ALSO SEE: Park Service Diverts $2.5 Million
for Trump's July 4 Extravaganza

Will Donald Trump's Fourth of July Parade Break the Law?

By Dahlia Lithwick, Slate

03 July 19

The Hatch Act prevents the president from spending tax dollars on a political rally. Here’s what would turn his “parade” into an illegal act.

resident Donald Trump is throwing himself a parade this week, complete with a flyover by the Navy’s Blue Angels and Air Force One, the chiefs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines standing by his side, and tanks that the District of Columbia emphatically does not want, although recent reporting suggests they will be parked and stationary, in an attempt to not destroy the roadways, as was originally planned. While historically, any Fourth of July celebration in Washington has been nonpartisan, this year the president will deliver a “Salute to America” address at the Lincoln Memorial. Perhaps he will spend it saluting America in a unifying and sober fashion, with no reference to his party, his enemies, or his reelection bid, but it seems much more likely that he will turn it into a Trump rally.

Putting aside for a moment the property damage and waste, the cost to a cash-strapped National Parks Service, and the horrifying authoritarian spectacle of a military tribute to one man’s ego, there is also the astronomical waste of taxpayers’ dollars to consider. USA Today spoke to a White House aide who estimated the cost to transport the tanks alone at $870,000; this helps explain how the cost of the scuttled military parade Trump wanted for 2018 added up to about $92 million. And while nobody will say precisely what amount taxpayers will be paying for this event, the government is currently detaining children at the southern border without access to toothbrushes, soap, socks, or their families.

Then, of course, there are the separate legal problems. CREW, the watchdog group that has been bird-dogging the administration on ethics violations, emoluments violations, and Hatch Act violations tweeted that it will be watching the “Salute to America” to determine whether the president will violate the Hatch Act when delivering his remarks.

As a refresher, the Hatch Act is a 1939 law that bars virtually all federal employees from engaging in partisan political activities. Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor whose repeated violations of the Hatch Act were so egregious that last month the Office of Special Counsel (a permanent federal agency, not Mueller’s probe) recommended that she be removed from her position, said Tuesday that the president’s remarks would be nonpartisan and instead limited to “how wonderful this country is”… “Our troops and military… Our great democracy. And great call to patriotism.” Of course last month, when asked about her own violations of the Hatch Act, Conway replied, and I quote: “Blah, blah, blah. … Let me know when the trial starts.” So she is probably not a reliable authority on the subject. Trump declined to discipline Conway for her Hatch Act violations because “I think you’re entitled to free speech in this country.”

Walter Shaub, the former director of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics who is now a senior adviser to CREW, produced a primer on how we might know whether the Administration violates the Hatch Act on July 4. While the president himself is not bound by the act, the July 4 event turns into a taxpayer-funded Trump campaign rally if any of the following happens:

• Trump uses one of his campaign slogans: “Make America Great Again” or “Keep America Great.”


• Trump mentions the election, his reelection, or a desire to stay in office.


• Trump mentions election polling, his approval rating, or his fundraising efforts.


• Trump mentions a candidate vying for a rival party’s nomination for president.


• Trump mentions his political party or a rival political party.


• Volunteers hand out campaign signs, banners, or flyers.


• Other speakers onstage mention Trump’s campaign, reelection, or a desire for Trump to remain in office.


• Other speakers on the stage mention one of Trump’s political rivals, Trump’s political party, or a rival political party.


• Trump campaign officials are present at the event.


• any other indicia of political activity

Let’s reconsider the types of things Donald Trump typically says to a fawning crowd in MAGA hats. What is he planning on doing? Showtunes? Knock-knock jokes? During a non-political speech at Osan Air Base in South Korea on Sunday, the president first noted, “This is not a political speech,” before telling listeners that Democrats did not want to give troops new equipment because “they want open borders and the hell with the military. That’s not good.”

Also of note is the fact that there will be a VIP section in front of the Lincoln Memorial, with tickets distributed by the White House and the Republican National Committee. As HuffPost reported this past week, the RNC is offering major donors tickets, as are political appointees at the White House, but the Democratic National Committee was not given any tickets to give away. HuffPost further reports that on Tuesday, the Trump campaign sent an email to its list inviting supporters to the event that included the following phrases: “We believe this is an important way to reach our grassroots supporters with the most up-to-date information regarding the efforts of Donald J. Trump for President, Inc., and we’re glad you’re on our team. It’s because of grassroots supporters like you that we will Make America Great Again, and we appreciate your support. Thank you for all that you do!”

Also consider that rooms at the Trump International Hotel, which is charging twice what local properties charge for the event, are sold out. The president and his daughter, a senior White House adviser, still profit from this state of affairs despite campaign promises not to profit from hotel income.

I asked Shaub what to make of the new revelations about the RNC and the White House offering tickets to VIPs. He said this: “The fact that the RNC is handing out tickets to major campaign donors heightens the concern that this appears to be a political rally. It’s a strong piece of evidence.”

He further clarified what is problematic about the pending celebration: “The RNC has tried to shrug it off by comparing the massive Fourth of July event on the National Mall to a holiday party or garden tour at the White House. But the president lives at the White House. The National Mall is a public space controlled by the Interior Department, which has a separate federal appropriation.”

Perhaps the president will surprise us all with a rousing and patriotic tribute to all Americans and the values that unite everyone on the Fourth. Or perhaps he will simply echo the now-infamous lines of his favorite adviser: “Blah, blah, blah. … Let me know when the trial starts.”

The US, Not Iran, Is the Rogue State

By Derek Davison, Jacobin

03 July 19

Trump says he wants to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, yet he wrecked an international agreement that was doing just that. Now we're edging closer to a war that the US says it doesn’t want but is doing everything to cause.

hen he’s not threatening Iran with “obliteration,” Donald Trump has, of late, noted his preference for negotiations over war. He’s reportedly asked his advisers, including hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and ultra-hawkish National Security Advisor John Bolton, to “tone down” their rhetoric on Iran. His Iran envoy, Brian Hooks, has told Congress that the goal of the administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign is negotiations, not conflict.

Trump has gone so far as to say he’ll be Iran’s “best friend” — with one caveat: the Iranians give up any efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. “We’re not going to have Iran have a nuclear weapon,” he told reporters last weekend. “When they agree to that, they’re going to have a wealthy country. They’re going to be so happy, and I’m going to be their best friend. I hope that happens.”

So let’s take Trump at his word. Maybe he is interested in cutting a deal. Let’s further acknowledge that the administration might not be comfortable relying on Iran’s word (Tehran has insisted that it “will never pursue a nuclear weapon ”) or even on the word of US intelligence (which in a 2007 report concluded that Iran stopped what nuclear weapons work it was doing in 2003). What kind of agreement would it then be looking to negotiate with Tehran?

To be viable, the plan would need to be an international one that involved not just the US and Iran, but China, Russia, and major European states. All these states would have to jointly take action to ensure that Iran fulfilled its obligations under the pact and that it benefited from doing so. The deal would need to be comprehensive, covering all aspects of Iran’s nuclear program; include a mechanism for enforcing Iranian compliance; and provide Iran with relief from the current array of US and international sanctions.

This hypothetical deal would be a win-win for all parties: the US and company would get their coveted denuclearization, and Iran would be freed from the sanctions that have wreaked havoc on their economy.

There’s just one problem: that kind of deal has already been crafted. It’s called the “Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action” (JCPOA) — the 2015 accord that Iran agreed to with the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the United Kingdom. The same accord that Trump chose to scrap last year, which has now brought the US and Iran to the brink of a military confrontation.

While Trump spent the 2016 presidential campaign trashing the JCPOA — calling it “the worst deal ever negotiated” and declaring his “number one priority” would be to “dismantle” it — arms control experts have supported it as an effective tool. More than eighty non-proliferation specialists signed a joint statement in 2017, before Trump abandoned the accord, saying that the JCPOA “has proven to be an effective and verifiable arrangement that is a net plus for international nuclear nonproliferation efforts” as well as “an important success of multilateral diplomacy, the full implementation of which is critical to international peace and security.”

When it was negotiated in 2015, the JCPOA’s premise was simple: in return for accepting limitations on its nuclear power program and an intense inspections regime to verify its compliance, Iran would get relief from US and international sanctions. By obligating Iran to redesign a heavy water reactor that could have generated significant plutonium waste and establishing strict limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment program, it closed off both of Iran’s potential pathways to a nuclear weapon. Most critically, Iran agreed to an unprecedented level of monitoring and inspections to verify its compliance. That work has been done by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has repeatedly affirmed Iran’s adherence to the deal.

This is the agreement that Trump chose to violate last year. With his reimposition of US sanctions — which apply not just to US entities but all parties seeking to do business with Iran — it has become impossible for Tehran to receive any benefits despite its fidelity to the deal. Although the remaining signatories to the JCPOA have to shield some Iranian commerce from US penalties, those efforts have been very limited in scope and are, thanks to US dominance in the global financial system, still ultimately vulnerable to sanctions.

It’s little wonder that the Iranians have recently begun scaling back their own commitments to the nuclear deal and plan to continue scaling them back. Amazingly, the Trump administration has warned Iran against doing so — it “still expects Iran to abide by [the JCPOA’s] terms,” according to NBC News. But the US withdrawal from the JCPOA, combined with the Trump administration’s zealous application of sanctions, has destroyed the pact. For all intents and purposes, there is no JCPOA anymore, and the notion that Iran would continue to adhere to a dead accord is, to say the least, unreasonable.

If it appears that the Trump administration’s approach to Iran is incoherent, that’s because it is. Trump says he wants to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, yet he wrecked an international agreement that was doing just that. His advisers say they want to force Iran to negotiate over an expanded deal that addresses the original’s perceived shortcomings, but the best way to encourage Iran to keep talking would have been to make sure that it received all of its promised perks under the JCPOA.

Now Iranian leaders call the US offer to talk a “deception,” and even ostensible US allies like France say they’ve seen “no signal the US is interested in dialogue.” The administration claims it wants to build a “global coalition” to isolate and counter Iran, but its actions have only isolated the US and shown that it, not Iran, is the rogue state in this situation.

The Trump administration has made sanctions an end unto themselves, heaping more and more on Iran and offering Tehran no chance to alleviate them that doesn’t involve some kind of capitulation. After the most recent round of US sanctions — which targeted Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself — Iran suggested that the “path to diplomacy” is now closed, and there’s no reason to doubt they mean it.

The one constant over the past forty years of Iran-US relations has been Washington’s deep desire for regime change in Tehran. Seen in that light, the administration’s refusal to create an off-ramp to deescalate this entirely US-made crisis may be deliberate — part of a plan to punish the Iranian people so severely that they eventually rise up and topple their government on Washington’s behalf. But there’s no indication that the effort is working, and in the meantime millions of people are suffering for it while the Persian Gulf region edges closer to a war that the US says it doesn’t want but is doing everything to cause.