Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
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July 16
The Washington Post on Erica Schwartz, the nominee for head of the CDC
Erica Schwartz, the nominee to lead the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was asked on Wednesday whether she supports the Trump administration’s cancellation of mRNA vaccine research. “This is the first time I’m actually hearing about this,” she said. “As a private citizen, I certainly was not following that.”
Really?
Schwartz said several times that she believes mRNA vaccines are safe and effective, but her professed ignorance of a decision that sent shock waves through the public health field highlights how much she’ll struggle to be effective if confirmed.
Schwartz is the third person tapped by President Donald Trump to run the CDC under Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. The first, Dave Weldon, was withdrawn because senators feared his anti-vaccine views would give Kennedy too much leeway to dismantle immunization policies. The second, Susan Monarez, was fired just weeks into the job because of her refusal to comply with Kennedy’s agenda.
Avoiding those fates is surely on Schwartz’s mind. She knows that she must articulate unvarnished support for vaccines to secure enough GOP votes for confirmation. Yet she also must cultivate a working relationship with Kennedy, which means avoiding public criticism of his policies.
Thus, when Senate Health Committee Chairman Bill Cassidy (R-Louisiana) pressed Schwartz on whether she would be able to do what’s right, “free of political interference,” she scoffed at the notion that this could ever become an issue. “The secretary absolutely will allow me to be the CDC director,” she said.
When Sen. Patty Murray (D-Washington) asked how she would respond if Kennedy demanded that she agree to approve every recommendation from his handpicked vaccine advisory committee, Schwartz responded, “The secretary would never ask me to do that.”
But that’s exactly what Kennedy allegedly did with Monarez, triggering her departure.
Schwartz’s assurances that she will “follow the science, wherever it leads” are certainly welcome, as is her expression of support for vaccines. But words themselves are less important than a willingness to stand by them once in office.
Will she stick up for mRNA vaccines? The technology has the power to respond quickly to new pathogens and create personalized therapies, yet administration officials — especially Kennedy — have remained hostile to them.
And how much control of her agency will she really have? Kennedy is reportedly pushing researchers to look for links between immunizations and conditions such as autism. He’s also reportedly considering creating a new science office at the CDC that would report to political staff and reworking the charter of the agency’s vaccine advisory committee to broaden the qualifications of who can serve on it.
Schwartz’s performance on Wednesday inspired little confidence that she will serve as an effective check on the anti-vaccine cranks atop HHS. So long as Kennedy remains in charge, it might be an impossible task.
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July 19
The Wall Street Journal on Iran, Donald Trump and assassination threats
President Trump is taking Iran’s threats to assassinate him seriously, as well he should. He reportedly switched Air Force One from the new Qatar version on his return from the recent NATO summit on the advice of the Secret Service. How about a little concern, then, about Iran’s threats to kill his former national security adviser, John Bolton?
The White House hasn’t confirmed the Air Force One switch, but it hasn’t denied the story either. Notably, the Justice Department has subpoenaed New York Times writers who reported the story to disclose their sources. That’s harassment against the press that won’t make the U.S. safer. The story arguably did Mr. Trump a favor by reminding the public that Iran’s regime hasn’t turned over a “new leaf,” to borrow Vice President JD Vance’s term.
“They want to take out the U.S. leader—me,” Mr. Trump told reporters in Turkey. “I’m on every list. I saw this morning, I’m on every single one of their lists. And so far, I guess I’ve been a little bit lucky, but that maybe doesn’t last very long.”
Which brings us to Mr. Bolton, who has been targeted by Iran along with Mr. Trump’s first-term Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and State’s main deputy for Iran policy in the first term, Brian Hook. The Biden Administration was concerned enough that it provided the trio with protection details.
But after taking office a second time, Mr. Trump pulled that protection from all three. This was raw vindictiveness, since we doubt Iran has given up on killing them. Iran blames all three for the 2020 assassination of Qassem Soleimani, who ran Iran’s network of terror proxies for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. These Americans are targets because of a decision the President rightly made.
The danger for Mr. Bolton in particular has increased because the Trump Administration is prosecuting him for mishandling classified documents. Mr. Bolton pleaded guilty last month to avoid the threat of additional charges against him or his family. The plea deal stipulates a fine of $2.25 million, which is an effort to strip Mr. Bolton of the income from his 2020 book that was critical of Mr. Trump.
But far worse, the Justice Department has insisted on seeking a prison term of up to five years. This is a penalty far beyond what other officials have received for similar or greater classification offenses. John Deutch, David Petraeus and Sandy Berger never served jail time and none pleaded guilty to felonies. Mr. Bolton was treated more harshly.
Federal Judge Theodore Chuang has scheduled sentencing for Mr. Bolton for Oct. 28. But a jail term of any length runs the risk of assassination. It wouldn’t take much for Iranians to bribe an inmate, or threaten relatives of an inmate or guard, to have Mr. Bolton killed while he’s in custody. Prisons are notoriously insecure.
Mr. Trump has the Secret Service to protect him, but these other public servants don’t. They have to do without security or pay for it themselves, as Mr. Bolton has. Let’s hope Judge Chuang dispenses with the Justice Department’s unjust prison demand and issues a suspended sentence.
As for Mr. Trump, he’s already exacted revenge against his former adviser with the prosecution and fine. He knows Iran has a kill “list” that includes him and his advisers. If Mr. Bolton is killed in prison, the President and his Justice Department will be partly responsible.
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July 20
The Philadelphia Inquirer says ICE is not about enforcing immigration law, but targeting
A poet, a nurse, a construction worker, and a food delivery driver. The four people killed in 2026 by federal immigration agents were regular folks trying to live their lives in peace before they were crushed by the unchecked power of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
The brief respite between the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January and the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastián Durán Guerrero over the last two weeks shows the government learned nothing from what happened in Minneapolis earlier this year.
There, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, alongside members of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, spread terror and chaos in plain view. Masked and heavily armed, agents trampled people’s constitutional rights as they used excessive force to intimidate and arrest with impunity, ultimately killing Good and Pretti, both U.S. citizens.
Sadly, the national outrage that followed did not dissuade Trump from his misbegotten mission — it merely amounted to a public relations problem addressed with a few firings and a temporary suspension of the siege.
That it was Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino who lost their jobs instead of Stephen Miller, the white nationalist architect of the president’s immigration crackdown, signaled where the White House stood.
Starting in June, the Trump administration once again unleashed ICE on America’s streets, with a reported target of 2,000 arrests a day. With little oversight, zero accountability, no transparency, and goaded by officials to escalate, it is a miracle more people haven’t been killed already. It is also likely that more deaths will follow.
The latest killings share striking similarities. Both Salgado Araujo in Texas and Durán Guerrero in Maine were on their way to work, both were not ICE investigation targets, and both were shot by agents during traffic stops.
Eyewitness video has repeatedly captured agents in unmarked cars aggressively pursuing and cutting off drivers, as well as firing on moving vehicles — tactics long abandoned by most law enforcement agencies, whose use-of-force policies prioritize protecting human life.
Immigration agents have also used banned choke holds and utilized tear gas and pepper spray indiscriminately, even harming children, ProPublica reported. A recent analysis of 1,200 immigration enforcement incidents by the American Civil Liberties Union found that immigration agents are using force and the threat of force as default tactics to coerce, not to respond to any threat.
ACLU researchers concluded there was a systemic breakdown in professional norms and standards with “encouragement of abuse by senior administration officials.”
After Durán Guerrero’s death, cooler heads inside the U.S. Department of Homeland Security called for a moratorium on vehicle stops, but were almost immediately overruled by the president, who was reportedly furious.
In fact, Trump has consistently shown no empathy nor taken any responsibility for what is being done in his name. If anything, he has doubled down on his inflammatory racist rhetoric against immigrants and anyone who would stand against him.
This should chill every American to the core as much as it should spur us all into action.
What is happening with ICE is not about enforcing immigration law; it is about a lawless administration willing to systematically ignore the Constitution, including every person’s right to walk down the street without fear of being assaulted, detained, or arrested by the government without cause. It is about a president using the vast power of the United States against those he deems a target with little concern about who gets caught in the crossfire.
Once this kind of violence becomes accepted and normalized, its use will not stop. No place and no one will be safe.
Voters must act quickly to hold federal lawmakers accountable.
Republicans in Congress have blindly enabled Trump, acquiescing to his demands, including $70 billion in June for immigration enforcement. That’s on top of the $75 billion ICE received last year. This would be excessive at any other time. Coming when many Americans are struggling to make ends meet as life becomes more unaffordable, it is indefensible.
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July 20
The Boston Globe on the flimsy legal arguments against birthright citizenship
President Trump has long been fixated on birthright citizenship, the longstanding constitutional guarantee that nearly all children born on American soil are automatically American citizens. In his first term, he floated the idea of ending birthright citizenship through executive fiat. And on the first day of his second term, he signed an executive order seeking to do just that, carving out new exceptions including children born to parents who are in the United States either temporarily or without legal status. The executive order was immediately challenged, and last month, the Supreme Court struck the order down in a 6-3 vote.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts made clear that birthright citizenship as we have come to know it over the past 150 years is here to stay. “Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” Roberts wrote. “The Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”
And yet, despite the court’s decision, Trump has still not accepted that citizenship is a near-universal birthright in the United States and is still looking for ways to undermine it. “I will be asking for a Rehearing by the United States Supreme Court, IMMEDIATELY. This miscarriage of justice will destroy America if they don’t change their absolutely insane decision,” Trump said in a recent social media post. The chances that the Supreme Court will take up Trump’s request are very slim: The last time the Court agreed to rehear a case was in 1965, and the last time it reversed a decision based on a rehearing was in 1956.
But Trump’s insistence that the United States can somehow do away with birthright citizenship without passing a constitutional amendment has only prompted more efforts by politicians and activists on the right. Earlier this week, Republican Sen. Jim Banks, of Indiana, introduced legislation to redefine birthright citizenship. And right-wing commentators have attacked Justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump appointed in 2020, for voting with the majority, calling her a “DEI hire” and demanding that she be removed.
The right’s effort rests on flimsy legal arguments — and flimsy factual ones, too. To hear Trump’s allies tell it, the citizenship clause is routinely taken advantage of by so-called “birth tourism” — that is, pregnant women coming to the United States on a tourist visa so that they can deliver their babies and automatically guarantee them citizenship. In his post asking for a rehearing, Trump claimed that “Signs and Billboards are being put up all over our Southern Border, and Mexico, advertising BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP, with ‘Deliveries starting at $4000.’”
This argument doesn’t make sense from a legal or practical standpoint.
The language of the citizenship clause in the 14th Amendment is plain and simple: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” That’s why the narrow exceptions to the birthright citizenship clause include the children of foreign diplomats and occupying armies — people who are not subject to US jurisdiction. People who are in the United States either temporarily or unlawfully, on the other hand, are still subject to US jurisdiction.
Moreover, “birth tourism” is not such a significant immigration problem that it should prompt the Supreme Court to entirely redefine birthright citizenship. It’s undeniable that some children born in the United States are indeed born to tourists. In many cases, it’s not planned. For example, Folarin Balogun, the soccer player who played on the US men’s national team in the World Cup, was born in New York after his mother, who was visiting the United States, was prevented by an airline from flying back to London because she was too far along in her pregnancy. (Despite his criticism of birthright citizenship, Trump still intervened in controversial fashion to get FIFA to reverse the red card a referee gave to Balogun.)
But the overall number of babies born to tourists is incredibly small. According to researchers at Penn State, only 0.3 percent of US births can be attributed to birth tourism. If the US government still finds that to be a problem, then it can tackle it through tightening visa rules and go after cases of visa fraud — rather than ending birthright citizenship as we know it — just as the Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations have in the past.
No matter how conservatives feel, birthright citizenship is enshrined in the Constitution, and the Supreme Court has again made clear that the text means exactly what it says. Citizenship is a promise to every person born in the United States — one that, as Roberts says, the country intends to keep. If Trump or Republicans want to change how we define citizenship, then they will have to make that case to the American people and pass a constitutional amendment.
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July 19
The Guardian says the world is America-avoidant
Earlier this year, a spate of western TikTok and Instagram creators announced that they were at “a very Chinese time in my life” – drinking hot water and wearing slippers around their homes. The Chinamaxxing phenomenon primarily reflected the constant need of influencers for novel content. But social media trends also reflect a growing fascination with China, as the economic historian Adam Tooze has noted.
While it broods over China’s economic, military and technical advance, the Trump administration is accelerating Beijing’s diplomatic progress, as striking new polling by the Pew Research Center shows. For the first time, China and Xi Jinping are seen more favourably than the US and its president in most of the 36 major countries surveyed – including Canada, Mexico and Australia. Only in six countries did people rate the US more highly. While Beijing has seen significant improvements in some places, the slump in Washington’s standing is more dramatic. Across 20 countries, the median percentage with a favourable view of China rose from 32% to 46% between 2023 and this year; for the US, it fell from 58% to 36%. Views of China were much more positive in Latin America, Africa and parts of south and south-east Asia than in wealthier European and east Asian countries.
On Thursday, Mr Trump accused China of interfering with the 2020 election – casting doubt on polls ahead of midterms that are forecast to hit Republicans hard. Never mind the lack of evidence; he offered Argentines a $20 billion economic incentive to vote in line with his preference last October. In nearly every country surveyed, more people thought the US interfered in other countries than thought China did so. Mr Trump’s demands to take over Greenland, the abduction of Venezuela’s then leader Nicolás Maduro and the illegal war on Iran have all left their mark. Even the World Cup, which should have been an easy US soft power win, has been tarred by his exclusion and bullying.
The Pew findings may further convince it of Washington’s hegemonic decline. China is keen to encourage the belief that it is leaping into a shiny new future of cyberpunk cities, while the West struggles with a declining standard of living – not least because it is useful in the face of domestic disillusionment.
But public perceptions of other countries are often complex and volatile. US standing rebounded after dropping sharply over the Iraq war; China’s favorability ratings fell during the pandemic, reflecting its handling of the outbreak. The lasting lesson for both superpowers should surely be that presentation shapes opinion, but others will judge them on their actions – and respond accordingly.
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