11 JULY

A justice is served

US President Donald Trump has named 53-year-old Brett Kavanaugh as his pick to replace retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy on the Supreme Court. The Yale Law School graduate has served as a judge on the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit since 2006 and once clerked for Kennedy.

Kavanaugh first gained attention during his time working for former independent counsel Ken Starr during the investigation into then-President Bill Clinton. His record on women’s and LGBT rights is sparse, but he has been a strong supporter of executive power, including calling for sitting presidents to be shielded from criminal investigations and civil lawsuits while they are in office. 

Kavanaugh will need 51 votes to clear the Senate. All eyes will be on Republican senators Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins – and whether they'll deem the pick too extreme on reproductive health.

NEWS WRAP

Warning shot at NATO as POTUS departs

• President Trump renewed his criticism of European allies just before departing for a NATO summit in Brussels Tuesday, though he said he was most optimistic about meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump complained about trade deficits with the European Union and appeared to threaten to cut American military spending in a bid to compel other NATO members to increase theirs. President of the European Council Donald Tusk responded on Twitter, saying Europe was a friend worth protecting, unlike other countries with which Trump has cultivated relationships.  READ MORE HERE.
   

• Are we underestimating the seriousness of the trade war unfolding between the United States and the rest of the world? Director of the Centre's Trade & Investment Program, Stephen Kirchner, says there is plenty of reason to be pessimistic, drawing comparisons with the 1930s trade war that saw international trade decline by nearly two-thirds. The US tariffs of 1930 exacerbated the Great Depression and devastated living standards for people around the world. READ MORE HERE.
   
• What is the future of the US-Australia alliance in the face of challenges presented by authoritarian regimes and the lack of leadership in our region from the new US administration? Writing for ASPI's Strategist last week, senior fellow and visiting scholar Charles Edel suggests three specific ideas for refocusing the alliance that will require reorienting the alliance’s geographic focus while broadening its scope beyond security, and expanding the joint efforts globally. READ MORE HERE.
   
• Does Trump's Supreme Court pick mean a reversal of Roe v Wade? ABC News looked at the prospects of the court winding back the landmark ruling that legalised abortion nationwide in America more than 40 years ago and spoke to honorary associate Elizabeth Ingleson about Democratic opposition to the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh. READ MORE HERE.
   
• Following a landslide victory in Mexico's presidential election, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador is president-elect of one the world's most populous democracies. Writing for ABC Religion & Ethics over the weekend, American Studies and History lecturer Thomas Adams pondered the potential for Obrador's Mexico to become an effective counterweight to Trumpism – perhaps more effective than the current Democratic Party, as well as America's self-styled #Resistance. READ MORE HERE.
   
• The Trump administration's withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council is part of a broader US deprioritisation of human rights internationally, at the same time as China, Russia and other states have grown more assertive in challenging democratic norms. In her new research brief released Monday, non-resident senior fellow Elsina Wainwright took a look at this departure from previous administrations on human rights promotion; the role of the State Department and US Congress in filling the vacuum; and the implications for Australia. READ MORE HERE.

If we continue on this path we're down, China will control all of the countries of South East Asia and they will control Australia.

Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon
(Sydney Morning Herald interview)
9 July 2018

ANALYSIS

Unequal cities mask their inequality

Ariel Castro-Martinez
USSC Global Cities Delegate

In San Francisco, a household that makes US$100,000 per year is considered low-income. A studio apartment there rents for about AU$850 per week. In Cupertino, home of Apple headquarters, the median home value is well over US$2 million. This is the natural consequence of a metropolis that revolves around the economic gravity of Silicon Valley. The Bay Area, as a whole, is one of the richest regions in the United States, but because of some conceptual quirks, it doesn’t appear to be so unequal on the surface. The full picture of urban inequality depends on who counts and who is counted.

In June of this year, I attended the Chicago Forum on Global Cities as the delegate for the United States Studies Centre. For the geographically astute, you can imagine that a few eyebrows were raised when a master’s student from Sydney explained they were in Chicago to learn about material inequality in the Bay Area. This is because the greatest challenges facing the world’s big cities are local manifestations of common and global issues. Major cities are the gateways of globalisation. They have more in common with each other than with the rest of their own countries. If you ever want to know where the global epicentre of any world city is, simply follow the tourist foot traffic until you hit the obligatory Hard Rock Café. You can be assured that the authentic local flavour will increase linearly with distance from that spot.

But cities around the world are importing more than just kitsch Americana; they’re importing inequality. The most successful cities will attract professionals, investors, and hopefuls from a global pool of talent and, if not equitably managed, the intense competition for space — both economic and physical — will cause these urban populations to segregate according to their means.

In the 1970s, human capital was more or less equally distributed across US cities. No city in America was disproportionately better paid than another. But since then, poorer and less educated Americans have been leaving the fastest growing US cities, while places like Silicon Valley have thrived on new blood through the influx of skilled migration. San Francisco is now in the lead for average wealth and its absurdly expensive cost of living reflects it. Other cities have rich people, but no city has as many rich people as San Francisco. This is why inequality is an insufficient metric to characterise what is going on. The elimination of the poor from the sample is the surest way to solve the inequality problem.

When urbanist Alex Schafran sought to describe how inequality hides within the gaps and behind the boundaries of the Bay Area’s fragmented urban geography, he wrote: “There is a deep tendency in America to assume problems evident in geography are the result of choices, decisions, and events made primarily in that geography as opposed to inequalities and poor decision-making in the wider system of urban and regional development.” Downtown Chicago was a pristine oasis of modernity, but it was built on the exclusion and concentration of poor African-Americans swept underneath its urban rug. San Francisco is much too expensive and instead exports its poor people. If urban inequality is not evident within cities, then it’s likely because over the last few decades it has been moving between cities.

The most disadvantaged members of society are the least visible and we need better ways of including them within our conceptual frameworks of inequality. San Francisco has more unsheltered homeless people than any other US city, and those who are sheltered —doubled up in the homes of friends, or temporarily residing within institutions like jail — are not even counted in the homeless census that only takes place every second January.

Urban poverty is being reinforced by a poverty of data and imagination. There needs to be a concerted effort to rethink the ways we conceive inequality because we cannot devise solutions to problems we struggle to perceive.

Inequality pervades the conformity of a seemingly universally rich and rosy San Francisco. People are struggling to get by on six-figure salaries and homeless people are filling the streets of the wealthiest and most progressive city in America. If everyone is rich, no one is, and then how will the poorest amongst us be seen?

DIARY

The week ahead

• Wednesday, 11 July: President Trump will meet NATO leaders at a summit in Brussels.
   

• Thursday, 12 July: 70th Primetime Emmy Awards nominations announced.
   

• 12-15 July: President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump will visit the United Kingdom.
   

• Tuesday, 17 July: Former US President Barack Obama will deliver the Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture in Johannesburg, themed 'Renewing the Mandela Legacy and Promoting Active Citizenship in a Changing World'.

EVENT

Public health law and health leadership in the United States: what can Australia learn?

VIDEO

Vice President Mike Pence: I do still want Roe v. Wade overturned

THE WEEK IN TWEETS

#BrettKavanaugh

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Institute Building H03
University of Sydney NSW 2006

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