Israel’s prime minister is holding consultations with senior ministers and aides to reevaluate the decision to allow two Democratic Congresswomen to enter the country next week.
 
A government official said Thursday that Benjamin Netanyahu was holding consultations about the upcoming visit of Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and that “there is a possibility that Israel will not allow the visit in its current proposed format.” The official spoke on condition of anonymity in line with regulations.
 
The Muslim members of Congress are outspoken critics of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians and advocates of a boycott against the country. Tlaib’s family immigrated to the U.S. from the West Bank.
 
 Last month, Israeli ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer said Israel would not deny entry to any member of Congress.

…

Jim Warlick is the master of presidential memorabilia, trinkets and novelties. Owner of the souvenir store White House Gifts in Washington, D.C. Warlick’s company describes its mission as offering a “nonpartisan tribute to Presidential history.”

…

Puerto Rico’s new governor finally appeared to be overcoming some of the challenges to her authority on Wednesday following weeks of political turmoil on the U.S. territory, with key members of the majority New Progressive Party expressing support.

That may allow Gov. Wanda Vazquez, who has never held elected office, to turn her attention to the territory’s lagging efforts to recover from 2017’s devastating Hurricane Maria as well as grinding economic slump and debt crisis that has led to demands for austerity from a federal board overseeing its finances.

Senate President Thomas Rivera Schatz, who had been seen as her chief challenger, issued a statement on Facebook Wednesday backing her and saying he’d only been looking for a replacement because he thought Wanda Vazquez didn’t want the governor’s job — though his efforts had continued well after she said she did.

“It’s up to all of us to work for Puerto Rico,” he said. “The governor will have our collaboration, and I have expressed that personally.”

Rivera Schatz had suggested the post go to the island’s congressional representative, Resident Commissioner Jenniffer Gonzalez. But Gonzalez too issued a statement of support for Vazquez on Tuesday.

Under the territory’s constitution, the governorship fell to Justice Secretary Vazquez on Aug. 7 because Gov. Ricardo Rossello resigned after intensive public protests and his attempt to name a last-minute successor were knocked down by the territory’s Supreme Court.

The topsy-turvy events at least briefly divided the party, with several legislators saying last week they wanted Gonzalez to become governor.

Members of her party from across the island have since been falling in line to declare support and Vazquez so far has been spared the massive protests that drove Rossello from power due to outrage over government corruption, economic malaise and the leak of embarrassing conversations involving the governor and top aides.

…

Ugandan social media influencers and news organizations are critical of a new requirement announced last week that all commercial online publishers must register with the government. They see the rule as a step toward limiting freedom of speech and the press.

However, Uganda’s Communication Commission says the publishers have to be watched to ensure they are posting appropriate content.

Bettina Tumuhaise, known online as the Proud Farmer, posts videos promoting farming and giving farmers advice on how to improve their incomes.

Tumuhaise has 17,000 followers — a small number in a country of 43 million people. But because she is doing well enough to make money off the posts, officials say online publishers like her must register so their content can be observed and regulated.

Tuhumaise says she would rather be taxed than monitored.

“If I am posting and am getting 300 per post, that, I get. And I’m sure you know this is what I am getting. Tell me, ‘Give me 1%,’  and I’ll give it to you. But don’t come hiding under registration, when in actual sense, you have your ways. You have something else that you’re trying to promote,” she said.

Uganda’s Communications Commission says too much online content contains misinformation that can incite the public. Forcing those with influence to register — even those already licensed — will make them mindful of what they post, says UCC spokesman Ibrahim Bbossa. 

“These are people who are online radios, online televisions, online publishers,” Bbossa said.  “But we are also saying that we have equally people who will be using online platforms, like blogs, like Facebook — still for commercial purposes, and they earn money from it. And they actually disseminate information to wide audiences. The content they put out there is of importance, so we say they should register.”

But bloggers like Rosebell Kagumire note that Uganda already has laws to regulate online communication, and says the registration requirement is worrying.

“We see these undertones are very political. And very, really, rooted in the fact that Uganda is a very young country, and the person who is seeking to stay in power longer is older. And the population which is going to vote will be much younger for the first time, and they are on the internet, and they are visibly anti the status quo,” Kagumire said.

Questions remain

Uganda last year instituted a social media tax that many online publishers saw as a government effort to curb free speech. 

Nation Media Group editor Charles Bichachi says expanding the registration raises some concerns about press freedom, but is still in line with the law. 

“UCC is testing out how much it can go, in terms of holding the media. And I think as media, we need to be able to fight back, but within the law,” he said.

While authorities can easily track whether Uganda’s media outlets have registered, it’s not yet clear how well they will trace individuals, like bloggers, and what enforcement will be used to ensure compliance. 

…

He is arguably America’s best known architect — in part because he was a shameless self-promoter — but Frank Lloyd Wright also possessed the talent and success to back up his boasts. And now eight of his designs are being recognized on a global scale.

“The 20th century Architecture of Frank Lloyd Wright” was recently added to the list of  UNESCO World Heritage Sites. The designation is given to places that are deemed to have “outstanding universal value to humanity.” It’s rare for an architect to be designated by name on the list.

“I think Wright’s work was unique because he was unique,” says architectural historian William Richards. “Wright was calculating about his persona and he was an iconoclast who, I think, wore his uniqueness as a badge of honor.”

The eight Wright structures, which include private homes, a church and a world-famous museum, are some of the only 20th-century pieces of architecture in the world to receive the honor.
 

“They’re all fairly modest in scale,” says Richards of Wright’s works,“butthey had an absolutely outsized influence on generations of architects who thought about how we live in our homes, how we worship in our sanctuaries, how we use public space, and even how we engage artworks.”

UNESCO says the buildings reflect the “organic architecture” developed by Wright,  including an open plan, a blurring of the boundaries between the inside and outside of the house, and the unprecedented use of materials such as steel and concrete. 

Wright didn’t pioneer the open floor plan coveted by today’s homeowners but his embrace of the concept helped popularize the design element. 

Although Wright’s designs are up to a century old, they retain an air of modernity. One of the structures designated by UNESCO is the Robie House in Chicago. Constructed in 1910, its emphasis of the horizontal over the vertical recalls the flat American plains, and the cantilevered roof connects the interior to the outdoors. 

“I’m always struck when I see the Robie House in Chicago,” says architect Susan Piedmont-Palladino, director of Virginia Tech’s Washington Alexandria Architecture Center. “When you go visit, it looks more modern than many of the buildings around it and it’s 110 years old … It wouldn’t look odd with a Tesla in front of it.”

Another Wright building on the list is the Guggenheim Museum in New York City. Completed in 1959, its circular, organic design still feels innovative, even though the building is 60 years old. 

The same is true of other Wright buildings on the list, all of which were built between 1906 and 1969. They include Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois; Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin; Hollyhock House in Los Angeles, California;Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; theHerbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin; andTaliesin West in Scottsdale, Arizona.

“What he gave American architecture, I think, is a series of designs that are very clearly borne out of deep thinking, a concern for the landscape, and acknowledgement of the landscape, a design philosophy … something that could be defined as ‘American,’” Richards says. 

“I think that’s probably his biggest statement about architecture, which is that American architecture can’t possibly reference somebody else’s era, some other country’s heritage. It’s got to be expressly its own.” 

In his 70-year career, Wright designed 1,114 architectural works, 532 of which were actually built by the time he died in 1959. The American Institute of Architects considers Wright the “greatest American architect of all time.” 

Wright also changed the course of American architecture. 

“Not because he gave architects something that they could repeat over and over again,” Richards says. “He gave them the OK really to pursue individuality whenever possible … he didn’t give them a formula to replicate his work, but he gave him kind of an invitation to be themselves.”

The only other U.S. works of architecture on the list of World Heritage Sites list are Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Charlottesville, Virginia.  

…

The United Nations refugee agency urgently appealed to European governments Tuesday to let two migrant rescue ships disembark more than 500 passengers who remain stranded at sea as countries bicker over who should take responsibility for them. 
 
The people rescued while attempting to cross the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa are on ships chartered by humanitarian aid groups that the Italian government has banned from its territory. The archipelago nation of Malta also has refused to let the ships into that country’s ports.

It’s unclear where they might find safe harbor, even though the Italian island of Lampedusa appears closest. About 150 of the rescued passengers have been on the Spanish-flagged charity ship the Open Arms since they were plucked from the Mediterranean 13 days ago. 

“This is a race against time,” Vincent Cochetel, the International Red Cross special envoy for the central Mediterranean, said in a statement. “Storms are coming, and conditions are only going to get worse.” 
 
While the number of migrants reaching Europe by sea has dropped substantially so far this year, the Red Cross says nearly 600 people have died or gone missing in waters between Libya, Italy and Malta in 2019.  
 
The agency said many of the people on the ships “are reportedly survivors of appalling abuses in Libya.” Cochetel said the ships “must be immediately allowed to dock” and their passengers “allowed to receive much-needed humanitarian aid.” 
 
“To leave people who have fled war and violence in Libya on the high seas in this weather would be to inflict suffering upon suffering,” the envoy said.

The captain of the Open Arms, Marc Reig, sent a letter Monday to the Spanish Embassy in Malta asking Madrid to grant asylum to 31 minors on his ship. A senior Spanish official said Tuesday that Reig’s request carries no legal weight because the captain doesn’t have authority to seek protection for the minors.

Two charity groups that are operating the Ocean Viking rescue ship — Doctors Without Borders and sea rescue group SOS Mediterranee — also formally asked Italy and Malta to allow the 356 migrants aboard that vessel to be allowed to disembark.

The limbo of the Open Arms and Norwegian-flagged Ocean Viking is the latest in a string of standoffs that kept Europe-bound migrants at sea in miserable conditions. 
 
Southern nations that have been the main arrival points since 2015 — notably Italy, but also Malta and Greece — have complained of feeling abandoned by their European Union partners to cope with the influx.

Italy’s hard-line interior minister, Matteo Salvini, reiterated Tuesday his intent to ensure that the ships don’t enter Italian ports.

Differences among EU member nations over how to manage mass migration have sparked a political crisis in Europe, while attempts to reform the bloc’s asylum system have failed. The issue has been a vote-winner for far-right and populist parties. 
 
The EU’s executive commission said it has urged member countries to take action to resolve the status of the recently rescued passengers and stands ready to offer national governments support but cannot act alone.

“There’s nothing more we can do,” a European Commission spokeswoman said Tuesday.

…

The Los Angeles Opera said on Tuesday it will investigate accusations of sexual misconduct against Spanish tenor Placido Domingo, who described the claims as inaccurate.

The Los Angeles Opera, where Domingo is general director, was responding to accusations made by eight singers, a dancer and others in the classical music world in a report by the Associated Press.

The news agency reported allegations by the women of inappropriate behavior. The Associated Press said it also had spoken to almost three dozen other musicians, voice teachers and backstage staff who said they had witnessed what the report described as “sexually tinged” behavior by Domingo dating back three decades in various cities.

“LA Opera will engage outside counsel to investigate the concerning allegations about Placido Domingo,” the opera house said in a statement. The LA Opera is “committed to doing everything we can to foster a professional and collaborative environment where all our employees and artists feel equally comfortable, valued and respected.”

Domingo, in a statement distributed by his publicist Nancy Seltzer, called the accusations “deeply troubling, and as presented, inaccurate.”

“Still, it is painful to hear that I may have upset anyone or made them feel uncomfortable — no matter how long ago and despite my best intentions,” Domingo’s statement said. “I believed that all of my interactions and relationships were always welcomed and consensual.”

Future performances

The Philadelphia Orchestra Association said on Tuesday it had withdrawn an invitation to Domingo to appear as part of its opening night on Sept. 18.

The Metropolitan Opera in New York, where Domingo is due to perform in “Macbeth” next month and “Madama Butterfly” in November, said in a statement that it took accusations of sexual harassment and abuse of power seriously but would await the results of the LA Opera investigation “before making any final decisions about Mr Domingo’s future at the Met.”

Domingo, 78, is one of the most famous opera singers and directors in the world and the LA Opera described him on Tuesday as a “dynamic force” there for more than 30 years. He was one of the “Three Tenors,” along with Jose Carreras and the late Luciano Pavarotti, who brought opera to a wider audience with concerts around the world in the 1990s.

Changing standards

In the statement released by his publicist, Domingo added that while he would not intentionally harm, offend or embarrass anyone, “I recognize that the rules and standards by which we are — and should be — measured against today are very different than they were in the past.”

Hundreds of women have publicly accused powerful men in business, politics, the news media, sports and entertainment of sexual harassment and abuse since October 2017, fueled by the #MeToo social movement.

…

President Donald Trump sought to take credit Tuesday for a major manufacturing complex in western Pennsylvania in his latest effort to reinvigorate the Rust Belt support that sent him to the White House. He was cheered on by fluorescent-vest-clad workers who were paid to attend by Shell, their employer, which is building the facility.

Despite Trump’s claims, Shell announced its plans to build the complex in 2012, midway through President Barack Obama’s term in the White House.

The event was billed as an official White House event, but Trump turned much of it into a campaign-style rally, boasting of achievements he claims as president and assailing his would-be Democratic rivals for the 2020 election.

“I don’t think they give a damn about Western Pennsylvania, do you?” he prodded the crowd.

Trump was visiting Shell’s soon-to-be completed Pennsylvania Petrochemicals Complex, which will turn the area’s vast natural gas deposits into plastics. The facility is being built in an area hungry for investment and employment, though critics claim it will become the largest air polluter in western Pennsylvania.

Trump contends that America’s coal, oil and manufacturing are reviving and he deserves the credit. He’s been focusing on his administration’s efforts to increase the nation’s dependence on fossil fuels in defiance of increasingly urgent warnings about climate change. And he’s embracing plastic at a time when the world is sounding alarms over its impact.

“We don’t need it from the Middle East anymore,” Trump said of oil and natural gas, proclaiming the employees “the backbone of this country.”

As for the new complex, he declared, “This would have never happened without me and us.”

Trump’s appeals to blue-collar workers helped him win Beaver County, where the plant is located, by more than 18 percentage points in 2016, only to have voters there turn to Democrats in 2018’s midterm elections. In one of a series of defeats that led to Republicans’ loss of the House, voters sent Democrat Conor Lamb to Congress after the prosperity promised by Trump’s tax cuts failed to materialize.

Today, the much of the area is still struggling to recover from the shutting of steel plants in the 1980s that sent unemployment to nearly 30%. Former mill towns like Aliquippa have seen their population shrink, though Pittsburgh has lured major tech companies like Google and Uber, fueling an economic renaissance in a city that reliably votes Democratic.

Trump claimed that his steel and aluminum foreign-trade tariffs have saved the industries and that they are now “thriving,” exaggerating the recovery of the steel industry, particularly when it comes to jobs, which have largely followed pace with broader economic growth.

Trump took credit for the addition of 600,000 U.S. manufacturing jobs. Labor Department figures show that roughly 500,000 factory jobs have been added since his presidency started.

Manufacturing has also started to struggle anew this year as the administration has intensified its trade war with China and factory production has declined. Pennsylvania has lost 5,600 manufacturing jobs so far this year, according to the Labor Department.

The region’s natural gas deposits had been seen, for a time, as its new road to prosperity, with drilling in the Marcellus Shale reservoir transforming Pennsylvania into the nation’s No. 2 natural gas state. But drops in the price of oil and gas caused the initial jobs boom from fracking to fizzle, leading companies like Shell to turn instead to plastics and so-called cracker plants — named after the process in which molecules are broken down at high heat, turning fracked ethane gas into one of the precursors for plastic.

The company was given massive tax breaks to build the petrochemicals complex, along with a $10 million site development grant, with local politicians eager to accommodate a multibillion-dollar construction project.

But “fracking for plastic” has drawn alarm from environmentalists and other activists, who warn of potential health and safety risks to nearby residents and bemoan the production of ever more plastic. There has been growing concern over the sheer quantity of plastic on the planet, which has overwhelmed landfills, inundated bodies of water and permeated the deepest reaches of the ocean. Microplastics have been found in the bodies of birds, fish, whales and people, with the health impacts largely unknown.

“Of all the things we could invest in, of all the things we should be prioritizing, of all the companies we should be giving our taxpayer money to, this seems like the worst of all worlds,” said David Masur, executive director of PennEnvironment, a statewide environmental advocacy organization.

Trump defended the investment in plastics, claiming pollution in the ocean is “not our plastic.”

“It’s plastics that’s floating over in the ocean and the various oceans from other places,” he told reporters before boarding Air Force One.

A spokesman for Shell, Ray Fisher, said the company has “dedicated a great deal of time and resources” to ensure emissions from the plant meet or exceed local, state and federal requirements. “As designed, the project will actually help improve the local air shed as it relates to ozone and fine particulates,” he said.

The project currently has 5,000 construction workers. Once operational, however, the number of permanent employees at the site will shrink to 600.

The area still faces economic headwinds. The nearby Beaver Valley Power Station, a nuclear plant that has employed 850 people, has announced plans to close in 2021. And the Bruce Mansfield Power Plant, once the state’s largest coal-powered plant, announced Friday that it would close this fall, 19 months earlier than expected, at a cost of at least 200 jobs.

…

Argentina’s peso closed weaker again on Tuesday following a second day of market turmoil triggered by opposition candidate Alberto Fernandez’s landslide victory in a primary election that dealt a severe blow to President Mauricio Macri’s re-election chances.

The peso closed 4.29% lower at 55.9 per U.S. dollar after touching 59 to the dollar earlier. The currency had hit an all-time low on Monday of 65 to the dollar, a drop of 30%, on fears that a Fernandez government could take Argentina back to interventionist economic policies.

The central bank has sold a total $255 million of its own reserves since Monday in an effort to help steady the currency.

“The market thinks Fernandez will likely default and impose capital controls and renegotiate with the IMF. In a nutshell, the market thinks Fernandez is the return of populism,” said Claudio Irigoyen of Bank of America Merrill Lynch (BAML).

Fernandez, who has former President Cristina Fernandez as his running mate, pulled off a stunning upset in the primary with a wider-than-expected 15-point lead over Macri, a free market proponent.

Monday’s crash in the peso unnerved global equities investors, with markets already jittery over the Sino-U.S. trade war and protests in Hong Kong.

“Yes, Argentina is a small economy. However, the last thing global markets want to see is another market-friendly government fall to populism and/or geopolitics,” said Rabobank strategist Michael Every.

Blame Game

In an interview Monday, Fernandez said he was willing to collaborate with the current government after his primary triumph on Sunday sent the peso, stocks and bonds reeling.

The primary results showed Fernandez, a former cabinet chief, was well placed to win October’s general election in the first round. He blamed Macri for the market turmoil.

“The dialogue is open, but I don’t want to lie to Argentines. What can I do? I’m just a candidate, my pen doesn’t sign decrees,” Fernandez said in an interview with Argentine TV channel Net TV broadcast on Monday.

“Markets react badly when they realize they were scammed,” Fernandez said earlier on Monday, adding that Argentina lives in a “fictitious economy” and that Macri’s government is not providing answers.

Fernandez, regarded as a moderate within the Peronist movement, has said he would seek to “rework” Argentina’s $57-billion standby agreement with the International Monetary Fund if he won the general election. He has proposed an economic and social pact to combat inflation, which is running at 55%.

Macri, too, deflected responsibility for the financial volatility, saying at a press conference on Monday that the opposition should “self-criticize” its own policies in the wake of the market reaction.

Macri, a scion of one of Argentina’s wealthiest families, came to power in 2015 on promises to kick-start Latin America’s third-largest economy via a liberalization wave.

But the promised recovery has not materialized and Argentina is in recession.

Rising Risk

Argentine assets had not recorded the kind of simultaneous fall seen on Monday since the South American country’s 2001 economic crisis and debt default, Refinitiv data showed.

After an initial tentative move high on Tuesday morning, traders said the market turned and left dollar-denominated bonds down roughly 10 points down across the board, though volume was low.

Investors were still assessing the damage caused by Monday’s crash. Argentina’s country risk rose 164 basis points to 1,631, the highest since 2009.

Index provider MSCI said it has not yet considered reclassifying the recently upgraded Argentina stock index out of emerging markets despite the massive spike in volatility and decline in prices.

“Accessibility of the market for foreign investors is the key factor here,” said Pavlo Taranenko, executive director of index research at MSCI.

As concerns rise about Argentina’s ability to meet its debt obligations, investors are looking closely at the government’s ability to roll over its short-term notes known as ‘Letes.”

“Markets will be sweating bullets each time one of these maturities come due,” Jeffries Fixed Income said in a note to investors.

The cost of insuring against an Argentine sovereign default jumped again on Tuesday, according to data from IHS Markit.

Markit’s calculations price the probability of a sovereign default within the next five years at more than 72%.

Analysts also predicted the peso’s fall would continue. BAML said it expects the exchange rate at 70.5 by end-2019 and 106.6 by end 2020.

…

The U.N.-assisted tribunal trying leaders of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge on charges of genocide and other crimes affirmed Tuesday it will cease legal proceedings against Nuon Chea, the communist group’s No. 2 leader who died at age 93 on Aug. 4 while his conviction was under appeal. 
 
A statement by the tribunal’s Supreme Court Chamber cited Cambodian law and international criminal tribunal precedent as the basis for its ruling. It also acknowledged a request by Nuon Chea’s defense team to clarify how ending the appeal due to Nuon Chea’s death affects “the trial judgment and underlying convictions” — whether it leaves his conviction standing, or nullifies it.

Nuon Chea, the chief ideologue for the Khmer Rouge, was convicted in two separate trials of crimes against humanity, genocide and other offenses committed when the Khmer Rouge held power in the late 1970s. About 1.7 million people died from starvation, disease, overwork and executions under its rule. He was tried along with Khieu Samphan, the regime’s former head of state, who like him received life sentences in both trials. Cambodia does not have capital punishment.

One of Nuon Chea’s lawyers, Australian Doreen Chen, said last week that her team believes that according to law, their late client “is presumed innocent until a final appeal judgment is delivered.”

“Since the Supreme Court Chamber hasn’t issued the appeal judgment, he is now considered innocent and that trial judgment against him is effectively vacated. We have asked the Supreme Court Chamber to confirm this view and let us know what should happen next,” she said in an interview over the internet.

She also said they are seeking to have his appeal continue despite his death “so that there can be a final judgment and confirmation of the truth, not only for Nuon Chea but for the Cambodian people.”

The tribunal, which has cost hundreds of millions of dollars, has convicted only one other defendant, Kaing Guek Eav, alias Duch, who as head of the Khmer Rouge prison system ran the infamous Tuol Sleng torture center in Phnom Penh. Two other defendants died before their trials could be completed.

Khieu Samphan, 88, is the only surviving defendant and almost certainly will be the last one to face trial, due to the Cambodian government’s opposition to launching any more prosecutions.

…

Rarely has a candidate gone far in a US presidential race highlighting a singular issue, but Democrat Jay Inslee is aiming to buck that trend with his commitment to tackling climate change.

Unless he does something to dramatically change his trajectory — he has less than one percent support in polls — Inslee, currently the governor of Washington state, likely will be an also-ran in the crowded race to decide who challenges President Donald Trump in 2020.

But what he has already achieved makes his candidacy worthy: launching a Democratic policy debate on climate change and how to prevent environmental disaster over the coming decades.

Since entering the race in March, Inslee has repeatedly hit the panic button on climate, demanding the United States reverse course and take global warming and environmental protections far more seriously.

For Inslee and several other Democratic candidates, the science is clear: dramatic action over the next decade is needed to reduce carbon pollution, or irreparable harm will result.

“Unless we defeat the climate crisis, everything else we’ve worked on will be moot,” the square-jawed Inslee, 68, told voters at the Iowa State Fair.

Inslee is quick to highlight his economic accomplishments as governor. He has also savaged Trump as a “white supremacist” who is dividing Americans and is hurting farmers with his trade war with China. 

But “climate change is the big banana, and we’ve got to make sure we take care of it,” he told AFP in an interview on the sidelines of a recent Iowa Democratic dinner featuring 20 of the party’s presidential hopefuls. 

Trump, Inslee has stressed, has denied the climate crisis, ending important Obama-era regulations and pulling the United States out of the Paris climate accord.

And on Monday, Trump rolled back key provisions of the Endangered Species Act, the popular law that helped save the bald eagle and grizzly bear.

“I’ll stand up against him on his weakest point, which is his environmental degradation,” Inslee said.

US voters have rarely considered climate change a top-priority presidential election issue, but that is changing. An April CNN poll labeled it as the single most important issue to Democratic primary voters, topping health care.

As a candidate, Inslee has introduced a sweeping and sophisticated climate mission, which popular liberal congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez praised as the “gold standard.”

It calls for zero carbon emissions across the economy within the next quarter century, including 100 percent carbon-neutral electricity and zero-emission new cars and buses by 2030.

The plan would require a staggering $9 trillion in investment and create eight million jobs. It would also likely encounter fierce resistance from the fossil fuel industry, and from many Republicans in Congress who oppose such drastic steps.

Clean energy economy

Inslee, who himself drives an electric car and wants to end the use of coal, has hammered away on the issue — most of his speaking time at the Democratic debates has addressed climate change. 

And that likely has inspired leading Democratic candidates to release their own ambitious climate plans.

Inslee insists he is a multi-faceted candidate who can beat Trump “like a $2 mule” in the election. 

He stood up to the president when he instituted a ban on arrivals from Muslim-majority countries, and blasted the administration’s family separations at the US-Mexico border as “the darkest moment” of Trump’s presidency.

He points to securing the largest teacher pay raise in the nation, expanding paid family leave and instituting what he says is the first public health option in the United States.

“If you do things to bring diversity to your community, to bring people together instead of intolerance, if you build a middle class instead of trickle down, just giving everything to the top one percent, if you take care of clean air and clean water, you have the biggest economic growth in America,” Inslee added. 

“That’s what we’ve done in the state of Washington.”  

And he explained climate change is not a singular issue, but one that affects health, national security, and the economy.

“We know the biggest job creator right now is in clean energy,” he said.

…

Guatemala’s incoming president Alejandro Giammattei has vowed to seek better terms for his country from an unpopular migration deal agreed with Washington last month, but any room for maneuver is seen as likely to be hampered by weakness in the national Congress.

Preliminary results from Sunday’s election gave Giammattei, a conservative, a runoff victory with 58% of the vote, well ahead of his center-left opponent, former first lady Sandra Torres, on 42%.

Still, his Vamos Party won just 8% of the vote in June’s congressional election, giving it around a tenth of the seats in a legislature bristling with nearly 20 parties. The biggest bloc of seats will be controlled by his rival Torres.

Speaking a few hours before he was declared the winner, the 63-year-old Giammattei said he wanted to see what could be done to improve the accord that outgoing President Jimmy Morales made under pressure from his American counterpart Donald Trump that seeks to stem U.S.-bound migration from Central America.

Giammattei will not take office until January, by which time Guatemala may be under severe pressure from the deal, which effectively turns the country into a buffer zone by forcing migrants to apply for asylum there rather than in the United States.

“I hope that during this transition the doors will open to get more information so we can see what, from a diplomatic point of view, we can do to remove from this deal the things that are not right for us, or how we can come to an agreement with the United States,” Giammattei told Reuters in an interview.

Threatened with economic sanctions if he said no, Morales agreed in late July to make Guatemala a so-called safe third country for migrants, despite endemic poverty and violence that have led to a constant flow of people northward.

“It’s not right for the country,” Giammattei said of the deal. “If we don’t have the capacity to look after our own people, imagine what it will be like for foreigners.”

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Giammattei on Monday, saying in a statement the United States looked forward to working with Guatemala on “the underlying conditions driving irregular migration,” without giving more details.

Asked about Giammattei’s comments, U.S. border patrol chief Carla Provost said in an interview with Fox News: “It certainly is a concern. We need both Mexico and Guatemala to continue doing what they’re doing,” referring to Mexico’s campaign to block migrants from crossing its border with the United States.

Concerns Growing

The safe third country agreement is deeply unpopular in Guatemala.

A poll published this month by Guatemalan newspaper Prensa Libre showed more than eight out of 10 rejected the idea of the country accepting foreign migrants seeking asylum.

It is unclear how much Giammattei will be able to do to change the deal, which would require Hondurans and Salvadorans to apply for asylum in Guatemala rather than the United States.

It also foresees granting U.S. visas to some Guatemalan workers.

The veteran bureaucrat has promised to erect an “investment wall” on the border with Mexico to curb migration. He has also proposed bringing back the death penalty.

Giammattei, who took Monday off after his landslide victory, inherits a country also struggling with a 60% poverty rate and one of the highest murder rates in the Western Hemisphere.

Adding to his challenges, Fitch Ratings said the divided political landscape will make it harder for the president to reverse declining tax collection that the agency cited in April when it revised Guatemala’s sovereign outlook to negative.

“The incoming administration will have limited support in an atomized Congress, raising the risks for continued political gridlock,” Fitch Director Carlos Morales said in a statement.

Weak governance and economic development are ongoing risks to the country’s rating, Fitch said.

Many Guatemalans are fed up with the political class after investigations by the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), a U.N. anti-corruption body, led to the arrest of then-President Otto Perez in 2015, and then threatened to unseat his successor Morales, a former television comedian.

Morales terminated the CICIG’s mandate from next month, and Giammattei’s failure to reverse that decision has stirred concerns about his commitment to fight corruption.

Adriana Beltran, director of citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA), a think tank, said the CICIG might just have a future “if Guatemalans take to the streets and there is enough pressure from within.”

But the Trump administration was unlikely to do much to complement such efforts, Beltran added.

“Their focus is how to pressure Giammattei to agree to the third country agreement,” she said. “Anti-corruption is not a priority for this (U.S.) administration.”

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