BOOK REVIEW: The Wrong Road To Freedom

BY DAVID R. HENDERSON

Columbia University economics professor Joseph E. Stiglitz has recently published a book titled The Road to Freedom: Economics and the Good Society. In it, Stiglitz, who shared the 2001 Nobel Prize in economics with George Akerlof and Michael Spence, criticizes what he calls “neoliberalism” and singles out Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek as two prominent neoliberals.

Stiglitz argues that Friedman, Hayek, and others failed to recognize the importance of market failure and were too optimistic about how competitive an economy would be without government intervention. Whereas Friedman argued that economic freedom is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for political freedom, Stiglitz turns the argument on its head. In his view, the kind of economic freedom that Friedman advocated would lead to less political freedom. Interestingly, though, Stiglitz himself advocates less freedom of speech for people with certain views and he claims that it was good for governments to have suppressed what he thinks of as misleading speech about the COVID-19 pandemic and masks.

Throughout the book, Stiglitz makes strong assertions with little or no evidence. Although the book is heavily footnoted, the footnotes are mainly to explain some of his ideas further or to reference other books or articles, disproportionately written by Stiglitz. There are few hard numbers, and he makes little attempt to cite writings by those he criticizes. He also shows a stunning ignorance of economic history and, in discussing price gouging, shows no awareness of the downside of price controls. His criticism of communism doesn’t even mention the millions of deaths it led to. At times, as when he discusses climate change, he is completely one-sided and seems completely unaware that he is. Moreover, Stiglitz is not shy about engaging in stunning personal attacks on Friedman and Hayek. The result is a book that preaches only to people who (1) already agree with him and (2) don’t need to see good evidence or arguments to support their views.

Neoliberalism and Trickle-Down Economics

In his Preface, Stiglitz defines neoliberalism as “the belief in unregulated, unfettered markets.” In a footnote he promises to provide a “more extensive definition” in the first chapter, but a careful reading of that chapter shows no such attempt.

Stiglitz, like many other critics of free-market economists, uses a term to describe them that almost none of them uses. The only economist I know who calls himself a neoliberal is EconLog co-blogger Scott Sumner. And the only evidence of Milton Friedman mentioning the word “neoliberal” was in a 1951 essay in a Norwegian magazine. Even there, Friedman didn’t claim the label for himself. In none of his subsequent non-academic writing—and I have read virtually all of it—did Friedman call himself a neoliberal.

Similarly, Stiglitz refers to people on the “Right” (he capitalizes the word) as advocates of “trickle-down economics.” They argue, he says, that “if we made the economic pie larger, all would eventually be better off.” (italics in original) Yet, I’ve never been able to find people on the “Right,” whether classical liberal, conservative, or libertarian, using the term “trickle-down economics” to refer to what they believe in. When someone uses terms to describe people’s beliefs, terms that those people never use to describe their own beliefs, we should be suspicious.

While we’re discussing it, though, it’s important to point out that the last two centuries of economic growth completely justify the idea that steady economic growth in a society does make virtually everyone better off. J. Bradford DeLong, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley—and certainly no one whom Stiglitz would regard as a “neoliberal”—beautifully documented that fact in a 2000 National Bureau of Economic Research study aptly titled “Cornucopia: The Pace of Economic Growth in the Twentieth Century.” This isn’t trickle-down economics; it’s gush-down economics.

Economic Concentration and the 19th Century Trusts

In criticizing Hayek and Friedman, Stiglitz claims that they thought that markets on their own would remain competitive without government intervention and forgot or ignored “the experiences of monopolization and concentration of economic power that led to competition laws” in the late 19th and early 20th century. There are two problems with this claim. First, both Hayek and Friedman did favor some version of antitrust. In his 1962 classic, Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman wrote, “The Sherman antitrust laws, with all their problems of detailed administration, have by their very existence fostered competition.” And in his 1979 volume 3 of his Law, Legislation, and Liberty, Hayek wrote that monopolists’ ability to price discriminate “ought to be curbed by appropriate rules of conduct” in cases where “market power consists in a power of preventing others from serving the customer better.” It’s not clear that Hayek had in mind antitrust statutes, He more likely was thinking of common law rules against monopolistic private-market actions. I don’t completely defend Friedman’s and Hayek’s views. I simply defend them from Stiglitz’s false charge.

Second and more important, Stiglitz shows his own ignorance of how competitive the “trusts” of the late 19th century were. In a pathbreaking study that Stiglitz doesn’t mention, economist Thomas DiLorenzo showed that in the six “trusts” he examined, between 1880 and 1890 real output increased by 175 percent at a time when the trusts were gaining market share and the economy’s overall output increased by only 24 percent. In his article, “The Origins of Antitrust: An Interest-Group Perspective,” published in the International Review of Law and Economics, DiLorenzo found that real prices in these industries were falling. Although the consumer price index fell 7 percent in that decade, the price of steel fell 53 percent, refined sugar 22 percent, lead 12 percent, and zinc 20 percent. The only price that fell less than 7 percent in the allegedly monopolized industries was that of coal.

What about oil, which was produced by that famous trust, Standard Oil of New Jersey? In his 1987 book, A Theory of Efficient Cooperation and Competition, Lester Telser, a University of Chicago economist, noted that during that same decade (1880-1890), the output of petroleum products rose 393 by percent and the price fell 61 percent. The only conclusion consistent with those facts are these two sentences from Telser: “The oil trust did not charge high prices because it had 90 percent of the market. It got 90 percent of the refined oil market by charging low prices.” But you won’t find any mention of this in Stiglitz’s book.

Stiglitz’s Personal Attacks

While we’re on the issue of false, or at least specious, charges, it’s worth pointing out Stiglitz’s personal attacks on Friedman and Hayek. In his Chapter One, Stiglitz writes, “Friedman and Hayek, like many other conservatives, have an unfailingly dismal view of human nature. It may have been because of deep introspection that they arrived at their extreme views about individual selfishness, which they the generalized to everyone.” I can’t speak for Hayek. I spent about a week at a conference with him in June 1975 and didn’t get to know him well, but I certainly didn’t observe an obviously selfish person. The main thing I observed was his utter delight in finding young economists who were more free-market-oriented than he was.

I did know Milton Friedman well, though, having interacted with him on numerous occasions between 1970 and the early 2000s. What I observed was a man with a large generosity of spirit. That simply doesn’t fit Stiglitz’s image of someone generalizing from his own selfishness to that of people in general.

On a related note, Stiglitz accuses Friedman of having been “a key adviser to the notorious Chilean military dictator Augusto Pinochet.” This claim has been refuted countless times. Friedman himself noted—and no one contradicted his claim—that Friedman spent about 45 minutes talking to Pinochet. Does that constitute key advice? And what is one to say about Stiglitz’s own close consulting relationship with Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez?

Price Gouging

One thing that tends to separate economists from non-economists is the economists’ understanding of the positive effects of allowing so-called “price gouging.” For purposes of this discussion, I’ll define price gouging as raising a good’s price quickly and substantially when the demand for the good suddenly rises or the supply suddenly falls. A 2012 poll of prominent economists found that only 8 percent agreed or strongly agreed with the idea of passing a law preventing price gouging during “a severe weather event or emergency” while 51 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed.2 Weighted by confidence in their views, the results were even more lopsided. Only 7 precent agreed or strongly agreed while 77 percent disagreed or strongly disagreed.

Why do so many economists think that allowing price gouging is a good idea? For three main reasons. First, even if higher prices don’t elicit higher output, they do cause the suddenly scarcer good to be sold to those who value it most. We measure value by willingness to pay. That may sound problematic, but it’s not always true that the wealthier people are the ones who are willing to pay more. During a hurricane, for example, although the wealthier person will certainly get plywood to cover up the windows of his mansion, the person who lives in a trailer might outbid the wealthier person for plywood for his trailer so that the wealthier person doesn’t get the plywood for his tool shed.

Second, if suppliers know that they can raise prices when there’s a sudden increase in demand or decrease in supply, they are more likely to stockpile goods than if they know they won’t be able to raise prices.

Third, outside suppliers, if they can charge unusually high prices, will be motivated to ship goods into the area where there is a sudden scarcity. There are actual cases of lumber sellers in Georgia getting ready to ship lumber to Florida if they’re assured of being able to get high prices.

Where does Stiglitz stand? He’s in the 7 or 8 percent. In addressing the issue of umbrella prices during rainstorms, he advocates a “simple coercive rule—no price gouging when it rains.” His argument for that rule is that it will cause people not to invest in information about the weather. He thinks that’s good. But he doesn’t even bother addressing the issues I discussed above: the allocation of a given number of umbrellas, the incentive to stockpile, and the shipment of umbrellas from other areas. (This last, admittedly, is probably not important for sudden rainstorms.)

Climate Change

Stiglitz calls climate change “an existential threat.” He writes:Climate change is about more than the heating of the planet a few degrees; it is about the increase in extreme weather events. More droughts, more floods, more hurricanes, more extreme heat and more extreme cold spells, rising sea levels and increasing ocean acidity, and all the dire consequences that will ensue, from dying seas to forest fires to the loss of life and property.

Such strong empirical claims cry out for strong empirical support. Stiglitz gives none. Yet physicist Steven Koonin, in his 2021 book, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What it Doesn’t, and Why it Matters, presents solid data, much of it from the federal government’s National Climate Assessment that undercuts claims like those quoted above. I discuss a number of these in my 2022 review of Unsettled.

COVID, Masks, Censorship, and Communism

This same confidence without evidence infuses Stiglitz’s discussion of the efficacy of wearing masks during COVID. He claims that “[S]cientists found that, holding all else constant, masking and social distancing make a difference.” The good news is that he footnotes this claim; the bad news is that the footnote doesn’t give evidence for the claim.

More ominously, Stiglitz comes out strongly for censoring people whose views on COVID differ from his. He writes:When individuals believe wrong information—when there is a demonstrable inability of many to identify laws and false information—there may have to be restrictions on its dissemination. We did that during the pandemic; it would have been foolish—socially harmful—if we had not.

That raises other issues. People acting on Marxist ideas, which were clearly wrong, put into power governments into power that murdered tens of millions of people. Would Stiglitz have censored Karl Marx?

I would bet that he would answer “No” and that part of the reason is that he doesn’t feel strongly about Communism. Here’s his summary statement about the downsides of Communism:Communism succeeded in generating greater equality and more security in material goods but failed on other counts, including low economic growth, an absence of freedom in all dimensions, a concentration of power, and a greater inequality in standards of living than Communist rulers would admit.

Put aside the fact that there were great inequalities under Communism. As my co-authors and I pointed out in our article “The Hidden Inequality in Socialism,” Leonid Brezhnev, general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party and president of the USSR, “had Rolls Royce, Mercedes, Cadillac, Lincoln Continental, Monte Carlo, Matra, and Lancia Beta automobiles.” Much more important, what’s missing? How about Joseph Stalin’s purposeful starving of millions of Ukrainians in the early 1930s. Has Stiglitz, a smart man, never heard of the Holodomor?

Getting Coase Wrong

One of the major players among free-market economists in the last century was the late Ronald Coase, who was even a player into the 21st century. Coase famously established that lighthouses in Britain, which so many economists—famously including Stiglitz’s own teacher, Paul Samuelson—assumed had to be provided by government, were actually provided privately. Coase never argued, though, that private producers could feasibly provide all public goods. Yet in a table summarizing various “neoliberal” views, Stiglitz writes, “[The] Coase theorem says that market will efficiently solve public goods problems.” Has he read Coase?

Is there anything to like?

There are so many other parts of the book to criticize. They include Stiglitz’s idea that the U.S. economy has deindustrialized—it hasn’t; an attack on Republicans for gerrymandering even though Democrats do so also; and a criticism of the idea of letting people sell their body parts in which he forgets to argue why they shouldn’t be so allowed. That is by far from a complete list of remaining weaknesses in the book.

I’ve been more critical of Stiglitz’s book than I normally am of other books by economists who are left of center. That raises a question: is there anything valuable in his book? Yes. There are two main things.

First, on immigration, Stiglitz criticizes the media for showing “waves of refugees trying to cross the border.” He claims that this occurs “relatively rarely.” I’m not sure he’s right. But I do agree that the showings on media probably exaggerate the problem. Even on immigration, though, Stiglitz misses an opportunity to make a bigger point. He writes:The libertarian claims [about people deserving their incomes] are even weaker once we think about what their incomes would have been had they been born in a poor country, without the rule of law or the institutions, infrastructure, and human capital that make the economies of advanced countries work so well. It is not enough to have assets such as entrepreneurial talents. If you are born into the wrong environment, those assets mean nothing.

The way I’ve summed up that point in speaking to American audiences is to tell them that for most of them, the most valuable asset they have is their American citizenship.

But there’s a straightforward solution, one that many libertarians advocate but Stiglitz fails to: let more people immigrate. Throughout the book, Stiglitz expresses concern for people in poor countries. The quote above shows that he understands how to help millions of them. But he doesn’t bother to say so.

The other area in which he expresses some good thoughts is on trade policy. Stiglitz writes, “The US [government] talks about the international rule of law in trade, but nothing is done when Trump or Biden violate these rules, whether by imposing unjustified tariffs, by subsidizing its chip industry, or by passing Buy America provisions.”

But those are two rare points of light. Stiglitz’s book is, in short, full of important errors and deeply unsatisfying.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

How A Newspaper Revolution Sparked Protesters And Influencers, Disinformation And The Civil War

BY JON GRINSPAN

POLITICAL HISTORY CURATOR

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

There’s one question I get every time I give a talk. I’m a curator of political history at the Smithsonian Institution, and when I discuss the deep history of political division in our country, someone in the audience always asserts that we can’t possibly compare past divisions to the present, because our media landscape is doing unprecedented harm, unlike anything seen in the past.

I’m always struck by people’s belief in a placid media landscape in the past, a time of calm before the internet blew everything up.

In fact, the most divided period in the history of U.S. democracy – the mid-1800s – coincided with a sudden boom in new communications technologies, confrontational political influencers, widespread disinformation and nasty fights over free speech. This media landscape helped bring the Civil War.

The point is not that 21st century media is like the 19th century’s, but that the past was hardly full of the upstanding, rational, nonpartisan journalists many like to believe it was.

And at this era’s center, in the campaign that actually led to the war, was a huge, strange, forgotten movement – the Wide Awakes – born from this media landscape and fought out in the newspapers, polling places and, ultimately, battlefields of the nation.

From snark to high-minded abolitionism

Newspapers had been around for centuries, but as American rates of literacy rose, millions of ordinary citizens became daily news junkies.

The number of papers jumped from a few publications in 1800 to 4,000 brawling rags by 1860, printing hundreds of millions of pages each year. They ranged from the snarky, immensely popular New York Herald and the blood-drenched true crime reports in the National Police Gazette to the high-minded abolitionism of The Liberator.

Nearly everyone devoured them – from wealthy elites to schoolgirls to enslaved people technically banned from reading. Newspapers published scandals and rumors, riling mobs and sparking frequent attacks on editors – often by other editors.

Well into the 20th century, communities were still pulling newspaper presses out of local rivers, hurled there by angry mobs.

Ninety-five percent of newspapers had explicit political affiliations. Many were bankrolled by the parties directly. There was no concept of journalistic independence and nonpartisanship until the turn of the 20th century.

These partisan presses, not the government, even printed the election ballots. Readers voted by cutting ballots from their pages and bringing them to the polls. Imagine if TikTok influencers or podcasters were responsible for administering elections.

The telegraph may seem old-timey today, but after its introduction in the 1840s, Americans could disseminate breaking news across huge territories along electrical wires. It allowed people to argue the issues nationwide – before the internet, television or radio.

Digesting slavery’s evils daily

Americans became a people by arguing politics in the press.

When politics was local, the major parties had avoided discussing slavery, taking what Abraham Lincoln mocked as a “don’t care” attitude. But now that Maine could debate with Texas, the topic shot to the forefront. By the 1850s, Northerners digested its evils daily.

The National Era – an abolitionist press in Washington – first printed Harriet Beecher Stowe’s hair-raising “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by far the most influential antislavery novel in history.

Meanwhile, the radical pro-slavery magazine “De Bow’s Review” spread a maximalist vision of expanding slavery far and wide. Americans living thousands of miles from each other could argue the issue, and the only gatekeepers were editors who profited from spreading often legitimate outrage.

It’s fitting, then, that the Northern pushback to expanding slavery came from the 19th century equivalent of “very online” young newspaper readers. Early in the 1860 election, a core of young clerks in Connecticut formed a club to help campaign for the antislavery Republican Party. They happened to live in the state with the highest literacy rates and huge newspaper circulations. So when a local editor wrote that the Republicans seemed “Wide Awake” in the campaign, the boys named their club “the Wide Awakes.”

Adding militaristic uniforms, torch-lit midnight rallies and an open eye as their all-seeing symbol, a new movement was born, which I chronicle in my recent book, “Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force that Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War.” Often, their chief issue was not the knotty specifics of what to do about slavery, but the fight for a “Free Press” – unsuppressed by supporters of slavery, South or North.

The Wide Awakes exploded across the national newspaper network. Within months of their founding, young Republicans were forming clubs from Connecticut to California.

Most learned how to organize their companies through the papers. They built a reciprocal relationship with America’s press: cheering friendly newspaper offices and harassing pro-slavery Democratic papers’ headquarters. Friendly editors returned the favor, marching with the Wide Awakes and pushing their readers to form more clubs, like the Indiana newspaperman who nudged: “Cannot such an organization be gotten up in this town?”

None of this could be admired as independent journalism, but it sure spread a movement. It only took a few months to turn the Wide Awakes into one of the largest partisan movements America had ever seen, believed to have 500,000 members – proportionally the equivalent of 5 million today.

‘From Maine to Oregon let the earth shake’

The same newspaper network spread fear as well. Readers in much of the South saw the clubs as a partisan paramilitary organization. Wild accounts shared accidental misinformation and deliberate disinformation, pushing the false notion that the Wide Awakes were preparing for a war, not an election.

The presence of a few hundred African American Wide Awakes in Boston morphed into claims in Mississippi that “the Wide Awakes are composed mainly of Negroes,” who were plotting a race war. A dispersed, partisan media exaggerated such falsehoods like a national game of telephone.

By the time Lincoln won election in November 1860, hysterical editors predicted a Wide Awake attack on the South. Secessionist newspapers used fears of Wide Awakes to help push states out of the Union. The Weekly Mississippian reported “WIDE-AWAKE INVASION ANTICIPATED,” the very day that state seceded.

Meanwhile, Wide Awake editors began to push back against the widening secession conspiracy. German newspapermen in St. Louis helped arm Wide Awake clubs for combat.

In Pennsylvania, the editor James Sanks Brisbin ordered Republicans to “organize yourselves into military companies. … Take muskets in your hands, and from Maine to Oregon let the earth shake to the tread of three millions of armed Wide-Awakes.”

What began in ink was spiraling into lead and steel. It took 16 years to develop from the introduction of the telegraph to the Civil War. Undoubtedly, the fight over slavery caused that conflict, but the newspapers fed it, amplified it, exaggerated it.

Mid-19th century Americans lived with an odd combination: an unprecedented ability to spread information, but also a siloed and partisan system of interpreting it. It helped the nation finally reckon with the crimes of slavery, but also spread bad faith, irrational panic and outright lies.

This history can add a needed perspective to today’s political conflicts, so often magnified by social media. In both eras, new technologies supercharged existing political tensions.

Yet we can see from this heated history that political media is less like an unstoppable, unreformable force that will consume democracy, and more like another in a succession of breathtaking, catastrophic, wild new landscapes that must be tamed.

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Nobel Prize In Medicine Awarded For Discovery Of MicroRNAs, The Molecules That Control Our Genes

BY JUSTIN STEBBING

PROGFESSOR OF BIOMEDICAL SCIENCES

ANGLIA RUSKIN UNIVERSITY

Two scientists, Victor Ambros (UMASS Chan Medical School in the US) and Gary Ruvkun (Harvard Medical School in the US), have won the 2024 Nobel prize in medicine or physiology.

They received the prestigious award for discovering tiny molecules in our cells called microRNAs. This discovery has not only changed our understanding of how our bodies work, but opens up a whole new area of science as well. It even extends into new treatments.

These molecules, microRNAs, can be simply thought of as tiny controllers inside our cells, the building blocks of our bodies. They help decide which parts of our DNA, our own genetic material, should be active and which should be quiet.

Think of them as volume knobs for our genes, turning them up or down as needed. All our cells contain the same number of DNA letters called bases – there’s about 3 billion. These tiny little molecules themselves, in fact, help control which of those letters are on or off, how loud that volume switch is and, in doing so, how our own genes behave.

This is called gene regulation and is so important, helping cells decide what type of cell they should be. They also have lots of roles in hard-to-treat diseases such as cancer and neurological diseases such Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

MicroRNAs play crucial roles in our bodies throughout our lives. They guide our development from a single cell into a fully formed person with various organs and tissues.

As we grow and age, these tiny molecules continue to keep us healthy by fine-tuning our genes’ activity as needed. When microRNAs malfunction, it can lead to diseases such as cancer, which is why scientists are studying them to develop new treatments.

Interestingly, microRNAs also help explain why different parts of our body look and function differently, despite all our cells containing the same DNA letters. This makes them essential for both our overall health and our individual uniqueness.

Much of my own research has focused on microRNAs and we now know there are thousands of these in our cells, all of them different. Teams I have led have shown their importance across many different cancer types, and how they control different cellular processes, such as growth, division, but also spread, which can occur in cancer. We’ve even found they’re key to waking up stem cells in cancer, rare populations that can seed a whole new tumour.

Ambros and Ruvkun found these microRNAs while studying tiny worms. They realised that these molecules could control how the worms grew.

The fact that microRNAs are found across many species suggests they’ve been important throughout evolutionary history, and across biology in general. Later, scientists found that humans and other animals have microRNAs, too.

Understanding microRNAs could lead to new ways to diagnose diseases earlier and overall a deeper understanding of how our bodies work.

Scientists are exploring ways to use microRNAs or molecules that target them as treatments for various diseases. We’ve found that some microRNAs are in fact very good at turning off cancer cells so they might even be useful as treatments in themselves.

In basic terms, the discovery of microRNAs is like finding a new set of tools that our bodies use to stay healthy. This knowledge gives scientists and doctors new ways to help people when things go wrong with their health.

The Nobel prize recognises how important this discovery is for medicine and our understanding of life. Their pioneering work on tiny worms led to the discovery of a fundamental biological mechanism that’s crucial for life as we know it.

Their Nobel prize recognises how this discovery has transformed our understanding of gene regulation and opened up new avenues for medical research and treatment. It shows that even tiny things in our cells can have a huge impact on our overall health and wellbeing.

    READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Children In West Africa Are Often Sent To Live With Other Families To Help Them Get Ahead – But Fostering May Be Doing The Opposite

BY PEARL S. KYEI

SENIOR LECTURER

UNIVERSITY OF GHANA

In west Africa, it’s common for families to foster children informally. This helps ease the burden on parents and can give children from poorer families a chance to improve their lives.

An estimated 20% to 40% of mothers in the region have sent at least one child to live with another household for an extended period. That household acts as a “social parent”.

Education is one of the leading reasons for the practice: children can be in households with more resources for schooling or closer to schools.

Whether this fostering is beneficial or harmful depends on how much the host families are willing to support and invest in the fostered children.

The practice of child fostering differs from the formal foster care systems that are common in many parts of the world. Fostering arrangements in sub-Saharan Africa are typically informal and unregulated. Without legal or economic incentives, there’s a risk that host households may not be as invested in the welfare of fostered children, including their education, as they are in their own.

My research studied the relationship between fostering and school attendance. I looked at how this has changed over time and whether it is affected by how wealthy a fostering household is.

I found that in some west African countries, fostered children were less likely to attend school than children who were not fostered. And children fostered by wealthier households were the least likely to attend school compared to their non-fostered counterparts.

The findings highlight the need to set up or improve systems to monitor how fostered children are doing. They also suggest more research is needed to understand fostering in wealthier families.

Comparing change over time

The research used data from five countries that conducted similar surveys about a decade apart, in 2005/06 and 2017/18. The countries were The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone and Togo.

The sample comprised 86,803 children aged 6 to 12 whose biological parents were alive. The analysis compared school enrolment of fostered children with children who were not fostered over the two periods.

In 2005/06, 16.7% of the children in the sample were fostered. In 2017/18, 19.4% were fostered.

I expected to find that fostered children would be less likely to attend school than children who were not fostered. This is because it is possible that the purposes for which parents send their children away may not align exactly with the reasons the host households agree to have them.

I also expected that the difference in school attendance between fostered and non-fostered children would decrease over time, because free primary education policies were being introduced.

But instead, the findings showed that in 2017/18, children who were fostered were much less likely to have ever attended school than was the case in 2005/06. In 2017/18, fostered children were 0.49 times as likely to have ever attended school compared to children who were not fostered. In 2005/06, there was no difference between fostered and non-fostered children.

I also expected that wealthier households would be able to invest more in children – both fostered and their own.

However, this was not the case. It was only in the poorest hosting households that foster children were more likely to attend school in 2005/06 and in 2017/18 compared to children who were not fostered. In wealthier households, foster children faced greater disadvantages in school attendance as the household’s wealth increased.

Worrying inequalities

The findings are worrying because they suggest that wealthier families might take in children not necessarily to improve their welfare, but to use them for household chores. There is some research suggesting that households’ decisions to foster in children are driven by demand for child labour. This could prevent foster children from attending school regularly.

It is also possible that poor parents might not have the power to step in if the wealthier hosting households are disrupting their children’s education.

The results indicate that there has been an increase in the proportion of children who have ever attended school over the two periods. However, the finding that more than one-tenth of children in the sample have never attended school in the most recent period is suggestive of challenges in the implementation of free education policies.

The challenges include:

competing demands for children’s time in households where child labour is required


the inability of households to pay for transport, books and uniforms.

The observed disparity in school attendance by foster status, particularly for richer households, highlights inequality in education. This has implications for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 4, which targets equitable education. The African Union declared 2024 the Year of Education, further highlighting the importance of ensuring all children on the continent attend school.

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As Affordable Housing Disappears, States Scramble To Shore Up The Losses

A general view of Hillside Villa, where Marina Maalouf is a longtime tenant, is seen in Los Angeles, Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

BY JESSE BEDYAN AND ARUSHI GUPTA

LOS ANGELES (AP) — For more than two decades, the low rent on Marina Maalouf’s apartment in a blocky affordable housing development in Los Angeles’ Chinatown was a saving grace for her family, including a granddaughter who has autism.

But that grace had an expiration date. For Maalouf and her family it arrived in 2020.

The landlord, no longer legally obligated to keep the building affordable, hiked rent from $1,100 to $2,660 in 2021 — out of reach for Maalouf and her family. Maalouf’s nights are haunted by fears her yearslong eviction battle will end in sleeping bags on a friend’s floor or worse.

While Americans continue to struggle under unrelentingly high rents, as many as 223,000 affordable housing units like Maalouf’s across the U.S. could be yanked out from under them in the next five years alone.

It leaves low-income tenants caught facing protracted eviction battles, scrambling to pay a two-fold rent increase or more, or shunted back into a housing market where costs can easily eat half a paycheck.

Those affordable housing units were built with the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, or LIHTC, a federal program established in 1986 that provides tax credits to developers in exchange for keeping rents low. It has pumped out 3.6 million units since then and boasts over half of all federally supported low-income housing nationwide.

“It’s the lifeblood of affordable housing development,” said Brian Rossbert, who runs Housing Colorado, an organization advocating for affordable homes.





That lifeblood isn’t strictly red or blue. By combining social benefits with tax breaks and private ownership, LIHTC has enjoyed bipartisan support. Its expansion is now central to Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris’ housing plan to build 3 million new homes.

The catch? The buildings typically only need to be kept affordable for a minimum of 30 years. For the wave of LIHTC construction in the 1990s, those deadlines are arriving now, threatening to hemorrhage affordable housing supply when Americans need it most.

“If we are losing the homes that are currently affordable and available to households, then we’re losing ground on the crisis,” said Sarah Saadian, vice president of public policy at the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

“It’s sort of like having a boat with a hole at the bottom,” she said.

Not all units that expire out of LIHTC become market rate. Some are kept affordable by other government subsidies, by merciful landlords or by states, including California, Colorado and New York, that have worked to keep them low-cost by relying on several levers.

Local governments and nonprofits can purchase expiring apartments, new tax credits can be applied that extend the affordability, or, as in Maalouf’s case, tenants can organize to try to force action from landlords and city officials.

Those options face challenges. While new tax credits can reup a lapsing LIHTC property, they are limited, doled out to states by the Internal Revenue Service based on population. It’s also a tall order for local governments and nonprofits to shell out enough money to purchase and keep expiring developments affordable. And there is little aggregated data on exactly when LIHTC units will lose their affordability, making it difficult for policymakers and activists to fully prepare.

There also is less of a political incentive to preserve the units.

“Politically, you’re rewarded for an announcement, a groundbreaking, a ribbon-cutting,” said Vicki Been, a New York University professor who previously was New York City’s deputy mayor for housing and economic development.






“You’re not rewarded for being a good manager of your assets and keeping track of everything and making sure that you’re not losing a single affordable housing unit,” she said.

Maalouf stood in her apartment courtyard on a recent warm day, chit-chatting and waving to neighbors, a bracelet with a photo of Che Guevarra dangling from her arm.

“Friendly,” is how Maalouf described her previous self, but not assertive. That is until the rent hikes pushed her in front of the Los Angeles City Council for the first time, sweat beading as she fought for her home.

Now an organizer with the LA Tenants’ Union, Maalouf isn’t afraid to speak up, but the angst over her home still keeps her up at night. Mornings she repeats a mantra: “We still here. We still here.” But fighting day after day to make it true is exhausting.

Maalouf’s apartment was built before California made LIHTC contracts last 55 years instead of 30 in 1996. About 5,700 LIHTC units built around the time of Maalouf’s are expiring in the next decade. In Texas, it’s 21,000 units.






When California Treasurer Fiona Ma assumed office in 2019, she steered the program toward developers committed to affordable housing and not what she called “churn and burn,” buying up LIHTC properties and flipping them onto the market as soon as possible.

In California, landlords must notify state and local governments and tenants before their building expires. Housing organizations, nonprofits, and state or local governments then have first shot at buying the property to keep it affordable. Expiring developments also are prioritized for new tax credits, and the state essentially requires that all LIHTC applicants have experience owning and managing affordable housing.

“It kind of weeded out people who weren’t interested in affordable housing long term,” said Marina Wiant, executive director of California’s tax credit allocation committee.

But unlike California, some states haven’t extended LIHTC agreements beyond 30 years, let alone taken other measures to keep expiring housing affordable.

Colorado, which has some 80,000 LIHTC units, passed a law this year giving local governments the right of first refusal in hopes of preserving 4,400 units set to lose affordability protections in the next six years. The law also requires landlords to give local and state governments a two-year heads-up before expiration.

Still, local governments or nonprofits scraping together the funds to buy sizeable apartment buildings is far from a guarantee.

Stories like Maalouf’s will keep playing out as LIHTC units turn over, threatening to send families with meager means back into the housing market. The median income of Americans living in these units was just $18,600 in 2021, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

“This is like a math problem,” said Rossbert of Housing Colorado. “As soon as one of these units expires and converts to market rate and a household is displaced, they become a part of the need that’s driving the need for new construction.”

“It’s hard to get out of that cycle,” he said.

Colorado’s housing agency works with groups across the state on preservation and has a fund to help. Still, it’s unclear how many LIHTC units can be saved, in Colorado or across the country.

It’s even hard to know how many units nationwide are expiring. An accurate accounting would require sorting through the constellation of municipal, state and federal subsidies, each with their own affordability requirements and end dates.

That can throw a wrench into policymakers’ and advocates’ ability to fully understand where and when many units will lose affordability, and then funnel resources to the right places, said Kelly McElwain, who manages and oversees the National Housing Preservation Database. It’s the most comprehensive aggregation of LIHTC data nationally, but with all the gaps, it remains a rough estimate.

There also are fears that if states publicize their expiring LIHTC units, for-profit buyers without an interest in keeping them affordable would pounce.

“It’s sort of this Catch-22 of trying to both understand the problem and not put out a big for-sale sign in front of a property right before its expiration,” Rossbert said.

Meanwhile, Maalouf’s tenant activism has helped move the needle in Los Angeles. The city has offered the landlord $15 million to keep her building affordable through 2034, but that deal wouldn’t get rid of over 30 eviction cases still proceeding, including Maalouf’s, or the $25,000 in back rent she owes.

In her courtyard, Maalouf’s granddaughter, Rubie Caceres, shuffled up with a glass of water. She is 5 years old, but with special needs, her speech is more disconnected words than sentences.

“That’s why I’ve been hoping everything becomes normal again, and she can be safe,” said Maalouf, her voice shaking with emotion. She has urged her son to start saving money for the worst.

“We’ll keep fighting,” she said, “but day by day it’s hard.”

“I’m tired already.”

Bedayn reported from Denver.
___


Bedayn is a corps member of The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

Dockworkers Pause Strike After Biden Administration’s Appeal To Patriotism Hits The Mark

US Acting Secretary of Labor Julie Su

BY ANNA NAGURNEY

EUGENE M. ISENBERG CHAIR

IN INTERGRATIVE STUDIES,

UMASS AMHERST

A dockworkers strike that froze operations at East Coast and Gulf Coast ports for 2½ days was paused on Oct. 3. The Conversation U.S. asked Anna Nagurney, a scholar of supply chains, to assess the extent of disruptions that likely occurred and how the swift return of 45,000 workers who had been on strike may stave off further problems down the road.

Why was the strike suspended?

Aided by intense pressure from senior Biden administration officials, the shipping companies, represented by the U.S. Maritime Alliance, significantly increased the raise they were offering the dockworkers to 62% from their previous offer of a 50% boost in pay. The International Longshoremen’s Association, the dockworkers’ union, were seeking a 77% raise, but it accepted the new offer, which will be phased in over six years.

The agreement labor leaders and management reached will suspend the strike until at least Jan. 15, 2025, allowing more time for additional collective bargaining and negotiations.

Talks over other contested conditions, including the adoption of more automation, will continue until then.

President Joe Biden applauded both sides. He thanked the union and management “for acting patriotically to reopen our ports and ensure the availability of critical supplies for Hurricane Helene recovery and rebuilding.”

How has this strike affected the economy?

About half of the products that the U.S. imports are handled by the ports that were paralyzed during this brief strike. About 1 million shipping containers arrive at these ports every month.

Imports include vast quantities of bananas and other fresh produce, coffee, pharmaceuticals, liquor, toys, apparel, furniture, machinery and vehicles. Exports include meats, commodities, machinery, chemicals, vehicles and vehicle parts.

The strike’s impact was immediate. More than 50 ships laden with hundreds of thousands of containers created a logjam at East Coast ports. Major retailers, such as Walmart, Costco, Lowes and Home Depot, were among the companies stuck waiting for the release of their stranded cargo.

It may take two to three weeks to relieve this logjam. Prices for some products, including coffee, were already rising before the negotiators reached their breakthrough.

Workers are critical to the functioning of each link in supply chains. When the dockworkers were on strike, other workers, such as truckers, rail employees and warehouse workers, were concerned about being affected, as well as all the businesses that rely on them, such as restaurants.

Why is the new time frame significant?

Shipping tied to the holiday season typically runs from July through early November. Members of the National Retail Federation, the largest U.S. retail trade group, have already been dealing with significant supply disruptions due to Houthi attacks in the Red Sea and Suez Canal. The attacks have forced shipping companies to take longer routes, delaying cargo delivery and increasing costs due to the need for more fuel and labor.

A prolonged dockworkers strike would put stress on the economy. According to J.P. Morgan, a lengthy dockworkers strike could have cost the U.S. economy US$5 billion per day.

The temporary agreement pushes the strike past the U.S. elections in November and the conclusion of the upcoming holiday season. That gives both sides a chance to return to the bargaining table to continue to negotiate and to reach an agreement on the issues that haven’t been resolved yet – notably the use of automation.

Having a shorter strike will reduce the risk of shortages of everything from mangos to Maseratis and the price increases that typically occur when products are scarce and in high demand.

What did the Biden administration do?

The Biden administration was eager for a settlement, especially with the ports serving as channels for recovery supplies after the massive damage seen in Florida, western North Carolina and other areas near the East Coast from Hurricane Helene.

Senior government officials made notable progress when they met with representatives of shipping companies before daybreak on Oct. 3 over Zoom.

Julie Su, the acting labor secretary, had been working hard to help the two sides settle their differences. She emphasized over Zoom that she could get the International Longshoremen’s Association to the bargaining table to extend the contract. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg also stayed in touch with labor and management, and used that Zoom meeting to tell the shipping companies that they would need to offer the dockworkers a higher wage.

White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients told the shipping companies on Zoom that they should make an offer to the union quickly so that the strike wouldn’t further exacerbate the effects of Hurricane Helene.

It seems clear to me that the pressure worked – helped, perhaps, by a bit of patriotism.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Money Gambians Send Home From Europe Is A Lifeline For Their Families But The Sacrifices Take A Toll

Children play in Kwinella village, Gambia, where many Gambians emigrated from, on July 27, 2024. (AP Photo/Annika Hammersschlag)

BY MONIKA PRONCZUK

KWINELLA, GAMBIA (AP) — Binta Bah met her husband last year on a dating app and instantly fell in love. They spent hours every day glued to their mobile phones and soon got married on a video call.

But they’ve met in person only once, when Suleyman Bah came home to Gambia for a visit, months after the wedding. He is one of tens of thousands of West Africans who have undertaken the perilous journey to Europe, and is now working in a factory in Germany.

Every month he sends money home. He is not alone — Gambians abroad send hundreds of millions of dollars a year in remittances, according to the World Bank. The remittances account for a fourth of the tiny country’s economy — the highest such proportion on the African continent.

Even as European countries increase their efforts to keep migrants out, Gambians and other West Africans keep risking the dangerous route, known locally as “the backway,” in unsafe boats across the Atlantic Ocean — or trek hundreds of miles across the Sahara Desert and then cross the Mediterranean Sea.

Almost 10% of Gambia’s population of 2.7 million has left the country, most of them young men from rural areas. The money they send is an economic lifeline for their families but their absence weighs heavily on their communities.

“It’s difficult to be apart,” the 24-year-old Binta Bah said of her long-distance marriage. “But it’s good when the other person takes care of you.”

“Whenever I need something, like to see a doctor, he sends the money straight away,” added Bah, who lives with her mother-in-law.

Life is increasingly difficult in their village of Kwinella, where villagers for centuries grew rice, maize, millet and peanuts to make a living. But ravages of climate change and outdated farming practices have made their traditional lifestyle unsustainable.

Moustapha Sabally, deputy chief of Kiang Central province, which includes Kwinella, said the rains have become unpredictable for farming, which is still done by hand and without tractors. Few young men are around to do that work, he said, and estimated that about 70% of them left the province for the capital, Banjul, or for Europe.

That leaves women and older people who struggle with the long and laborious work on the land, forcing the community to depend on remittances, Sabally said.

Without the remittances, “life would be very difficult,” he said.

Gambia, the smallest country on the African mainland, is surrounded by Senegal except for a sliver of the coast where the Gambia River flows into the Atlantic Ocean. According to the World Bank, 75% of its population lives in poverty and there is virtually no industry. The economy relies on imports, and living costs have skyrocketed since the coronavirus pandemic.

Nearly 60% of Gambians are under 25, and nearly half of them are unemployed. Despite European Union’s efforts in West Africa to reduce the number of migrants, the lack of jobs reinforces the conviction of many that leaving is their only option.

Last year alone, over 8,000 Gambians arrived in Europe, according to the International Organization for Migration.

Many others die trying. Earlier this year, a boat carrying 300 migrants, mostly from Gambia and Senegal, capsized off Mauritania; more than a dozen were killed and at least 150 others went missing. Last year, a young man from Kwinella drowned on his way to Europe.

Because the journey is so risky, most young men slip away for Europe without letting their loved ones know they’re leaving.

Musukebbe Manjang’s 39-year-old husband left Kwinella for Italy 10 years ago, after he could no longer make enough money from construction work. She never encouraged him to leave, “the risk was just too high,” she said.

One evening, when Manjang was pregnant with their third child, her husband’s younger brother called him from Italy, and he simply disappeared without a word. He later called to say he had left for Europe.

Then she heard nothing for nine months, and her anger turning to fear. When he finally arrived in Italy, he called and explained that he had been kidnapped in Libya, long a key starting point for many Mediterranean crossings to Europe.

These days, Manjang’s husband sends around 14,000 dalasi, or $200, a month, enough to cover the children’s school fees, food and clothes, she said. But on a personal level, it’s been difficult.

“He misses all the important moments,” she said. “He hasn’t even met our youngest daughter.”

Gambia’s central bank says remittances amounted to over $730 million last year but experts warn that the rising costs of living will push more men to migrate abroad.

Eliman Jallow, 42, the Gambia-born founder of a U.K.-based company that facilitates sending money home to Africa, says his clients are a mix, from highly skilled workers to manual laborers.

The son of Ansumana Sanneh from Kaiaf, a village not far from Kwinella, was a teacher. He left for Europe because he could barely make a living on a teacher’s monthly salary of 5,000 dalassi, about $70.

His journey was cut short when he was kidnapped by a Libyan militia and Sanneh paid the equivalent of $700 in ransom before his son was freed and returned home.

Sanneh believes the dreams of the young village men are fueled by the misguided idea of Europe as a promised land. But with rising costs of living in European countries, migrants today are able to send less money home than in the past, he said.

The gamble is simply not worth the risks, Sanneh said.

But stories of success journeys and evidence of what remittances can do often outweigh such words of caution — large concrete village homes built with money sent back are solid; images posted on social media by migrants who work in Europe appeal to the young men still in the village.

Despite his ordeal, Sanneh’s son hopes to find a way to leave Gambia again.

Not far from their home, a group of teenagers practiced a dance routine in front of a stylish brick house, its driveway lined with spotless pink tiles. The teens were recording a video for TikTok, they said, and chose the prettiest — and largest — village house for the background.

The house, they said, belongs to a family whose young man migrated to the United States, for many, the most coveted migrant destination.

For more news on Africa and development: https://apnews.com/hub/africa-pulse

Kamala Harris Illustrates How Complex Identity Is − And The Pressure Many Multiracial People Feel To Put Themselves In One ‘Box’

BY WILSON K. OKELLO

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF HIGHER 

EDUCATION AND DIRECTO OF THE 

BLACK STUDY IN EDUCATION LAB,

PENN STATE

People sometimes feel pressured to choose one identity over another. Kamala Harris, who is multiracial – her mother is from India and her father is a Black immigrant from Jamaica – illustrates the complexity of defining identity.

Harris is often asked questions about her Black identity. She has responded by saying how it relates to her sense of self. “I’m really clear about who I am, and if anybody else is not, they need to go through their own therapy.”

At the National Association of Black Journalists conference, in July 2024, former president and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump questioned her Black identity by saying, “Is she Indian or is she Black?”

The question reflected a narrow, either/or approach. As a scholar who draws from the ideas of Black thinkers to explore how society works, I know that identity is not the result of a single decision, but rather the confluence of several factors, such as someone’s environment and socialization.

‘The Truths We Hold’

Harris’ parents, Donald Harris and Shyamala Gopalan, met at the University of California, Berkeley, in the 1960s. They connected through the radical politics of the Black intellectual tradition, finding both community and shared values. As part of a study group and, later, the Afro-American Association, they developed a language to confront civil rights struggles and systemic oppression.

Harris often refers to herself as both African American and Asian American. During the Democratic National Convention, she paid tribute to her multiracial background and upbringing.

But in her autobiography, “The Truths We Hold,” Harris explains how her mother was cognizant that some people would see her and her younger sister, Maya, as Black, and was “determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”

Harris chose to attend Howard University, a historically Black University, and joined a Black sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. In her autobiography, she highlighted how the values of hard work and social justice were instilled in her by her parents.

Identities are fluid and expanding

Individuals can hold multiple dimensions of identity based on their race, sexual orientation, culture and social class, among others. It is impossible to separate one from another. For example, someone can be Black, a lesbian and a woman at the same time.

Instead, identities inform one another; no one is simply Black, or a woman, or a lesbian, but these social identities compound, forming a unique experience. Furthermore, identity is fluid, and expanding. Your beliefs and values can shift, and so too can the ways in which people define themselves.

In these ways, identity is the work of context and choice. Defining your identity is about deciding not just who you want to be but how you choose to live and show up in the world. It is a complex process of making choices and navigating challenges along the way. For example, somebody navigating the intersection of race and gender might choose to embrace both identities fully, despite external pressures to conform to societal expectations.

Harris’ embrace of her multiracial identity, thus, is the result of things she learned from her parents and the various contexts and communities she inhabited.

Claims to an identity

Historically, there has been a disregard for complex identities that don’t fit into clear categories, driven by fears about preserving white racial purity and protecting associated privileges. So, when Trump questioned Kamala Harris’ racial identity, it was a reminder of the long-standing notion of pressuring someone to choose one identity over another.

An example of this is the “one-drop rule” in the United States, where even a small amount of nonwhite ancestry classified a person as nonwhite, reinforcing strict racial boundaries. Dating back to a 1662 Virginia law, the one-drop rule ensured that a single drop of Black blood assigned minority status to mixed-race individuals.

The idea that identity can be simplified to just one thing, such as race, is based on the wrong assumption that these identities never change. It’s worth repeating that Harris is of South Asian and Black descent, and it is her choice to define her racial identity. I believe that any effort to question her on the topic is disingenuous and not grounded in a willingness to engage with the complexity of her identity or anyone else’s either.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

Presidential Immunity Has Clear Limits, Special Counsel Filing Says, And Trump Should Be Tried For Efforts To Overturn 2020 Election

BY JENNIFER SELIN

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF LAW

ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY

A new filing by special counsel Jack Smith in the case he has brought against Donald Trump for his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election provides greater detail and support for Smith’s argument that Trump, while president, committed illegal acts to reverse his 2020 election loss.

Those acts, argues Smith, were taken by Trump as a candidate for reelection and therefore are not covered by a 2024 Supreme Court opinion related to the case that says presidents’ official actions are immune from prosecution when they exercise their core constitutional powers.

But are the actions that fall outside of a president’s core constitutional powers clearly defined? Smith’s filing is not only relevant to his 2020 election subversion case against Trump but will likely affect the next and future presidents of the United States. The filing, and inevitable legal battles that will result from it, will help clarify precisely how far presidential immunity extends.

While arguments related to the Trump case will take place in a courtroom, Congress has and will continue to have an underappreciated responsibility in defining and curbing presidential power. As a constitutional law scholar who studies government institutions and how they work, I believe that Congress has a unique role in shaping the balance of powers among the three branches of government at this moment in history.

The Trump case and the precedent on which it relies recognize that the most constitutionally suspect presidential actions are those that exceed the outer limits of one branch’s authority or undermine the powers of another. For example, with respect to the certification of the results of a presidential election, the court noted that Congress has legislated extensively and the president plays no direct constitutional or statutory role in that process.

By acting under its own constitutional legislative and oversight authority, Congress can push back against presidential power.

‘Zone of twilight’

In August 2023, a federal grand jury indicted Trump on four counts of conduct related to conspiring to overturn the November 2020 presidential election.

Trump contested the indictment, alleging the president has absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for official actions taken while in office. The case made its way to the Supreme Court, and the court made its now famous immunity ruling, stating: “The Court thus concludes that the President is absolutely immune from criminal prosecution for conduct within his exclusive sphere of constitutional authority.”

Yet not all presidential actions fall within these core powers. The court differentiated between three types of presidential action.

Some actions clearly fall within the scope of the president’s exclusive constitutional authority. These responsibilities include serving as commander in chief, recognizing foreign governments and signing or vetoing the bills Congress passes. Presidential actions under this authority are absolutely immune from prosecution.

On the other end of the spectrum, some actions clearly are outside the scope of the president’s constitutional authority. For example, when a president files for reelection or sets up a campaign committee, the president acts as a candidate, not as occupant of the office of the presidency. There is no immunity for these acts.

Yet sometimes the president acts in what the Supreme Court has called a “zone of twilight,” where the president and Congress share powers or in areas that are within the outer perimeters of the presidential office.

For example, even though the Constitution does not explicitly detail this responsibility, the president acts in his official capacity when he addresses the nation from the Oval Office to update the American people on important events.

In these “zone of twilight” instances, a prosecution cannot hinder the president’s ability to do the job. That means the president has immunity unless the prosecutor can show that prosecution will not upset the balance of power between the three branches of government.

Why immunity?

The primary reason for granting immunity to public officials, including to prosecutors and judges, is to enable them to serve the public without the risk of being punished criminally for doing what they think best serves the country. Potential criminal liability raises the possibility that public officials would make decisions based on political opponents’ threats, rather than by exercising the independent judgment required for effective public service.

Fear of political threat is of particular concern for the president. As the court explained in the Trump case, without immunity, “the President would be chilled from taking the ‘bold and unhesitating action’” required of the office.

In contrast to other federal offices in the U.S. constitutional system, the presidency composes an entire branch of government, known as the executive branch. Prior Supreme Court decisions recognized the president’s duties are “of unrivaled gravity and breadth” in that the president makes the most sensitive and far reaching decisions entrusted to any elected official.

The president is vested with the executive power of the United States and serves as the nation’s leader in politics and foreign and domestic policy. And the president’s job is far more complex than the 18th-century framers of the Constitution could have imagined.

The modern executive branch includes hundreds of agencies and millions of federal employees who help the president execute the law. As a result, the president has more political and policy advisers than anyone else in government. The promise of immunity helps these advisers provide the president nuanced information on policy and politics.

And while the expansion of the executive branch may seem like a modern phenomenon, concerns over increased executive power are nothing new. Indeed, at the beginning of President George Washington’s second term, Benjamin Franklin “was struck dumb with astonishment at the sentiments … (t)hat the executive alone shall have the right of judging what shall be kept secret, and what shall be made public.”

This raises the question, how does Congress write laws and oversee the implementation of them in a constitutionally, legally and historically established world where the president has such power?

What are the limits?

While the phrase “separation of powers” has long been used to describe the U.S. system of government, in fact, U.S. legal history shows that the American constitutional system is one of shared, not separate, powers.

Presidential immunity sits purely within this context. So, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2024 ruling, it’s not up to the president to decide which of his actions in that “zone of twilight” will be given immunity and which ones won’t.

That’s up to the courts and Congress.

Here’s how that works: The extent of presidential immunity rests on the federal judiciary’s rulings on what constitutes official and unofficial acts. Articulated first by the Supreme Court in 1803, it is the judiciary’s job “to say what the law is.”

But Congress writes the law. And Congress oversees how the president implements it.

Congress has investigated the conduct of at least 15 sitting or former presidents. For example, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, the congressional investigations revealed crucial evidence of President Nixon’s illegal actions and ultimately led to his resignation.

In doing so, Congress relied on its own constitutional authority as a way to use litigation-like tools to shed light on presidential actions that are outside the president’s official duties or in the “zone of twilight.”

Not only did these investigations inform the public about presidential actions, they helped Congress assert its position in the American constitutional system of shared powers.

In a legal world that, in part, defines presidential immunity based on the balance of power between the three branches of government, this can’t be a bad thing.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

UK Hands Sovereignty Of Chagos Islands To Mauritius In A Deal To Secure US Base

Protesters hold banners outside the World Court in The Hague, Netherlands, Monday, Sept. 3, 2018, where judges listen to arguments in a case on whether Britain illegally maintains sovereignty over the Chagos Islands. (AP Photo/Mike Corder, File)

BY PAN PYLAS

LONDON (AP) — The British government agreed Thursday to hand sovereignty of the long-contested Chagos Islands, an archipelago of more than 60 islands in the Indian Ocean, to Mauritius, in a deal that secures the future of a strategically important U.K.-U.S. military base.

British Foreign Secretary David Lammy said the agreement secures the vital military base at Diego Garcia, the largest in the chain of islands off the tip of India, for the future. The base, which is home to around 2,500 personnel, mainly Americans, has been involved in military operations including the 2003 war in Iraq and the long-running war in Afghanistan.

Britain’s Labour government said without the deal the secure operation of the military base would be under threat, with contested sovereignty and legal challenges, including through various international courts and tribunals. As part of the deal, the U.K. will retain sovereignty of Diego Garcia for an initial period of 99 years.

“It will strengthen our role in safeguarding global security, shut down any possibility of the Indian Ocean being used as a dangerous illegal migration route to the U.K., as well as guaranteeing our long-term relationship with Mauritius, a close Commonwealth partner,” Lammy said.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he spoke to his Mauritius counterpart, Pravind Jugnauth, on Thursday morning.

The agreement will have to be signed off in a treaty and is dependent on legal processes being finalized. Both sides have committed to complete this as quickly as possible.

The Chagos Islands have been at the heart of what Britain calls the British Indian Ocean Territory since 1965 when they were siphoned away from Mauritius, a U.K. territory that gained independence three years later. Mauritius, which lies east of Madagascar in southern Africa, is around 2,100 kilometers (1,250 miles) southwest of the Chagos Islands.

The U.S. Navy base at Diego Garcia was built in the 1970s and provides what American authorities have described as “an all but indispensable platform” for security operations in the Middle East, South Asia and East Africa.

Around 1,500 inhabitants from the Chagos Islands were displaced to make way for the U.S. base, in what Human Rights Watch said last year amounted to “crimes against humanity committed by a colonial power against an indigenous people.”

The Mauritius government said that the treaty will aim to resolve all outstanding issues related to the islands, including “its former inhabitants,” as well as addressing “the wrongs of the past.”

It laid out the hope that those displaced who are still alive and their descendants, who are mainly living in the U.K., Mauritius and the Seychelles, will have a right to return, as it is now “free” to implement a resettlement program on the islands except Diego Garcia.

It added that the U.K. will financially support the Chagossians, who have fought a long-running legal battle about their displacement, most recently in 2016 when they lost out in a Supreme Court ruling in the U.K. At the time, the previous Conservative government refused their right to return but voiced its “deep regret” for the way the Chagossian community had been mistreated in the 1960s and 1970s. Over the years, the Chagossians and Mauritius have garnered increasing international support, notably among African nations and within the United Nations. In 2019, in an advisory option that was non-binding, the International Court of Justice ruled that the U.K. had unlawfully carved up Mauritius when it agreed to end colonial rule in the late 1960s.

In a statement, the White House said President Joe Biden applauded the “historic agreement” on the status of the Chagos Islands. It called the Diego Garcia base vital in preserving “national, regional, and global security.”

“The agreement secures the effective operation of the joint facility on Diego Garcia into the next century,” the statement said. “This agreement affirms Mauritian sovereignty over the Chagos Archipelago, while granting the United Kingdom the authority to exercise the sovereign rights of Mauritius with respect to Diego Garcia.”

However, Conservative lawmakers standing to be leader of Britain’s opposition party expressed dismay at the decision to hand over sovereignty of all but one of the islands.

Gerald Imray in Cape Town, South Africa, contributed to this report.