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    Corruption is no longer envelopes of cash – now it is about who is being shielded and who is being sacrificed | Kenneth Mohammed

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    Trump has attacked judges and weakened global safeguards. Someone needs to stand up to the US and stop the erosion of democracyIn an era of overlapping crises, corruption is no longer a side issue – it is a structural threat to achieving international equality and even freedom itself. Each year, Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, a league table of 182 countries, is greeted with predictable theatrics: praise where it flatters power, condemnation where it can be weaponised, and hollow promises of reform that quietly expire once attention moves on. Instead of a moment of reckoning, it is ignored by those with the power to act.As this newspaper reported, last week’s table showed a “worrying trend” of backsliding and a picture of “democratic institutions being eroded by political donations, cash for access and state targeting of campaigners and journalists”. Continue reading… More

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      The secretive, destructive work of an ICE attorney: ‘My job is to do what I’m told’

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      ICE lawyers in New York City earn more than $100,000 a year, enjoy generous benefits and post about rich social lives. Their work is vital to Trump’s deportation agendaOne morning last June in an immigration courtroom in New York City, a lawyer named Estefani Rodriguez looked as if she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She was a prosecuting attorney for the Department of Homeland Security’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE). Her job was to present immigration judges with motions to kick non-citizens out of the United States – to switch on the deportation machine.Rodriguez is in her late 30s, with long hair and full cheeks. According to the website of the Dominican Bar Association, her parents are immigrants from the Dominican Republic. In online photos, she sports a wide smile. But on this day, as she covered one of some 60 immigration courtrooms housed in labyrinthine federal buildings in lower Manhattan, she seemed to churn with angst. Repeatedly she touched her hands to her mouth, then under her glasses, then back to her mouth, and then she rubbed and rubbed her eyes. Continue reading… More

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      The arrests of Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are a danger to all Americans | Theodore J Boutrous, Jr and Katie Townsend

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      We are witnessing a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the press and a clear threat to first amendment freedomsThe extraordinary arrests of the journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort last week are a dangerous escalation in the Trump administration’s attacks on the press and pose a clear threat to first amendment freedoms. Mere weeks after federal law enforcement executed a search warrant targeting a Washington Post reporter, the justice department is now pursuing criminal charges against two independent journalists for reporting from the scene of a protest in Minnesota citing – ironically – federal laws intended to protect the exercise of constitutional rights. These indictments are an affront to the first amendment of the US constitution.On 18 January, protesters entered the Cities church in St Paul, where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official is a pastor, and interrupted a service with chants of “ICE out.” By all indications, Lemon, a former CNN host, and Fort, a local journalist, entered the church to cover the demonstration against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities.Theodore J Boutrous, Jr & Katie Townsend are partners in the law firm of Gibson Dunn and co-chairs of the firm’s first amendment and free expression group Continue reading… More