delay implementation of a rule that enforces the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The rule implements the IDEA’s provisions regarding significant disproportionality in the identification, placement, and discipline of students with disabilities with regard to race and ethnicity.On March 5, the Trump administration approved Arkansas’ request to require some Medicaid recipients to work.On March 5, the Office for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education released a new Case Processing Manual (CPM) that creates greater hurdles for people filing complaints and allows dismissal of civil rights complaints based on the number of times an individual has filed.On March 5, a Department of Housing and Urban Development memo announced Secretary Ben Carson’s consideration of revising the agency’s mission statement and removing anti-discrimination language and promises of inclusive communities.On March 12, Attorney General Sessions announced the Justice Department’s ‘school safety’ plan – a plan that civil rights advocates criticized as militarizing schools, overpolicing children, and harming students, disproportionately students of color.On March 14, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 4909, the Student, Teachers, and Officers Preventing (STOP) School Violence Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On March 23, Trump issued new orders to ban most transgender people from serving in the military – the latest iteration of a ban that he had initially announced in a series of tweets in July 2017.On March 23, Trump signed a spending bill that included the STOP School Violence Act, which civil rights organizations are concerned will exacerbate the school-to-prison pipeline crisis, further criminalize historically marginalized children, and increase the militarization of, and over-policing in, schools and communities of color.On March 26, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross announced that he had directed the Census Bureau to add an untested and unnecessary question to the 2020 Census form, which would ask the citizenship status of every person in America.On April 3, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos restored recognition of for-profit school accreditor ACICS, which the prior administration had terminated as a federal aid gatekeeper based on ACICS’s documented failures to set, monitor, or enforce standards at the schools it accredited, including the now-defunct Corinthian, ITT, and FastTrain.On April 6, Attorney General Sessions announced that he had notified all U.S. Attorney’s offices along the southwest border of a new “zero tolerance” policy toward people trying to enter the country – a policy that quickly, and inhumanely, separated hundreds of children from their families.On April 10, a federal official announced that the Department of Justice was halting the Legal Orientation Program, which offers legal assistance to immigrants.On April 10, Trump signed an executive order directing federal agencies to push for work requirements for low-income people in America who receive federal assistance, including Medicaid and SNAP.On April 11, the Bureau of Justice Statistics announced that it will stop asking 16- and 17-year-olds to disclose voluntarily and confidentially their gender identity and sexual orientation on the National Crime Victimization Survey.On April 17, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting S.J. Res. 57, a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to repeal the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s guidance on indirect auto financing. The sole purpose of the resolution is to undermine the ability of the CFPB to enforce laws against racial and ethnic discrimination in auto lending, which is why The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes it.On April 25, Secretary Ben Carson proposed changes to federal housing subsidies that could triple rent for some households and make it easier to impose work requirements.On April 26, the Trump administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation in 12 months for approximately 9,000 Nepalese immigrants.On May 3, Trump signed an executive order creating a White House Faith and Opportunity Initiative tasked with working on “religious liberty” issues across federal agencies. The order deleted protections for beneficiaries receiving federally funded services from religious groups.On May 4, the Trump administration announced it would terminate the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) designation in 18 months for approximately 57,000 Honduran immigrants.On May 7, the Trump administration approved New Hampshire’s request to require some Medicaid recipients to work or participate in other “community engagement activities.”On May 11, the Federal Bureau of Prisons released changes to its Transgender Offender Manual that rolled back protections allowing transgender inmates to use facilities, including bathrooms and cell blocks, that correspond to their gender identity.On May 13, The New York Times reported that the Department of Education had “effectively killed investigations into possibly fraudulent activities at several large for-profit colleges where top hires of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary, had previously worked” by reassigning, marginalizing, or instructing its fraud investigators to focus on other matters.On May 18, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it would be publishing three separate notices to indefinitely suspend implementation of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule.On May 21, Trump signed a resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, which repealed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) guidance on indirect auto financing.On May 21, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On May 22, the Trump administration issued a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) designed to block access to health care under Title X and deny women information about their reproductive health care options.On May 24, Trump signed the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, which will undermine one of our nation’s key civil rights laws and weaken consumer protections enacted after the 2008 financial crisis. The law rolls back more expansive Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data requirements for banks that generate fewer than 500 loans or lines of credit each year, thereby exempting 85 percent of banks and credit unions.On May 24, the Department of Education announced that it does not plan to implement rules designed to protect students in online degree programs from being taken advantage of by schools that load students up with debt but offer useless degrees, and instead plans to delay implementation of the rules and rewrite them.On June 6, Mick Mulvaney fired all 25 members of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Consumer Advisory Board.On June 8, a Department of Justice filing argued that the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions are unconstitutional. The brief was signed by Chad Readler, a Justice Department official who Trump nominated (and Senate Republicans confirmed) to serve on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.On June 11, Attorney General Sessions ruled that fear of domestic or gang violence was not grounds for asylum in the United States.On June 11, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director L. Francis Cissna announced the creation of a denaturalization task force in a push to strip naturalized citizens of their citizenship.On June 11, the Department of Justice announced that it would delay implementation of a permanent program for collecting information on arrest-related deaths until Fiscal Year 2020, a full five years after the Death in Custody Reporting Act was signed into law and two years after DOJ last published its near-final compliance guidelines.On June 12, the Department of Justice sued the state of Kentucky to force it to “systematically remove the names of ineligible voters from the registration records.” This voter purge lawsuit was filed one day after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Ohio’s voter purges in Husted v. A. Philip Randolph Institute.On June 18, Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, announced that the United States was withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council.On June 27, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 6139, the Border Security and Immigration Reform Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On July 3, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos rescinded guidance from the Departments of Justice and Education that provides a roadmap to implement voluntary diversity and integration programs in higher education consistent with Supreme Court holdings on the issue.On July 10, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced cuts to navigator funding for outreach to hard-to-reach communities for the fall 2018 Affordable Care Act open enrollment period.On July 25, the Department of Education proposed new borrower defense rules, which would further exacerbate inequalities – making the already unfair and ineffective student loan servicing system even more harmful to all students, particularly to borrowers of color. The proposal would strip away student borrower rights, end key deterrents of predatory school conduct, and make it nearly impossible for students hurt by school misconduct to get loan relief.On July 26, the Trump administration failed to meet a court-ordered deadline to reunite children and families separated at the border.On July 30, Jeff Sessions announced the creation of a religious liberty task force at the Department of Justice, which many saw as a taxpayer funded effort to license discrimination against LGBTQ people and others.On August 10, the Department of Labor encouraged the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) staff to grant broad religious exemptions to federal contractors with religious-based objections to complying with Executive Order 11246, and deleted material from a prior OFCCP FAQ on sexual orientation and gender identity nondiscrimination protections that previously clarified the limited scope of allowable religious exemptions.On August 13, Secretary Ben Carson proposed changes to the Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, which aimed to combat segregation in housing policy.On August 15, the Federal Register published a Trump administration proposal to restrict protest rights in Washington, D.C. by closing 80 percent of the White House sidewalk, putting new limits on spontaneous demonstrations, and opening the door to charging fees for protesting.On August 29, The New York Times reported that the Department of Education is preparing rules that would “narrow the definition of sexual harassment, holding schools accountable only for formal complaints filed through proper authorities and for conduct said to have occurred on their campuses. They would also establish a higher legal standard to determine whether schools improperly addressed complaints.”On August 30, the Department of Justice filed an amicus brief opposing Harvard College’s motion for summary judgement in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard, choosing to oppose constitutionally sound strategies that colleges and universities use to expand educational opportunity for students of all backgrounds.On September 5, the Trump administration sent sweeping subpoenas to the North Carolina state elections board and 44 county elections boards requesting voter records be turned over by September 25. Two months before the midterm elections, civil rights advocates worried this effort would lead to voter suppression and intimidation.On September 6, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposal to withdraw from the Flores Settlement Agreement. The Flores Agreement is a set of protections for underage migrant children in government custody.On September 13, the National Labor Relations Board proposed weakening the “joint-employer standard” under the National Labor Relations Act, which would make it difficult for working people to bring the companies that share control over their terms and conditions of employment to the bargaining table.On October 1, a policy change at the Department of State took effect saying that the Trump administration would no longer issue family visas to same-sex domestic partners of foreign diplomats or employees of international organizations who work in the United States.On October 10, the Department of Homeland Security’s proposed ‘public charge’ rule was published in the Federal Register. Under the rule, immigrants who apply for a green card or visa could be deemed a ‘public charge’ and turned away if they earn below 250 percent of the federal poverty line and use any of a wide range of public programs.On October 12, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest opposing a consent decree negotiated by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan to overhaul the Chicago Police Department.On October 15, Trump vetoed a resolution, passed by both chambers of Congress, that would have terminated his declaration of a national emergency on the southern border with Mexico.On October 16, the administration released its fall 2017 Unified Agenda of Federal Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions. The document details the regulatory and deregulatory actions that federal agencies plan to make in the coming months, including harmful civil and human rights rollbacks.On October 19, the Department of Justice ended its agreement to monitor the Juvenile Court of Memphis and Shelby County and the Shelby County Detention Center in Tennessee, which addressed discrimination against Black youth, unsafe conditions, and no due process at hearings.On October 21, The New York Times reported that the Department of Health and Human Services is considering an interpretation of Title IX that “would define sex as either male or female, unchangeable, and determined by the genitals that a person is born with” – effectively erasing protections for transgender people.On October 22, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) issued new guidance on the Affordable Care Act’s 1332 waivers that would expand a state’s flexibility to establish insurance markets that don’t meet the requirements of the ACA.On October 24, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that federal civil rights law does not protect transgender workers from discrimination on the basis of their gender identity.On October 30, Axios reported that Trump intends to sign an executive order to end birthright citizenship. In a tweet the following day, Trump said “it will be ended one way or the other.”On October 31, the administration approved a waiver allowing Wisconsin to require Medicaid recipients to work. It was the first time a state that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act was allowed to impose work requirements.On November 5, the Department of Justice filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court to circumvent three separate U.S. Courts of Appeals on litigation concerning the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.On November 7, on his last day as Attorney General, Jeff Sessions issued a memorandum to gut the Department of Justice’s use of consent decrees.On November 8, the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice announced an interim final rule to block people from claiming asylum if they enter the United States outside legal ports of entry.On November 8, the Department of Labor rolled back guidance issued by the Obama administration that clarified that tipped workers must spend at least 80 percent of their time doing tipped work in order for employers to pay them the lower tipped minimum wage.On November 16, the Department of Education issued a draft Title IX regulation that represents a cruel attempt to silence sexual assault survivors and limit their educational opportunity – and could lead schools to do even less to prevent and respond to sexual violence and harassment.On November 23, the Office of Personnel Management rescinded guidance that helped federal agency managers understand how to support transgender federal workers and respect their rights (initially issued in 2011 and updates several times since), replacing it with vaguely worded guidance hostile to transgender working people.On December 11, Trump declared that he would be “proud to shut down the government” – which he did. It resulted in the longest government shutdown in U.S. history (35 days), which harmed federal workers, contractors, their families, and the communities that depend on them.On December 14, BuzzFeed News reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development was quietly advising lenders to deny DACA recipients Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans.On December 18, the Trump administration’s School Safety Commission recommended rescinding Obama-era school discipline guidance, which was intended to assist states, districts, and schools in developing practices and policies to enhance school climate and comply with federal civil rights laws.On December 21, following the recommendation of Trump’s School Safety Commission, the Departments of Justice and Education rescinded the Dear Colleague Letter on the Nondiscriminatory Administration of School Discipline. Both departments jointly issued the guidance in January 2014.2019On January 3, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is considering rolling back disparate impact regulations that provide anti-discrimination protections to people of color, women, and others.On January 4, The Guardian reported that the Trump administration has stopped cooperating with and responding to UN investigators over potential human rights violations in the United States.On January 23, the Department of Health and Human Services granted a waiver to South Carolina to allow state-licensed child welfare agencies to discriminate in accordance with religious beliefs.On January 25, the Department of Homeland Security began implementing the Migrant Protection Protocols – also known as the Remain in Mexico policy – which forces Central Americans seeking asylum to return to Mexico, for an indefinite amount of time, while their claims are processed.On January 29, the Department of Justice reversed its position in a Texas voting rights case, saying the state should not need to have its voting changes pre-cleared with the federal government. Career voting rights lawyers at the department declined to sign the brief.On February 6, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – under the direction of Trump-appointed Director Kathy Kraninger – released its plan to roll back the central protections of the agency’s 2017 payday and car-title lending rule.On February 15, Trump announced that he would declare a national emergency on the southern border – an attempt to end-run the Congress in order to build a harmful and wasteful border wall.On February 22, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a final rule to significantly undermine the Title X family planning program’s ability to properly serve its patients and to provide its hallmark quality care. The rule’s provisions will have far-reaching implications for all Title X-funded programs, the services provided, and the ability of patients to seek and receive high-quality, confidential family planning and preventive health care services.On February 25, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On February 26, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.J. Res. 46, a resolution terminating the national emergency on the southern border declared by President Trump, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports. On September 25, the White House issued a statement opposing the Senate’s companion resolution.On March 5, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 1, the For the People Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On March 7, the Department of Labor issued a proposed revision to the overtime rule, which proposes to raise the salary threshold to an amount ($35,308) far lower than the Obama Labor Department’s previously finalized rule ($47,476).On March 11, the Trump administration released its FY 2020 budget proposal, which requested $8.6 billion for a southern border wall, requested an inexplicably and irresponsibly low figure for 2020 Census operations, and proposed deeply troubling cuts to the social safety net – including cuts to Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and SNAP.On March 12, the Department of Defense issued guidance for enacting the transgender military ban to begin in 30 days.On March 25, the Trump administration said in an appeals court filing that the entire Affordable Care Act should be struck down.On April 11, the Trump administration ordered all federal agencies to put important policy decisions on hold until they have been reviewed by the White House, making it take even longer for independent regulators to respond to problems like risky lending practices.On April 12, Politico reported that the Trump administration will not nominate (or renominate) anyone to the 18-member U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.On April 17, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed a rule (eventually published on May 10) seeking to restrict housing assistance for families with mixed-citizenship status. The agency’s own analysis showed that the proposal could lead to 55,000 children becoming temporarily homeless.On April 19, the Department of Health and Human Services published a proposal to reverse an Obama-era rule that required the data collection of the sexual orientation and gender identity of youth in foster care, along with their foster parents, adoptive parents, or legal guardians.On May 2, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a final rule to allow health workers to cite religious or moral objections to deny care to patients, which will substantially harm the health and well-being of many people in America – particularly women and transgender patients.On May 6, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) published a final rule targeting home care workers – who are mostly women of color – designed to stop them from paying union dues and benefits through payroll deduction.On May 6, the Office of Management and Budget proposed regulatory changes that could result in cuts in federal aid to millions of low-income Americans by changing how inflation is used to calculate the definition of poverty.On May 20, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 1500, the Consumers First Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On May 22, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed changing the Obama-era Equal Access Rule to allow homeless shelters to deny access based on a person’s gender identity.On May 24, the Department of Health and Human Services announced a proposed rule to weaken the non-discrimination protections (Section 1557) of the Affordable Care Act. The rule, if implemented, would harm millions of people in America by allowing health care providers to deny care to marginalized communities and worsen already existing health disparities.On June 3, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 6, the American Dream and Promise Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On June 6, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule that delayed the compliance date for the agency’s 2017 payday and car-title lending rule.On June 10, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Kevin McAleenan announced that immigration hardliner Ken Cuccinelli was the new acting director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Five months later, the new acting Secretary of Homeland Security, Chad Wolf, named Cuccinelli to be the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security. A federal judge and the Government Accountability Office, respectively, said that Cuccinelli’s appointments were illegal.On June 12, Trump asserted executive privilege to block congressional access to documents related to the addition of an untested citizenship question to the 2020 Census.On June 21, it was reported that Trump had directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to conduct a mass roundup of migrant families. The following day, the president announced that the raids were delayed, but has continued to threaten them.On July 1, the Department of Education rescinded the “gainful employment” rule that identified higher education programs that routinely left students with unaffordable debt. The rule had been designed to ensure that students who needed to borrow loans were able to reap the benefit of their investment in education.On July 3, the Department of Housing and Urban Development removed requirements that applicants for homelessness funding maintain anti-discrimination policies and demonstrate efforts to serve LGBT people and their families, which had been included in Notices of Funding Availability for several prior years.On July 8, the State Department created the Commission on Unalienable Rights aimed at providing review of the role of human rights in American foreign policy. Seven of the appointees to commission have disturbing anti-LGBT records.On July 15, the administration moved to end asylum protections for most Central American migrants – deeming anyone who passes through another country ineligible for asylum at the U.S. southern border.On July 15, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 582, the Raise The Wage Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On July 23, the Trump administration published a notice in the Federal Register that expands expedited removals to a wider range of undocumented immigrants. The move threatens same-day deportation for anyone who cannot immediately show they have been in the United States continuously for two years without a hearing, oversight, review, or appeal. It also threatens to trigger massive racial profiling and roundups for immigrants and citizens in the United States.On July 23, the Trump administration proposed a rule that could cut more than 3 million people from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – or food stamps – after Congress blocked similar efforts in 2018.On July 25, Attorney General William Barr announced that the federal government will reverse a nearly two-decade moratorium to resume the federal death penalty.On July 31, Bloomberg Law reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to issue a proposed rule to amend the agency’s “disparate impact” regulations that provide anti-discrimination protections to people of color, women, and others. If enacted, millions of people in America would be more vulnerable to housing discrimination – with fewer tools to challenge it. The proposal was officially published in the Federal Register on August 19.On August 7, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raided seven food processing plants in Mississippi and arrested 680 undocumented immigrants – representing the largest workplace raid in more than a decade. The raids – part of this administration’s dangerous, anti-immigrant agenda – left some children parentless and locked out of their homes after school.On August 12, the administration announced its final “public charge” rule, which makes it more difficult for immigrants who come to the United States legally to stay as permanent residents if they have used (or are viewed as likely to use) public benefits.On August 13, Bloomberg Law reported that the Department of Justice is urging the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to change its position and urge the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that businesses can discriminate against LGBTQ workers.On August 15, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) unveiled a proposal that would allow government contractors to fire LGBTQ employees, or workers who are pregnant and unmarried, based on the employers’ religious views.On August 16, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit discrimination against transgender people. Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions previously reversed an Obama-era DOJ policy which clarified that transgender workers are protected from discrimination under Title VII.On August 16, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services sent letters, first reported in the Boston area, stating that the agency will no longer consider most deferrals of deportation for people with a serious medical condition – asking people in extreme medical need to leave the country within 33 days.On August 19, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the Trump administration acted lawfully when it rescinded the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program in September 2017.On August 21, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced that the administration was moving forward with new rules aimed at ending the decades-old Flores settlement agreement that ensures constitutional protections for children in immigrant detention facilities. Without the protections of Flores, the government can hold immigrant children indefinitely, and in prison-like conditions, with no hope for a timely release and no mandate for appropriate care of traumatized children.On August 23, the Department of Justice filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 does not prohibit discrimination against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people.On August 23, the San Francisco Chronicle reported that Attorney General Barr promoted six judges to the Board of Immigration Appeals, which sets binding policy for deportation cases. All six of the judges have high rates of denying immigrants’ asylum claims, and four of them fill seats that the Trump administration created in 2018.On August 28, the Trump administration announced that some children born to U.S. military members and government employees working overseas wouldn’t automatically be considered U.S. citizens.On August 30, Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced final new “borrower defense” regulations that rolled back protections for student borrowers against predatory recruiting and other school misconduct put in place in 2016.On September 3, the Trump administration announced that it would divert $3.6 billion of funding for military construction projects to fund the president’s harmful and wasteful wall along the southern border.On September 11, multiple reports confirmed that the Trump administration would not grant Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to Bahamians impacted by Hurricane Dorian. The denial of protected status follows the Trump administration’s termination of the TPS designation for several other countries.On September 17, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 1423, the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On September 19, the Department of Education proposed removing gender-based harassment – including harassment based on gender identity, gender expression, and nonconformity with gender stereotypes – from the Civil Rights Data Collection’s definition of harassment or bullying on the basis of sex.On September 23, acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan announced that the administration would soon end a federal immigration policy (commonly referred to as “catch and release”) that allows migrant families seeking asylum in the United States to remain in this country while their asylum applications are pending.On September 24, the Department of Labor released its final overtime rule, which raises the salary threshold to an amount far lower than the Obama Labor Department’s previously finalized rule.On September 27, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division filed a statement of interest in defense of a Roman Catholic archbishop’s decision that led to the firing of a gay, married teacher – yet another move by the Trump administration to use religion as a shield against core anti-discrimination principles that protect LGBTQ people.On October 1, the Department of Agriculture unveiled a new proposal to take away some state flexibility in setting benefit levels under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) – the administration’s third attempt in the past year to kick people off food stamps.On October 4, Trump signed a proclamation to deny visas to legal immigrants who are unable to prove they will have health care coverage or the ability to pay for it within 30 days of their arrival to the United States.On October 7, the Department of Labor released a proposed tip rule that would eliminate the “80/20 rule,” which says that when a tipped worker is assigned non-tip-generating ‘side work’ that takes up more than 20 percent of their time, the employer can’t take the tip credit and must instead pay the worker the full minimum wage.On October 22, a Department of Justice proposal published in the Federal Register proposed to begin collecting DNA samples from immigrants crossing the border, creating an enormous database of asylum-seekers and other migrants.On October 23, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 4617, the Stopping Harmful Interference in Elections for a Lasting Democracy (SHIELD) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On October 25, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a new policy to narrow who can qualify for waivers of fees associated with applications for green cards, U.S. citizenship, work permits, and other benefits.On October 25, Attorney General William Barr issued two decisions, made through his certification power, that will limit immigrants’ options to fight deportation.On November 1, the Department of Health and Human Services issued a rule to undo requirements that its grantees ensure that federal taxpayer dollars are not used to fund discrimination.On November 1, the Department of Education issued a final regulation permitting religious colleges and universities to ignore nondiscrimination standards set by accrediting agencies.On November 18, the Social Security Administration published in the Federal Register a proposal to slash Social Security disability benefits – which could cut benefits for up to 2.6 million people with disabilities.On December 3, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On December 10, the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission (EEOC) revealed a proposed rule that would prohibit the use of official time by union representatives to assist in federal workplace anti-discrimination claims.On December 11, memos obtained by NPR revealed that Secretary Betsy DeVos overruled career staff in the Department of Education’s Borrower Defense Unit, who recommended to the department’s political leadership that defrauded student borrowers deserve no less than full relief from their student debts (the secretary instead provided only partial or no relief to most such borrowers).On December 12, the Trump administration approved a waiver allowing South Carolina to require most Medicaid recipients to work.On December 18, Attorney General William Barr announced the launch of Operation Relentless Pursuit, which was projected to funnel $71 million to law enforcement in seven cities – Albuquerque, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Kansas City, Memphis, and Milwaukee – under the guise of combating violent crime. Operation Relentless Pursuit replicates the most devastating aspects of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which flooded America’s streets with cops and dramatically increased incarceration rates, especially in Black and Brown communities.On December 27, HuffPost reported that the Department of the Interior removed “sexual orientation” from a statement in the agency’s ethics guide regarding workplace discrimination.On December 30, the Department of Labor announced a proposed rule setting out new standards for when the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs could issue predetermination notices for preliminary findings of discrimination. The rule would make it more difficult to identify and remedy potential discrimination in federal contractor and subcontractor workplaces, negatively impacting the right of federal contract workers to be free from unlawful employment discrimination.2020On January 3, the Trump administration filed a brief in June Medical Services v. Gee, urging the Court to allow a Louisiana abortion access law to go into effect. The civil rights community filed briefs urging the Court to strike down the restrictive law, highlighting the law’s impact on Black women.On January 7, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a proposal that would gut the agency’s 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule. HUD’s proposal would leave people of color, women, and other protected communities already harmed by unfair and unequal housing policies at a further disadvantage.On January 13, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration would divert $7.2 billion of funding from the Pentagon to fund the president’s harmful and wasteful wall along the southern border.On January 13 (and subsequently on February 11 for the Senate companion resolution), the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.J. Res 76, a resolution under the Congressional Review Act to overturn Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos’s borrower defense rule. The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports this resolution.On January 13, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 1230, the Protecting Older Workers Against Discrimination Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On January 16, nine federal agencies issued proposed rules eliminating the rights of people receiving help from federal programs to (i) request a referral if they have a concern or problem with a faith-based provider and (ii) receive written notice of their rights. The changes would encourage agencies to claim broader religious exemptions to deny help to certain people while receiving federal funds.On January 23, the Department of State announced a new regulation aimed at denying pregnant people visas to prevent them from traveling to the United States. The regulation represents an attack against pregnant people living in countries without access to the Visa Waiver Program and immigrant women, particularly those of color, and with low incomes.On January 30, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released block grant guidance to allow states to cap Medicaid spending – essentially putting forward the notion that we should ration health care for the most vulnerable people in our nation.On January 31, the Trump administration announced an expansion of its Muslim ban, which will expand restrictions on additional countries including Myanmar (also known as Burma), Eritrea, Kyrgyzstan, Nigeria, Sudan, and Tanzania.On February 5, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 2474, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On February 10, the Trump administration released its Fiscal Year 2021 budget proposal, which included $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and the ACA over 10 years, cuts to SNAP by $182 billion over 10 years, cuts assistance for some people with disabilities through Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income, and reduces the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program by $21 billion over 10 years, among other drastic cuts.On February 13, the Department of Housing and Urban Development proposed to amend the Equal Participation of Faith-Based Organizations rule that removes safeguards to prevent discrimination.On February 14, the Trump administration announced the deployment of law enforcement tactical units from the southern border as part of an arrest operation in sanctuary cities across the country. This includes the deployment of members of the elite tactical unit known as BORTAC, which acts as a Border Patrol SWAT team.On February 20, the White House published a memo (dated January 29) signed by Trump that granted Secretary of Defense Mark Esper the authority to ignore the collective bargaining rights of civilian employees working for the Department of Defense.On February 25, the Department of Justice sided with the plaintiff, Students for Fair Admissions, to oppose race-based affirmative action at Harvard University in a friend-of-the-court brief filed in the First Circuit Court of Appeals.On February 26, the Department of Homeland Security expanded two pilot programs, the Humanitarian Asylum Review Process (HARP) for Mexican nationals and Prompt Asylum Claim Review (PACR), that fast-track the asylum process for migrants at the U.S. border. The American Civil Liberties Union argues that both programs deny asylum seekers due process since it is nearly impossible for the migrants to access legal help.On February 26, the Department of Justice created a Denaturalization Section in its immigration office to prioritize stripping citizenship rights from naturalized immigrants who commit certain crimes.On February 27, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in support of a Kentucky wedding photographer who is challenging a city ordinance banning businesses from discriminating against gay customers. The photographer, Chelsey Nelson, refused to photograph same-sex weddings due to her religious beliefs.On February 28, the Department of Justice proposed regulations increasing fees for immigrants and requiring asylum seekers to pay a $50 fee to have their cases heard in court. Fees for permanent residence permits would increase by $990, to a total of $2,750, and the cost for naturalization of new citizens would increase by $445, to $1,170.On March 6, the Department of Justice issued a rule saying that DNA data samples from migrants taken into federal custody after trying to cross the U.S. border can be stored and shared among federal agencies.On March 10, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 2486, the National Origin-Based Antidiscrimination for Nonimmigrants (NO BAN) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On March 17, the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs announced a decision to temporarily exempt and waive certain affirmative action requirements connected to federal contracts for coronavirus relief.On March 20, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention imposed a 30-day restriction on all nonessential travel into the United States from Mexico and Canada – an effort, led by Stephen Miller, to use public health laws to reduce immigration.On March 24, Attorney General William Barr signed a statement of interest arguing against the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference’s transgender athlete policy, which allows athletes to compete as the gender with which they identify.On April 20, the Trump administration extended its March 2020 CDC rule on border restrictions until May 20, 2020.On April 22, Trump signed an executive order to temporarily ban the issuance of green cards to people seeking permanent residency in the United States – a move that was viewed as a shameless manipulation of the pandemic to justify the administration’s xenophobic policies.On April 30, the Department of Education issued guidance, flouting congressional intent under the CARES Act, that directs school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools.On May 6, the Department of Education released its final rule on Title IX that raises the bar of proof for sexual misconduct, bolsters the rights of those accused, and introduces new protections that include sexual harassment. If the rule takes effect, it will silence sexual assault survivors and limit their educational opportunity.On May 12, the Department of Agriculture appealed an injunction that blocked the agency from proceeding with cuts to the SNAP program (food stamps). The new requirements, if the USDA wins its appeals, would strip 688,000 Americans of their food benefits.On May 12, the Department of Health and Human Services eliminated sexual orientation and gender identity and tribal data collection in the Adoption and Foster Care Analysis and Reporting System (AFCARS, which collects case-level information on all children in foster care and those who have been adopted with title IV-E agency involvement).On May 14, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 6800, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On May 15, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights sent a letter of impending enforcement action to the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference and six school districts declaring that Title IX requires schools to ban transgender students from competing in school sports based on their gender identity and threatening to withhold funding from Connecticut schools if they do not comply.On May 19, the Trump administration announced the indefinite extension of its CDC order that allows federal authorities at the border to immediately return migrants to their home countries.On May 26, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in an Alabama federal court in support of the state’s onerous absentee ballot requirements that put Black voters and voters with disabilities at risk during the COVID-19 pandemic.On May 29, Trump vetoed a bipartisan resolution to overturn a Department of Education rule and hold Secretary DeVos accountable for failing to provide relief to students defrauded by for-profit colleges.On May 29, Trump issued a presidential proclamation aimed at restricting the entry of graduate students and researchers from China.On June 1, police officers and the National Guard dispersed peaceful protesters outside the White House using teargas and flash-bang explosions so that Trump could pose for photos, while holding up a Bible, in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church.On June 3, the Department of Justice filed a brief in Fulton v. City of Philadelphia calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to allow religious-affiliated adoption agencies to refuse child placement into LGBTQ homes. The Justice Department is not a party to the case.On June 12, the Department of Health and Human Services issued its final rule rolling back the non-discrimination protections (Section 1557) of the Affordable Care Act. The rule will promote discrimination in medical care.On June 14, The Washington Post reported that the Department of Housing and Urban Development will propose a rule that would roll back Obama-era guidance requiring single-sex homeless shelters to accept transgender people.On June 15, a 161-page regulation from the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice was published in the Federal Register that would make it exceedingly difficult for migrants to claim asylum in the United States.On June 19, the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest arguing that the Equal Protection Clause permits Idaho’s Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which bars trans girls and women from school sports teams.On June 22, Trump issued a proclamation to expand and extend his April 22 order that suspends some immigration from outside the United States. The new proclamation extends the initial green card ban in the April proclamation until December 31, 2020, and includes additional significant restrictions on several categories of temporary guest worker visas.On June 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 51, the Washington, D.C. Admission Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On June 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 7120, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On June 24, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy supporting H.R. 3985, the Just and Unifying Solutions To Invigorate Communities Everywhere (JUSTICE) Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights opposes.On June 25, the Trump administration filed a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court arguing that the entire Affordable Care Act should be invalidated – saying “the remainder of the ACA should not be allowed to remain in effect.” The brief was filed in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.On July 7, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its final rule on payday and car-title lending – undoing consumer protections and threatening to devastate communities of color that are already facing the worst fallout of the pandemic.On July 7, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights issued a notice in the Federal Register proposing changes to the Civil Rights Data Collection, including removal of several questions regarding school and district characteristics, discipline, school finance and data disaggregation.On July 8, the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice issued a proposed rule that would bar asylum seekers from countries with disease outbreaks. The proposal does not say whether it would only apply during a global pandemic, but instead would depend on determinations made by the Attorney General and Homeland Security secretary in consultation with the Department of Health and Human Services.On July 14, the Department of Justice filed a brief asking the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate Medicaid work requirements in Arkansas after a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit unanimously upheld a lower court ruling that blocked the work requirements.On July 14, the federal government carried out its first execution in more than 17 years and has since carried out four additional executions during Trump’s presidency.On July 15, the Trump administration finalized a rule proposed by the White House Council on Environmental Quality to change how the federal government implements the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA). NEPA is the federal law, signed by President Nixon in 1970, that safeguards air, water, and land by requiring environmental assessments of major infrastructure projects. The Trump administration’s rule limits the number of projects that require in-depth environmental review and no longer requires federal agencies to weigh a project’s vulnerability to climate change or impact on global warming.On July 16, the Commission on Unalienable Rights (the formation of which was announced in July 2019 by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo) released a draft report to the public. Experts described the report as undermining decades of human rights progress.On July 21, Trump signed a memorandum attempting to ban undocumented immigrants from counting toward congressional apportionment following the 2020 Census.On July 23, Secretary Carson terminated the Obama-era Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule, replacing it with a new rule called “Preserving Community and Neighborhood Choice.” AFFH aimed to combat segregation in housing policy.On July 28, acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf issued a memorandum to drastically curtail the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program while the agency decides whether to rescind the program completely. The memo is in response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in June 2020 that found the administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it rescinded the program in September 2017.On July 30, NPR reported that the U.S. Census Bureau would be cutting census door-knocking a month short. On August 3, the bureau released a statement confirming that both field data collection and self-response would be ending a month early on September 30.On August 6, Trump appointed J. Christian Adams to serve on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) and was sworn in one week later. Adams, who was a member of the president’s sham voter suppression commission, was appointed to the USCCR on the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.On August 8, Trump signed a series of politically motivated executive actions amid the coronavirus pandemic. One of the memos he signed defers payroll taxes from September through December 2020. Trump also said that, if reelected, he would permanently terminate the payroll tax. In a letter to Senate Democrats on August 24, Stephen Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, said that such a move would deplete Social Security by mid-2023.On August 18, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) signaled its intent to create burdensome new rules for its conciliation process that could tip the scales in favor of employers and potentially expose workers who file workplace discrimination claims, as well as potential witnesses, to retaliation.On August 19, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) released an updated draft policy on gender and women’s empowerment that eliminated any reference to transgender people or contraceptives.On August 21, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 8015, the Delivering for America Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On August 26, Eric Dreiband, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, sent letters to the governors of Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, and New York (all Democrats) requesting information under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA) about the coronavirus response of public nursing homes in their states. The move, which occurred during the Republican National Convention, was viewed as a political move targeting Democrats to distract from the president’s failed response to the pandemic.On August 26, the Department of Education issued a “Dear Educators and Stakeholders Letter” announcing the withdrawal of eight guidance documents, including in its rationale that previous support the department expressed for diversity was advocating for “policy preferences and positions beyond the requirements of the Constitution and Title VI.”On August 31, the Department of Education issued a notice in the Federal Register that it had rescinded almost 100 guidance documents issued since the 1990s.On September 2, Trump sent a memorandum to the attorney general and the director of the Office of Management and Budget that threatened to pull federal funding from “anarchist jurisdictions” – cities “that are permitting anarchy, violence and destruction.” This was also viewed as a political move targeting cities where people are protesting police brutality and systemic racism.On September 3, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission issued an opinion letter abandoning its long-standing interpretation of Section 707 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.On September 4, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued a final rule that severely weakens the disparate impact tool under the Fair Housing Act, which will make millions of people more vulnerable to housing discrimination.On September 4, Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, sent a memo to the heads of executive departments and agencies instructing them to end anti-racist trainings that address white privilege and critical race theory – caalling them “divisive, anti-American propaganda.”On September 8, the Department of Justice filed a brief in support of an Indiana Catholic school that was sued for firing a teacher in a same-sex marriage.On September 8, a whistleblower complaint from a Department of Homeland Security official alleged that top DHS officials, including Chad Wolf and Ken Cuccinelli, directed analysts to downplay threats from violent white supremacy and Russian election interference.On September 17, the AP reported that the Department of Education is threatening to withhold some federal funding from Connecticut school districts if they follow a state policy that allows transgender girls to compete as girls in high school sports.On September 22, Trump issued an executive order prohibiting federal agencies, federal contractors, and grantees from engaging in anti-discrimination workplace diversity trainings the Administration deemed “divisive.”On September 22, the Department of Labor proposed a rule that would make it easier for employers to misclassify workers and deny them minimum wage and overtime protections.On September 24, the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued its final rule to gut the disparate impact tool under the Fair Housing Act, which will make it harder to challenge systemic racism by housing providers, financial institutions, and insurance companies that deprive people of the services and opportunities they need.On September 30, the State Department told Congress that it would allow only 15,000 refugees to resettle in the United States in the 2021 fiscal year, which began the following day.On October 1, the White House issued a Statement of Administration Policy opposing H.R. 8406, the HEROES Act, which The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights supports.On October 6, Microsoft revealed that the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) contacted the company over its commitments to increasing diversity. According to Microsoft, “the OFCCP has focused on whether Microsoft’s commitment to double the number of Black and African American people managers, senior individual contributors and senior leaders in our U.S. workforce by 2025 could constitute unlawful discrimination on the basis of race, which would violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.” The OFCCP contacted Wells Fargo for the same reason.On October 7, the Trump administration filed an emergency application with the U.S. Supreme Court in an attempt to halt the 2020 Census count early. The application was filed after the Ninth Circuit upheld a district court’s ruling that the administration could not stop the count at the end of September.On October 8, a Justice Department memo suspended all diversity and inclusion training for the department’s employees and managers in compliance with Trump’s recent executive order banning anti-bias trainings.On October 21, Trump signed an executive order that could expand his ability to hire and fire tens of thousands of federal employees. The order would allow federal agencies to reclassify certain workers, which would strip them of job protections. The national president of the American Federation of Government Employees referred to the order as “the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes.”On November 1, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and the Department of the Treasury approved Georgia’s waiver request under Section 1332 of the Affordable Care Act, which allows the state to exit the federal marketplace without creating a state-based marketplace to replace it. This will endanger coverage and access to care for tens of thousands of people.On November 2, Trump signed an executive order establishing the President’s Advisory 1776 Commission to “promote patriotic education.” The commission, teased by Trump in remarks on September 17, was viewed as a political move aimed at censoring the teaching of American history and as an attack on The New York Times’ Pulitzer-Prize winning 1619 Project, which details this nation’s history beginning when the first enslaved Africans were brought to America.On November 9, in a memo to U.S. attorneys, Attorney General William Barr authorized the opening of election fraud investigations “if there are clear and apparently-credible allegations of irregularities that, if true, could potentially impact the outcome of a federal election in an individual State.” The memo, for which there was no factual basis, was viewed as an attempt to sow chaos and led to the resignation of Richard Pilger, director of the DOJ Criminal Division’s Election Crimes branch.

Well, I’ll toss this out to see what people think. They might not be the biggest, but…Lies and Consequences in Our Past 15 WarsMonday, May 28, 2012 By David Swanson, War Is a Crime | News AnalysisAFGHANISTANPrior to 2001, the Taliban was willing to turn Osama bin Laden over to a third country if he was promised a fair trial and no death penalty, and if some evidence of his guilt of crimes were offered. In 2001, the Taliban warned the United States that bin Laden was planning an attack on American soil. In July 2001 the United States was known to have plans to take military action against the Taliban by mid-October.When the United States attacked Afghanistan on October 7, 2001, the Taliban again offered to negotiate for the handing over of bin Laden. When President George W. Bush refused, the Taliban dropped its demand for evidence of guilt and offered simply to turn bin Laden over to a third country. Bush rejected this offer and continued bombing. At a March 13, 2002, press conference, Bush said of bin Laden "I truly am not that concerned about him."[i] When President Barack Obama announced, in May 2011, that he had killed bin Laden, the war didn't even slow down.Bin Laden, as a justification for the longest war in U.S. history, had always had weaknesses. As with Saddam Hussein or Muammar Gadaffi or Manuel Noriega, past U.S. support for bin Laden had to be kept out of the discussion. And a crime had to be transformed into an act of war. A crime by a non-state group was used to implicate the nation of Afghanistan, even though 92% of Afghans not only didn't support the crime of 9-11, but they have to this day never heard about it.[ii]If bin Laden was not the reason for over a decade of war in Afghanistan, perhaps al Qaeda more generally was the cause. When President Obama continued the war in 2009 and tripled the number of U.S. troops in it, he and his subordinates argued that if the Taliban had power it would work with al Qaeda, and that would allow al Qaeda to endanger the United States. Some of the same officials who made this claim, including Richard Holbrooke, at other times admitted that al Qaeda had virtually no presence in Afghanistan, that the Taliban was not likely to work with al Qaeda, and that al Qaeda could easily plan attacks on the United States in a dozen nations other than Afghanistan, just as the 911 attack had been planned, in part, in Europe and the United States.[iii]And of course recruitment for such attacks could only be boosted by the continuation of a U.S. war on Afghanistan. Most experts believe that the war is making the United States less liked and less safe. From 2001 to 2007, there was a sevenfold increase in fatal jihadist attacks around the world, a predictable if tragic result of the Global War on Terror. The U.S. State Department responded to this dangerous escalation in terrorism by discontinuing its annual report on terrorism.[iv] By 2012, Obama was proposing to include the Taliban in a peace process.If bin Laden and al Qaeda and terrorism were not the reasons for the war, maybe the war was intended to spread democracy, human rights, and economic benefits. Maybe the war was philanthropy. But the United States has claimed to be building nations in dozens of places and never succeeded yet.[v] The Afghan government propped up by the U.S. occupation supports wife-beating and barely even pretends to hold legitimate elections. It is extremely difficult to bring people rights and freedoms while bombing them and kicking in their doors at night. While U.S. media only mentions U.S. deaths and suffering, never showing images of the suffering of Afghans in this war, the pretense that the war is for the benefit of Afghans is thin. Nearly 2,000 U.S. troops have died in Afghanistan, as compared to tens of thousands of Afghan men, women, and children. The United States doesn't even count the number of people it kills, a seemingly necessary step if we actually wanted to calculate whether we are bestowing more benefit than harm. In fact, a strong majority of the people of the United States wants the war ended, as does a majority of Afghans. But racial and religious bigotry allow many in the United States to hold the self-deceptive belief that Afghans can gain from a war they oppose, since they just don't know any better. In fact, many Americans blindly accept that the U.S. government or president knows best even if their policies appear to us to be the most extreme folly.If the war is based on lies and making us less safe, at least we can take comfort in the fact that it is succeeding. Or can we? Why is it taking so long? In April 2012, echoing numerous other reports, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis made public the results of 250 interviews with U.S. soldiers and Afghans around the country over two year-long deployments. Davis concluded that all claims of success and progress have been dishonest: "Senior ranking U.S. military leaders have so distorted the truth," he wrote, "when communicating with the U.S. Congress and American people in regards to conditions on the ground in Afghanistan that the truth has become unrecognizable."As the U.S. public has turned against the war, many members of Congress have depicted themselves as opponents and critics of the war, while still in many cases continuing to vote for its funding. A Congressional report in 2010 documented payoffs made by the U.S. to the Taliban for the safe passage of goods through Afghanistan, payoffs that amounted to either the first or second largest source of income for the Taliban, the other being opium. Afghans, including those fighting for the Taliban, often signed up for training and pay from the United States and then departed, sometimes repeating the process a number of times. The United States has been funding, training, and arming both sides of the war.[vi]Every week or two there has been an atrocity story in the media. Soldiers cut off fingers. Or they shot children from a helicopter. Or they shot up a bunch of women and then dug the bullets out with knives to cover up the crime. Or they urinated on corpses or burned corpses or burned Korans. It is always something. And it is always lied about to the extent possible by the United States and NATO, with NATO serving as protection from Congressional oversight. A pattern has developed of the U.S. military passing the buck to NATO, NATO denying everything, NATO revising its lies as new evidence emerges, and NATO finally admitting the crime, with the blame going to a few rogue "bad apples." But you cannot have a war without atrocities, and the atrocities are the least of it. The urination on corpses is not as serious a crime as the creation of the corpses in the first place.The U.S. military lied about football star Pat Tillman's death to his family at his funeral, for purposes of propaganda, but what would have been unusual would have been telling the truth.[vii] Wars cannot exist without lies, and lying is the norm.Myths about how a recent escalation in Iraq had turned a bad war into a good and successful war were applied by Obama to the completely different context of Afghanistan, in combination with familiar rhetoric about supporting troops, as if the war were for their benefit, and as if they had volunteered to be in it, even though they were being endlessly redeployed to a war that had nothing to do with the responsibilities they had signed up for and sworn an oath to, and even though their top cause of death was suicide. Sending more troops into war so that previous troops should not have killed themselves in vain is a hopeless endeavor. Escalating hopeless wars, supposedly in order to end them, actually serves only two purposes: it allows a president to appear more militaristic, and it enriches war profiteers. The escalation in Afghanistan has not improved the situation, quite the reverse."We did not choose this war," said Obama on May 1, 2012, as if the crime of 9-11 had been continually compelling him to fight a war in Afghanistan year after year. But the war was not defensive. Afghanistan was not attacking the United States. The war was not authorized by the United Nations. And it was not declared by Congress, as no war has been since 1941. When Russia began talking about a preemptive strike against U.S. missile bases on Russia's western border in May of 2012, there was nothing the United States could say against the justifiability of such an act. Not after Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and the threats being made toward Iran.The tissue of lies surrounding the war on Afghanistan is typical. Libya, despite its use as a model for future "humanitarian wars," is no different.LIBYAThe United States and Europe had been arming and working with Muamar Gadaffi in Libya for years, up to shortly before "intervening" against him in 2011. U.S. and British spy agencies had worked with Gadaffi's torturers and killers.Gadaffi had given up his nuclear program. His subsequent fate (butchered and displayed in a meat locker), along with the fate of the nation of Iraq, sends a strong message to other nations already inclined to believe that only nuclear weapons will protect them.But Gadaffi had displeased the West and displeased the Arab dictatorships. He was unreliable. He wanted too much of Libya's wealth for Libyans. He was too independent. He even called the Saudi monarch the worst thing in the book: "made by Britain and protected by the U.S." And he made that remark in Qatar, another nation that became his enemy.The Arab Spring in Tunisia and Egypt was out of control. Nonviolent movements were overthrowing dictators. Something had to be done. Violence by protesters in Libya provided an opening -- for the Gulf dictatorships and for U.S.A./NATO. Violent engagement in Libya, supposedly on behalf of the Arab Spring, provided cover for violent crackdowns on nonviolent protesters in Bahrain and Yemen. It was opponents of the Arab Spring who helped to arm the rebels in Libya -- and later in Syria -- but not just to arm them, also to control them. This began under the banner of humanitarianism.Between February 15th and 19th, according to Human Rights Watch, 104 protesters were killed in Libya. Protests did not remain nonviolent. Rebels burned down a police station in Dernah and executed 50 "African mercenaries" in Al Bayda'. On February 21st the Libyan air force attacked Benghazi. Reports vary as to whether the targets were military or civilian. By February 24th Benghazi residents were lining up to be issued guns looted from the army and police. Gadaffi's troops tried to take Az Zawiya on March 1st and Misrata on March 6th but the rebels held off the attacks. Gadaffi's troops did take Az Zawiya on March 7th, and the loss of life was about eight people. Thirty-three died on March 5th in Az Zawiya, eight of them Gadaffi's soldiers. And 21 were killed in Misrata on March 6th by Gadaffi's army shelling. But Gulf and NATO nations' media began talking about 50,000 dead and a genocide underway. The number came from Sayed al-Shanuka, a Libyan member of the International Criminal Court who had defected. There was no explanation of where or how the 50,000 had been killed.On April 10th, Human Rights Watch reported on the dead in Misrata. The highest numbers came from Dr. Muhammad el-Fortia who claimed there were 257 dead, with only 22 percent of them women -- suggesting that fighters had been targeted rather than homes. By the middle of June credible reports claimed 10,000 had been killed over four months by both sides, including by NATO's bombing. NATO, dominated by the United States, entered the war on the pretext of protecting civilians from mass slaughter. There is no solid evidence that slaughter would have occurred. Some observers believe the rebels had the upper hand. The rebels were, in any event, very well armed. There were other options available, as well. The African Union had been proposing a peace settlement, one that Gadaffi might have agreed to.But NATO immediately abandoned humanitarian rescue as the goal of its mission, replacing it with the need to overthrow Gadaffi. General Khalifa Belqasim Hifter was brought in from his home in Virginia by the CIA to lead the rebels, along with other CIA-friendly Libyans. Obama, Sarkozy, and Cameron published an essay on April 15th announcing their plan to overthrow Gadaffi, something the United Nations did not authorize. U.S. Navy Admiral Samuel Locklear admitted in May to Congressman Mike Turner (R., Ohio) that NATO was trying to assassinate Gadaffi.The New York Times admitted to "scores" of dead from NATO strikes unacknowledged by NATO. Over 600,000 civilians fled the country, including 100,000 Libyans, while another 200,000 Libyans were internally displaced. NATO had bombed the city of Tripoli for months, occasionally apologizing for the deaths of civilians, but leaving many observers with the impression that the goal was "shock and awe" -- or "terror bombing" as opposed to "precision bombing." Among the targets were media outlets, in which journalists were killed by NATO's missile strikes.Because cruise missiles and drones did the dirty work, U.S. Department of State Legal Adviser Harold Koh told Congress that the war was neither a war nor even "hostilities" (the language in the War Powers Act). If no U.S. pilots or soldiers were at risk, then the bombs were not hostile. They were friendly explosions.There are echoes here of the first aerial bombing in world history, the Italian bombing of Tajura and Ain Zara in 1911. The bombing, the Italian air force said, had "a wonderful effect on the morale of the Arabs." The 2011 version had a less-than-wonderful effect on the U.S. Constitution, because of course Congress did not offer any resistance. Discussions of a possible war on Iran in 2012 left both Congress and the United Nations to one side. Pentagon head Leon Panetta told the U.S. Senate that President Obama could go to war in Syria or elsewhere without Congress, without the United Nations, and with or without NATO.The ICC disgraced itself as well. Lead investigator Luis Moreno-Ocampo made statements as if they were indisputable about alleged crimes by Gadaffi, including claims about mass-rape and the handing out of Viagra to troops, stories pushed at the same time by U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. Eventually Amnesty International investigated and found no grounds for the accusations. Moreno-Ocampo did not investigate NATO's crimes in Libya, any more than he has ever done so in Iraq or Afghanistan. On January 19, 2012, the Arab Organization for Human Rights, the Palestinian Center for Human Rights, and the International Legal Assistance Consortium reported that NATO had targeted civilian areas and committed war crimes.Toward the end of the war, the rebels displaced the entire population of the town of Tawergha. All 30,000 people are now gone. The rebels had deemed the town's residents' skin too dark. Libya is now smuggling arms to Syrian rebels. Tribes are at war in Southern Libya. The new transitional Libyan government is not representative, democratic, stable, protective of civil rights, or productive of economic rights. Libya is plagued by the resentment and instability that come with violent change. Gadaffi's death did nothing to prevent this inevitable outcome. And unlike the outcome of homegrown violence, which would have been bad enough, the current state of affairs in Libya is one in which the nation suffers from foreign control.The West could have left Libya alone in 2011. Or it could have left Libya alone for decades. Or it could have done good by Libya, economically and politically rather than seeking to exploit Libya's oil. Come the crises of 2011, the United States could have aided the nonviolent protesters in Bahrain rather than approving of a Saudi crackdown and sending over a U.S. cop to lead the cracking of skulls. Instead, the people of the nations of Western Asia learned that the West will only aid violent campaigns, and then only if it, too, favors the overthrow of one of its former puppets. Oil now flows from Libya to the West for free, as repayment apparently for "regime change services."[viii]DRONE WARSThe bombing of Libya was intense and sustained, but U.S. drones are also being used to kill in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and elsewhere. They are used to kill individuals, including U.S. citizens, including children, including both identified individuals and people targeted because of a pattern of behavior that is deemed suspicious, and of course including many people who simply happen to be too close to an intended or accidental target. If drone strikes are law enforcement, the president or his designate is judge, jury, and executioner. The U.S. Congress and public are left in the dark. The nation where the strike is made is violated. If drone strikes are war, they are war with one army safely ensconced thousands of miles from the battlefield, and the other army blindfolded and handcuffed on the battlefield with their wives and children and grandparents along.In February 2002, a drone pilot thought he'd killed Osama bin Laden, but it turned out to be an innocent man. Expert observers, including Shahzad Akbar, a Pakistani lawyer representing drone victims, believe the vast majority of drone victims are not the individuals who were targeted. Noor Behram, who photographs drone victims, says, "For every 10 to 15 people, maybe they get one militant." President Obama has instructed the government of Yemen to keep a reporter locked up whose crime appears to be having reported on the victims of a U.S. drone strike. Over a million people, by Amnesty International's estimate, have fled the areas of heavy drone bombing in Pakistan.Drones have killed Americans in "friendly fire," including on April 6, 2011, in Afghanistan. Afghans have killed CIA drone pilots and other U.S. officials inside their offices. Even drone "pilots" working in the United States can commit suicide. They are suffering extremely high rates of stress and burnout, according to the Air Force. A Pakistani who tried to blow up a car in Times Square in 2010 said it was revenge for drone attacks. Eventually, blowback for drone attacks may come in the form of drone attacks. U.S. companies sell drones to democracies and dictatorships alike. Al Qaeda stole a crashed U.S. drone from Yemeni police in February 2011. And in December 2011, Iran captured a U.S. drone a decade after the CIA had given Iran plans to build a nuclear bomb, any possible progress on which the drone was no doubt supposed to be spying on.While initially cheaper than manned planes, unmanned drones require many more personnel: 168 people to keep a Predator drone in the air for 24 hours, plus 19 analysts to process the videos created by a drone. And to make matters worse, they tend to crash. They even "go rogue," lose contact with their "pilots" and fly off on their own. The U.S. Navy has a drone that self-destructs if you accidentally touch the space bar on the computer keyboard. Drones also tend to supply so-called enemies with information, including the endless hours of video they record, and to infect U.S. military computers with viruses. But these are the sorts of SNAFUs that come with any project lacking oversight, accountability, or cost controls. The companies with the biggest drone contracts did not invest in developing the best technologies but in paying off the most Congress members.[ix]IRAQ IIThe normalization of war lies in recent years, and the acceptance of the idea that war criminals should go on book tour rather than on trial, of course begins with the 2003 invasion of Iraq. And that war began with the promise that it would be free and easy. Dick Cheney said U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators, while Ken Adelman promised a cake walk.President George W. Bush had decided on the war and sought ways to get it started for many months, while publicly pretending to be striving to avoid a war. Vice President Cheney pressured the CIA to fudge the facts, and set up an even more compliant "intelligence" operation within the Pentagon. Secretary of State Colin Powell made a war sales pitch to the United Nation despite his own staff having warned him that many of the claims he would be making were not backed up by the evidence. The U.N. refused to authorize the war, but Bush launched it anyway, resulting in over a million deaths and over 4 million people displaced from their homes, along with such complete devastation of Iraqi society that commentators began popularizing the term "sociocide." This disaster cost the U.S. trillions of dollars in direct expense and indirect economic impact.[x]This war, like all wars since 1928, violated the Kellogg-Briand Pact, and like most wars since 1945, violated the U.N. Charter. But it went further than that in damaging the rule of law. Bush persuaded Congress to issue vague and general "authorizations to use military force," violating the limitations placed on presidential war making by the Constitution and even by the War Powers Act. Bush also violated the authorization by submitting false information to Congress, not to mention by claiming in a "signing statement" that Congress had no power to authorize him to do anything. Those and many other false claims about Iraqi weapons and ties to terrorism, made by Bush and his subordinates, violated the Anti-Conspiracy Statute, as well as the False Statements Accountability Act. It is also illegal under treaties the United States is party to for one nation to invade another in order to control its resources.[xi]And then there were all the subordinate war crimes that came along with the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq: targeting civilians, journalists, hospitals, and ambulances, using antipersonnel weapons including cluster bombs in densely settled urban areas, using white phosphorous as a weapon, using depleted uranium weapons, employing a new form of napalm found in Mark 77 firebombs, collectively punishing populations including by blocking roads and electricity and water, by planting bombs in farm fields, by demolishing houses, by plowing down orchards, by detaining people without charge, imprisoning children, torturing, raping, and murdering captives. An increased use of mercenaries created a force lacking even the pretense of accountability to any body of law.[xii]Equal to the mendacity of the public relations campaign that launched the Iraq war was the campaign that escalated it and claimed some benefit from that "surge" in 2007-2008. Just as the Vietnamese would have agreed to the same terms prior to the saturation bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong as after, the Iraqis would have accepted the treaty that Bush and Maliki finally came up with had it been proposed prior to the escalation. The "benchmarks" that Congress expected Bush to meet by 2007 were not met by then or by 2008 or by 2009. There was no oil law, no de-baathification law, no constitutional review, no provincial elections, and no improvement in electricity, water, or other basic measures of well-being. Only agreement to leave produced what the escalation had merely delayed. Claims for the "surge" were downsized to include only a reduction in violence, but the timing coincided with a long-term downward trend in violence, the relatively small "surge" actually increased violence in some areas, and violence went down most dramatically where troops were withdrawn, or where they ceased provocative raids on homes, not where troops were added. Violence really dropped off when Bush committed the United States to full withdrawal in 2011.[xiii]BOSNIADishonesty about wars did not begin with our 43rd president. In 1995, President Clinton announced that he would "help the people of Bosnia to secure their own peace." Almost two decades later, U.S. and other foreign troops have never left , and the place is governed by a European-backed Office of High Representative.[xiv] U.S. involvement in Yugoslavia gave NATO a reason to exist after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was also not unrelated to lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, and silver mines, cheap labor, and a deregulated market. In 1996 U.S. Secretary of Commerce Ron Brown died in a plane crash in Croatia along with top executives for Boeing, Bechtel, AT&T, Northwest Airlines, and several other corporations that were lining up government contracts for "reconstruction." Enron, the famously corrupt corporation that would implode in 2001, was a part of so many such trips that it issued a press release to state that none of its people had been on this one. Enron gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee in 1997, six days before accompanying new Commerce Secretary Mickey Kantor to Bosnia and Croatia and signing a deal to build a $100 million power plant. The annexation of Kosovo created a militarized buffer between Yugoslavia and the projected route of an oil pipeline through Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Albania. The pipeline is being built, with U.S. government support, to provide the United States and Western Europe with access to oil from the Caspian Sea. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said in 1998: "This is about America's energy security. It's very important to us that both the pipeline map and the politics come out right." [xv]IRAQ IFar-fetched claims of humanitarian intention did not begin with Bill Clinton either. On October 9, 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl told a U.S. congressional committee that she'd seen Iraqi soldiers take 15 babies out of an incubator in a Kuwaiti hospital and leave them on the cold floor to die. Some congress members, including the late Tom Lantos (D., Calif.), knew but did not tell the U.S. public that the girl was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, that she'd been coached by a major U.S. public relations company paid by the Kuwaiti government, and that there was no other evidence for the story. President George H. W. Bush used the dead babies story 10 times in the next 40 days, and seven senators used it in the Senate debate on whether to approve military action. Thus was born the Gulf War, a war that would never really end, but would be radically expanded in 2003.[xvi]PANAMAWhen Bush the Elder had first sought, among other things, to prove he was no "wimp" by attacking Panama in 1989, the most prominent justification was that Panama's leader was a mean, drug-crazed, weirdo with a pockmarked face who liked to commit adultery. An article in the New York Times on December 26, 1989, began:"The United States military headquarters here, which has portrayed General Manuel Antonio Noriega as an erratic, cocaine-snorting dictator who prays to voodoo gods, announced today that the deposed leader wore red underwear and availed himself of prostitutes."Never mind that Noriega had worked for the CIA, including at the time he'd stolen the 1984 election in Panama. Never mind that his real offense was refusing to back U.S. war making against Nicaragua. Never mind that the United States had known about Noriega's drug trafficking for years and continued working with him. This man snorted cocaine in red underwear with women not his wife. "That is aggression as surely as Adolf Hitler's invasion of Poland 50 years ago was aggression," declared Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger of Noriega's drug trafficking. The invading U.S. liberators even claimed to find a big stash of cocaine in one of Noriega's homes, although it turned out to be tamales wrapped in banana leaves. And what if the tamales really had been cocaine? Would that, like the discovery of actual "weapons of mass destruction" in Baghdad in 2003 have justified war?[xvii]DOMINICAN REPUBLIC AND GRENADAOften one of the initial excuses for military action is to defend Americans in a foreign country who have supposedly been put at risk by recent events. This excuse was used, along with the usual variety of other excuses, by the United States when invading the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989. In the case of the Dominican Republic, U.S. citizens who wanted to leave (1,856 of them) had been evacuated prior to the military action. Neighborhoods in Santo Domingo where Americans lived were free of violence and the military was not needed in order to evacuate anyone. All the major Dominican factions had agreed to help evacuate any foreigners who wanted to leave.In the case of Grenada (an invasion that the United States banned the U.S. media from covering) there were supposedly U.S. medical students to rescue. But U.S. State Department official James Budeit, two days before the invasion, learned that the students were not in danger. When about 100 to 150 students decided they wanted to leave, their reason was fear of the U.S. attack. The parents of 500 of the students sent President Reagan a telegram asking him not to attack, letting him know their children were safe and free to leave Grenada if they chose to do so.In the case of Panama, a real incident could be pointed to, one of a sort that has been found anywhere foreign armies have ever occupied someone else's country. Some drunk Panamanian soldiers had beaten up a U.S. navy officer and threatened his wife. While President Bush claimed that this and other new developments prompted the war, the war plans had actually begun months prior to the incident.[xviii]President Lyndon B. Johnson's invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965 used the pretense of American lives at risk. But that justification had been cooked up as a substitute for a claim of combating communism, which Johnson knew to be baseless and couldn't be sure would fly. In a closed session of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Mann later explained that the U.S. ambassador had asked the head of the Dominican military if he'd be willing to play along with the alternative lie:"All we requested was whether he would be willing to change the basis for this from one of fighting communism to one of protecting American lives."[xix]VIETNAMThe greatest war fraud perpetrated by LBJ was, of course, Vietnam. He built on what had already been done during President John F. Kennedy's presidency. Kennedy's subordinates in Vietnam wanted an expansion of the U.S. presence there, but believed the public and the president would resist. General Maxwell Taylor and Walt W. Rostow wondered how the United States could go to war while appearing to preserve the peace. While they were pondering this, Vietnam was suddenly struck by flooding. The U.S. quickly sent in troops to save Vietnam from natural disaster.[xx]The big escalation, however, came after a fictional attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 4, 1964. These were U.S. war ships off the coast of North Vietnam that were engaged in military actions against North Vietnam. President Johnson knew he was lying when he claimed the August 4th attack was unprovoked. Had it happened, it could not have been unprovoked. The same ship that was supposedly attacked on August 4th, had damaged three North Vietnamese boats and killed four North Vietnamese sailors two days earlier, in an action where the evidence suggests the United States fired first, although the opposite was claimed. In fact, in a separate operation days earlier, the United States had begun shelling the mainland of North Vietnam. But the supposed attack on August 4th was actually, at most, a misreading of U.S. sonar. The ship's commander cabled the Pentagon claiming to be under attack, and then immediately cabled to say his earlier belief was in doubt and no North Vietnamese ships could be confirmed in the area. President Johnson was not sure there had been any attack when he told the American public there had been. Months later he admitted privately: "For all I know, our navy was just shooting at whales out there." But by then Johnson had the authorization from Congress for the war he'd wanted.[xxi]Vietnam is a prominent example of another type of war lie as well. Peace offers have been rejected and hushed up prior to or during World War II, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and many other wars. In Vietnam, peace settlements were proposed by the Vietnamese, the Soviets, and the French, but rejected and sabotaged by the United States. The last thing you want when trying to start or continue a war — and when trying to sell it as a reluctant action of last resort — is for word to leak out that the other side is proposing peace talks.[xxii]The War on Vietnam may have killed 4 million civilians or more, plus 1.1 million North Vietnamese troops, 40,000 South Vietnamese troops, and 58,000 U.S. forces.KOREAThe forgotten war in Korea, however, was the war that did away with Congressional declarations and established war as a permanent industry and global project, with the heavy taxes that go along with funding that. Americans were told that North Korea had attacked South Korea and had done so at the behest of the Soviet Union as part of a plot to take over the world for communism. In fact, the evidence suggests that the South was the aggressor. But, whichever side attacked, this was a civil war. The Soviet Union was not involved, and the United States ought not to have been. South Korea was not the United States, and was not in fact anywhere near the United States, yet this war was advertised as "defensive."The War on Korea saw the deaths of an estimated 500,000 North Korean troops; 400,000 Chinese troops; 245,000 - 415,000 South Korean troops; 37,000 U.S. troops; and an estimated 2 million Korean civilians.WORLD WAR IIThe war that has been used to justify later wars more than any other, and to justify massive military spending in anticipation of its repetition, is World War II. More than a few paragraphs are needed to persuade most Americans that there were better alternatives that could have been taken immediately prior to, in the decades preceding, and during the conduct of World War II. What can be easily reviewed is the fact that the war propaganda was chock full of lies.On September 4, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt gave a "fireside chat" radio address in which he claimed that a German submarine, completely unprovoked, had attacked the United States destroyer Greer, which — despite being called a destroyer — had been harmlessly delivering mail. Really? The Senate Naval Affairs Committee questioned Admiral Harold Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, who said the Greer had been tracking the German submarine and relaying its location to a British airplane, which had dropped depth charges on the submarine's location without success. The Greer had continued tracking the submarine for hours before the submarine turned and fired torpedoes.A month and a half later, Roosevelt told a similar tall tale about the USS Kearny. And then he really piled on. Roosevelt claimed to have in his possession a secret map produced by Hitler's government that showed plans for a Nazi conquest of South America. The Nazi government denounced this as a lie, blaming of course a Jewish conspiracy. The map, which Roosevelt refused to show the public, in fact actually showed routes in South America flown by American airplanes, with notations in German describing the distribution of aviation fuel. It was a British forgery, and apparently of about the same quality as the forgeries President George W. Bush would later use to show that Iraq had been trying to purchase uranium.Roosevelt also claimed to have come into possession of a secret plan produced by the Nazis for the replacement of all religions with Nazism: "The clergy are to be forever silenced under penalty of the concentration camps, where even now so many fearless men are being tortured because they have placed God above Hitler." Such a plan sounded like something Hitler would indeed draw up had Hitler not himself been an adherent of Christianity, but Roosevelt of course had no such document.[xxiii]The people of the United States did not support going into another war until Pearl Harbor, by which point Roosevelt had already instituted the draft, activated the National Guard, created a huge Navy in two oceans, traded old destroyers to England in exchange for the lease of its bases in the Caribbean and Bermuda, and — just 11 days before the "unexpected" attack — he had secretly ordered the creation of a list of every Japanese and Japanese-American person in the United States.On August 18, 1941, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met with his cabinet at 10 Downing Street. The meeting had some similarity to the July 23, 2002, meeting at the same address, the minutes of which became known as the Downing Street Minutes. Both meetings revealed secret U.S. intentions to go to war. In the 1941 meeting, Churchill told his cabinet, according to the minutes: "The President had said he would wage war but not declare it." In addition, "Everything was to be done to force an incident."In January 1941, eleven months before the attack, the Japan Advertiser expressed its outrage over Pearl Harbor in an editorial, and the U.S. ambassador to Japan wrote in his diary: "There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case of a break with the United States, are planning to go all out in a surprise mass attack on Pearl Harbor. Of course I informed my government."On February 5, 1941, Rear Admiral Richmond Kelly Turner wrote to Secretary of War Henry Stimson to warn of the possibility of a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor.In November 1940, Roosevelt had loaned China one hundred million dollars for war with Japan, and after consulting with the British, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau made plans to send the Chinese bombers with U.S. crews to use in bombing Tokyo and other Japanese cities. On December 21, 1940, two weeks shy of a year before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, China's Minister of Finance T.V. Soong and Colonel Claire Chennault, a retired U.S. Army flier who was working for the Chinese and had been urging them to use American pilots to bomb Tokyo since at least 1937, met in Henry Morgenthau's dining room to plan the firebombing of Japan. Morgenthau said he could get men released from duty in the U.S. Army Air Corps if the Chinese could pay them $1,000 per month. Soong agreed.On May 24, 1941, the New York Times reported on U.S. training of the Chinese air force, and the provision of "numerous fighting and bombing planes" to China by the United States. "Bombing of Japanese Cities is Expected" read the subheadline. By July, the Joint Army-Navy Board had approved a plan called JB 355 to firebomb Japan. A front corporation would buy American planes to be flown by American volunteers trained by Chennault and paid by another front group. Roosevelt approved, and his China expert Lauchlin Currie, in the words of Nicholson Baker, "wired Madame Chaing Kai-Shek and Claire Chennault a letter that fairly begged for interception by Japanese spies." Whether or not that was the entire point, this was the letter:"I am very happy to be able to report today the President directed that sixty-six bombers be made available to China this year with twenty-four to be delivered immediately. He also approved a Chinese pilot training program here. Details through normal channels. Warm regards."On July 24, 1941, President Roosevelt remarked, "If we cut the oil off , [the Japanese] probably would have gone down to the Dutch East Indies a year ago, and you would have had a war. It was very essential from our own selfish point of view of defense to prevent a war from starting in the South Pacific. So our foreign policy was trying to stop a war from breaking out there."Reporters noticed that Roosevelt said "was" rather than "is." The next day, Roosevelt issued an executive order freezing Japanese assets. The United States and Britain cut off oil and scrap metal to Japan. Radhabinod Pal, an Indian jurist who served on the war crimes tribunal after the war, called the embargoes a "clear and potent threat to Japan's very existence," and concluded the United States had provoked Japan.In late October, U.S. spy Edgar Mower was doing work for Colonel William Donovan who spied for Roosevelt. Mower spoke with a man in Manila named Ernest Johnson, a member of the Maritime Commission, who said he expected "The Japs will take Manila before I can get out." When Mower expressed surprise, Johnson replied "Didn't you know the Jap fleet has moved eastward, presumably to attack our fleet at Pearl Harbor?"On November 15th, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall briefed the media on something we do not remember as "the Marshall Plan." In fact we don't remember it at all. "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan," Marshall said, asking the journalists to keep it a secret.Ten days later Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary that he'd met in the Oval Office with Marshall, President Roosevelt, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, Admiral Harold Stark, and Secretary of State Cordell Hull. Roosevelt had told them the Japanese were likely to attack soon, possibly next Monday. It has been well documented that the United States had broken the Japanese' codes and that Roosevelt had access to them. It was through intercept of a so-called Purple code message that Roosevelt had discovered Germany's plans to invade Russia. It was Hull who leaked a Japanese intercept to the press, resulting in the November 30, 1941, headline "Japanese May Strike Over Weekend."That next Monday would have been December 1st, six days before the attack actually came. "The question," Stimson wrote, "was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves. It was a difficult proposition." The day after the attack, Congress voted for war.[xxiv]Craig Shirley's book December 1941, published in December 2011, printed a memo from December 4, 1941, that warned Roosevelt of possible Japanese attack. Shirley also reported that, in the words of U.S. News and World Report, "On the night of the Pearl Harbor attack, FDR and his war cabinet considered declaring war on all three Axis Powers -- Japan, Germany, Italy -- but in the end the president only targeted Japan."World War II became "the good war" during the unpopular war on Vietnam. In the minds of many Americans today, World War II was justified because of the degree of evilness of Adolf Hitler, an evilness to be found above all in the holocaust. But you won't find any recruitment posters of Uncle Sam saying "I Want You…to Save the Jews." When a resolution was introduced in the U.S. Senate in 1934 expressing "surprise and pain" at Germany's actions, and asking that Germany restore rights to Jews, the State Department "caused it to be buried in committee." By 1937 Poland had developed a plan to send Jews to Madagascar, and the Dominican Republic had a plan to accept them as well. Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain of Great Britain came up with a plan to send Germany's Jews to Tanganyika in East Africa. Representatives of the United States, Britain, and South American nations met at Lake Geneva in July 1938 and all agreed that none of them would accept the Jews.On November 15, 1938, reporters asked President Franklin Roosevelt what could be done. He replied that he would refuse to consider allowing more immigrants than the standard quota system allowed. Bills were introduced in Congress to allow 20,000 Jews under the age of 14 to enter the United States. Senator Robert Wagner (D., N.Y.) said, "Thousands of American families have already expressed their willingness to take refugee children into their homes." First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt set aside her anti-Semitism to support the legislation, but her husband successfully blocked it for years.In July 1940, Adolf Eichmann, "architect of the holocaust," intended to send all Jews to Madagascar, which now belonged to Germany, France having been occupied. The ships would need to wait only until the British, which now meant Winston Churchill, ended their blockade. That day never came. On November 25, 1940, the French ambassador asked the U.S. Secretary of State to consider accepting German Jewish refugees then in France. On December 21st, the Secretary of State declined. By July 1941, the Nazis had determined that a final solution for the Jews could consist of genocide rather than expulsion.[xxv]World War II, is still the deadliest of all time, with military deaths estimated at 20 to 25 million (including 5 million deaths of prisoners in captivity), and civilian deaths estimated at 40 to 52 million (including 13 to 20 million from war-related disease and famine).World War II was of course capped off by President Truman pretending that Hiroshima was a military base and that bombing the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki saved lives and shortened the war.[xxvi]WORLD WAR IIn the case of World War I, the U.S. public was told that Germany had attacked our good and innocent allies, might eventually attack us, and had in fact attacked innocent American civilians aboard a ship called the Lusitania. German submarines had been giving warnings to civilian ships, allowing passengers to abandon them before they were sunk. When this exposed the U-boats to counterattacks, however, the Germans began attacking without warning. That was how they sank the Lusitania on May 7, 1915, killing 1,198 people, including 128 Americans. But, through other channels, the Germans had already warned those passengers. The Lusitania had been built to specifications of the British Navy which listed it as an auxiliary cruiser. On its final voyage, the Lusitania was packed with American-made war materiel, including ten-and-a-half tons of rifle cartridges, 51 tons of shrapnel shells, and a large supply of gun cotton, not to mention 67 soldiers of the 6th Winnipeg Rifles. That the ship was carrying troops and weapons to war was not actually a secret. Before the Lusitania left New York, the German Embassy had obtained permission from the U.S. Secretary of State to publish in New York newspapers a warning that because the ship was carrying war supplies it would be subject to attack.Upon the sinking of the Lusitania, those same newspapers, and all other American newspapers, declared the attack murder and omitted any mention of what the ship had carried. When President Wilson protested to the German government, pretending the Lusitania had not contained any troops or weapons, his secretary of state resigned in protest of Wilson. The British and U.S. governments falsified the ship's manifests and lied so effectively that many people today imagine there is doubt over whether the Lusitania had weapons on board. Or they imagine that dive crews discovering arms in the wreckage of the ship in 2008 were resolving a long-standing mystery.[xxvii]SPANISH AMERICAN WARProfessional public relations campaigns may have come into their own with World War I, but war propaganda was not invented in the 20th century. In 1898 the USS Maine blew up in Havana Harbor, and U.S. newspapers quickly blamed the Spanish, crying out "Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!" Newspaper owner William Randolph Hearst did his best to fan the flames of a war he knew would boost circulation. Who actually blew the ship up? Nobody knew. Certainly Spain denied it, Cuba denied it, and the United States denied it. Spain didn't just casually deny it either. Spain conducted an investigation and found that the explosion had been inside the ship. Realizing that the United States would reject this finding, Spain proposed a joint investigation by both countries and offered to submit to binding arbitration by an impartial international panel. The United States wasn't interested. Whatever caused the explosion, Washington wanted war.More recent investigations raise the distinct possibility that the Maine was indeed sunk by an explosion, whether accidental or intentional, that occurred within it, rather than by a mine outside it. But no experts have proven one theory over another to the satisfaction of all. The Spanish could have found a way to plant a bomb inside the ship. Americans could have found a way to place a mine outside it. Knowing where the explosion took place won't tell us who, if anyone, caused it. But even if we knew for certain who caused it, how, and why, none of that information would change the basic account of what happened in 1898. The nation went mad for war in response to an attack by Spain for which there was no evidence, merely conjecture. This alleged atrocity -- the sinking of the Maine -- was used to launch a war "in defense of" Cuba and the Philippines that involved attacking and occupying Cuba and the Philippines, and PuertoRico for good measure.[xxviii]MEXICAN AMERICAN WARU.S. imperialism wasn't new in 1898. The United States had simply run out of land to conquer on the continent by then. Before Abraham Lincoln had become, as president, the celebrated abuser of war powers (suspending habeas corpus, etc.) who has served to excuse similar abuses by so many of his successors, he had been a congressman aware that the Constitution had given the power to declare war to the Congress. In 1847, Congressman Lincoln accused President James Polk of lying the nation into a war by blaming Mexico for aggression when that charge rightly should have been made against the U.S. Army and Polk himself. Lincoln joined with former president and then-current congressman John Quincy Adams in seeking a formal investigation of Polk's actions and the formal sanctioning of Polk for lying the nation into war.[xxix]Even while denouncing a war based on lies whose blood, Lincoln said, was crying to heaven, Lincoln and his fellow Whigs voted repeatedly to fund that war. On June 21, 2007, Senator Carl Levin (D., Mich.) cited Lincoln's example in the Washington Post as justification for his own stance as an "opponent" of the War on Iraq who would continue to fund it through eternity as a means of "supporting the troops."IT WAS EVER THUSAnd so it goes, back through the claim that the Civil War was launched to end slavery and was needed to end slavery, even though so many other nations ended slavery without wars. Back through the endless lies about, and to, Native Americans. Back through the War of 1812 that we like to imagine as a defensive struggle and a continuation of a war for independence, although it was actually launched by the U.S. government three decades after the revolution ended, and launched with the intention of conquering Canada. Back indeed beyond the American Revolution that we justify by averting our eyes from the nonviolent liberation of many other nations.From war we have acquired taxes and debt. Expenses on war and war preparation in the United States are now over half of federal discretionary spending, more than all other nations of the world combined, and more than at any time during the Cold War. Military spending increases, not with the need for military defense, but with the level of corruption in U.S. elections.Decreasing in proportion to the rise in military spending are our civil liberties; our representative government; the balance of powers within the government; resistance to policies of warrantless spying, imprisonment without charge, torture, and assassination; and the health of our news media. The war machine has become the greatest destroyer of the natural environment we have. And the shifting of funding from all other areas to the military has had disastrous results in as many fields as we might choose to name.[xxx][i] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 38.[ii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 55.[iii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 56.[iv] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 56.[v] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 94.[vi] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 102.[vii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 164.[viii]David Swanson, "The Libyan Model and the Oxymoron," http://davidswanson.org/node/3669[ix] Drone Warfare: Killing by Remote Control, by Medea Benjamin, 2012.[x] Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union, by David Swanson, 2009, pp. 34-44.[xi] Ibid.[xii] Ibid.[xiii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 242-249.[xiv] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 101.[xv] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 181.[xvi] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 23.[xvii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 30-31.[xviii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 53.[xix] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 79-80.[xx] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 100.[xxi] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 79.[xxii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 192.[xxiii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 117-118.[xxiv] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 57-65.[xxv] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., p. 36.[xxvi] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 41-43.[xxvii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 71-72.[xxviii] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 68-69.[xxix] War Is A Lie, by David Swanson, 2010, Charlottesville, Va., pp. 65-67.[xxx] The Military Industrial Complex at 50, edited by David Swanson, Charlottesville, VA., 2011.This piece was reprinted by Truthout with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.David SwansonDavid Swanson, author of War Is A Lie, is an activist, journalist, public speaker and radio host. His previous books include When the World Outlawed War, and War No More: The Case forAbolition. Swanson serves as director of World Beyond War, and host of Talk Nation Radio. He blogs at Let's Try Democracy and War Is A Crime. In the early 2000s, he helped to expose the "Downing Street Minutes" and other attempts to lie the United States and its allies into the Iraq war.