Opinion
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
4A — Monday, February 10, 2020

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KEITH JOHNSTONE | COLUMN

Trump’s two worst enemies you’ve never heard of
O

n Sept. 24, 2019, Speaker 
Nancy Pelosi held a press 
conference 
launching 
the official impeachment inquiry 
against President Donald Trump. 
That day, she introduced America 
to the six-headed monster of 
committee chairmen who were 
investigating Trump. If you pay 
attention to politics, you probably 
know U.S. Reps. Adam Schiff, 
D-Calif., Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., 
Maxine Waters, D-Calif. and the late 
Elijah Cummings, D-Md. Each has 
become famous via their frequent 
appearances on cable news or viral 
clips berating cabinet secretaries 
— or, in the case of Nadler, buckets 
of fried chicken. However, unless 
you’re from the East Coast or pay 
too much attention to politics, you 
probably did not recognize the 
chairmen of the Congressional 
Ways and Means Committee and 
Foreign Affairs Committee. The 
two men, Reps. Richard Neal, 
D-Mass., and Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., 
have planted several landmines just 
waiting to explode on Trump. 
Neal, a grown man who goes by 
“Richie,” has spent his entire career 
devoted to budgetary and economic 
issues. His record is an economic 
policy treasure trove, focused on 
simplifying the tax code, repealing 
the Alternative Minimum Tax and 
supporting lower trade barriers. 
He operated in Washington under 
the radar for years until he came 
to prominence in 2007 when he 
clashed with another prominent 
policymaker, 
Rep. 
Paul 
Ryan, 
R-Wis., 
over 
the 
Alternative 
Minimum Tax. 
While Neal’s bill eventually lost 
out, his new notoriety in policy 
circles allowed him to chair the 
Ways and Means subcommittee 
on Select Revenue Measures the 
following year. He then became 
the ranking member of Ways and 
Means in 2017, once again sparring 
with Ryan through the Tax Cuts 
and Jobs Act of 2017 — another 
fight he ultimately lost. However, 
he got the ultimate win over Ryan 
by becoming the chairman of Ways 
and Means when Ryan left office.
Though he has been quiet, 
preferring to operate out of the 
public eye, Neal has had a busy year. 
First, he and the committee built a 
comprehensive legal argument for 

subpoenaing Trump’s tax returns 
and he is now the lead plaintiff in a 
court fight over that subpoena. Soon 
after he became one of the leading 
Democrats 
on 
the 
President’s 
NAFTA 2.0 trade agreement, also 
known as the United States-Mexico-
Canada 
Agreement 
(USMCA). 
In his spare time, Neal has been 
chairing the Joint Congressional 
Committee on Taxation and trying 
to pass Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s 
prescription drug bill.
Such a large profile prompts one 
question: How is he doing? The 
answer: Not bad, but there are still 
some big issues on the table. The 
USMCA passed both chambers, 
the Joint Committee released a 
large-scale report earlier this week 
and the tax returns case is working 
its way through the federal court 
system. However, the USMCA 
contained lower labor standards 
than Neal initially set out for, the 
prescription drug bill has stalled 
and he still hasn’t received those tax 
returns. Putting his mixed record 
aside, though, Neal could be easily 
described as Democrats’ largest 
domestic policy asset, and with 
China’s “Phase 1” trade deal coming 
to the House floor, this might not be 
the last time you hear about him. 
In contrast to the rank-and-file 
Neal, Engel, whose mustache might 
be more prominent than the man it’s 
attached to, has been one of the few 
members of Congress whose career 
has been defined by bipartisan 
compromises. First elected in 1988 
based on his progressive idealism, 
Engel was an early proponent 
of single-payer healthcare, paid 
family leave and an assault weapons 
ban. 
However, 
Engel’s 
career 
path was altered forever when 
he fell in love with foreign policy 
in 1996. He came to prominence 
in Washington as the leader of 
a 
bipartisan 
group 
criticizing 
the 
Clinton 
administration’s 
noninterventionism in the Kosovo 
genocide. In fact, he became so 
intertwined with justice for the 
small nation that a street in its 
capital is named after him. This 
trend 
of 
criticizing 
presidents 
from both sides of the aisle 
contributed to his credibility in 
Washington’s foreign policy circles 
as a principled member. This was 
especially reflected in 2015 when 

Engel vocally opposed the Obama 
administration’s Iran nuclear deal. 
As the ranking member of the 
House Foreign Affairs Committee, 
Engel has led bipartisan trips 
abroad that tour everything from 
war zones to the Munich Security 
Conference, which grants him 
significant goodwill on both sides of 
the aisle. Recognizing his bipartisan 
history, House Republicans were 
not upset with Engel’s appointment 
to the Foreign Affairs chairmanship 
after the 2018 midterms. 
The Trump administration’s 
plethora of foreign policy blunders 
have kept Engel busy over the 
past year, but none more than the 
Ukraine scandal. This scandal and 
subsequent 
impeachment 
saga 
threatened to put Engel on center 
stage, with his committee being 
one of the three allowed to attend 
closed-door depositions. When the 
televised impeachment hearings 
were looming, Engel was faced 
with a decision: go on the cable 
news circuit or forego the spotlight. 
He quickly chose the latter and 
allowed Schiff and Nadler to be 
mocked nightly by journalistic 
paragons like Greg Gutfeld, Tucker 
Carlson and Sean Hannity. In the 
following weeks, the news cycle 
churned on and Engel returned 
to his largely thankless day job of 
having his subpoenas ignored by 
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. 
However, with about 10 months 
until election day and countless 
foreign policy decisions, from 
Russia to Iran to whatever Jared 
Kushner is doing, this is likely not 
the last you will hear of Engel, 
either.
Simply put, both Neal and 
Engel have consciously avoided 
the gaze of the general public, 
preferring to silently lay traps for 
Trump using their high offices 
and 
large 
portfolios. 
When 
the 
administration 
inevitably 
encounters one of these traps — my 
bet is Neal’s tax return subpoena or 
Engel’s Ukraine revelations — they 
will find a foe with tremendous 
respect and without a demeaning 
nickname bestowed by Fox News 
or Trump’s Twitter feed. That is 
the point.

Keith Johnstone can be 

reached at keithja@umich.edu.

ALLISON PUJOL | COLUMN

Waiting outside the golden door
P

oet Emma Lazarus’s words 
displayed on the Statue 
of Liberty will likely be 
remembered for decades to come. 
The text of her poem “The New 
Colossus,” which experts have 
praised for both its poise and 
defiance, ends with an iconic, 
powerful call to action: “ ‘Give 
me your tired, your poor, / Your 
huddled masses yearning to breathe 
free, / The wretched refuse of your 
teeming shore. / Send these, the 
homeless, tempest-tost to me, / I lift 
my lamp beside the golden door!’ ” 
While 
speaking 
to 
NPR’s 
Morning Edition to announce a 
new immigration regulation, Ken 
Cuccinelli, acting Director of U.S. 
Citizenship 
and 
Immigration 
Services (USCIS), suggested in a 
smirking aside to “Give me your tired 
and your poor who can stand on 
their own two feet and who will not 
become a public charge.” 
“No one has a right to become 
an American who isn’t born here 
as an American,” said Cuccinelli, 
director of the agency primarily 
responsible for immigration and 
citizenship 
applications 
in 
the 
United States. Many in immigration 
policy circles have been attentive 
to the recent Supreme Court ruling 
about Cuccinelli’s proposed public 
charge rule that has restricted legal 
immigration in the U.S. Put simply, 
the “public charge” rule renders an 
individual ineligible for permanent 
legal residence status (also known as 
a “green card” or LPR) if they receive 
in-kind (i.e., non-cash) government 
assistance such as Medicaid, housing 
vouchers or food stamps. For some, 
perhaps the logic seems intuitive 
enough: Given that government 
assistance is funded by taxpayers, 
the cost of thousands of immigrants 
qualifying and receiving welfare 
every year would be enormous for 
U.S. citizens. (Please do note that 
non-citizens also do pay taxes, and 
that is often a condition to receive 
LPR). 

The reality is that there are 
already fairly restrictive guidelines 
in place that determine who can 
and cannot obtain legal permanent 
residence in the U.S. To have a 
decent chance at legal permanent 
residency, immigrants need to 
produce an affidavit of support that 
indicates they or a close relative who 
is already a citizen earns a steady, 
substantial income. And that’s just 
one example — there are many 
biometric screening procedures in 
place to confirm that immigrants 
or their families are considered 
adequate 
for 
legal 
permanent 
residence. 

Now, under the new public 
charge regulation, an immigrant 
who has received assistance within 
36 months (three years) of applying 
for legal permanent residence or 
seems “likely” to receive assistance 
at some point in the future will be 
ineligible. For example, a single 
mother who receives government 
benefits while she searches for 
employment in the U.S., secures 
a job and then applies for legal 
permanent residence would be 
ineligible even if she or her children 
never 
received 
government 
assistance ever again. 
Many supporters of the new 
regulation insist that the regulation 
is only an extension of prior policy. 
Prior to the new USCIS regulation, 
immigration 
officials 
did 
not 
typically enforce the public charge 
rule as it was difficult to assess what 

it meant for somebody to be “likely” 
to receive assistance and the rule 
seemed fairly counter-intuitive. After 
all, many immigrants come to the 
U.S. in search of better employment, 
housing or education opportunities 
than in their home countries. Some 
immigrants who flee the social or 
political conditions in their home 
countries may be unable to take 
forms of material wealth with them 
into the U.S., and it’s unreasonable to 
assume that everyone should have 
the means to make it in America 
immediately upon arriving. 
It is also worth noting that 
over-arching regulations and bans 
are unprecedented in American 
immigration law. Both President 
Jimmy Carter’s Iran order and 
President Ronald Reagan’s Cuba 
proclamation, 
which 
invoked 
the need for a national security-
based limit on immigration visas, 
adopted a case-by-case approach. 
In the dissenting opinion in 
Trump v. Hawaii, Justice Stephen 
Breyer pondered, “... if those two 
Presidents thought a case-by-case 
exemption 
system 
appropriate, 
what is different about present 
circumstances that would justify 
that system’s absence?” 
It is important to call out the 
new regulation for exactly what 
it is. The new public charge rule 
sends the message that immigrants 
are only welcome if they can 
come to the U.S. with substantial 
means and resources, which is 
both disconnected from reality 
and socially irresponsible. Public 
health experts are also worried 
that the new rule won’t limit 
immigration flows into the U.S. 
but rather convince immigrants to 
stop seeking healthcare through 
Medicaid or other public health 
benefits. 

Allison Pujol can be reached at 

ampmich@umich.edu.

NOAH ENTE | COLUMN

Palestine’s missed opportunity

L

ast 
week, 
President 
Donald Trump released 
his much-anticipated and 
self-titled “Deal of the Century,” 
the administration’s framework to 
resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. 
With the deal finally published in 
detail, a wide spectrum of responses 
arose into the discourse. Overall, 
there appeared to be approval from 
Israel’s government, led (for now) by 
Trump confidant and veteran Prime 
Minister 
Benjamin 
Netanyahu, 
along with mixed reviews from the 
American public and the American 
Jewish community. There were also 
expected responses of disapproval 
and 
rejection 
by 
Palestinians, 
among whom Mahmoud Abbas 
— president of the Palestinian 
National Authority — stood out with 
his declaration of “a thousand no’s.” 
The use of the term “Arab-Israeli 
conflict” to refer to the tension that 
has lasted — in one way or another 
— for over a century, is purposeful. 
Arab states and their leaders 
have always played a significant 
role in shaping the course of the 
conflict throughout the decades. 
Such examples include former 
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel 
Nasser’s casus belli that set both 
the consequential 1967 Six-Day 
War into motion and the 2002 
Saudi-led Arab Peace Initiative that 
conditioned the establishment of 
formal ties between Israel and Arab 
states on the premise that Israel 
withdraw to the 1949 armistice 
lines, or as they have often been 
called, the “1967 Lines.” It is clear 
that the position taken by Arab 
leaders has proved influential in 
determining much of the discourse 
surrounding the conflict, if not the 
facts on the ground themselves.
With such context in mind, 
the response of many important 
Arab figures to the release of the 
Trump plan is quite notable. On 
Jan. 28, when the details of the plan 
were put out in full, dignitaries from 
many Arab countries either came 
to Washington to show support 
for the deal or released statements 
encouraging the diplomatic efforts 
and urging acceptance of the plan 
as a basis for ongoing talks. Such 
countries include Bahrain, Oman, 

the United Arab Emirates, Saudi 
Arabia and Morocco. Their support 
for the plan as a start to future 
negotiations, and even support for 
the plan itself, is telling because it 
reveals the beginnings of a shift 
in the attitude of the Arab world 
towards the plight of Palestinian 
nationalism.
With each solution that has been 
proposed for resolving the Arab-
Israeli conflict, those who now 
identify themselves as Palestinians 
have received a less generous offer. 
Indeed, even plans for peace during 
the British Mandate period were 
almost 
completely 
sympathetic 
to Arab desires. The 1947 United 
Nations partition plan, the design 
of which gave Arabs much of the 
agriculturally viable and historically 
meaningful land and gave Jews the 
desert for most of their territory, 
was quickly accepted by then-Israeli 
Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion 
(whose partner, would-be Israeli 
President Chaim Weizmann, would 
have accepted much less) and the 
Jewish Yishuv, and so the formal 
framework for Israel’s establishment 
was advanced. 
Even after the existence of 
Israel was solidified through law 
and survival from multiple wars of 
attempted annihilation, rejections 
continued, 
leaving 
Palestinians 
without a state as a result of their 
inflexible demands. Negotiations 
from the 1990s until 2000 led by 
former President Bill Clinton were 
known to have stalled due to Yasser 
Arafat’s unwillingness to budge, 
and Clinton himself has blamed 
the Palestinian leader for dooming 
peace prospects at the Camp David 
summit. Even with all parties under 
new leadership in 2008, with a 
surprisingly generous proposal that 
included Israel ceding its claim to a 
united capital in Jerusalem in favor 
of establishing it as international 
territory, met Palestinian rejection. 
The pattern can be seen here, 
clear as day. To paraphrase Israeli 
diplomat and U.N. Ambassador 
Abba Eban, the Palestinians “never 
miss an opportunity to miss an 
opportunity.” 
It is important to know and 
recognize 
this 
history 
when 

evaluating the offer the Palestinians 
currently find in front of them. Yes, 
it is significantly less sympathetic 
to their demands and desires 
compared to previous proposals, 
and addresses Israeli concerns 
prominently. However, if Abbas 
and the rest of the Palestinian 
leadership find the “Deal of the 
Century” 
to 
be 
unacceptable, 
they have only their predecessors 
and themselves to blame. They 
repeatedly refused compromise 
and even a small waiting period to 
receive everything they desired, 
and now question how they find 
themselves in such a predicament. 
The reactions by many Arab 
states to the release of a peace 
plan generally understood to be 
favorable to Israel reveal that 
their leaders, to some degree, also 
acknowledge the true history of 
Arab-Israeli negotiations. They 
are at least subtly calling on the 
Palestinians 
to 
finally 
accept 
something after over a century of 
dispute that they have perpetuated 
through stubbornness, delusion 
and often ill will.
Many 
Israelis, 
Palestinians 
and their supporters all have 
varying gripes with the terms of 
the Trump plan or the future it 
may lay out. Yet if the Palestinian 
leadership has learned anything 
from past or current patterns of 
the conflict, and truly wants to 
accomplish 
something 
rather 
than simply seeking victimhood, 
representatives should at least 
come to the negotiating table and 
civilly voice their concerns. 
After Abbas’s boycott of the 
Trump administration following 
its recognition of the basic fact that 
Jerusalem is Israel’s capital and 
the subsequent relocation of the 
U.S. Embassy, they have no right to 
complain about not influencing the 
original formation of the plan. If 
they seek to have any control over 
their future, Abbas must swallow 
his pride and come prepared to talk. 
If not, Palestinians will continue to 
have only their own leaders to blame 
for their current plight. 

Noah Ente can be reached at 

noahente@umich.edu.

KEVIN MOORE JR. | CONTACT CARTOONIST AT KEVINJR@UMICH.EDU

Many immigrants 
come to the U.S. 
in search of better 
employment.

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