Revoking the Plea in the 9/11 Case: The Cycle of Lawlessness at Guantanamo Continues

Professor Jonathan Hafetz | Seton Hall Law School

SEPTEMBER 6, 2024 

Edited by: JURIST Staff

The author, a professor at Seton Hall Law School, argues that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's decision to revoke plea agreements for 9/11 defendants at Guantanamo perpetuates a cycle of lawlessness...

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s recent decision to revoke the plea agreements for three defendants in the 9/11 case at Guantanamo, including alleged mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), was at once shocking and predictable: shocking that the Defense Secretary would step in deus ex machina at the eleventh hour to scuttle a deal negotiated by the convening authority whom Austin had himself designated to oversee the military commissions; yet also predictable that the U.S. government would somehow find a way perpetuate the cycle of lawlessness at Guantanamo.

Secretary Austin’s decision is the latest in a series of failures to bring the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks to justice. In the “legal train wreck” of the 9/11 case, a few key moments stand out:

• In November 2001, rather than relying on a federal court system that had consistently prosecuted terrorism suspects without abandoning due process, the Bush administration system created military commissions at Guantanamo to deny the basic elements of a fair trial.
• The Bush administration also denied detainees any protections under the Geneva Conventions and instead embraced the use of torture.
• In 2006, following the Supreme Court’s decision invalidating the military commissions, President Bush doubled down, persuading Congress to create new commissions and transferring KSM and the other 9/11 defendants from secret CIA black sites to Guantanamo to face trial there.
• In 2011, President Obama, after announcing he would bring the 9/11 defendants to federal court in New York to face charges, caved into political pressure and reversed his decision.
• Since then, Congress has continued to enact legislation barring the transfer of any Guantanamo detainee to the U.S. for any purpose, including for trial.
• Meanwhile, the 9/11 case has been mired in delays because of the defendants’ torture and the decision to try them before a military commission.

The plea agreement represented an attempt to break the logjam and achieve closure. Like all such agreements, it was a compromise: the defendants would admit guilt and waive their right to appeal in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.

But the announcement of the deal ignited a political backlash. Sen Tom Cotton (R-AR) denounced the Biden-Harris administration for “choos[ing] the side of killers and criminals over law-abiding Americans” and threatened to introduce legislation prohibiting any outcome that did not result in the death penalty. In explaining his decision, Secretary Austin stated, “the families of the victims, our service members, and the American public deserve the opportunity to see military  . . .  commission trials carried out.”  The message was clear: the death penalty must remain on the table.

Victims and their families unquestionably have the right to see the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks held accountable. And offering sentencing concessions to a defendant who pleads guilty to a heinous crime involving thousands of victims remains controversial even in international criminal tribunals.

But while some families opposed the plea deal, others did not—and with good reason. They recognized that the deal represented the best, and only, remaining option for a final resolution of the 9/11 case. As one member of Sept. 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows explained, “The system has not worked for a long time.”

The victims’ anger and frustration should be directed at the U.S. government for so badly botching one of the most important cases in US history by torturing the defendants. Torture — KSM, for example, was waterboarded more than 180 times — did not just violate the rights of detainees; as UN Special Rapporteur Fionnuala Ní Aoláin stated, it was also a “betrayal of the rights of victims” by fatefully tainting the case against the accused. That error was compounded by insisting on using jerry-rigged military commissions where even the most basic questions, including which provisions of the Constitution apply, remain uncertain. In such circumstances, a life sentence is the only feasible and acceptable outcome.

Secretary Austin’s decision is now being challenged in the military commissions themselves, where the judge will consider whether Secretary Austin violated the commission’s rules and exercised undue command influence over the case. It is possible the military judge will resist the Secretary’s interference. Either way, the Secretary’s actions will be the subject of later appeals, adding to the plethora of questions that will embroil the commissions in more controversy for years to come.

A comparison to how the United States chose to deal with Nazi leaders, who were responsible for the deaths of millions, is particularly instructive.

Near the end of World War II, Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill indicated he favored summarily executing Hitler and other high-ranking Nazi officials after the war. But the United States insisted that top Nazis be tried in a court of law, leading to the creation of the venerated Nuremberg war crimes tribunal.

As the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, Robert H. Jackson, explained, “”That four great nations, flushed with victory and stung with injury, stay the hand of vengeance and voluntarily submit their captive enemies to the judgment of law is one of the most significant tributes that Power has ever paid to Reason.”  And Jackson insisted, for the trials to be recognized as legitimate, they had to be fair.

Although Secretary Austin’s decision may pay lip service to Nuremberg’s ideal of accountability through trials, it reinforces the perception that the only acceptable outcome in the 9/11 case is execution and that the trial itself is mainly for show. Secretary Austin’s decision thus helps cement what will surely be one of the military commissions’ darkest legacies: that despite the pretense of submitting “captive enemies to the judgment of law,” the commissions are instead merely a cover for the raw exercise of “power and vengeance.”

Jonathan Hafetz is Professor of Law at Seton Hall Law School and the author of Punishing Atrocities through a Fair Trial: International Criminal Law from Nuremberg to the Age of Global Terrorism.

Opinions expressed in JURIST Commentary are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of JURIST's editors, staff, donors or the University of Pittsburgh.

 

Canada appeal court finds Facebook infringed privacy law

George Macauley | U. Toronto Faculty of Law, CA

SEPTEMBER 11, 2024

The Canadian Federal Court of Appeal found that social media platform Facebook violated statutory obligations for data protection and meaningful consent created by Canada’s primary legislation on the use of personal information by corporations, the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

Following an investigation into Facebook’s personal data-sharing practices, the Privacy Commissioner of Canada and the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia found that:

1. Facebook failed to ensure apps used on the site acquired meaningful consent from users;
2. Facebook failed to obtain meaningful consent from the friends of users;
3. Facebook did not have enough safeguards in place to protect users’ personal information; and
4. Facebook failed to take accountability for data breaches and instead blamed users or relied on vague and broad terms of service agreements.

After the Privacy Commissioner sought a court order obligating Facebook to change its practices, the lower court found in favor of Facebook, finding that Facebook’s data protection obligations ended where external apps using the platforms requested information and that there was insufficient evidence to determine if the safeguards Facebook had were appropriate.

On appeal, the Privacy Commissioner successfully argued that the lower court had set the bar “too low”  for Facebook in interpreting the “meaningful consent” requirements created by PIPEDA, failed to differentiate between consent granted to users and friends, and failed to consider the “reasonability” of the data safeguard procedures Facebook used.

The meaningful consent requirement from PIPEDA obliges companies handling user information to acquire consent from users where they could reasonably understand what they are consenting to. In the present case, the appeal court found the extreme length and vague, broad nature of Facebook’s user terms meant the consent was not meaningful. Further, data safeguarding principles in the act require companies handling user data to create and regularly review the effectiveness of their data protection policies. The court found Facebook did not regularly review the privacy policies of third-party apps beyond verifying they had a working hyperlink in their data agreement and therefore did not meet its data protection obligations.

The Privacy Commissioner first initiated the complaint following the Cambridge Analytica Scandal, where the company Cambridge Analytica harvested Facebook users’ and their friends’ data for targeted political ads. In the scandal, Cambridge professor Aleksandr Kogan developed a Facebook personality quiz called “thisisyourdigitallife,” a Facebook app where users took personality quizzes. However, in using the app, users inadvertently agreed to share their profile information and information about all their Facebook friends with the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica. The firm would then use the information harvested through the app to target political ads to Facebook users depending on their personality, geographic location, race, gender and any other relevant details the firm could find. Notably, Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign contracted Cambridge Analytica, which used the details harvested from this survey to create targeted Facebook ads in swing states.

How Corporate News Has Tried to Numb Americans to the Horrors in Gaza

by Norman Solomon

 September 11, 2024
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

As the Gaza war enters its 12th month with no end in sight, the ongoing horrors continue to be normalized in U.S. media and politics. The process has become so routine that we might not recognize how omission and distortion have constantly shaped views of events since the war began in October.

The Gaza war received a vast amount of U.S. media attention, but how much the media actually communicated about the human realities was a whole other matter. Easy assumptions held that the news enabled media consumers to see what was really going on. But the words and images reaching listeners, readers, and viewers were a far cry from experiences of being in the war zone. The belief or unconscious notion that news media were conveying of the war’s realities ended up obscuring those realities all the more. And journalism’s inherent limitations were compounded by media biases.

In-depth content analysis by the Intercept found that coverage of the war’s first six weeks by the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times “showed a consistent bias against Palestinians.” Those highly influential news outlets “disproportionately emphasized Israeli deaths in the conflict” and “used emotive language to describe the killings of Israelis, but not Palestinians.” For example: “The term ‘slaughter’ was used by editors and reporters to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 60 to 1, and ‘massacre’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 125 to 2. ‘Horrific’ was used to describe the killing of Israelis versus Palestinians 36 to 4.”

During the first five months of the war, the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post applied the word “brutal” or its variants far more often to actions by Palestinians (77 percent) than to Israelis (23 percent). The findings, in a study by Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting (FAIR), pointed to an imbalance that occurred “even though Israeli violence was responsible for more than 20 times as much loss of life.” News articles and opinion pieces were remarkably in the same groove; “the lopsided rate at which ‘brutal’ was used in op-eds to characterize Palestinians over Israelis was exactly the same as the supposedly straight news stories.”

Despite exceptional coverage at times, what was most profoundly important about the war in Gaza—what it was like to be terrorized, massacred, maimed, and traumatized—remained almost entirely out of view. Gradually, surface accounts reaching the American public came to seem repetitious and normal. As death numbers kept rising and months went by, the Gaza war diminished as a news topic, while most interview shows seldom discussed it.

Gaps widened between the standard reporting in media terms and the situation worsening in human terms. “Gazans now make up 80 percent of all people facing famine or catastrophic hunger worldwide, marking an unparalleled humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip amid Israel’s continued bombardment and siege,” the United Nations reported in mid-January 2024. The UN statement quoted experts who said: “Currently every single person in Gaza is hungry, a quarter of the population are starving and struggling to find food and drinkable water, and famine is imminent.”

President Biden dramatized the disconnect between the Gaza war zone and the U.S. political zone in late February when he spoke to reporters about prospects for a “ceasefire” (which did not take place) while holding a vanilla ice-cream cone in his right hand. “My national security adviser tells me that we’re close, we’re close, we’re not done yet,” Biden said, before sauntering off. On the same day as Biden’s photo op at an ice cream parlor near Rockefeller Center, where he had just taped an appearance on NBC’s “Late Night” show with comedian Seth Meyers, the UN lamented that “very little humanitarian aid has entered besieged Gaza this month, with a 50 percent reduction compared to January.” Israel was halting aid convoys ready to enter Gaza at border crossings. More than 10 policemen providing security for the aid trucks had been purposely killed by the Israeli military. Disastrous consequences were obvious.

“The volume of aid delivered to Gaza has collapsed in recent weeks as Israeli airstrikes have targeted police officers who guard the convoys, UN officials say, exposing them to looting by criminal gangs and desperate civilians,” the Washington Post reported. “On average, only 62 trucks have entered Gaza each day over the past two weeks, according to figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs—well below the 200 trucks per day Israel has committed to facilitating. Just four trucks crossed on two separate days this week. Aid groups, which have warned of a looming famine, estimate that some 500 trucks are needed each day to meet people’s basic needs.”

While such numbers peppered news stories, countless real-life horrors were out of media sight that shower people in private agony and grief. Major media coverage did include some commendable human-interest reporting and investigative features about individual tragedies in Gaza. But even at its best, such journalism didn’t do much to convey the size, scope, and depth of the widening disaster. And the narratives of catastrophe were short on zeal for exploring causality—especially when the trail would lead to the U.S. “national security” establishment. American media frames around heartrending portrayals of Palestinian victims rarely also encompassed their victimizers in Washington. Top government officials readily voiced facile regret for the tragic loss of life, while they continued to put out enormous welcome mats for the Grim Reaper.

Distributed in partnership with Economy for All, this text is excerpted from Norman Solomon’s paperback release of War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine (The New Press, 2024). All rights reserved.

Norman Solomon is the national director of RootsAction.org and executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. His latest book, War Made Invisible: How America Hides the Human Toll of Its Military Machine, is published by The New Press.

9/11 families vow to ‘keep fighting’ for justice 23 years later

A red rose is on the Sept. 11 memorial on Sunday in New York, ahead of the 23rd anniversary of the 9/11 attacks today. (AP Photo/Ted Shaffrey)

By Joe Dwinell | joed@bostonherald.com | Boston Herald
PUBLISHED: September 11, 2024 

The 9/11 families facing yet another solemn anniversary of the terror attacks vow to “keep fighting.”

They have asked both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris to pledge support for the legal fight against Saudi Arabia.

“The pledge, with over 3,000 signatories, asks that you commit to not endorse any normalization deal involving Saudi Arabia unless it fully addresses the role of the Saudi Arabian government in the 9/11 attacks,” a copy of both letters sent to the presidential candidates states.

The letters, shared with the Herald, go on to stress “the loss of 2,977 of our family members and loved ones” 23 years ago today can’t be dismissed.

The 9/11 kin are waiting for a federal judge in Manhattan to decide on their lawsuit alleging Saudi Arabia aided the first al Qaeda hijackers to land in the U.S. — at Los Angeles International Airport — and if more discovery can commence, court documents state.

The bandaid will be ripped off the 9/11 story if they can proceed.

“More than ever, we’re angry now that we’ve seen this new evidence,” said Brett Eagleson, who was 15 years old when his dad, Bruce, died while working at the World Trade Center on 9/11. “We deserve better. It’s a nightmare that 23 years later, we have to beg for justice, but we’re going to keep fighting.”

He’s not alone.


Retired FAA special agent Brian Sullivan, who warned about the risk of a terror attack at Logan Airport pre-9/11, said the “American people have a right to know about the Saudi involvement.”

The release of a chilling pre-9/11 video “rewrites everything Americans” have been told about the terror attacks, said Eagleson.

The video allegedly shows a Saudi suspect “casing the Capitol” in the summer of 1999, pointing out where Congress sits. Eagleson also says a companion sketchbook painstakingly shows “an aviator’s algorithm on how to hit a target on the horizon when flying a plane.”

The man behind the camera, court documents allege, is Omar Al Bayoumi — then working for Saudi intelligence, according to the FBI.

The video shows a man speaking in Arabic as he tours the Capitol. There are time stamps, footage of exits and entrances to Congress, a model of the building and nearby landmarks — including the towering Washington Monument. The plan to attack America using hijacked jets was hatched soon after, according to multiple reports.

Bayoumi has been linked to Nawaf Al Hazmi and Khalid Al Mihdhar — the first 9/11 hijackers. Bayoumi and another Saudi official, Fahad Al Thumairy, are accused of assisting them, court documents allege.

The rest is seared into America’s history: American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 — both out of Logan Airport in Boston — slammed into the north and south towers of the World Trade Center 18 minutes apart beginning at 8:45 a.m. on 9/11.

American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m.; United Flight 93 crashed last, at 10:03 a.m., in Shanksville, Pa.

Of all the 19 hijackers, 15 of them were citizens of Saudi Arabia.

Andrew Cuomo, once a COVID star, grilled by Congress over pandemic missteps

Dan Diamond | The Washington Post

CUOMO: Democrats in Congress have repeatedly joined Republicans in calling for scrutiny of how Andrew M. Cuomo (D) handled the pandemic while he was New York's governor. Salwan Georges/The Washington Post

Andrew M. Cuomo - who won national acclaim in early 2020 for his seemingly steady management as the coronavirus ravaged New York - on Tuesday faced an aggressive panel in Congress, which battered the former New York governor over his administration’s controversial directive to send more than 9,000 coronavirus-infected people back into nursing homes.

And lawmakers demanded that he apologize for other pandemic decisions.

“It appears there’s to be no soul-searching from you, governor … no self-critique of what could have been done better. … Just doubling-down and blaming others,” said Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), who chairs the House panel dedicated to investigating the nation’s coronavirus response.

The combative and sometimes theatrical hearing was held more than four years after the nursing home order was issued and more than three years after Cuomo resigned as governor amid a cascade of sexual harassment complaints. It unfolded on an afternoon when D.C. was abuzz about Tuesday’s presidential debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, and not the years-old pandemic decisions of a former governor.

Slow-walked accurate data

But Democrats joined Republicans to insist that Cuomo explain whether his administration slow-walked accurate data on nursing home deaths, in a hearing room packed with attendees who lost family members to COVID in New York nursing homes.

“Any public official who sought to obscure transparency or mislead the American people during the COVID-19 pandemic should answer to the American public - regardless of political party,” said Rep. Raul Ruiz (Calif.), the panel’s top Democrat.

Wenstrup and his GOP colleagues issued a report Monday concluding that Cuomo and his aides worked to influence a New York health department report that shifted blame for the nursing home deaths away from the Cuomo administration’s order.

Cuomo countered that his administration had acted appropriately, particularly given the chaos in the earliest days of the pandemic, and that his record had been distorted by political opponents. He also focused on the Trump administration’s failures to provide personal protective equipment, coronavirus testing and other crucial supplies in early 2020.

“It was the COVID ‘Hunger Games,’” Cuomo said, invoking the fictional series about a winner-take-all society. “The federal government was nowhere to be found.”


Much of Tuesday’s hearing focused on the March 2020 order by Cuomo’s administration - issued as New York reeled from the nation’s first surge of coronavirus, and intended to preserve hospital capacity - that forced the state’s nursing homes to readmit residents who had developed COVID. Lawmakers said the decision resulted in a dangerous situation: Many facilities’ older and often vulnerable residents were exposed to a deadly disease months before vaccines and treatments became available.

Potentially thousands of people

The decision has been linked to the deaths of at least hundreds and potentially thousands of people, according to outside experts and analysts. Those experts and some officials have acknowledged there was no need to force nursing homes to house coronavirus-infected patients given ample emergency capacity elsewhere in New York City, the outbreak’s epicenter in March 2020, and across the state. A pair of temporary hospitals, including a Navy hospital ship, went mostly unused.

The order came to haunt the New York governor after he received national praise, a book deal and even an Emmy award for his televised coronavirus briefings early in the pandemic. (Cuomo later lost the Emmy after the sexual harassment allegations, which he has denied.) Families of nursing home residents swiftly demanded answers, and Cuomo rescinded the directive six weeks after it was issued amid public criticism.

While Cuomo insisted Tuesday that his administration’s order was in line with federal guidance, members of the panel cited federal officials and public health experts who have said the decision was harmful, and Republicans urged Cuomo to be more contrite.


Wenstrup, who said Cuomo’s team had threatened the panel during its inquiry, announced that the New York governor’s office was being subpoenaed in an effort to secure additional documents about Cuomo’s response that he said had not been turned over. The office of New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) said it would comply with the subpoena.

Some GOP lawmakers pressed Cuomo on matters such as whether his 2020 memoir on his pandemic response distracted from his actual response, with New York Republicans particularly eager to question their longtime rival under oath.


‘As seniors were dying?’

“When were you negotiating for your multimillion-dollar advance deal for your book? As seniors were dying in nursing homes?” asked Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), demanding that Cuomo turn around and apologize to attendees in the room, an exchange that won her a share of applause.

The panel’s Democrats, meanwhile, joined Cuomo in faulting Trump’s pandemic response but did little else to defend the former New York governor. They also unveiled legislation to boost funding for federal inspectors who monitor how nursing homes protect residents from infections and other dangers, saying problems revealed by the pandemic went far beyond New York.

“One thing is certain: There is still more we can and must do to protect and advance the health of our nation’s seniors,” Ruiz said.

The scrutiny of Cuomo’s COVID decisions has built for years. The state’s attorney general in January 2021 issued a report concluding that Cuomo’s administration had significantly undercounted nursing home deaths in public data. In a conversation with state lawmakers the following month, a Cuomo aide blamed some of the administration’s transparency problems on pressure from the Trump administration.


“He has been squirming about it visibly from the moment it became public news and … he rarely speaks about it with honesty,” said Bill Hammond, senior fellow for health policy at the Empire Center for Public Policy, a New York think tank that sued the state to release nursing home data. Hammond on Monday night posted an analysis of the documents obtained by the House panel, concluding that they show new evidence of patient harm.

Holistic examination

While Hammond and others have called for a holistic examination of Cuomo’s actions, Tuesday’s hearing broke little new ground, as lawmakers and Cuomo battled over the definitions of words such as “directive” and “shall,” and whether Cuomo was given enough time to answer members’ questions. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) accused Cuomo of “murdering people’s parents, grandparents and great-grandparents” through his administration’s nursing home order; invoked sexual-harassment allegations against Cuomo; and asked about a former aide recently charged by federal officials with secretly working with China.

“I’ve read a lot about you, including the fact that 13 women that worked for you accused you of sexually inappropriate behavior,” Taylor Greene said.

“I’ve read a lot about you, too, congresswoman,” Cuomo responded.

Ahead of the hearing, Cuomo and his aides telegraphed their own plan to be combative with the House panel, dismissing it in op-eds and statements as a “MAGA COVID panel” led by a “foot doctor.” (Wenstrup is a podiatric surgeon.) Cuomo’s team also warned the House panel that they may file state bar ethics complaints about the lawyers conducting their inquiry, according to a House staffer who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive situation.


Rich Azzopardi, a Cuomo spokesman, said his colleagues were “reminding” House lawyers that there were consequences for making “false and misleading” statements in the report that Republicans issued Monday.

“I do think lawyers have an ethical obligation to tell the truth, and I don’t think there’s a lot of that in this report,” Azzopardi said. He also shared a competing report written by a former Cuomo health official that defends the former governor’s pandemic decisions.

Cuomo has tried to link his nursing home policy to Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, the Democratic nominee for vice president, and other Democratic governors who also encouraged nursing homes to readmit patients positive for the coronavirus in the pandemic’s early days. Hammond said the policies were significantly different, with New York going further than other states in requiring nursing homes to accept such patients - rather than the more flexible approach adopted by Minnesota that allowed nursing homes to turn away infected people.

The panel has spent more than a year examining New York’s nursing home policy, first in a May 2023 hearing with outside experts and then in interviews with Cuomo and his aides behind closed doors. The interview transcripts were posted Monday.

Congressional Democrats have long maintained they were shocked by the Cuomo administration’s order, given older Americans’ vulnerability to the virus.

“It wasn’t rocket science” to keep sick patients out of nursing homes, said Rep. Ami Bera (D-Calif.), a physician, at last year’s hearing. “Sometimes bad decisions are made. But we have got to try to understand why those decisions were made.”

Germany corrects Trump on energy policy: 'PS — we also don't eat cats and dogs'

Edward Carver, Common Dreams
September 11, 2024 

Donald Trump (AFP)

The German foreign ministry on Wednesday issued a rejoinder to Republican nominee Donald Trump's debate claim that Germany had reverted back to a "normal" energy policy after, as he implied, failing to transition away from fossil fuels.

Near the end of the televised presidential debate, Trump addressed Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, saying:
"You believe in things that the American people don't believe in. You believe in things like we're not going to frack. We're not going to take fossil fuel. We're not going to do, things that are going to make this country strong, whether you like it or not. Germany tried that and within one year they were back to building normal energy plants."

The Germans replied forcefully and included a snarky reference to Trump's baseless claim, made earlier in the debate, that immigrants were eating Americans' pets.

"Like it or not: Germany’s energy system is fully operational, with more than 50% renewables," the German foreign ministry, which is led by Annalena Baerbock of the country's green party as part of a coalition arrangement, wrote on social media. "And we are shutting down—not building—coal and nuclear plants. Coal will be off the grid by 2038 at the latest. PS: We also don't eat cats and dogs."

"The former president is not famous for his grasp of the finer details of European energy policy," Bernd Radowitz wrote Wednesday in Recharge, a trade news publication.

Radowitz and other commentators took Trump's "normal" to mean fossil fuel-driven energy production.

"As usual with Trump, it takes some patience to interpret his incoherent line of argument, but what most U.S. viewers and potential voters likely understood from this statement is that Germany tried to ditch fossil fuels, but within a year had to give that up. The assumption here is also that Trump by 'normal energy plants' meant fossil-fired generation."

Germany has since 2010 undertaken an Energiewiende aimed at drawing down on fossil fuel use and nuclear-powered energy and ramping up renewables. The transition plan hit a rough patch in 2022 following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Russia had supplied more than half of Germany's natural gas, as well as some of its oil and coal. German authorities turned some nuclear plants back on, added more coal consumption into the energy mix, and imported more natural gas from elsewhere, drawing criticism from climate campaigners.

However, those changes were meant to be temporary and Germany has since made progress on implementing its green transition plans. In March, the government declared itself on target to reach its 2030 climate goals. Over 60% of the country's electricity was powered by renewables in the first half of this year, a marked increase from 2022.

The foreign ministry's social media post had been viewed by over 1 million people as of Wednesday morning. It was not entirely clear why the ministry raised Trump's pet remarks, which were seemingly aimed at immigrants of color from low-income countries. Trump's claim, which The New York Times called "false and outlandish," was based on a rumor that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating pets for sustenance. Trump's running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio), had spread the racist rumors on Monday.

As president, Trump had a scratchy relationship with Germany, which he frequently criticized for its export surplus to the U.S. and its lack of defense spending. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, of the center-left Social Democratic Party, made remarks in July that indicated that he hoped Harris would win the election. Scholz, who's held office since 2021, had last year endorsed President Joe Biden for reelection, speaking in unusually direct terms about the U.S. race.

Under Trump, China’s Economic Growth Nearly Doubled the Growth of the US

by Dean Baker

September 11, 2024
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Photograph Source: PAS China – Public Domain

Donald Trump seems to get very confused when talking about economics. The U.S. did have respectable growth under his administration, but it was not especially good by any standard metric. We also were very far from being the fastest growing economy in the world.

Contrary to what Trump seems to believe, China’s economic growth hugely outpaced U.S. growth under his watch. China’s economy grew by a cumulative total of 25.4 percent in the years from 2017 to 2021, compared to just 9.3 percent for the United States.

Source: International Monetary Fund.

As a share of world GDP (purchasing power parity), China went from 16.15 percent at the start of the period to 18.42 percent at the end. By contrast, the U.S. share fell slightly from 15.98 percent in 2017 to 15.87 percent in 2021.

This first appeared on Dean Baker’s Beat the Press blog.

Dean Baker is the senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, DC.