TDB Top 5 International Stories: Tuesday 19th June 2018

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5: Trump said he’s asking the Pentagon to create a sixth branch of the military — for space

In a surprise announcement on Monday, Trump said he would direct the Defense Department to begin creating a sixth branch of the armed forces: the “Space Force.”

“In defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space,” Trump said in a National Space Council meeting. He also described the plan with some racially charged language. “We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space Force — separate but equal.”

Vice News

4: Anger mounts against Trump over child separation policy

Pressure is mounting on US President Donald Trump to reverse his policy of separating children from refugees and migrants who cross the US-Mexico border.

“Families belong together,” protesters chanted on Sunday, as hundreds gathered outside detention centres in the states of Texas and New Jersey, calling for an end to the practice.

Aljazeera

3: FETISHIZING “IDENTITY POLITICS” COULD COST DEMOCRATS IN 2020

TDB Recommends NewzEngine.com

THE 2016 BERNIE Sanders campaign terraformed the landscape of political possibility: “Socialist” is no longer a slur, “Medicare for All” is a litmus test for 2020 hopefuls, and Americans are no longer so inured to the influence of money in politics. To millions on the left, the then-relatively unknown Vermont senator’s unexpected surge in the 2016 Democratic primary (and consistently strong approval ratings) demonstrate that electoral victory in 2020 requires adopting much of his platform and approach to politics. This means, among other things, making economic inequality central to any prospective presidential agenda.

Yet the very concept of “economic anxiety” has become a punchline at best, and a third rail at worst, among a loud swath of the Democratic coalition. Because economic concerns have, at times, been used as a pretext to avoid recognizing the role racism and xenophobia played in Donald Trump’s popularity, many Democrats now bristle at the notion that the Democratic Party should reach out to working-class whites at all. Understandably fearful that “wooing” white voters might require an appeal to bigotry, it’s now commonly argued that the Democratic Party should concentrate its efforts on nonvoters of color instead.

The Intercept

2: Meet the Migrant Child Detention Center Whistleblower Now Speaking Out Against Family Separations

A youth care worker who quit his job at a Tucson detention center for unaccompanied minors is speaking out about inadequate facilities, untrained staff and inhumane policies, after witnessing the devastation of family separations firsthand. Antar Davidson says he quit after he was forced to tell children who were separated from their mother not to hug one another. The facility is run by Southwest Key, a nonprofit that operates 27 facilities and has signed a lease to detain hundreds of separated children, including many who are a younger than 12 years old, in a “baby jail” in a former warehouse and homeless shelter in Houston. For more, we speak with Antar Davidson.

Democracy Now

1: Donald Trump says US will not be a ‘migrant camp’

Donald Trump said the US would not be a “migrant camp” as his administration defended its controversial practice of separating migrant children from their parents at the border.

“The United States will not be a migrant camp and it will not be a refugee holding facility,” Trump said during remarks at the White House on Monday.

“You look at what’s happening in Europe,” he continued, “you look at what’s happening in other places – we can’t allow that to happen to the United States. Not on my watch.”