U.S. may ignore Saudi use of child soldiers

WASHINGTON—Speculation that the Trump administration would give Saudi Arabia a pass for using child soldiers sparked criticism this week from congressional lawmakers already frustrated with U.S. relations with the kingdom.

The U.S. State Department does not include Saudi Arabia on a congressionally mandated list of countries that use underage soldiers despite evidence showing that Saudi-led forces have used children in combat in the Yemeni civil war, according to Reuters. The news service reported Tuesday, citing four anonymous sources, that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo overruled State Department experts and decided to leave the kingdom off the list, which is set to be released June 27.

The 2008 Child Soldiers Prevention Act requires the State Department to annually report on countries that recruit and use children in combat or other forced labor such as spying or sex trafficking. The law says the United States should block offending governments from receiving certain kinds of military aid, including training, funding, and other assistance.

Sudanese soldiers and lawmakers have estimated that since 2016, the Saudi coalition fighting Iranian-backed rebels in Yemen has hired an estimated 14,000 Sudanese fighters, many of them young as 14. In March, more than a dozen lawmakers wrote a letter to Pompeo expressing grave concerns with the “credible reports” of Sudanese child fighters in Yemen. They asked for a U.S. investigation.

A spokesman for the coalition, Col. Turki al-Malki, denied the use of child soldiers in a statement to Reuters. Other officials argued that it was unclear whether the Sudanese forces were directly reporting to Saudi officials in Yemen or were known only to Sudanese officers. Instead of putting Saudi Arabia on the list, the State Department will reinstate Sudan, Reuters reported.

“This is reprehensible,” Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, tweeted in response to the news. He asked why the administration would give “cover for [Saudi Arabia’s] human rights abuses and violations of international norms?”

In recent months, some lawmakers have soured on the U.S.-Saudi alliance due to concerns over the kingdom’s poor record on human rights and the humanitarian crisis resulting from the Yemen conflict. After the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last October, Congress approved a bipartisan resolution calling for an end to U.S. assistance to the Saudis in Yemen. President Donald Trump vetoed the measure in April.

On Thursday, the Senate voted to block a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Seven Republicans joined their Democratic colleagues in the vote. The House of Representatives is likely to pass the resolution, as well, but neither chamber is expected to muster the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said he voted against the sale to “send a signal to Saudi Arabia that if you act the way you’re acting, there is no space for a strategic relationship. … There is no amount of oil you can produce that will get me and others to give you a pass on chopping somebody up in a consulate.”

Instead of simply leaving Saudi Arabia off the list of countries that use child soldiers, the Trump administration could include it but issue a waiver based on “national interest.”

Every year since President George W. Bush signed the bill into law, the White House has granted either whole or partial waivers to countries on the list. President Barack Obama waived sanctions for countries like South Sudan, Somalia, and Yemen, citing national interest. Others, like Afghanistan, Obama left off the list altogether despite evidence the country used underage soldiers to carry out military operations.

When enforced, the Child Soldiers Prevention Act has been effective. In 2012, the Obama administration withheld military training and funding from the Democratic Republic of Congo after reports that the country had an estimated 30,000 child soldiers. Less than a week later, the Congolese government agreed to sign a UN action plan to end recruiting children. By 2014, the United Nations had documented only two cases of the Congolese national army recruiting underage soldiers.

Rep. Will Hurd Associated Press/Photo by J. Scott Applewhite

Seen but not Hurd

When the Black Hat USA cybersecurity conference announced Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, as its keynote speaker June 13, organizers highlighted the congressman’s numerous qualifications, including his record of pushing cybersecurity initiatives in Congress, previous work as an undercover CIA officer, and experience as a senior adviser for a tech security firm. But a day after touting his accomplishments, the conference dropped him.

None of Hurd’s qualifications had changed, but TechCrunch, an online tech-focused news site, published a report citing his poor “voting record on women’s rights,” which included votes for pro-life measures. Potential conference attendees expressed their displeasure with the choice of Hurd, and Black Hat accommodated them by axing him.

NARAL Pro-Choice America, a pro-abortion advocacy group, gave Hurd a zero percent rating on his congressional voting record for pro-abortion laws. By most other measures, the congressman votes far more moderately than most Republicans. Hurd was one of only eight GOP members of Congress to vote for the Equality Act, which would make sexual orientation and gender identity protected classes and potentially decrease protections for religious conscience objections. He has also accused President Donald Trump of being manipulated by Russian President Vladimir Putin and is close friends with Democratic presidential hopeful Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman from Texas.

The Democratic National Committee has targeted Hurd, whose West Texas seat could be vulnerable in the 2020 election. He won in 2019 by fewer than 1,000 votes in the only district along the Mexican border to elect a Republican to the House. Democrats already launched their first Spanish-language ad of the 2020 season against Hurd for his immigration views even though he has broken with his party on immigration policy and has suggested a path to citizenship for so-called Dreamers who were brought to the country illegally as children.

With public pressure on the abortion issue mounting over the past year, pro-life members of Congress in swing districts like Hurd’s will face an important choice: Do they continue to stand strong on their stance in favor of unborn children, or do they sweep it under the carpet to protect themselves and the Republican Party? —Kyle Ziemnick

Rep. Will Hurd Associated Press/Photo by J. Scott Applewhite

Counting the cost

Long-standing efforts to secure reparations to the descendants of slaves took center stage at a congressional hearing for the first time in more than a decade Wednesday.

Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., who is seeking his party’s 2020 presidential nomination, testified before a House Judiciary subcommittee in support of a measure, first introduced in 1989, that would establish a commission to study the legacy of slavery and the possibility of reparations. Other Democratic candidates, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Kamala Harris of California have also endorsed the idea.

“As a nation, we have yet to truly acknowledge and grapple with the racism and white supremacy that tainted this country’s founding and continues to cause persistent and deep racial disparities and inequality,” Booker said. He has introduced similar legislation in the Senate.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., promised to bring the bill to a vote on the floor if it passes in committee.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., dismissed the effort, noting “none of us currently living” is responsible for the evils of slavery. “We’ve tried to deal with our original sin of slavery by fighting a civil war, by passing landmark civil rights legislation. We elected an African American president,” he told reporters.

Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, who revived the debate about reparations with a 2014 article in The Atlantic, told the committee that though McConnell was “not alive for Appomattox,” a reference to the Confederate surrender at the end of the Civil War, he was alive to see violence and discrimination against African Americans before and during the civil rights era.

Coates argued that a reparations study might find the price to be incalculable, but the process would provide “a national reckoning that would lead to spiritual renewal.”

There is little support among the public for the idea, with 60 percent of respondents in a Fox News poll this year opposed to it. —Anne Walters Custer

Rep. Will Hurd Associated Press/Photo by J. Scott Applewhite

2020 update

The Democratic National Committee announced Friday the lineup of the 20 candidates for next week’s primary debates, the first of the 2020 presidential campaign season. The DNC randomly placed the party’s front-runner, former Vice President Joe Biden, and the current second-place contender, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, in the second debate next Thursday, while Sens. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Cory Booker of New Jersey lead the first debate’s field on Wednesday.

The random selection process was designed to avoid creating an “undercard” debate that would attract fewer viewers, which happened to Republicans during the 2016 campaign. But four of the top five candidates, according to a poll summary by the website FiveThirtyEight, ended up in the Thursday debate: Biden, Sanders, Sen. Kamala Harris of California, and South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota attempted to boost their standing in the polls prior to the debate by attending the DNC’s annual LGBTQ gala in New York Monday night. They framed themselves as warriors for the gay rights movement and attacked Republicans for restricting transgender individuals’ service in the military. Buttigieg, the only openly gay candidate in the race, did not attend the event.

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump kicked off his reelection campaign Tuesday night at a packed rally in Orlando, Fla. He unveiled his new slogan, “Keep America Great,” and attacked Democrats, saying they “want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it.”

The president’s campaign raised almost $25 million in the first 24 hours after the rally, more than Biden, Sanders, Harris, Warren, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke of Texas raised in their first days combined, according to The New York Times. —K.Z.

Rep. Will Hurd Associated Press/Photo by J. Scott Applewhite

Poll predicament

President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign recently fired three pollsters after internal numbers leaked this month showed Trump trailing Democratic front-runner Joe Biden in crucial swing states.

Earlier this month, someone shared with news organizations several polls from March that showed Biden ahead of Trump in a head-to-head contest in 11 states. The polling gave the former vice president a 16-percentage-point lead in Pennsylvania (55-39) and a 10-point advantage in Wisconsin. It also showed Biden leading by 7 points in Florida. The polls did not include matchups between president and other Democratic candidates. After the leak, the campaign fired pollsters Brett Loyd, Adam Geller, and Michael Baselice.

Campaign manager Brad Parscale said in a statement that the numbers were flawed. Since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigative report, which did not find evidence of collusion between Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and Russia, “the president’s new polling is extraordinary and his numbers have never been better,” Parscale said.

Trump denied the negative polling in an ABC News interview, calling them “fake polls.” He added that he had seen other polls that showed him “winning everywhere.” —H.P.