It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
The Repeating Signals From Deep Space Are Extremely Unlikely to Be Aliens. Here's Why
MICHELLE STARR
14 FEB 2020
There are many things in the Universe we are yet to understand. It's a big old machine just churning out mysteries, and we tiny specks crawling on the surface of a small blue dot are doing our darnedest to unravel them.
Recently, news emerged about one of the most tantalising mysteries. For the first time, a fast radio burst (FRB) has been detected emitting in a pattern - a 16-day cycle, with four days of intermittent bursts and 12 days of silence.
We still don't know what causes these extremely powerful, millisecond blasts of radio waves from up to billions of light-years away. Most of them haven't been detected repeating, most of them are wildly unpredictable, and only five out of over 100 have been traced to a source galaxy.
It's proven extremely tricky to find a cosmic phenomenon that fits the profile of FRBs. Violent, highly magnetised neutron stars called magnetars are pretty close, but there's some doubt as to whether they can emit the nova-scale energies detected in fast radio bursts.
But the absence of a solid explanation thus far doesn't mean we should automatically turn to aliens, as so many headlines have done. When unusual cosmic phenomena appear, rampant speculation arrives at this suggestion all too quickly.
"Invoking aliens has become too systematic, too easy, and too sensationalist a way to get the public's attention ... [It] reminds me of the way we used to invoke gods," planetary scientist and astrobiologist Charley Lineweaver of the Australian National University (ANU) told ScienceAlert.
"Instead of 'gods of the gaps' we now have 'aliens of the gaps'."
Alien communication problems
In 2017, some physicists proposed that the fast radio burst signals could be produced by radiation leaking from alien spaceship propulsion systems. Others have put forward that it could be one-way alien communication.
"My understanding is that those explanations are not excluded by the available evidence," physicist Paul Ginsparg of Cornell University, and the founder of arXiv, told ScienceAlert.
"But also that they are not required by it, in the sense that there remain equally or more plausible explanations that don't employ extraterrestrial intelligence."
One big problem for the alien idea is the variety of locations and distances involved. Of the FRBs that have been localised, some are from billions of light-years away; others are from hundreds of millions.
As astronomer Seth Shostak of the SETI Institute has noted, that alone is reason enough to discount the hypothesis that FRBs are extraterrestrial communications.
"How could aliens organise so much of the Universe to engage in broadcasting the same sort of signal?" he wrote in a blog post last year.
"There's hardly been enough time since the Big Bang to coordinate such widespread teamwork, even if you can think of a reason for it!"
For the bursts to have an artificial origin, at least 100 different alien species would have to be technologically advanced to produce such a powerful signal that it can move across space and still be detected by us.
For context, here on Earth, we only developed technology that could beam radio waves into space just around 125 years ago. That means that any radio transmission from Earth would only have travelled, at a maximum, 125 light-years. By the time the signal has propagated that far, it would have become too attenuated to be detected.
That's not to say that a more advanced civilisation couldn't produce a powerful signal... but there's another problem. All these hypothetical alien civilisations would've had to have developed their technologies at just the right time, so that all their signals are reaching Earth in the same handful of years.
Are we alone?
To date, we have had no credible evidence that there are other intelligent, advanced civilisations out there. This lack of evidence for other civilisations seems paradoxical in the context of the Drake Equation, which suggests there should be quite a few of these civilisations around.
But should there? Of all the multitudinous species on Earth, only humans have human-like intelligence. In turn, this suggests that our kind of intelligence is a very long way from inevitable.
"My reading of biological evolution on Earth is that human-like intelligence is not a convergent feature of evolution," Lineweaver told ScienceAlert.
"The bottom line to my thinking is that the best data we have (data from evolution here on Earth) strongly suggest that our closest relatives in the Universe are here on Earth."
So, there are logistical reasons to think that fast radio bursts are natural in origin. As was also eventually found with interstellar object 'Oumuamua, another target of enthusiasm for alien presence - there is actually evidence in the data that the phenomenon is a natural one.
"I think the best argument against the extraterrestrial hypothesis is that we see FRBs with all sorts of weird properties (some wide, some narrow, some polarised, others not, some have multiple pulses, some are a single pulse)," an FRB astronomer, who wished to remain anonymous for concern of being targeted by conspiracy theorists, told ScienceAlert.
"If I were designing a spacecraft propulsion system (which would be bloody good fun), I'm not sure some of those properties (e.g. changing polarisation over the pulse), would make a better spacecraft engine.
"On the other hand, we do see a similar diversity of properties in pulsars, which everyone agrees are a natural phenomenon."
This line of thinking is also supported by astronomer Andy Howell of Las Cumbres Observatory and the University of California Santa Barbara.
Why #FRBs aren't aliens, part 3. The frequency sweep predicted how far away #FRBs would be, and then they were found to be consistent with those distances. That's explained by a natural process. For communication you want something unnatural. 14/
All that isn't to say there's no value in considering the alien explanation. It's important for scientists to keep an open mind, to be receptive to possibilities, even if they are small ones.
Consider the cases - even though they only constitute a small percentage - of hypotheses initially derided by the scientific community, only later to be widely accepted. The existence of tectonic plates comes to mind.
Wild ideas can also help to engage the public with science; not just the discoveries themselves, but the work scientists do to present the hypothesis, provide evidence for it, and generate a theory.
And there are practical possibilities, too.
"These discussions give non-scientists an indication of the sorts of the amazing observations being made, the fun that scientists have thinking about them, and the possibilities that are out there," Ginsparg told ScienceAlert.
"Wild speculation can sometimes inform the next generation of instrumentation, which can then either confirm or refute the wild hypothesis, or see something else entirely and unexpected. And that too is what makes science fun."
The difficulty lies in understanding the difference between pondering wild ideas as a thought exercise, and evidence based on data and prior experience, observation and conclusions.
Or, as Ginsparg put it, "in a discussion about string theory, a senior physicist once argued to me that one can't 'prove' there's no Santa Claus, but we have alternative ways of explaining the observed phenomena with fewer unnecessary assumptions."
So, for now, we'll be holding off on the aliens until the aliens tell us otherwise.
A radio signal is coming from space every 16 days. What the hell is it?
Scientists don’t know what to make of fast radio bursts. Some think they come from aliens.
Astronomers use radio telescopes like this one, part of the Very Large Array observatory in New Mexico, to listen to the cosmos. Getty Images
Fast radio bursts are one of astronomy’s tantalizing unsolved mysteries. These sudden pulses of radio waves come from far outside our galaxy. They last about a millisecond. And sometimes, the signals repeat.
Until recently, that’s about all scientists could tell you about fast radio bursts, or FRBs. Our radio telescopes, which pick up noise rather than light, first detected them in 2007; since then, we’ve recorded a few dozen more, but not enough to be able to put together a compelling theory of what causes them.
With the origin of these signals still unknown, some scientists — notably the chair of the Harvard astronomy department, Avi Loeb — speculate aliens could be sending them.
Now, researchers based in Canada, where a radio telescopeexceptionally well equipped to detect FRBs began operating in 2018, have added a new piece to the puzzle. A few previously detected FRBs had been shown to repeat sporadically, without any regular pattern. But by observing the sky from September 2018 through October 2019, the researchers in Canada found 28 bursts — including one that repeats with a very regular pattern indeed: It appears every 16.35 days, to be exact.
This is the first time scientists have detected such a pattern in an FRB source. The peculiar signal is coming from a massive spiral galaxy 500 million light-years away. The source sends out one or two bursts of radio waves every hour, over four days. Then it goes quiet for 12 days. Then the whole process repeats.
So why is a radio signal repeating every 16 days like clockwork, and what can that teach us about its origins?
That’s the central question ofa new paper authored by the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment in collaboration with the Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB).
There are a couple of things we know for sure. The 16-day “periodicity” cannot be occurring “by chance coincidence,” the scientists write, and it’s “an important clue to the nature of the object.” It’s clear that the FRB can’t be originating from a cataclysmic event, like a star going supernova, since that’s a one-time affair.
But beyond that, the scientists really aren’t sure. They propose a few possibilities.
One explanation is orbital motion. Celestial bodies are known to orbit on regular timescales, so a pair of objects — like a star and a black hole — could account for the 16-day pattern. “Given the source’s location in the outskirts of a massive spiral galaxy,” the paper says, “a supermassive black hole companion seems unlikely, although lower-mass black holes are viable.”
The authors say FRBs could be generated if giant radio pulses from an energetic neutron star are eclipsed by a companion object. They also note that periodicity could arise from the rotation of a star, but that’s a tricky hypothesis: Previously observed sources have had way shorter periodicities (a few hours, not a couple of weeks) and way less strength (we’re talking nine orders of magnitude less) than FRBs have.
In short, the authors don’t know what’s causing FRBs. But aliens are not on their list of possibilities. They end their paper calling for more research.
Are aliens causing fast radio bursts? Probably not.
While grounded speculation among astrophysicists suggests that FRBs are caused by neutron stars, stars merging, or black holes, it’s a different theory that has caught hold of the public imagination: Maybe they’re caused by intelligent alien life.
The hypothesis raises some obvious questions. FRBs come from all over space, not just from one particular region. Are we to assume that these aliens are sophisticated enough to have spread across many galaxies, but that there are no signs of them other than these energy bursts? Or that many civilizations independently settled on the same odd style of energy burst?
The 2017 paper argues for the latter possibility: that many civilizations have separately built such massive transmitters and are sending out FRBs. “The latest estimates suggest that there are ∼ 10^4 [10,000] FRBs per day,” the paper observes, which would suggest an implausible number of extremely busy, scattered alien civilizations. To resolve that, the paper argues that perhaps “not all FRBs have an artificial origin — only a fraction of them could correspond to alien activity.”
But once we concede that FRBs can occur naturally, and conclude that at least some of them are occurring naturally, why conclude that any of them are artificial?
And if a civilization had the astounding technical capacities to build solar-powered, planet-size transmitters, wouldn’t it be doing other things we could detect that would be less ambiguous?
“The possibility that FRBs are produced by extragalactic civilizations is more speculative than an astrophysical origin,” the paper concedes.
Indeed, that’s what the CHIME/FRB researchers behind the new paper think. “We conclude that the periodicity [of the FRB] is significant and astrophysical in origin.”
The broader debate over alien life
Scientists disagree about how to interpret phenomena like FRBs in large part because they disagree about how plausible alien life is in the first place. In statistical terms, they have different priors, meaning that the background assumptions they are using to interpret the new evidence are different.
From one perspective, the universe is astonishingly large, full of habitable planets like Earth where life could evolve as it did here. Sometimes, that life would become intelligent. We’d expect such a universe to have lots of flourishing civilizations — as well as lots of extinct ones.
This is clearly the expectation that motivates Harvard’s Loeb. “As soon as we leave the solar system, I believe we will see a great deal of traffic out there,” he said in a 2019interview with Haaretz. “Possibly we’ll get a message that says, ‘Welcome to the interstellar club.’ Or we’ll discover multiple dead civilizations — that is, we’ll find their remains.”
If you think that space is teeming with aliens, it’s not so much of a stretch to interpret astronomical phenomena as remnants of those aliens.
But if you’re looking at the same data with the expectation that we’re alone in the universe, you’re much likelier to conclude that there’s a natural explanation for FRBs.
It’s weird, given that the universe is so vast, that we seem to be alone in it. Physicist Enrico Fermi was the first to spell out this dilemma, and it’s named after him: the Fermi paradox. The paradox is that, under some reasonable assumptions about how often life originates and reaches technological sophistication, we should be able to detect signs of thousands or millions of other civilizations. And yet we haven’t. Recent investigations suggest that the paradox may have a mundane resolution — under more accurate assumptions about how life originates, we are very plausibly, alone.
The disagreement between researchers who think advanced civilizations must be extremely rare and those who think they’re common is a fairly substantive one. For one thing, if advanced civilizations are common, then why can’t we see them? We might be forced to conclude that they’re fairly short-lived. That’s Loeb’s take: “The technological window of opportunity might be very small,” he told Haaretz.
That take would have some consequences for us. If there’s some danger ahead that destroys every technological civilization that runs into it, we might expect that we’re living in a “vulnerable world” where future technological advances will destroy us, too.
In that way, disagreements over aliens have big implications. But that’s probably not the reason everyone cares about them. Offhand speculation about aliens tends to get vastly more coverage than anything else in astronomy. Whether we’re alone in the universe feels like a profoundly important question, for its implications for human civilization but also for its own sake. The lack of evidence suggesting phenomena like FRBs are alien in origin won’t be enough to stop people from wondering. Something in Deep Space Is Sending Signals to Earth in Steady 16-Day Cycles
Scientists have discovered the first fast radio burst that beats at a steady rhythm, and the mysterious repeating signal is coming from the outskirts of another galaxy.
A mysterious radio source located in a galaxy 500 million light years from Earth is pulsing on a 16-day cycle, like clockwork, according to a new study. This marks the first time that scientists have ever detected periodicity in these signals, which are known as fast radio bursts (FRBs), and is a major step toward unmasking their sources.
FRBs are one of the most tantalizing puzzles that the universe has thrown at scientists in recent years. First spotted in 2007, these powerful radio bursts are produced by energetic sources, though nobody is sure what those might be. FRBs are also mystifying because they can be either one-offs or “repeaters,” meaning some bursts appear only once in a certain part of the sky, while others emit multiple flashes to Earth.
Pulses from these repeat bursts have, so far, seemed somewhat random and discordant in their timing. But that changed last year, when the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment Fast Radio Burst Project (CHIME/FRB), a group dedicated to observing and studying FRBs, discovered that a repeater called FRB 180916.J0158+65 had a regular cadence.
The CHIME/FRB team kept tabs on the repeating burst between September 2018 and October 2019 using the CHIME radio telescope in British Columbia. During that period, the bursts were clustered into a period of four days, and then seemed to switch off for the next 12 days, for a total cycle of about 16 days. Some cycles did not produce any visible bursts, but those that did were all synced up to the same 16-day intervals.
“We conclude that this is the first detected periodicity of any kind in an FRB source,” the team said in a paper published on the preprint server arXiv in late January. “The discovery of a 16.35-day periodicity in a repeating FRB source is an important clue to the nature of this object.”
Scientists recently tracked down this particular FRB to a galaxy called SDSS J015800.28+654253.0, which is a half a billion light years from Earth. That may seem like a huge distance, but FRB 180916.J0158+65 is actually the closest FRB ever detected.
But while we know where it is, we still don’t know what it is. To that point, the beat of the FRB suggests that it might be modulated by its surroundings. If the source of the FRB is orbiting a compact object, such as a black hole, then it might only flash its signals toward Earth at a certain point in its orbital period. That scenario could potentially match this recognizable 16-day cycle.
It’s also possible that we are witnessing a binary system containing a massive star and a super-dense stellar core known as a neutron star, according to a study published on arXiv on Wednesday by a separate team that looked at the same data. In that model, the neutron star would emit radio bursts, but those signals would be periodically eclipsed by opaque outflowing winds from its giant companion.
Another scenario is that the FRB rhythm isn’t tempered by another object, and is sending out the pulses directly from the source. Scientists have previously suggested that flares from highly magnetized neutron stars, called magnetars, might be the source of some FRBs. But since magnetars tend to rotate every few seconds, a 16-day cycle does not match the expected profile of a magnetar-based FRB.
Ultimately, the CHIME/FRB team hopes to find similar patterns in the handful of known repeating bursts to see if these cycles are common. The researchers also plan to keep a careful eye on FRB 180916.J0158+6 while it is active in order to spot any other details that might point to its identity.
FRBs have baffled scientists for more than a decade, but new facilities such as CHIME are revealing new details about these weird events every year. While we still don’t know what is blasting out these bizarre signals, the discovery of a clear tempo from one of these sources provides a significant lead for scientists to follow.
This article originally appeared on VICE US.
Trump vowed to not cut Social Security and Medicare — hours before proposing just that
The president is either brazenly lying about his 2021 budget or doesn’t know what’s in it.
President Donald Trump delivers remarks at a White House session with the state governors on February 10, 2020. Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump posted a tweet on Saturday vowing, “We will not be touching your Social Security and Medicare in Fiscal 2021 Budget.” One day later, the Wall Street Journal published a report indicating that Trump is doing exactly that with his budget proposal.
The Journal’s report, which came a day ahead of the administration officially releasing its budget on Monday, indicates that Trump’s $4.8 trillion budget includes “steep reductions in social-safety-net programs,” including cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security disability programs:
The White House proposes to cut spending by $4.4 trillion over a decade. Of that, it targets $2 trillion in savings from mandatory spending programs, including $130 billion from changes to Medicare prescription-drug pricing, $292 billion from safety-net cuts—such as work requirements for Medicaid and food stamps—and $70 billion from tightening eligibility access to disability benefits.
That Trump is proposing cuts to these programs isn’t surprising — his 2020 budget cut all three as well. It’s a long-running contradiction for the president. He often says he won’t touch these entitlement programs, but he’s continued to employ Republican Party officials who make cutting these programs center to their work. Trump keeps proposing entitlement cuts and then denying that he did so
In 2015 and ’16, Trump differentiated himself from the rest of the Republican presidential hopefuls by campaigning on a vow to not cut entitlements.
“I’m not going to cut Social Security like every other Republican and I’m not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid,” Trump told the Daily Signal, a conservative publication affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, in 2015.
As his budget proposals indicate, this promise was an empty one. Trump, however, seems to realize that cutting entitlements is a political loser for him, and as a result has continued to make assertions about preserving them that are at odds with reality.
All Republicans support people with pre-existing conditions, and if they don’t, they will after I speak to them. I am in total support. Also, Democrats will destroy your Medicare, and I will keep it healthy and well!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2018
Last month, however, Trump seemed to have a moment of radical honesty when he told CNBC during an interview conducted in Davos that “at some point” entitlement cuts will be on the table.
CNBC: Will entitlements ever be on your plate [for cutting]?
TRUMP: "At some point they will be"
CNBC: But you said you wouldn't do that in the past
Those comments created a negative stir, so the very next day Trump tried to walk them back.
Democrats are going to destroy your Social Security. I have totally left it alone, as promised, and will save it!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 23, 2020
Fast-forward less than a month, and Trump is again pushing entitlement cuts. It’s whiplash-inducing. Democrats have already signaled Trump’s budget is going nowhere
While Trump tries to have it both ways by proposing entitlement cuts while claiming he’s not really doing that, Treasury Department spokesperson Monica Crowley was somewhat more straightforward during a Monday morning appearance on Fox Business.
Asked by host Stuart Varney if she agrees that the new budget “hits the safety net,” Crowley said the president “understands that Washington’s habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped.”
Treasury Secretary Assistant Sec. Monica Crowley defends cuts to entitlements in Trump's new 2021 budget proposal: "The president also understands that Washington's habit of out of control spending without consequence has to be stopped." pic.twitter.com/4VdP3fItJ6— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 10, 2020
But for Trump, not all spending is bad. While his budget cuts non-defense spending by 5 percent, he actually slates defense spending for an increase to $740.5 billion for fiscal year 2021.
Budget proposals are just that — proposals. And while Trump insists that Republicans are the ones trying to save entitlements from destruction, the irony is that the truth is exactly the opposite: Entitlement cuts are dead on arrival as long as Democrats control a chamber of Congress.
House Budget Committee Chair John Yarmuth (D-KY) alluded to this reality in a statement he released on Sunday blasting Trump for “proposing deep cuts to critical programs that help American families.”
The “budget reportedly includes destructive changes to Medicaid, SNAP, Social Security, and other assistance programs that help Americans make ends meet — all while extending his tax cuts for millionaires and wealthy corporations,” Yarmuth wrote. “Congress will stand firm against this President’s broken promises and his disregard for the human cost of his destructive policies.”
Trump: The economy is the best in history. Also Trump: We need to cut raises for federal workers.
The president is shamelessly trying to have it both ways.
President Trump speaks during a meeting with first lady Melania Trump, the President of the Republic of Ecuador LenÃn Moreno, and Mrs. RocÃo González de Moreno in the Oval Office on February 12, 2020. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
President Donald Trump wants you to believe the American economy “is the best it has ever been” — but he also wants you to believe that “serious economy conditions affecting the general welfare” justify his proposal to cut a scheduled pay raise for federal workers.
The juxtaposition illustrates how nothing Trumpworld says can be taken at face value, as well as the disdain the administration has for non-military government workers.
Trump made the aforementioned claim about the economy being “the best it has ever been” during his State of the Union speech on February 4. He reiterated it on Tuesday.
BEST USA ECONOMY IN HISTORY!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 11, 2020
During congressional testimony on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin echoed Trump’s theme, telling senators that the president’s “economic freedom agenda is working” and that “American families are earning more each year ... growth [will] reduce our debt and deficits over time.”
But at the same time as Trump and administration officials are painting this rosy picture, the president quietly sent a letter to Congress on Monday announcing that as part of his 2021 budget proposal, he wants a scheduled pay raise for civilian federal workers cut from 2.5 percent to just 1 percent. The letter cites a “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare” and claims federal agencies “cannot sustain such increases.”
Title 5, United States Code, authorizes me to implement alternative plans for pay adjustments for civilian Federal employees covered by the General Schedule and certain other pay systems if, because of “national emergency or serious economic conditions affecting the general welfare,” I view the increases that would otherwise take effect as inappropriate.
Under current law, locality pay increases averaging 20.67 percent, costing $21 billion in the first year alone, would go into effect in January 2021, in addition to a 2.5 percent across-the-board increase for the base General Schedule.
We must maintain efforts to put our Nation on a fiscally sustainable course; Federal agency budgets cannot sustain such increases. Accordingly, I have determined that it is appropriate to exercise my authority to set alternative pay adjustments for 2021 pursuant to 5 U.S.C. 5303(b) and 5 U.S.C. 5304a.
One thing that has negatively affected the “sustainability” of the federal budget is the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Though that package resulted in tax cuts for most Americans, it mostly benefited rich people and corporations, creating a massive spending gap while only modestly stimulating the economy. Trump’s 2021 budget proposal cut entitlement programs while making those tax cuts permanent.
And while the American economy is strong, it is not the best in history. As the Washington Post notes, Trump “has never achieved an annual growth rate above 3 percent, but in 1997, 1998 and 1999, the gross domestic product grew 4.5 percent, 4.5 percent and 4.7 percent, respectively.” The unemployment rate, while low, is not the lowest in history, and Trump’s job creation record lags Obama’s. Still, the notion that the government can afford $738 billion to spend on defense but not a modest raise for federal workers is hard to buy.
The stock market is hitting all-time highs, and corporate profits have hit unprecedented levels. But this is cold comfort to federal workers who, according to one recent study, make 27 percent less than their private sector counterparts.
Alluding to the disconnect between the haves and have-nots in Trump’s economy, Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement that “For an administration that has added $3 trillion to the federal debt, gouging federal employee pay and benefits in the name of deficit reduction is ridiculous.”
SOME GOOD NEWS The Senate just voted to check Trump’s ability to take military action against Iran
Eight Republicans joined with Democrats to send the president a message.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) talks to members of the media as he leaves after a closed briefing on the airstrikes against Syria by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joe Dunford on April 7, 2017, at the Capitol in Washington, DC. Alex Wong/Getty Images The Senate, on Thursday, once again attempted to limit the president’s war powers.
In a 55-45 vote, lawmakers passed a resolution that would require President Donald Trump to obtain congressional approval if he wanted to take additional military action against Iran. It’s the latest lawmaker response to an airstrike Trump authorized in early January that killed Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani, and follows the passage of a similar measure in the House. Differences in the legislation mean is must be voted on by the lower chamber before it heads to the president’s desk. The war powers vote notably garnered bipartisan support from a majority of senators, including eight Republicans. Sens. Susan Collins, Jerry Moran, Rand Paul, Mike Lee, Todd Young, Lisa Murkowski, Lamar Alexander, and Bill Cassidy voted with Democrats to advance the measure, which did not come close to reaching the 67-member supermajority needed to override a presidential veto.
Even if this resolution is passed by both chambers of Congress, it’s expected to be rejected by the president, who was calling via Twitter for Republicans to vote it down earlier this week. “If my hands were tied, Iran would have a field day,” Trump wrote.
The Thursday Senate vote marks the latest attempt to check the president’s war powers, which have evolved significantly, in part with the help of past congressional authorizations. Last year, both the House and Senate also voted to curb the president’s ability to continue the United States’ support for the war in Yemen, though those measures were similarly vetoed. Democratic lawmakers have also pushed to include amendments in the annual must-pass defense budget bill that would have reined in the president’s ability to unilaterally take military action in Iran, but those were stripped out of the final versions.
Although it’s ultimately just a message, the passage of this Senate resolution enables Democrats to make a point and put Republicans on the record. It also further establishes where Congress stands on the matter — and signals to Trump just how seriously lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are taking it. War powers resolutions keep coming up
In the past year, Congress has tried repeatedly to check Trump’s ability to take military action, efforts that have included support from some Republicans. Although Congress hasn’t waded into specific questions tied to the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, there has been a growing push to prevent the president from using past authorizations of military force to conduct attacks elsewhere in the world.
As Vox’s Ian Millhiser explained, the expansion of these powers has partly been enabled by the courts over the years, as well as legal opinions offered by the executive branch:
One consequence of judicial deference is that there is fairly little case law explaining when the executive branch can and cannot take military action. Instead, most of the legal opinions in this space were drafted by executive branch officials. According to Jack Goldsmith, a professor at Harvard Law School who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel during the second Bush administration, “Practically all of the law in this area has been developed by executive branch lawyers justifying unilateral presidential uses of force.”
These lawyers, Goldsmith warned, “view unilateral presidential power very broadly.”
The focus of the Iran resolution, an effort led by Sen. Tim Kaine, is pretty straightforward: It reiterates that Congress has not declared war against Iran, and that current congressional war authorizations don’t apply. It also would require the president to remove US troops from any “hostilities” with Iran within 30 days if he didn’t gain congressional approval. It includes exceptions for cases of self-defense and responses to imminent attacks.
“We’re now at a boiling point, and Congress must step in before Trump puts even more of our troops in harm’s way,” Kaine said in a statement.
Lawmakers have repeatedly tried to draw boundaries limiting the use of past Authorizations for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that were approved after 9/11 and before the Iraq War. These authorizations, both of which are nearly 20 years old, have since been used to justify other military action across the Middle East.
Last month, the House passed its own version of this war powers resolution, sponsored by Rep. Elissa Slotkin, as well as two resolutions from Reps. Ro Khanna and Barbara Lee, which would withdraw US military support for the war in Yemen and repeal the 2002 AUMF that enabled the president to take military action in Iraq.
As legal experts have told Vox, however, Congress can only do so much depending on how the administration interprets the various restraints that are passed. If Kaine’s measure were approved and signed into law, for example, it’s possible the administration could attempt to bypass it.
The vote on this resolution follows a January briefing from the Trump administration about the airstrike against Soleimani that’s since prompted intense criticism from both Democrats and Republicans. After Thursday’s vote, Congress’s ability to check Trump remains limited, in part because some Senate Republicans aren’t interested in strengthening it.
How Justice Scalia paved the way for Trump’s assault on the rule of law Three words: “the unitary executive.”
Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia pauses as he addresses a Northern Virginia Technology Council breakfast on December 13, 2006, in McLean, Virginia. Alex Wong/Getty Images
The past couple of weeks began a new phase for the Trump administration and, potentially, for the institution of the presidency.
Emboldened by his acquittal in a majority-Republican Senate, President Trump spent the past week firing officials who testified against him in impeachment proceedings — part of a rash of retaliation that my colleague Zack Beauchamp labeled “Trump’s purge.”
Then Trump sent a tweet denouncing the Justice Department’s suggestion that Roger Stone, a Trump ally convicted of making false statements, obstruction, and witness tampering, should receive a stiff sentence of seven to nine years. The Justice Department swiftly changed its recommendation, over the apparent protest of four career prosecutors who withdrew from the case. At least one of these prosecutors appears to have resigned entirely from the DOJ.
Attorney General William Barr, for what it’s worth, claims that “the president has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case.” But Trump credited his attorney general for the swift turnaround in the Stone case.
Congratulations to Attorney General Bill Barr for taking charge of a case that was totally out of control and perhaps should not have even been brought. Evidence now clearly shows that the Mueller Scam was improperly brought & tainted. Even Bob Mueller lied to Congress!— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 12, 2020
The Justice Department’s swift compliance with Trump’s wishes was widelycondemned by DOJ alumni, who spoke of why it is important that the nation’s prosecutorial arm retain a degree of independence from its political leader. As Joyce White Vance, a former United States attorney, wrote in Time, if Trump “can corrupt the criminal justice system for the benefit of his friends, there is no reason he cannot also use it to retaliate against those he views as enemies.”
In this sense, the Justice Department is fundamentally different from other federal agencies. While those agencies can wield tremendous power over federal policy, DOJ is tasked with the awesome power to prosecute crimes — and with it, the power to ruin the lives of a president’s political enemies.
For Barr, however, the idea that the Justice Department would be subservient to the president isn’t simply acceptable; it is a constitutional necessity. (Although Barr has also claimed he would not bring a criminal investigation solely because the president wished to investigate a “political opponent.”)
Last November, Barr spoke to the conservative Federalist Society’s annual lawyers convention. His speech focused on the proper role of the presidency, and on the theory of the “unitary executive.” As Barr described that theory, which he enthusiastically supports, every power exercised by the executive branch “must be exercised under the President’s supervision.”
That no one in the executive branch should be independent of the president, and that such independence is in fact constitutionally illegitimate, is one of the core beliefs pushed by conservative legal groups such as the Federalist Society.
More than three decades ago, in Morrison v. Olson (1988), Justice Antonin Scalia published a lonely dissent articulating this theory of the unitary executive. Though no other justice joined Scalia’s opinion in 1988, the Morrison dissent gained a cult following in subsequent years. That cult now includes some of the most powerful people in the country — including Barr and several current members of the Supreme Court.
Indeed, the Supreme Court will hear a case early next month that could make Scalia’s theory of the unitary executive the law of the land.
If you want to understand Barr’s approach to his job — and his disregard for longstanding norms of prosecutorial independence — you have to understand the theory of the unitary executive. For Barr, eliminating such independence isn’t simply an act of partisan loyalty; it is a constitutional necessity. The unitary executive, explained
The issues at the heart of Morrison are, in many important ways, similar to the issues underlying Trump’s interference in the Stone prosecution.
Morrison upheld a 1978 law providing for the appointment of an “independent counsel” to investigate — and potentially prosecute — high-level government officials accused of committing a federal crime (the independent counsel law expired in 1999). In this case, an independent counsel was appointed to investigate whether then-Assistant Attorney General Ted Olson lied during a congressional hearing.
Under the 1978 law upheld in Morrison, the attorney general would conduct a preliminary investigation to determine if there was sufficient reason to appoint an independent counsel, but the actual person appointed to this role was decided by federal judges. Once an independent counsel was appointed, they could be removed by the attorney general, but only “for good cause, physical disability, mental incapacity, or any other condition that substantially impairs the performance of such independent counsel’s duties.”
Thus, the independent counsel enjoyed a great deal of independence from both the president and the president’s appointees. Neither the president nor the attorney general could remove an independent counsel simply because they disapproved of the counsel’s work.
This arrangement, according to Scalia’s lonely dissent, was not allowed.
The Constitution provides that “the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America.” For Scalia, “this does not mean some of the executive power, but all of the executive power.” Thus, because the power to investigate crimes and bring prosecutions is entrusted to the executive branch, there cannot be a federal prosecutor who is not fully accountable either to the president or to some lower official that can be fired at will by the president.
The question of who has the power to fire prosecutors, and for what reason, may seem esoteric, but it’s difficult to exaggerate the passion Scalia’s Morrison dissent inspired among many of the Federalist Society’s leading lights. When future Justice Brett Kavanaugh was asked, in 2016, to name a case that he would like to overrule, Kavanaugh said that he wanted to “put the final nail in” Morrison’s coffin.
Barr, meanwhile, spoke of the unitary executive during his Federalist Society address as if it is the only legitimate way to read the Constitution — and as if anyone who doubts it is acting in bad faith:
One of the more amusing aspects of modern progressive polemic is their breathless attacks on the “unitary executive theory.” They portray this as some new-fangled “theory” to justify Executive power of sweeping scope. In reality, the idea of the unitary executive does not go so much to the breadth of Presidential power. Rather, the idea is that, whatever the Executive powers may be, they must be exercised under the President’s supervision. This is not “new,” and it is not a “theory.” It is a description of what the Framers unquestionably did in Article II of the Constitution.
But the case against the unitary executive is not “some new-fangled ‘theory’” either, and it is not an attack that can only be found in “modern progressive polemic.” Morrison was a 7-1 decision authored by Chief Justice William Rehnquist, who spent many decades as the intellectual leader of the Supreme Court’s conservative wing. As recently as 1988, the theory of the unitary executive was a fringe idea on the nation’s highest court.
The unitary executive’s more recent popularity is a testament to Scalia’s power to shape conservative opinion, and of the power the Federalist Society has to popularize ideas that were once viewed as well outside the legal mainstream. But Barr is simply wrong that the unitary executive theory “unquestionably” describes the framers’ vision.
The truth is that the framers themselves had confused and often contradictory views about what the Constitution requires. The case against the unitary executive
Similarly, Alexander Hamilton suggested in the Federalist Papers that the Senate would need to acquiesce in the president’s decision to remove a senior executive branch official. “The consent of that body would be necessary to displace as well as to appoint,” he wrote in Federalist 77.
The point is not that these statements should be taken as gospel — Hamilton’s claim that the Senate could prevent the president from firing top officials is soundly rejected today, and Hamilton himself later abandoned this view. Rather, the point is that the Constitution is sufficiently unclear about whether certain officials can act independently of the president that two of the founding generation’s leading figures disagreed with Scalia and Barr’s approach.
As Fordham law professor Jed Shugerman explained in a recent article, Scalia’s suggestion that the power to investigate crimes and bring prosecutions is reserved to the executive branch is hard to square with early American history. Indeed, for much of the nation’s history, the power to bring prosecutions wasn’t even limited to the government. As Shugerman writes, “for much of English and American history, most prosecution was not an executive function at all because it was a private enterprise.”
Indeed, prosecutions led by lawyers in private practice were the norm until long after the Constitution was ratified. “The vast majority of American prosecutions were still private through the mid-nineteenth century,” Shugerman explains, “as Allen Steinberg and many other historians have demonstrated.”
Federal judges occasionally conducted prosecutions during the early days of the American republic. “The federal judges themselves led what appeared to be prosecutions during the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794,” Shugerman writes, “and initiated prosecutions under the Alien and Sedition Acts by convening and presiding over grand juries.”
In the face of this evidence, there are also profound practical reasons to reject the unitary executive theory. If Scalia and Barr’s theory prevails, for example, the president would gain the power to fire Federal Reserve governors at will. That would enable the president to pressure the Fed to juice up the economy during an election year, potentially ensuring the president’s reelection.
The facts of Morrison also highlight why prosecutorial independence is sometimes desirable. That case involved an investigation into one of the seniormost officials within the Justice Department. A rank-and-file prosecutor would understandably fear the professional consequences of leading such an investigation — for the same reason that I would be reluctant to conduct an investigation into one of Vox Media’s top executives.
Yet, regardless of the arguments against the unitary executive, it is clear that Barr does not buy them. Indeed, he rejects them so soundly that he denies that any other reading of the Constitution is legitimate. He even appears to reject the idea that informal norms should constrain the president’s interference with the Justice Department, even if DOJ remains formally subject to presidential authority.
And that means that if Trump tells him to jump, Barr will answer, “How high?” SCALIA ALSO ENDORSED THE RIGHT OF THE STATE TO EMINENT DOMAIN WRITING THE MAJORITY OPINION FOR SCOTUS IT IS ALLOWING BIG OIL TO DOMINATE OVER LOCAL RESIDENTS A VERY NON LIBERTARIAN THING TO DO
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