A call to honor a black Civil War hero with a monument at the South Carolina Statehouse grounds, onetime epicenter of a groundswell movement to rid communities of Confederate symbols, is being made by two lawmakers in a bid to encourage consensus-building in a nation divided by the issue.

Two state senators — a black Democrat and a white Republican — announced their proposal Wednesday to memorialize Robert Smalls, who in 1862 hijacked a Confederate supply ship he worked on, steered his family to freedom and delivered the ammunition-laden vessel to the Union.

If approved, the Smalls monument would be the first on Statehouse grounds to an individual African-American in South Carolina, which removed the Confederate flag from those grounds in 2015 after a mass shooting by an avowed white supremacist.

“Robert Smalls was both a warrior and peacemaker, both a combative and kind man who accomplished incredible feats,” said Republican state Senator Greg Gregory, who noted Smalls’ titles after the war included state lawmaker and five-term congressman. “Unfortunately, few people know of this man — one of our greatest citizens — and we’re seeking to change that.”

Heated debate

Moves to strip Confederate symbols from U.S. communities by those who see them as hated symbols of racism and slavery have triggered impassioned national debate and even violence like that arising from a white nationalist protest in Charlottesville, Virginia, over a Robert E. Lee statue. Others see such symbols as proud reminders of Southern heritage and ancestors who fought in the war.

In South Carolina, a 2000 legislative compromise that took the Confederate battle flag off the Statehouse dome and put it beside a memorial on the Statehouse’s front lawn also built a monument that broadly portrays centuries of African-American history in the state. That compromise also removed rebel flags from both chambers and barred altering any public monument that honors historic figures or events without overwhelming legislative approval.

Still, the Confederate flag debate was far from settled. But lawmakers of both parties refused to revisit the issue until the 2015 death of nine black parishioners at a historic Charleston church prompted them to remove the flag altogether.

Church gunman Dylann Roof, now on federal death row, was seen brandishing a Confederate flag in photographs that surfaced after his arrest.

Black politicians’ contributions

Senator Darrell Jackson, D-Columbia, said he’s long wanted Statehouse grounds to recognize the role of the hundreds of African-American politicians who served statewide during Reconstruction, particularly Smalls.

He added the proposal is independent of calls to remove or alter other monuments around the state. He still intends to refile a bill proposing to change the state’s “Heritage Act” — the 2000 compromise — to let local leaders make their own decisions about historical monuments in their communities. But he doesn’t want that wrapped into the discussion on honoring Smalls.

“I’d rather spend my time building a monument than any time tearing down monuments,” Jackson said. “History is not always good. Sometimes it’s good. Sometimes it’s bad, and sometimes it’s ugly, but it’s history, and it’s important to tell the whole story.”

One Statehouse monument some have called for removing or changing is a statue of “Pitchfork” Ben Tillman, governor from 1890 to 1894 and then a U.S. senator. The inscription on Tillman’s statue tells visitors he founded two universities as a “friend and leader of the common people.” But it says nothing about his rise in power by the killing of black Republicans or his role in creating the Jim Crow-era of Southern segregation — white supremacy policies that Smalls opposed.

No more debate

After the flag’s removal, House Speaker Jay Lucas vowed there won’t be any further debate on amending the Heritage Act on his watch. His spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to the senators’ proposal.

House Minority Leader Todd Rutherford, D-Columbia, said a bill honoring Smalls should stand on its own.

“I think that’s awesome,” he said, adding he only regrets that he didn’t think of it first.

Rutherford, who is black, said he recently learned all that Smalls accomplished during a visit to Beaufort County, where Smalls was born a slave and later purchased his former owner’s home.

Smalls’ great-great grandson, Michael B. Moore, grew up hearing his grandmother’s accounts of Smalls. He noted his famous ancestor took in his former owner’s wife — who had dementia and still thought the property hers — letting her occupy the master bedroom until her death.

“We happen to be in a political climate that’s very partisan and where people are often at each other’s throats,” said Moore, of Charleston, adding Smalls’ compassion for the former owner’s wife was telling. “To think about Robert in the way he acknowledged the humanity of this woman and embraced her in the way he did, that’s something we can all learn from.”
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President Donald Trump is considering a further reduction in the number of refugees allowed into the United States as the administration works to re-shape American immigration policy, officials said Wednesday.

Trump, who has already slashed refugee admissions once since taking office, is now weighing limiting even further the number of refugees allowed into the country in the next fiscal year.

But as is often the case with the Trump administration, Cabinet officials are divided as they weigh the costs and potential security risks associated with the program.

Lowest in modern history

The Department of Homeland Security has been pushing for a reduction beyond the 50,000 mark set by Trump earlier this year as part of his travel ban executive orders — a number that is already the lowest in modern American history. In a proposal submitted late last week, the department called for a reduction to 40,000 refugees in the next fiscal year, citing concerns about its workload and ability to adequately vet those seeking entry.

The State Department, which oversees the program, has formally recommended that the number be kept at 50,000, according to Trump administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal deliberations. Agencies had been given until the close of business Wednesday to submit formal recommendations for consideration.

State Department officials would have been inclined to set their recommendation higher, several of the people said, but were taking their cues from the president’s executive order and felt that 50,000 was the highest number that would be palatable to him.

Trump has until Oct. 1, the start of the new fiscal year, to determine how many refugees to admit under the Refugee Act of 1980. Trump is expected to consider the issue over the weekend, after he finishes up at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, one White House official said.

The U.S. welcomed 84,995 refugees in fiscal year 2016, and former President Barack Obama had wanted to raise that number to 110,000 in 2017.

Agenda centerpiece

Trump has made limiting immigration the centerpiece of his agenda. He temporarily banned visitors from a handful of Muslim-majority nations, has revoked an Obama-era executive action protecting young immigrants from deportation and insists he’ll build a wall along the southern border.

During his campaign, Trump pledged to “stop the massive inflow of refugees” and warned that terrorists were smuggling themselves into naive countries by posing as refugees fleeing war-torn Syria.

“Thousands of refugees are being admitted with no way to screen them and are instantly made eligible for welfare and free health care, even as our own veterans, our great, great veterans, die while they’re waiting online for medical care that they desperately need,” Trump said last October.

Instead, Trump has advocated keeping refugees closer to their homes.

Words of thanks

In a speech to the United Nations on Tuesday, Trump thanked Jordan, Turkey and Lebanon for taking in hundreds of thousands of refugees from the Syrian conflict, and described the United States as a “compassionate nation” that has spent “billions and billions of dollars in helping to support this effort.”

“We seek an approach to refugee resettlement that is designed to help these horribly treated people, and which enables their eventual return to their home countries to be part of the rebuilding process,” he said, arguing that, for the cost of resettling one refugee in the United States, the U.S. can assist more than 10 migrants in their home regions.

Advocates say that misses the point.

“We think that these comments show a basic misunderstanding of the refugee crisis,” said Jen Smyers, who helps run the immigration and refugee program at Church World Service, one of nine organizations that work to resettle refugees in the U.S.  She said the safe re-integration of refugees into their home countries is always the preferred outcome, followed by integration in a nearby country that shares a refugee’s language and culture.  Resettlement is a last resort when those options are impossible.

Waiting game for refugees

Refugees already face an extensive backlog and waiting periods that can take years. Smyers said that after Trump’s executive order, she had to tell refugees in the pipeline they’d be waiting even longer.

“It’s devastating for refugees who are overseas,” she said.

Stacie Blake, of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, said the proposed cutbacks were especially concerning given the migrant crises affecting so many parts of the word, including the Rohingya Muslim refugees fleeing Myanmar. She said Trump’s move could prompt other nations to “back out” as well.

Trump approach ‘unwavering’

White House spokeswoman Kelly Love said in a statement that the administration’s approach to refugee resettlement “is unwavering” and would be “guided by the safety and security of the American people, the protection of U.S. taxpayers, and the application of U.S. resources in a manner that stretches our dollars to help the most people.”

DHS spokesman David Lapan said that in setting the admissions ceiling, the agency would take into account the “workload capacity of all program partners, including the vetting agencies” as well as national security interests.

Simon Henshaw, the top State Department official for refugees, said the decision was ultimately Trump’s.
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The collapse of a prominent Native American media network has triggered debate over how Native media can best serve the interests of communities across Indian Country and counter stereotypes and misinformation in the mainstream press.

Native American journalism dates back to the Cherokee Phoenix, founded in 1828 to advocate against the U.S. government policy of assimilation and forced removal. Many newspapers have since come and gone, victims of high costs and low revenue.

The most recent casualty was Indian Country Today Media Network (ICTMN), whose publisher, Ray Halbritter of the Oneida Indian Nation, this month announced that after 36 years in business, the network would take a break to explore “alternative business models.”

The news disappointed many, who surmised that the venture was too costly to support.

“This is a really tough environment for anyone that’s in the advertising side, and Indian Country Today was selling advertising,” said independent journalist and blogger Mark Trahant.

Others suggest ICTMN failed because it lost touch with the audience it intended to serve.

Humble beginnings

ICTMN began as the Lakota Times, founded in 1981 by Oglala Lakota journalist and editor Tim Giago, serving South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. A weekly community newspaper, independently owned, it gradually expanded its coverage to national issues and was renamed Indian Country Today.

New York State’s Oneida Nation, a tribe which has profited through the gaming industry, bought the paper in 1998. They later renamed it ICTMN and moved operations to New York City. In 2013, they ended the print edition and shifted online. Last April, ICTMN launched a glossy, bimonthly magazine, Indian Country, at considerable expense.

“One of the things I think they forgot was all these folks here in Pine Ridge, Rosebud, Cheyenne River, Crow Creek or Standing Rock reservations,” said Giago, now publisher of Native Sun News Today. “They live way out in the middle of nowhere. A lot of them don’t have money to buy computers, least of all to hook up to the internet.”

Giago and others have also criticized ICTMN for hiring non-Native American writers and editors.

“Most of the other Native publications over the past couple of generations were written and edited by people who were deeply involved in their respective communities,” said Mohawk journalist Doug George-Kanentiio, vice president of the Hiawatha Institute for Indigenous Knowledge and a former editor of the now-defunct newspaper Akwesasne Notes.

He also questioned whether a network owned and funded by a tribal government could guarantee editorial independence.

“Whoever is writing the checks by and large determines the content,” he said.

‘Crabs in a bucket’

ICTMN op/ed editor Raymond Cook bristles at the criticisms.

“People always poke at success,” he said, citing the analogy of crabs in a bucket, “where one crab is trying to get out of the bucket, and then the others pull him down.”

First, he explained why ICTMN shut down.

“The state of New York recently handed out several gaming licenses, and now these non-tribal entities are trying to creep into the casino market,” he said. “So, the Oneida had to readjust its revenue projections. And reluctantly, with tears in their eyes, they put us on hiatus.”

He denies ICTMN lost touch with tribes.

“New York City has a larger Native American population than any other U.S. city,” he said. “So we never moved out of Indian Country. If we had stayed in South Dakota, we’d still be waiting for internet connection.”

He defends ICTMN for hiring non-native writers, whom he calls ‘indigenous identifiers,’ as well as targeting non-Native audiences.

“’Cause we can’t talk to ourselves only,” he said.

The paper regularly interviewed prominent U.S. politicians, including President Barack Obama.

“We not only educated our readers on the views of these politicians on Indian-focused issues, but we also helped ensure that Native America was on the radar of many of the top power brokers in our country and beyond,” said ICTMN’s Washington bureau chief Rob Capriccioso, a member of the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

Looking forward

At their recent annual meeting, members of the Native American Journalists Association discussed setting up a national Native American wire service to serve both tribal and mainstream media.

“Instead of trying to create a new vehicle, we’d just create a new driver,” journalist Trahant said.

In the meantime, ICTMN’s Cook said his network is looking for a qualified party to take over operations, something that would require an annual investment of $2.5 million to $3 million until 2021.

“Basically, we’d sell it to them for $10, and they can take over operations, as long as they can guarantee our journalistic standards,” he said. “It could be a tribe, a business, a government — anything, as long as it’s based in Indian Country and it’s run by Natives.”
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The United States is working to strengthen its international alliances and partnerships, the country’s top defense official said, describing the effort as critical to U.S. military strategy.

“Americans have no God-given right to victory on the battlefield,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told a conference just outside of Washington Wednesday, saying no nation can flourish on its own.

“History is compelling on this point, that nations with allies thrive and those without allies decline. It’s that simple,” he said.

The comments come a day after President Donald Trump told the United Nations General Assembly U.S. foreign policy was returning to the “founding principle of sovereignty.”

“I will always put America first, just like you, as the leaders of your countries will always, and should always, put your countries first,” Trump said.

Trump also irked some U.S. allies and partners with talk on possibly needing to “totally destroy” North Korea due to its nuclear and missile tests, and with talk of potentially pulling out of the nuclear deal with Iran.

Mattis, in his speech at the Air Force Association’s Air, Space and Cyber Conference, struck a different tone.

“We must be willing to do more than to listen to our allies,” the U.S. defense secretary said. “We must be willing to be persuaded by them.”

“Not all the good ideas come from the nation with the most aircraft carriers,” he added.

Mattis also emphasized the need for effective diplomacy, especially in confronting North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs.

“It is still a diplomatically-led effort,” he said when asked about North Korea. “But we must also recognize the somber reality that military options must be available to protect our allies and ourselves.”

 
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Former U.S. Rep. Anthony Weiner is more than a serial digital philanderer – he’s a danger to the public who deserves two years in prison for encouraging a 15-year-old girl to engage in online sex acts, prosecutors told a judge Wednesday.

A Manhattan judge is scheduled to sentence the New York Democrat on Monday for transferring obscene material to a minor.

The government urged the judge to put Weiner’s claims of a therapeutic awakening in a context of a man who made similar claims after embarrassing, widely publicized interactions with adult women before encountering the teenager online in January 2016. Prosecutors said his conduct “suggests a dangerous level of denial and lack of self-control.”

 This is not merely a ‘sexting’ case,” prosecutors wrote. “The defendant did far more than exchange typed words on a lifeless cellphone screen with a faceless stranger. … Transmitting obscenity to a minor to induce her to engage in sexually explicit conduct by video chat and photo – is far from mere ‘sexting.’ Weiner’s criminal conduct was very serious, and the sentence imposed should reflect that seriousness.”

Weiner, 53, said in a submission last week that he’s undergoing treatment and is profoundly sorry for subjecting the North Carolina high school student to what his lawyers called his “deep sickness.”

Prosecutors attacked some of Weiner’s arguments for seeking leniency and noted his full awareness beforehand of his crime, citing his co-sponsorship in January 2007 of a bill to require sex offenders to register their email and instant message addresses with the National Sex Offender Registry.

“While the government does not contend that Weiner engaged in inappropriate sexual exchanges with other minors or that he is a pedophile, his professed ambivalence toward the minor victim’s age is belied by the defendant’s own statements to the court-appointed evaluator during his evaluation,” they said.

Prosecutors said Weiner, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor in 2005 and 2013, acknowledged to the evaluator an interest in legal, adult, teen-themed pornography.

The government said Weiner’s “widely-reported prior scandals” were not criminal in nature and did not involve minors but should be considered at sentencing because they reveal a familiar pattern.

“He initially denied his conduct; he suffered personal and professional consequences; he publicly apologized and claimed reform. Yet, he has, on multiple occasions, continued to engage in the very conduct he swore off, progressing from that which is self-destructive to that which is also destructive to a teenage girl,” prosecutors said.

They added: “Weiner’s demonstrated history of professed, yet failed, reform make it difficult to rely on his present claim of self-awareness and transformation.”

Defense lawyers had portrayed the girl as an aggressor, saying she wanted to generate material for a book and possibly influence the presidential election.

Prosecutors responded that Weiner should be sentenced for what he did, and his victim’s motives should not influence his punishment. A defense lawyer declined to comment Wednesday.

In a plea bargain, Weiner has agreed not to appeal any sentence between 21 and 27 months. Prosecutors said the sentence should fall within that span, and they noted that Probation Office authorities had recommended a 27-month prison term.
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