Trump’s farewell address - Uighur genocide designation - US history origin debate

Trump’s nearly 20-minute speech, which was taped Monday, framed his departure from the White House as the natural conclusion of a job well done, rather than as the consequence of his election loss to Biden. “This week, we inaugurate a new administration and pray for its success in keeping America safe and prosperous. We extend our best wishes, and we also want them to have luck — a very important word,” Trump said.
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“All Americans were horrified by the assault on our Capitol. Political violence is an attack on everything we cherish as Americans. It can never be tolerated,” Trump said in the speech. He has denied any responsibility for the invasion. But earlier Tuesday, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said that the mob was “provoked by the president and other powerful people.”
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“Now, as I prepare to hand power over to a new administration at noon on Wednesday, I want you to know that the movement we started is only just beginning,” [Trump] said. But it’s unclear whether that movement will include Trump — at least as a candidate for elected office. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., vowed earlier Tuesday that if Trump is convicted after his impeachment trial “there will be a vote on barring him from running again.”

[President-elect Biden's Department of Homeland Security secretary nominee Alejandro Mayorkas] appeared for his Senate confirmation hearing one day after reports surfaced that Biden intends to propose an eight-year path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants shortly after taking office Wednesday, signaling an immediate focus on a topic that has both consumed and paralyzed Congress for decades.
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Republican lawmakers pressed Mayorkas on whether the Biden administration would spend $1.4 billion that Congress appropriated late last year to continue border wall construction, one of President Donald Trump’s top priorities that has been fiercely opposed by Democrats, including President-elect Joe Biden. Mayorkas said he would examine whether existing funds must be spent and underscored Biden’s opposition to further wall appropriations.
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The hearing lasted more than two hours and featured repeated questions about Mayorkas’ role in the granting of U.S. visas to wealthy foreign investors when he served as director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) during the former Obama administration. A 2015 DHS inspector general’s report concluded that Mayorkas intervened in the EB-5 investor program at the behest of some powerful Democrats in a way that “created an appearance of favoritism and special access.” Mayorkas noted that the report found no legal wrongdoing.

Officials said the determination of crimes against humanity was obvious, due to extensive public evidence showing the Chinese Communist Party has subjected Uighurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang province to many atrocities. They include the arbitrary imprisonment of more than 1 million innocent civilians, forced sterilization, torture, forced labor and severe restrictions on freedom of religion, freedom of expression and freedom of movement.
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The Chinese government also tipped its own hand when its embassy in the United States tweeted this month in defense of these very policies. The embassy was promoting a “study” published in its own propaganda outlets claiming that anti-extremism policies had “emancipated” the minds of Uighur women, promoted gender equality and reproductive health, “making them no longer baby-making machines.”
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Internally, there was debate among the State Department’s lawyers over whether to add the additional determination of genocide. There’s no legal requirement for the new administration to do anything. The Biden administration would be hard-pressed not to call China’s atrocities a “genocide,” after doing so explicitly during the campaign.

Riots erupted after the Tunisian government imposed a nationwide lockdown on Thursday — the same day as it marked the 10th anniversary of dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's fall from power during the Arab Spring — to curb a surge in coronavirus infections. Interior ministry spokesman Khaled Hayouni said a total of 632 people were arrested, including "groups of people between the ages of 15, 20 and 25 who burned tires and bins in order to block movements by the security forces."
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The unrest comes at a time many Tunisians are already increasingly dissatisfied with the lack of change since the Arab Spring broke out at the end of 2010. The country is suffering from a weakening economy, with one third of young people unemployed. GDP contracted by nine percent in 2019 and consumer prices have skyrocketed. Citizens are also frustrated over poor public services.
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The pandemic has exacerbated economic woes, decimating Tunisia's tourism industry — also already crippled after a string of fatal jihadist attacks in 2015. Tunisia has recorded over 177,000 coronavirus infections with over 5,600 deaths since the pandemic erupted last year.

The commission’s report charges, in terms quickly derided by many mainstream historians, that Americans are being indoctrinated with a false critique of the nation’s founding and identity, including the role of slavery in its history. American universities, the report contends, “are often today hotbeds of anti-Americanism, libel, and censorship that combine to generate in students and in the broader culture at the very least disdain and at worst outright hatred for this country.”
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The report drew intense criticism from historians, some of whom noted that the commission, while stocked with conservative educators, did not include a single professional historian of the United States. Some of the strongest criticism was for the report’s treatment of slavery, which the report suggests was an unfortunate reality throughout the world that was swept away in America by the forces unleashed by the American Revolution.
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While billed by the White House as “definitive,” the report included no scholarly footnotes or citations, nor was it clear who its primary authors were. The commission and its report are in part a rebuke to The New York Times Magazine’s 1619 Project, which reframes American history around the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans.