Donald Trump is a threat to world peace. Read about what one expert says- Scott D. Sagan

Echo Opinion  published in the Detroit Free Press by Scott D. Sagan Sagan: I study nuclear war. Kamala Harris must be our next president.

The risk of nuclear war in the Middle East today is dangerously high, and Donald Trump is responsible. Let me explain.

IMO This essay brings to my mind the "Daisy" political ad of 1964

I grew up in Dearborn, Michigan in the 1960s, at the height of the Cold War. I clearly remember the "duck and cover" exercises we conducted in elementary school, crawling under the wooden desks when an alarm bell rang out at the Greenfield Village School. Our teacher tried to calm our nerves by claiming this was “a hurricane drill.” But, with Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis on the CBS evening news with Walter Cronkite, we all knew what the drills were really about.

And I recall how scared I was again about the danger of nuclear war a few years later, as a teenager in the 1970s. On October 6, 1973, Israel was attacked by Egyptian and Syrian forces in a surprise attack in the Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Israeli Defense Forces gradually fought back, supplied by U.S. emergency arms shipments, defeating the Syrians and crossing the Suez Canal to surround the Egyptian Third Army in the Sinai desert. Then, on October 24, 1973, the Soviet Union threatened to send troops to Egypt to enter the war, on the side of its Egyptian allies.

Daisy ad changed political advertising and influenced the outcome of the 1964 election. IMO The powerful ad conjured up the image about the threat of nuclear war.

Suddenly, President Richard Nixon put U.S. nuclear forces on a high-level DEFCON 3 alert to try to deter the Soviet Union from sending forces to the Middle East. Threatening nuclear war was not prudent (I thought that even in my teenage years), but simultaneously, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger successfully put pressure on Israel to accept a cease-fire and end the 1973, war. This cease-fire eventually led to the Camp David Accords and the peace between Israel and Egypt that still exists today.

We also now know that Nixon, facing Watergate soon thereafter, was so distraught and irrational in his decision-making that Secretary of Defense James Schlessinger actually warned the Joint Chiefs of Staff not to automatically follow military orders from the president, but rather to check with him first. 

Schlessinger’s actions were not constitutional, but were prudent and wise.  This dark history is relevant today. For I have never been worried about a nuclear war in the Middle East since then ... until now.  

No deal: A war is raging in the Middle East, and Iran is on the brink of getting nuclear weapons.  Donald Trump is responsible for this dangerous development because his administration withdrew, in 2018, from the U.S.-Iranian nuclear deal that restricted Tehran's ability to make highly enriched uranium bomb material.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors in Iran verified that Tehran was in compliance, but then ❗- (former) President Donald Trump claimed that he, the self-proclaimed “master of the deal,” would get a better agreement.

He did not.   Iran was a year or two away from getting the bomb when the Obama Administration negotiated the Iran nuclear agreement, and when Trump cancelled it. Now, U.S. intelligence agencies report that Iran “has greatly expanded its nuclear program” and “has the infrastructure and experience to quickly produce weapons-grade uranium.” The head of the IAEA now estimates that Iran has “amassed enough nuclear material for several weapons, not just one.” That is the direct result of Trump's ego and poor decision-making.

In the coming weeks or months, Israel may well attack the Iranian nuclear facilities in response to Iran’s recent missile and drone attack on Israel. But, Israel lacks the confidence that it could destroy all of the Iranian nuclear materials, both because the enrichment centrifuges are in deep underground facilities — and because most of the IAEA inspectors were kicked out of Iran due to Trump’s rash withdrawal from the nuclear deal. 

This means Israel can’t be sure that it knows where all Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities are now located. And even if an attack is successful in the short-term, Iran will likely then rush to rebuild a nuclear arsenal.

High stakes:  When you get to the polls, think about that scenario.

Do you want a President Kamala Harris who supports Israel, but has expressed doubts about the way Israel is fighting its wars today?

Or do you want a President Trump, who criticized calls for a cease-fire in Gaza, has said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “knows what he’s doing” and advised him “have victory, get your victory, and get it over with.”

Do you want a President Harris, a former prosecutor known to stay calm and focused under pressure?

Or do you want a 😔President Trump, who was so impulsive and vengeful at the end of his term in office that his chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, like Nixon’s secretary of defense, told senior military officers to check back with him before following any presidential orders to use military force?

The voters of Michigan may well decide who is the next president of the United States. They should remember that the risk of nuclear war is on the ballot in November. 

Scott D. Sagan is a Professor of Political Science at Stanford University 

Donald Trump filled his Michigan fake autoworkers rally with hypocrisy

Echo opinion published in the Detroit Free Press: 

"Donald Trump is a charlatan*"-  full stop❗

When Donald Trump’s private jet touches down in Michigan tonight, working people know what to expect from the former president. Underneath his multimillionaire-class status and luxurious private estates, his $100,000 plated Bedminster dinners and Mar-a-Lago golden galas, he’ll claim to lend a hand to working people. It’s the same lie he told us in 2016, when he first ran for president.

But there’s a critical difference now: Trump has a record. And that record was nothing short of catastrophic for workers, highlighting an open hostility especially to union families. He never cared about our jobs. Or our wages. Or our pensions and health care. Or even our safety. Trump just cared about making his rich buddies even richer at our expense.

Let’s be very clear: He doesn’t deserve the labor movement's support — or the support of any working-class person across this country — in 2024.

Autoworkers are fighting for their lives, and as a third-generation member of the United Auto Workers myself, now leading the largest labor federation in Michigan, I find it shameful Trump would attempt to use the strike line to score political points when his record goes against everything the labor movement stands for.

Donald Trump says he supports workers. Frankly, Trump's fake track record on labor shows otherwise.  

As Trump shows up in Detroit, let’s remember that "showing up" is the last thing he did for us as president. 

Trump spent the run-up to 2016 talking a big game: about how workers were getting screwed, how we needed to turn the tide on exporting jobs and importing products. It was all true.

What happened next? He spent four years doing the bidding of billionaires and wealthy companies, overhauling the tax code for the benefit of those who claim more than their fair share of our profits and outsource our jobs. He spent four years sitting on his hands when it came to infrastructure — doing nothing to invest in rebuilding our country or create good jobs in Michigan that sustain families and communities.

Biden has driven historic investments in auto industry.

Compare that to what we have seen over the past few years under President Joe Biden. The Biden Administration has driven historic investments in our auto industry, including a $7 billion investment in four new manufacturing sites across the state. President Biden has brought more than $5 billion in federal funding to rebuild our roads, bridges, and roadways, along with restoring our Great Lakes and securing clean water for millions across the state.

He’s made the crucial investment in upgrading the Soo locks — a critical entry point for commerce, agriculture, and military, where 7,000 vessels and 90 percent of our country’s iron ore moves through every single year.

The result is real, tangible results for Michigan workers in just a few short years. We have seen an absolute boom in Michigan job creation, with more than 330,000 jobs added since January 2021. Unemployment has dropped significantly, rebounding from the pandemic and accelerated by investments in working people through policies like the American Rescue Plan and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. We have more resilient homes, businesses, and communities in the face of the climate crisis. Health care costs have gone down for families — as almost 2 million people across the state benefit from the caps on insulin and prescription drug costs. The list goes on and on and on.

Michigan GOP in shambles:Party chair Kristina Karamo's first conference was a poorly attended conspiracy fest.
We need a president who understands worker solidarity

We still have work to do. Even with these federal investments, we need to make sure every job — from the auto workers building electric vehicles to the workers repaving our roads to the engineers restoring our bridges — is a good, safe, family-sustaining, union job. No matter our industry, we need to come together in support of the UAW and all workers as we fight for a good future on the job for all of us.

To do that, we need someone in the White House who understands the importance of worker solidarity. It’s not Donald Trump — who restricted overtime pay, who opposed wage increases, who gutted health and safety protections during COVID, who appointed hundreds of anti-worker judges, and who fought against our very basic freedom to organize and join a union. It’s not Donald Trump — who cannot even say, point blank, that he is on the side of the workers in any fight we have to create a better life for ourselves and our families.

He is a charlatan, plain and simple, who thinks he can use us to enrich himself and his buddies. We’re smarter and stronger than he gives us credit for. Michigan and working people are on the rise — and from now until Election Day, we should let Trump know we deserve a lot better than him.

Ron Bieber is president of the Michigan AFL-CIO.

*"charlatan"- a person falsely claiming to have a special knowledge or skill; a fraud.

Spartan Strong! Michigan State University and Students Demand Action

On February 13, 2023, - since the Michigan State University (MSU) shooting. Classes eventually resumed at Michigan State University.

Opinion echo published in the Detroit Free Press: 

Students Demand Action

"We’ve grown up in the midst of America’s gun violence crisis. In fact, we’ve been called the “school shooting generation.” Now we’re rising up and organizing in our high schools, colleges, and communities across the country to demand action to end gun violence."

The shooting news quieted down. But for students who lived through it, it feels like it was just yesterday. 

I remember sheltering in place, sending frantic texts to my family, praying everything would be okay. Even with the immediate threat over, the shooting still impacts us everyday. 

We’re still on edge, ready to run for cover. Every loud noise sounds like a gunshot, taking us back to that night — when gun violence tore through our campus, killing three Spartans, wounding five others, and leaving our entire community traumatized. In just a matter of moments, our illusion of safety was shattered, and East Lansing joined a long list of cities that will forever bear the scars of our gun violence crisis.

The month since February 13, passed in the blink of an eye, but it’s also felt like a lifetime. Even as we’ve sprung into action and urged lawmakers to take legislative action to address this crisis, we’re still hurting. For those of us who survived that night, we’ve spent a month reliving it, playing it back again and again. The pits in our stomachs, the fear in our chests. A part of us stays frozen in those unending moments of terror, grief and shock.

"'Our Spartan Hearts Are Broken': Remembering the 3 Michigan State Students Killed in Monday's Mass Shooting," People Magazine.

I hear it might get easier — that with time, we’ll find a path to healing. Those of us who survived will go on to graduate and build new lives. For the loved ones of the victims, it won’t be so simple. Their children, siblings, and friends will stay forever 19 and 20. They won’t get to grow up or chase their dreams. They won’t get to walk across the stage for commencement. Tragically, their families will carry the weight of this tragedy for the rest of their lives. And while we can never take away that hurt, we can and will honor them with action every single day.

Spartan Strong

I didn’t think a horrible shooting like this could ever happen at MSU, but when the shots rang out and I watched my fellow students spring into action, I realized that we’ve been preparing for a nightmare like this one our entire lives. Our generation has been forced to grow up living in fear of the next shooting. We’ve practiced how to stay quiet and out of sight, rehearsed how to run, hide and fight.

This wasn’t isolated. This tragedy took place one day before the five-year mark of the shooting in Parkland (Florida) — on a campus where survivors of the shooting at Oxford High School live and study. But it’s not just the horror of the school shootings. Gun violence in all its forms — including homicides, unintentional shootings and firearm suicides — impacts young people around the country every single day. Guns are the leading cause of death for children, teens, and college-aged Americans who should have a right to a life free from the constant fear of being shot.

As a country, we’ve accepted that this is the reality of being young in America — shootings on campus, traumatized students, vigils instead of classes. But I refuse to accept that this is the way things have to be. I refuse to let future generations of students grow up like we have, living in constant worry that any day could be their last.

It’s not the responsibility of young people to keep ourselves safe, but once again, it’s our generation that is bearing the weight of this crisis, and it’s our generation that is showing up to demand change. Over the last month, students, survivors, and advocates have flooded our campuses and our capitol, painting the state green and white, and calling on lawmakers to meet this tragic moment with urgency.

And they have listened.

Right now, Michigan has a real opportunity to make meaningful change. Thanks to the tireless work of gun safety advocates and voters, the political landscape has shifted. We’ve elected lawmakers who prioritize gun safety, including Moms Demand Action volunteers, and we’ve secured a gun sense trifecta in the House, Senate and the governor’s mansion. Voters have done our jobs. Now, lawmakers must do theirs.

As the weeks since the shooting have shown us, so much can be accomplished in a month. In the wake of the shooting, state lawmakers moved quickly to introduce a package of foundational gun safety bills — including background checks on all gun sales; secure firearm storage; and extreme risk laws, also known as red flag laws — that will help close the gap in Michigan’s gun laws. 

Polling shows that Michigan voters on both sides of the aisle overwhelmingly support these policies. 

These bills are moving quickly through both chambers, and now, we must get them across the finish line and onto Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s desk.

We proudly stand with lawmakers who have championed these gun safety policies, and we will continue to work hand in hand with them to get this done.

But there is no more time to waste. We know the cost of inaction, and we can’t afford to pay it. This time must be different. We deserve better — we demand better.

Saylor Reinders, is the President of the Michigan State University chapter of Students Demand Action.

Children before guns: The Second Amendment was not written to enable mass murder!

I have to tell my son.

This echo essay was published in the Abilene Reporter News by Nancy Kaffer of the Detroit Free Press. 

Michigan State University mass shooting- Februaray 13, 2023

My son went to bed at 9 p.m. 

Monday, because he’s 12 and it’s a school night, before I saw the news alerts rolling in: a shooting on Michigan State University’s campus.

The shooter was still on the loose. One person, reportedly, slain; five at Sparrow Hospital. It’s 11:30 p.m., and I’m watching the news. The dead now number three, and there’s a blurry picture of the shooter on my screen. I hope at least they catch the guy before my son wakes up. At least then I can say it’s over.

I can’t not tell him, not anymore. He has a phone. He has a laptop, required for school. He has friends with phones and laptops and older siblings. I had to tell him about the mass shooting at Oxford High School on Nov. 30, 2021. He listened, quietly – he is not, by nature, quiet – and asked: “Are you sending me to school tomorrow?”

Will lawmakers act to prevent gun violence?

My son's first active shooter drill was kindergarten. I didn’t know. They didn’t have active shooter drills when I was his age. 

There had been a substitute teacher, clearly as blindsided by the drill as any of her young charges. Administrators used a code name to communicate the actions of the fictional shooter. It made the drill seem real.

He came home that day earnestly explaining to me that his class had to hide in the bathroom, because a bad guy had been in the school.

This morning, a story penned by my colleague Clara Hendrickson led the Detroit Free Press website: “Michigan lawmakers want to curb gun violence. What gun safety researchers suggest.” 

Michigan Sen. Mallory McMorrow, D-Royal Oak, tweeted that Democrats are prepping a slate of gun reform bills. Things are different now. 

There’s a caucus on firearm safety. It has 50 members.

It’s too early to know whether the laws supported by vast majorities of Michiganders but blocked by right-wing politicians and the gun lobby – universal background checks, red flag and safe storage laws – could have stopped it. We know what happened, but we don't know how. We don't know why.

After dinner Monday night, we watched an episode of a sitcom we’ve been streaming. I paused the show to explain a grown-up joke to my son, and he laughed and laughed, delighted, for once, to be inside the circle of adulthood.

It's six and a half hours until I have to tell him.

Growing up with these tragedies

This isn’t the first time; it won’t be the last. I know what I’m supposed to say. I’m meant to be empathetic but matter of fact, to validate his feelings, but make him feel safe. I’m told to watch him for signs of trauma. I have to keep my cool. If I lose it, he will, too.

The children at Michigan State University are older than my son, six or 10 or 12 years; a gulf to him – to me, the blink of an eye. Wasn’t it just yesterday that he took his first steps?

Last month, my son saw footage on YouTube of the shooter in Uvalde, Texas, a kid running away, down the school hall. He looked that child up, afterwards. He thinks that child died.

He told me, later, what he had seen. At first he thought it was a fake. Then he was caught, unable to turn away. Why would anyone put that footage online? Why would anyone watch it on purpose? 

Why won’t anyone make it stop?

“To give a little context, I saw some footage of the Uvalde, Tex., Robb Elementary School shooting on YouTube,” he wrote last month. “What I saw definitely scared me. Then I thought … why is gun violence still happening? Why is this happening? Why do politicians pretty much completely ignore it? Like it didn’t happen. Like a dozen kids didn’t just die?

“This needs to stop. Politicians need to stop choosing money over death. What soul do you have if you let kids die, and teachers, and as a matter of fact regular people, die, and choose money?”

It’s six hours, now, until I have to tell him, and my newsroom is reporting that the shooter has killed himself, another thing I’ll struggle to explain.

“They just do that,” I’ll say. “I don’t know why. I don’t know why they do any of it.”

This time, I can tell him, the people in Lansing are listening. They’re prepping some new laws. They’re going to pass those bills, and the governor will sign them. Would those laws have made a difference?

“We don’t know,” I’ll tell him, “but it can’t get worse". 

"We need to do everything we can. Whatever we can.”

Because he’s right: This needs to stop.

#MarchForOurLives

Born out of a tragic school shooting, March For Our Lives is a courageous youth-led movement dedicated to promoting civic engagement, education, and direct action by youth to eliminate the epidemic of gun violence.

Nancy Kaffer is a Detroit Free Press columnist. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com

Everybody except for Sean Hannity knows where Michigan ends and Canada begins - OMG!

Fox News right wing pundit Sean Hannity must have had the same United States history teacher as his cult leader Donald Trump had, because, obviously, they are both geographically challenged.

The majority of people living in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan are of either Finnish, French Canadian, Cornish, Scandinavian, German, or Native American descent.

Opinion echo published in the Detroit Free Press by Brian Manzullo:

The Upper Peninsula is a lot of things: Beautiful, natural, rural, teeming with minerals, you name it. But it is most definitely and inarguably not Canada.

Unfortunately, it was labeled as such during Thursday night's "Hannity" on Fox News, when conservative talk show personality Sean Hannity was discussing Wisconsin's 2020 election recount efforts.

As Hannity talked, a map of Wisconsin aired on the screen, with surrounding states such as Michigan, Minnesota and Iowa labeled in initials on the map. But the Upper Peninsula is labeled ... "Canada."



Look, just because the Yooper dialect shows similarities to Canadians (eh?), that doesn't make the Upper Peninsula part of Canada. As we all know, the U.P. was granted to Michigan in 1836, a year before Michigan was admitted to the union, in exchange for Michigan ceding the Toledo Strip to Ohio. (Still the greatest trade of all time, by the way.)

Anyway, the reactions on social media were swift.  "Sean, check your map. You have the upper peninsula of Michigan labeled as Canada!", Tweet by S D S @Juniper1123 on November 19th.

So, we should look at the bright side: At least the Upper Peninsula was on the map at all. Both Google and "Saturday Night Live" left the U.P. off the United States last year.

TickPick notoriously left the U.P. off its map and picked a fight with Yoopers in 2017, but it eventually led to a heartwarming ending over beers, which might be one of the most Yooper (UP) stories of all time.

We leave you all with this reminder, which apparently needs to be hammered into our heads until we can't see straight:

For everyone outside the state with eyes on Michigan tonight, a few reminders: ➜ It's Michigander, not Michiganian ➜ It's pop, not soda ➜ Even though too many maps leave it off, the Upper Peninsula is still very much there!

Echo endorsement - Anybody But Trump: For the people and by the people to vote Joe Biden

#JoeBiden2020

Echo opinion editorial published by the Detroit Free Press, in Michigan.

Among the myriad lawn signs sprouting in anticipation of November's presidential election, two are noteworthy for their seeming nonpartisanship:

The first sign — "ANY FUNCTIONING ADULT 2020" — makes light of America's current upheaval, tacitly confessing how little today's disillusioned voters expect of their elected leaders. (Respectfully disagree with this quick assessment. I read this sign ie AFA, as being justifyably "anybody but Trump- IOW "abt", JMO.)

The second, beginning with the words "IN THIS HOUSE," advertises the occupants' allegiance to a list of cardinal virtues — kindness, respect for learning, compassion for those with disabilities, etc. — as timeless and anodyne* as the Girl Scout Law.

Neither sign mentions any candidate, political party or elective office. But it is telling that both signs are understood — instantly and universally — to signal the resident's opposition to Donald Trump's re-election.

Optimists who believe in America's boundless capacity for re-invention like to think we are always one election away from redemption. But it will be no simple task to recover what has been lost in the four years since 2016, when a confluence of working-class anger, bipartisan resignation, and misplaced confidence in polls that forecast an easy Democratic victory propelled a man who personified the nation’s worst qualities to the highest office in the land.

Donald Trump’s election was a tragedy whose cost Americans have scarcely begun to reckon. Its most conspicuous casualties are the disproportionate number of American lives extinguished by a pandemic that raged unchecked for months while the president shrugged off, mocked and occasionally obstructed the medical community's urgent efforts to contain it.

Continuing to pay the price of Trump's negligence are the tens of millions of U.S. workers still languishing in unemployment, even as their counterparts in other developed countries — countries whose leaders recognized the pandemic's seriousness and acted promptly to curtail its spread — return to work, and secure incomes.

Other damage is more difficult to quantify: It includes the pervasive mistrust triggered by Trump's relentless campaign to discredit or corrupt nonpartisan institutions like the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FBI, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Postal Service, and the myriad agencies that comprise the nation’s intelligence community; the legal chaos arising from his contempt for the authority reserved for the courts and the U.S. Congress, and the normalization of behavior Americans once found intolerable even in their children and house pets.

The Detroit Free Press Editorial Board urged Michigan voters to reject Trump's candidacy in 2016, and we have opposed many of his signature initiatives: his obsessive war on immigrants, which began with an overtly racist attack on Mexicans and culminated in images of caged children that shocked the world; his chaotic tariffs, which brought confusion to U.S. auto manufacturers and higher prices to American consumers, and his emasculation of regulations designed to slow or combat climate change.

Trump's State Department deserves credit for brokering a rapprochement between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, but his blustering, impulsive conduct of foreign policy has mostly diminished America's reputation and influence abroad.

But our most serious reservations about Trump's presidency do not rise to the level of politics or policy. They center, rather, on his aversion to facts and contempt for science, his nonchalant cruelty toward everyone from principled public servants to deceased political rivals, his use of social media to promote white supremacist extremists and amplify flagrantly fraudulent conspiracy theories, and his unapologetic exploitation of his public office to enrich his family and favored friends.

His attacks on the federal judiciary are without precedent in their viciousness, and he will likely exploit U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's death to appoint a successor dedicated to eradicating much of Ginsburg's civil rights legacy, including the rulings that have protected the reproductive rights of American women for the last half-century.

Today, we call on Free Press readers to support the election of a new president who can restore dignity and integrity to an office debased and diminished by its current occupant.

Former Vice President JOE BIDEN, whose name and decades of public service are familiar to generations of American voters, is the man Democrats have nominated to undertake that critical mission, and we are confident that he is a trustworthy choice — the only responsible choice, in fact, for voters who wish to see this country's 244-year-old experiment in government by, for and of the people continue.

*not likely to provoke dissent or offense; inoffensive, often deliberately so.

Donald Trump's Sophie Choice - public health or financial pain

"Public health risks need to be addressed with stringent public health measures; economic risks must be addressed with various economic measures. Mixing these risks and strategies will only result in worse public health outcomes (potentially a million lives lost) as well as worse economic outcomes..." Leonard M. Fleck.

Ethics professor: In the coronavirus crisis, don't prioritize economics over public health- an echo opinion published in the Detroit Free Press by Leonard M. Fleck.

Donald Trump said this week that he hopes to see economic activity ramped up and social distancing practices and other public health measures reduced (as soon as possible, even prior to the designated May 1, 2020 target date). 

This is a recipe for disaster and it again vividly illustrates his dismissal of medical and scientific expertise for his own political goals.

The rhetoric he uses suggests that the financial pain the nation will experience over the next year or longer is not worth the lives that will be lost as a result of dialing back public health restrictions. I am an ethicist. To me, Trump is forcing Sophie’s Choice decisions by people who have taken an oath to “first do no harm.” Trump and his advisers ignore the ethical pain that health professionals will have to endure who must decide who lives and who dies because we have too few ventilators or too few ICU beds to treat all the patients who need those beds for survival. Those harsh choices are very real right now. They would become even more tragic if public health measures now in place were loosened in order to improve economic activity.

Trump casually and thoughtlessly suggests that many fewer lives will be lost as a result of loosening public health restrictions regarding COVID-19 than is currently the case with the flu season (60,000 lives) or automobile accidents (40,000 lives). 

However, these analogies are entirely misleading. We have vaccines and effective treatments for addressing the flu. Some people choose not to get the vaccine. That is often a tragic choice. Auto accidents are also very often the result of bad personal choices: excessive speed, distracted driving, drunk driving. 

These are not things that can be readily controlled through public health measures of any kind. By way of contrast, we have no vaccine and no cure on the horizon, in spite of grossly exaggerated reports earlier this month from the Trump administration to the contrary. Further, we now know that asymptomatic people can infect others with COVID-19. That makes the virus especially insidious. That is the relevant medical scientific fact that requires the social distancing practices emphasized by every public health official.

Readers can readily recall the casual “happy talk” promulgated by Trump that the virus was completely under control several weeks ago and that we would have drugs to cure it in no time at all. We now have instead “unhappy facts,” such as 80,000 infected in the US and more than 1,000 deaths. We are very much on a steep upward curve in this regard that Dr. Fauci and other health experts expect to continue for at least the next seven to eight weeks, assuming that the stringent public health measures now in place remain in place for at least that period of time. Relaxing those measures would only result in something much worse with respect to the loss of life. 

Recall the recent images in the news of college students partying on the beach in spite of the risks of transmission (remember we do not know who is infected but asymptomatic). Those images generated a substantial public outcry regarding how irresponsible that behavior was. Trump relaxing public health and social distancing measures so that young and healthy people can go back to work, then have a friendly drink at the local bar after work, essentially says that the college student behavior was acceptable. 

Economically, the worst-case scenarios suggest a 24% decrease in GDP (Gross Domestic Product is the monetary value of all finished goods)  for the next quarter, not much better beyond, and 10% unemployment. However, the economic pain can be reduced by the $2 trillion dollar package Congress is poised to pass. If properly crafted, it will put money in the hands of workers that will allow them to buy food, pay their rent and utility bills and sustain the economy in that way. Millions of people are successfully and productively working at home and maintaining public health at the same time. That is the real take home message that Dr. Fauci and many others are emphasizing. 

Public health risks need to be addressed with stringent public health measures; economic risks must be addressed with various economic measures. Mixing these risks and strategies will only result in worse public health outcomes (potentially a million lives lost) as well as worse economic outcomes, though those will be a bit further out, likely past November. My apologies, I forgot to say anything about political risks. But the astute reader can figure that out.

Leonard M. Fleck is a professor and director of the Center for Ethics at Michigan State University's College of Human Medicine.

Canadian international border crossings

By Brian Dickerson published in the Detroit Free Press

DETROIT- The U.S.- Canadian boundary was scarcely a border at all, with most official checkpoints left unguarded at night and residents of both countries coming and going as casually as they would cross county lines or state boundaries.

Border monument in Minnesota's Boundary Waters. (Photo: Sara Fox)

At 3,987 miles, the border between the lower United States and Canada is the third-longest international boundary in the world, more than twice as long as the border between the United States and Mexico, and considerably harder to secure.

Author/adventurer Porter Fox chronicles the three years he spent exploring the northern border, including the 721 miles that divide Michigan and Ontario, in his 2018 book, "Northland."

This month, not long after Donald Trump declared a national emergency on the shorter, less porous southern border. Free Press Editorial Page Editor Brian Dickerson asked Fox what he learned on his 4,000-mile odyssey:

In the beginning, the border was not even a line. Settlers from many nations, including Native Americans, lived on both sides of the line that we know today. It was a porous border, in part, because many businesses like the timber and fishing trades also straddled that line.

After the American revolution, the British did not go back to England. Most of them went to British Canada and retained ownership of their businesses to the south. The line was so open, and busy, in America’s early days, that it was almost impossible to collect tariffs on goods coming into the U.S.

Even today, there are many parts of the border where you can simply walk across. I know, because I did it many times while researching Northland.

There is a lot of confusion in some places along the border about where our country ends and where Canada begins. Are there any ongoing, unresolved boundary disputes between the two countries?
A: There are quite a few. 

The sovereignty of nearby Machias Seal Island off the coast of Maine has been disputed for more than 200 years.The situation wasn’t a problem until the price of lobster spiked in 2015 and Nova Scotia fishermen started setting traps there. Death threats, cut lines, and close calls between American and Canadian fishermen followed. The dispute was never resolved, nor were several others in “gray zones” along the line.

Fishermen at Dixon Entrance, between Alaska and British Columbia, have been battling for fishing rights for years. U.S. and Canadian companies began vying for oil-drilling rights in the Beaufort Sea, near the Arctic Ocean, One of the most public feuds along the northern border is playing out in the Northwest Passage — the fabled water route to China that only recently thawed enough to allow boats through — where American ships are claiming navigational rights on water Canadians say is theirs.

Q: Michiganders who travel to Canada regularly know the journey has become more complicated and time-consuming since 9/11. How have those new impediments changed the experience and attitudes of people in the border communities you visited?

A: It has changed things a lot, mostly north of the border.

For many years, Canadians have been driving into America for jobs or to pick up things like toilet paper that are a couple of bucks cheaper in the States. You notice lots of businesses like Mailboxes Etc. on the American side of the line. Most of the P.O. boxes there are owned by Canadians, so they can order things from Amazon without paying a heavy tax.

Doctors, clergy, schoolteachers and bartenders often live in Canada and drive south over the border, and vice versa, to do their work.

Increased (and disorganized) security makes it impossible to predict whether there will be a five-minute or five-hour wait at the border. This has turned a lot of Canadians I spoke with against the United States, understandably feeling that the U.S. simply doesn’t care what they think or how this affects them. 

Customs and Border Protection acts with impunity and little oversight, and is free to racially profile or indefinitely detain travelers and basically do whatever they want.

In terms of business, it has been devastating to border regions. One study estimates that businesses along the American side of the border lose $30 billion a year due to unpredictable border crossing bureaucracy.

The auto industry is a good example. Vehicles produced in North America crisscross the border up to seven times before they are completed, creating thousands of customs transactions for each truckload. Every delay can cost up to $800 per vehicle. A study by the Ontario Chamber of Commerce found that a four-hour delay at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor can cost the Ontario economy up to $7 million in lost production.

Q: You write of canoe trips in which you crossed the border dozens of times in a single day without encountering border patrol agents from either country. But officials on both sides assured you that your movements were being monitored 24/7 by drones, satellites, sensors, etc.

Are you convinced it’s no longer possible to cross the border between manned checkpoints without one or both governments taking note?

A: No, I think that border patrol and communities exaggerate the effectiveness of surveillance — to make themselves sleep better at night and deter would-be smugglers. .

The Department of Homeland Security has essentially transposed its Mexico border policy to the U.S-Canada border, increasing the number of agents in the north by 500 percent and installing some of the same sensors, security cameras, military-grade radar and drones used on the U.S.-Mexico line.

The increased security has resulted in an uptick in arrests, but it has hardly locked the northern border down, because it focuses on border checkpoints, and not the vast back country between them.

The northern border is long, rugged, underfunded and suffers from “constricted domain awareness.” A 2010 Congressional Research Service report put a number to that “awareness,” stating that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) maintained “operational control” over just 69 miles of the northern border. Even with a new DHS “Northern Border strategy” rolling out, it doesn’t look like much is going to change.

Q: Few of the residents you encountered seem particularly worried about border security; even the militia leader you interviewed in Idaho didn’t talk much about illegal immigration.

Journalists who cover the Mexican border convey the same sense that the closer people live to the boundary, the less threatened they feel by those on the other side. You seem to have had the same experience: Even the militia leader you interviewed in Idaho didn’t seem worried about illegal immigration. Do you think there’s a commonality of experience that transcends the obvious differences between the two border communities?

A: Absolutely. Probably the greatest commonality is the understanding that politicians and the media have no idea what it is actually like to live on the border.

Border patrol on both sides of the line operates with so little oversight that it can basically do whatever it wants within 100 miles of the line. They have complete and total authority in that region, and they can make life more difficult for citizens living there than for illegals trying to cross.

Travel Writer Stephanie Elizondo compares the Rio Grande Valley to the U.S-Canada border where it passes through the St. Regis Mohawk Reservation in upstate New York. Her book is a disturbing examination of how much of the U.S. came to be, and how the original residents of this borderland continue to be oppressed.

Q: The U.S.-Canada border divides 12 Indian reservations, and three times as many indigenous tribal populations. Some still refuse to officially recognize the border, although most grudgingly obey the immigration laws ordained by Ottawa and Washington. Have any of those tribes — or any other border communities you encountered, for that matter —– been able to maintain their identity as a single community?

A: They are trying, in spite of constant harassment by U.S. and Canadian officials.

Both governments have illegally cut tribes off from their families, fishing and hunting grounds and rightful land, either by physically intercepting them or requiring paperwork that, for a member of a sovereign nation, is very difficult to get. (All of which violates the Jay Treaty, which guarantees unencumbered passage, among other federal laws.)

At the Akwesasne Mohawk Reservation, families are forced to cross three bridges over the St. Lawrence River, over and back — waiting in hour-plus border-check lines at two stations in Ontario and New York — before dropping their children off at school on Cornwall Island. When parents are late to school and skip the second bridge, their cars are impounded and they are arrested for aiding and abetting illegal aliens.

Q: The only terrorists known to have entered the U.S. by land have come from Canada, not Mexico. So what in your mind accounts for the widespread conviction that our most serious vulnerability lies in the South?

A: It’s all politics and it always has been.

The president wants to build a $30 billion wall on the southern border, but what is it going to stop? It is common knowledge that 90 percent of human and drug trafficking takes place at ports of entry, not the backcountry where the proposed wall would be built.

There are some racist implications here as well, with the growing sentiment that America needs to stop brown-skinned people from the south penetrating into the States, when the actual threat to the United States, as documented by the federal agencies, is in the north. FBI reports uncovered by The Daily Beast last year show that there have been significantly more encounters with terror suspects on the northern border recently than in the south. Not to mention the opioid crisis, which is being fueled by smugglers in the north.

Nearly every modern American president has used the nation’s southern fringe as a campaign platform, a political bargaining chip, a rallying cry or a trade tactic — all while the country’s longest, most vital and most porous border to the north was neglected. What’s more, the haphazard policies initiated along the “Hi-Line” have done more to antagonize our No. 1 trading partner — and a network of centuries-old cross-border communities there — than to secure it.

Q: Demographers who study Mexican immigration patterns have marshaled persuasive evidence that making the southern border more secure has dramatically increased the population of undocumented immigrants by making it more dangerous for migrant workers to bounce back and forth between their work in the U.S. and their families in Mexico. The theory is that since slipping in and out of the U.S. seasonally became more difficult, more workers are bringing their families here and staying, or starting families here and staying. Did you encounter evidence of anything similar happening along the northern border since 2001?

A: No, the number of migrant workers crossing the northern border is very small. Although, truth be told, crossings in remote regions are detected regularly, but individuals, some armed, repeatedly get away before agents can get there — leading border officials to suggest that they might not know how many people actually cross the northern border illegally.

What they do know is that every year $56 billion in smuggled drugs — including large quantities of opioids, like fentanyl — and thousands of illegal aliens do, in fact, cross the U.S.-Canada border.

Q: Detroit is one of the few large American cities on the northern border. How is the relationship between residents of less densely populated border communities different than the one between Detroiters and their neighbors in Windsor?

A: It’s pretty different. At busy crossings like the Windsor Bridge and Blaine, Washington, there is a heavy presence of Customs and Border Protection services. There is a tremendous amount of surveillance, and I noticed, a feeling that things are being taken care of.

In rural parts of the border, this simply does not exist. There are roads that cross the border with a slim white monument indicating the U.S.-Canada boundary, but nothing actually blocking the road. There are logging roads in the woods of Maine, Vermont, New York, Minnesota, and practically every other state along the northern border that cross the line without any obstruction. Which is to say, you don’t need to walk across the border, you can drive.

The feeling in these communities is understandably a bit paranoid. And, as I discovered in northern Maine, any person with a dark complexion walking into a rural northern border town is likely going to get stopped or questioned. Customs and Border Protection actually counts on this, and uses this grapevine security to shore up the northern border in lieu of proper staffing and funding that it has been asking for for years.

The problem is, townsfolk are not trained professionals, and plenty can slip past.

Q: The United States and Canada have been on the same side in most important political disputes over the last century. Did the people you encountered in your journey express any anxiety that conflicts over natural resources, environmental regulation or immigration policy could fundamentally alter the relationship?

A: I think that there is more tension between the U.S. and Canada then politicians let on. Canada remains America's No. 1 oil importer and No. 3 trading partner. More than 40 oil pipelines cross the northern border. About 95 percent of America’s surface freshwater sits in the Great Lakes basin, and almost half of that is Canada’s.

America has been feeding off of Canada’s natural resources for many years, though the political and military situation on the continent doesn’t allow them to use this to their advantage. Surprisingly, border security has been the biggest flashpoint of all of these issues, and has created more anti-American sentiment in Canada then almost anything else.

Q: How are the border communities you describe in your book likely to change over the next 20 years? Will the boundary between our countries become harder or softer, and what variables will determine that?

A: I don’t see much changing in the next 20 years. After that, I believe that climate change is going to change everything in North America.

As the previous Canadian ambassador to the United States, Gary Doer, said, things like water wars in the future will make arguments over the XL pipeline “look silly.” The vast natural resources that Canada controls are going to be in high demand. As coastal flooding, extreme temperatures and the desertification of the America West take hold, mass northern migration is going to put a lot of pressure on all borders around the world. (We’re already seeing this in Europe.)

One would think that Canada would hold the cards in future border and trade negotiations. But knowing America’s appetite for money, land and power, it seems more rational that the U.S. will eventually revisit plans to simply add its northern neighbor into the Union.

What happens when both the House and the Senate votes oppose the Donald Trump border emergency?

The New York Times: House Votes to Block Trump’s National Emergency Declaration About the Border

ABC News Senators seek to halt Trump's border emergency

Donald Trump's national emergency declaration to build the border wall is on the cusp of being terminated by Congress as Republicans on Capitol Hill are growing increasingly uneasy with the move.

At least a dozen Republicans have signaled they are unhappy with the president's decision to go the route of a national emergency.

This is what the evil Donald Trump border wall looks like

Following is an ambiguous point of view about the evil Donald Trump border wall, written by A. Sedler is a constitutional law professor at Wayne State University and published in The Detroit Free Press.

Sedler's opinion gives context to the Donald Trump incendiary action, by declaring a national emergency, just because he failed to get the funding to build his border wall, when he promised Americans that Mexico was going to pay for it. I dislike ambiguity but appreciate learning the information provided about the authority of the United States president.Donald Trump has now declared a national emergency along the southwestern border and claims that this will enable him to obtain funding for his long-promised border wall. His opponents claim that the declaration is illegal, and have threatened litigation. The only thing that is certain about the declaration is that everything is uncertain. I will now discuss the two basic questions that are presented by the declaration.

Is Trump's emergency declaration legal?

Here we start off with some basic propositions:

► First, the Constitution makes no provision for a “national emergency” and does not recognize anything like emergency powers.

►Second, only Congress can appropriate federal funds.

►Third, with few exceptions, the President can only act with Congressional authorization, and any presidential action can be challenged as not being authorized by applicable legislation.

A number of laws do authorize the President to take certain actions by declaring a national emergency. The National Emergencies Act of 1976, as amended in 1985, governs the President’s declaration of a national emergency. The President must specify the law under which he proposes to act, and must comply with the provisions of that law. Congress has 18 days to adopt a joint resolution to terminate the declaration. But the joint resolution is subject to a presidential veto, which can only be overturned by a two-thirds vote of both houses. This is highly unlikely.

One of the laws on which the President is relying is a law dealing with military construction. 

Under this law (33 U.S.C. sec. 2293), the President may terminate or defer a military construction project that he deems not essential to the national defense, and apply the resources for that project to construct another project that he considers essential to the national defense.

Trump is also relying on other laws that he claims authorize the reprogramming of funds for the wall. In the event of a viable legal challenge to the transfers of funds, the courts will have to determine whether the transfer is authorized by the laws on which the President relies. The government will argue that the courts should give broad deference to the administration's determination that there is a national emergency and his determination as to what is and what is not essential to the national defense.

The challengers will argue that such deference is not appropriate to the transfer of funds that have already been appropriated for other purposes and that the courts should carefully scrutinize the facts on which the President relies to support his determination. It is completely speculative, of course, as to which approach the courts will take.

Who can challenge the President's declaration?

Talk of lawsuits challenging the President’s declaration must take into account the requirements of standing. Media commentary to the contrary, a viable lawsuit challenging the President’s declaration is far from a sure thing. At least for now.

The constitutional jurisdiction of the federal courts is limited to “cases and controversies,” which means that the courts can only hear cases involving parties with adverse legal interests. In order to bring a federal court suit, the plaintiff must have standing, which requires that the plaintiff must have suffered significant personal harm from the challenged action. The Supreme Court has held that individual senators and representative do not have standing to challenge actions of the President. 

Nevertheless, the court has indicated that if one house of Congress authorizes the suit, that may be sufficient to confer standing.*

However, the court has also held that unless a conflict between Congress and the administration affects the rights of third parties – which it usually doesn’t – it will invoke the political question doctrine and refuse to hear the case. Rather, the court has said that the President and Congress should “resolve the conflict as equals.”

A state or a city in the path of the proposed border wall would have standing to challenge the construction of the wall if, and only if it could show that the construction of the wall could cause some injury to the city or state. Perhaps a city like El Paso, which is a major crossing point between the U.S. and Mexico, could meet this test, but perhaps not. One clear example of a person who would have standing is a landowner whose land would be taken by the government for construction of the wall. But this would be some time in the future.

In the months ahead, there will be a plethora of commentary about the President’s declaration of a national emergency to obtain funding for his long-promised border wall. 

Ultimately, the questions we examined here will be resolved within the framework of the American constitutional and judicial system.

*Professor Sedler does not provide context about what hypothetically happens when both houses of the Congress authorizes the suit, even if the President vetoes the majority votes by the House and the Senate.