Dodgers’ Julio Urías and Daniel Hudson set target for return

• June 18, 2023

LOS ANGELES ― The light at the end of the tunnel for the Dodgers’ beleaguered pitching staff is getting closer, and now they can circle it on the calendar. Julio Urías and Daniel Hudson are set to rejoin the team during its three-game series in Kansas City from June 30 to July 2, manager Dave Roberts said Sunday.

Urías, 5-4 with a 4.39 ERA, has been on the injured list since May 20 with a left hamstring strain. The Dodgers have struggled during his absence, posting a 5.60 ERA ― 29th in MLB ― entering Sunday’s game against the San Francisco Giants.

Roberts said Urías will throw live batting practice Tuesday at Dodger Stadium, then make a minor league rehab start before rejoining the active roster.

Hudson hasn’t appeared in a major league game since March 2022 while recovering from surgery on his left knee. Before undergoing the season-ending procedure on his anterior cruciate ligament, Hudson was among the Dodgers’ most reliable relief pitchers.

The 36-year-old right-hander recently began a minor league rehabilitation assignment. He has made five scoreless appearances for the Dodgers’ Arizona Complex League team, and is expected to transfer his rehab to Triple-A Oklahoma City no sooner than Tuesday.

SYNDERGAARD UPDATE

Noah Syndergaard resumed throwing from flat ground Sunday. The right-hander went on the 15-day injured list with a finger blister June 8. There is no timetable for his return.

In 12 starts prior to the injury, Syndergaard was 1-4 with a 7.16 ERA. The Dodgers’ bullpen has struggled arguably as much as its rotation in recent weeks. Their 5.11 ERA (through Saturday) is 29th in MLB.

Last year, Syndergaard made three relief appearances for the Philadelphia Phillies between September and October, but the Dodgers have no intention at the moment of bringing him back as a relief pitcher.

“I don’t see that happening,” Roberts said. “I know last year in Philadelphia he pitched in the ’pen a little bit. For us, get him back, ramp him up, and see where we’re at as far as a starter.”

The Dodgers signed Syndergaard to a one-year, $13 million contract in December.

ALSO

Clayton Kershaw is scheduled to start for the Dodgers on Tuesday in Anaheim, where he will be opposed by the Angels’ Reid Detmers. … Roberts does not know who will start Wednesday, with the possibility of a bullpen game likely since the Dodgers have off-days Monday and Thursday. Shohei Ohtani will start for the Angels. … Infielder/outfielder Chris Taylor (knee) was unavailable Sunday as he recovers from a cortisone shot. He will be re-evaluated Tuesday.

UP NEXT

The Dodgers have an off-day Monday.

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​ Orange County Register 

Laguna Woods honors ‘Greatest Generation’ of veterans

• June 18, 2023

Michael Brigandi was 18, not long out of high school, when he was drafted into the Army in February 1944.

Four months later, he found himself in England, waiting for transport to Utah Beach in Normandy. That wait took four days, for reasons unknown to him.

“When you’re 18 or 19 years old, all you’re worried about is getting back home,”  he said.

Brigandi was with the 234th Engineer Combat Battalion, whose mission was to build bridges and roads, dig foxholes and “anything else that needed to be done” after the Allied invasion of Western Europe on D-Day, June 6, 1944, during World War II.

“The first bridge we built we were under mortar fire by the Germans,” he recalled. “But they got taken care of by our artillery.”

Brigandi survived, he said, because his company followed the 2nd Armored Division inland.

“We didn’t see anybody around anywhere,” he said. “The tank guys cleared the way for us.”

Eddie Hoffman also survived the war, but he came face-to-face with the horrors of Auschwitz: At age 14, he watched, he said, as his entire family perished in the Nazi concentration camp in Poland.

The Nazis then shipped Hoffman to camps around Europe. In May 1945, he was at a camp in Austria when it was liberated by Gen. George Patton’s 3rd Army.

As a young man, Hoffman emigrated to America and was drafted into the U.S. military – the 3rd Army. He served in Korea and Japan.

“I loved the Army and felt allegiance to the country and the 3rd Army that liberated and gave me a new life,” he said.

Brigandi, Hoffman and nine other Laguna Woods residents and members of the “Greatest Generation” of veterans were honored at an American Legion Post 257 dinner meeting May 25 in Clubhouse 1.

The meeting started off on a solemn note after Commander Dennis Powell welcomed those in attendance – the veterans, Legionnaires, and members of the American Legion 257 Auxiliary, female family members of Legion veterans.

Pat Burr, president of the Auxiliary, gave the bugle call “To the Colors,” honoring the nation, and Chaplain Alan Clark presented the opening prayer.

Burr then led the POW/MIA ceremony in front of a Missing Man Table set up inside the clubhouse.

It is a small round table laden with symbolism: a single red rose as a reminder of the missing and their loved ones who keep the faith, a lemon slice for the bitter fate of those captured and missing in a foreign land, a pinch of salt for the tears of the missing and their families, an inverted glass showing the inability of those missing to share in the toast, an empty chair at the table, and more.

The mood in the room changed after dinner, when each veteran was introduced and asked to share their most vivid memory of the war. A sense of reverence prevailed as guests listened to the 10 men and one woman who endured the war, lived to talk about it and are still alive even as the number of World War II veterans rapidly dwindles.

But it was clear that many of the veterans didn’t take themselves quite as seriously as the guests did. Laughter broke out as the vets shared humorous memories, often poked in the ribs by their wives, prodded to “tell them about the time you …”

Gilbert Rowland was in the Army Air Corps. Since he was a teenager, he said, he was “nutty about learning how to fly.” He finally got to do it at Kelly Field in San Antonio, Texas.

Rowland told the story about having quite a bumpy landing. In fact, his biplane bumped down on the ground several times. When he was finally able to bring the plane to a stop, his superior told him, “You only get credit for one landing.”

Jerry Schur enlisted in the Navy in 1944 at age 17 and was promptly sent to college for one year in Wisconsin to learn how to fix radars. But when he was done, two things happened in rapid succession, he recalled: FDR died (April 12, 1945) and Germany surrendered (May 7, 1945).

Schur was on only one ship, he said: He took a tour of his brother’s vessel when it was docked in San Francisco.

Joe Toifel also was in the Navy and also got in at the tail end of the war, he said, in time to “decommission a couple ships.” But he recalled that in high school he worked on making .50-caliber machine gun bullets that were used in the war.

Roland Davis recalled his Army career as being “like having an office job in Hawaii.” He graduated from high school in 1944 and got into a college program for engineers at Camp Roberts, near San Luis Obispo, before being shipped off to Hawaii.

“If I learned anything, I did learn to type in high school,” he said, so the military put him in an anti-aircraft office.

Davis didn’t see combat, but he did a lot of training, he said. His most vivid memory is of training on Oahu in a stream with water up to his neck and holding his rifle above his head.

Charles Luce joined the Army Air Corps at 18 and was sent to gunnery school in Greensboro, North Carolina. He recalled being “small enough to fit in the belly of a B-17 – even though you’re not supposed to be in the belly for landing.”

Because he had lost the eardrum in his right ear, he was sent to England for radar school and eventually learned computer programming.

Lillian Davis, 101, was the only female World War II veteran in attendance. She had a more sobering memory to share.

She joined the Army at age 21, was trained in physical therapy, and spent the bulk of her military career helping service members who were wounded in the war – first amputees, then those who had brain injuries.

Also among the veterans were Charlie Claxton, who served in the Navy in the North Atlantic and the Pacific, and Elmer Shapiro, 102, who served in the Army.

Don Goldberg was called into the Navy in 1944 at age 17. He spoke about his father, who fought in World War I and was wounded in combat.

Goldberg himself served on two destroyers in the North Atlantic.

“I was never shot at,” he said, “and I never shot at anybody else.”

​ Orange County Register 

Angels’ Brandon Drury has his father to thank for career turnaround

• June 18, 2023

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s fitting that Brandon Drury reached Father’s Day playing his best baseball of the season, because he said he owes his father for helping to turn around his career.

Drury had hit .205 with a .600 OPS over three straight years from 2018-20, seasons that he now calls “awful.”

That’s when Drury went to his father, who is not a coach but had been his coach, and rebuilt his swing, back to what it had been before he made some ill-advised changes.

“I scratched all that launch angle stuff and went back to my dad,” Drury said on Sunday. “Let’s just do whatever we have to do to get back to being a good hitter again.”

Drury, who was with the Toronto Blue Jays for much of those lean years, said he didn’t even care about power.

“I just wanted to be a solid player and help the team win,” he said.

In 2021, with the New York Mets, Drury had a .783 OPS, and he improved on that last season, hitting 28 homers with an .813 OPS with the Cincinnati Reds and San Diego Padres.

After Drury, 30, signed a two-year, $17-million deal with the Angels this season, he has hit 12 homers with an .809 OPS.

Drury slumped for the first three weeks of the season, but since then he has produced a .934 OPS over his last 45 games. This weekend in Kansas City, he he hit three homers and drove in five runs in the first two games. The Angels now have him hitting cleanup, behind Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani.

“He’s been huge,” manager Phil Nevin said. “Bargainwise, find me a better free-agent pickup so far. He’s gotta be in the talk to maybe play in that game (the All-Star Game) in July, with the company he’s in. He’s been fantastic for us. He’s meant a lot to that group. He’s been a big part of that room.”

Drury said he still talks to his dad regularly to help keep his swing where he wants it.

“He’s my coach,” Drury said. “He watches all my at-bats. We talk a lot about the game and what he sees. He’s seen me at my best and my worst so I really lean on him.”

SCHEDULE BREAK

Nevin said he has been focused all season on getting to this point in schedule in a good position, because this is the beginning of a much more friendly stretch.

No team in baseball has played on more days than the Angels. (The Tampa Bay Rays have played one more game, but they had a doubleheader.) The Angels have also had two trips that took them to the East Coast so far.

This week the Angels have two off days around a two-game series against the Dodgers. They have a three-game trip to Colorado next weekend, and then they don’t leave California or get on a plane until after their July 23 game. Their only road games are in San Diego and at Dodger Stadium.

The Angels have only three more weeks without an off day.

“If we’re .500 or a little better after the way this has gone, we’re in a good position regardless of who’s in front of us because the schedule does lighten up for us for the next month and a half,” said Nevin, whose team came into Sunday’s game with a 40-33 record.

Nevin reiterated that he’s not referring to the quality of the opponents, but to the travel and frequency of off days.

“I’m not complaining,” Nevin said. “Our travel’s easy. We have nice planes. We get nice hotels. But at the end of the day on your body, the clock and everything, it does take its toll. It’s never anything we use as an excuse. I’m just saying after today I feel like for the next month we’re in a good position.”

ROTATION UPDATE

The Angels had planned to give Reid Detmers and their other starers some extra time off after their last turns, but they changed plans after seeing how Detmers pitched against the Texas Rangers earlier this week.

Detmers will now start on Tuesday against the Dodgers and Clayton Kershaw, followed by Ohtani on Wednesday. That leaves Patrick Sandoval, Griffin Canning and Tyler Anderson to work next weekend in Colorado.

The Angels will not need No. 6 starter Jaime Barría until June 28, so he is available in the bullpen in the meantime.

NOTES

Left-hander Matt Moore threw a bullpen session on Sunday, and Nevin said “he threw the ball great.” If he continues to progress well, he could be back by the end of the month. …

Mike Trout and Ohtani homered in the same game for the 28th time, which tied Tim Salmon and Garret Anderson for the second most of any duo in Angels history. Trout and Albert Pujols (48 times) hold the club record. …

Outfielder Hunter Renfroe has impressed Nevin in a couple days of workouts at first base. “Of all the guys that I took over there to kind of introduce to the position since I’ve been here, I think he’s the one that looks more the part than anyone,” Nevin said. Although Taylor Ward played first in an emergency earlier this week, Nevin said “I don’t think Taylor really feels comfortable there.” Renfroe could get some opportunities at first because Jared Walsh is struggling and Gio Urshela is injured. …

Infielder David Fletcher returned to the lineup with Triple-A Salt Lake on Sunday. Fletcher had been on bereavement leave.

UP NEXT

Angels (LHP Reid Detmers, 1-5, 4.48) vs. Dodgers (LHP Clayton Kershaw, 8-4, 2.95), Tuesday, 7:07 p.m., Angel Stadium, Bally Sports West,  830 AM.

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​ Orange County Register 

Gov. Newsom and the state’s prison guard union

• June 18, 2023

For years, the California Legislature and Gov. Gavin Newsom have signed off on lucrative and unjustified contracts for the state prison guard union, despite warnings from the non-partisan Legislative Analyst’s Office that legally required compensation studies were not being conducted. Now, the Newsom administration is pulling a fast one on California taxpayers with a flawed study to justify big giveaways to the prison guard union.

In 2019, while analyzing a proposed contract to give raises to the prison guard union, the LAO advised the Legislature that there was “no evident justification for proposed salary increase.”

Partly, that’s because the state failed to provide a legally required compensation study comparing prison guard union pay to comparable public and private employees for the Legislature to consider.

The last time such a report was produced, in 2015, using 2013 data, the LAO noted, the report found that California’s prison guards “received total compensation that was 40 percent higher than their local government counterparts.”

The Legislature ignored these warnings.

In 2021, coincidentally around the time of Gov. Newsom’s recall (in which the prison guard union dumped millions to defend him), the Legislature was again reminded of the need for a compensation study.

Again, the Legislature ignored the warnings from the LAO and  overwhelmingly approved a lucrative new contract for the prison guard union.

In January 2022, good government group Govern for California released its own compensation study for the California prison guard union.

Their conclusion?

“Using statistical methods to control for differences in education, experience, and other demographic factors, California correctional officer wages are about 55 percent higher than national average correctional officer wages (including California in the average) and 57 percent higher than other states,” they found.

California’s prison guards also benefit from generous pension and retiree healthcare benefits, which exceed national norms.

This is overall consistent with the state’s compensation study using 2013 data.

And yet, in April of this year, the state finally generated a compensation study, which compared prison guard pay to the pay of deputy sheriffs in counties like Los Angeles and Orange. As you might expect, deputy sheriffs make more than prison guards, giving the prison guard union ammunition and the Legislature cover, if they take it, to give the prison guard union lavish raises.

What happened here?

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Well, as the LAO last month, the Newsom administration decided to use a different methodology from past compensation studies. “This methodology was crafted through negotiations between the administration and the union,” the LAO notes.

In a statement to this editorial board, Govern for California criticized the study, calling it “wholly inadequate because it compares unequal occupations.”

Govern for California has called on the California Legislature “to hold the line in the next contract, which will come into effect upon the expiration of the current contract on July 2” of this year.

We echo this call from Govern for California.

The California Legislature must not fall for the cynical games played by Gov. Newsom and the prison guard union.

​ Orange County Register 

Successful Aging: More fresh perspectives on longevity

• June 18, 2023

Last week, we presented some new perspectives on longevity based on the work of Laura Carstensen, director of the Stanford Center on Longevity.  

Carsten and her colleagues developed something called the New Map of Life that encourages us to make a “mind shift” in how we think about longevity. Its goal is to offer a new narrative of an aging society, from the crisis narrative of the “gray tsunami” to defining actionable steps that enhance the quality of longer lives. It envisions engineering an entire life course with at least 30 more years of vitality and engagement.

This new map of life is guided by 10 principles. We described the first five last week.  Here are the remaining ones. 

Learning throughout a lifetime: Getting a formal education prior to our working years was considered a one-time event before starting a lifetime job. That’s not the case today – or for those five-year-olds who will live to be age 100. The new map of life suggests we no longer will be front-loading education. Rather, the authors envision options for learning outside traditional formal education available to people of all ages and life stages so they can acquire the education they need. That learning experience will align with their individual needs, interests, abilities, schedules and budgets and will spread out through the life course. 

Working more years with more flexibility: The New Map of Life predicts that within the 100-year life, we can expect to work 60 years. However, that may not be within the traditional 40-hour workweek. What is more likely is people will move in and out of the workplace, working from home periodically, taking paid and unpaid leaves for caregiving, education, health needs and other transitions that we cannot even predict at this time. 

Starting early on financial security: Living to age 100 requires new opportunities and pathways to work, save and retire. The financial challenges of the 100-year life take into consideration today’s financial age-related challenges. Currently, more than half of Americans have little or no retirement savings. And we know that without Medicare and Society Security, one-third of older adults would live below the poverty line. The New Map of Life wants to create more opportunities to build financial security with an understanding of the social and economic trends and the upcoming realities. 

Building longevity-ready communities: Where we live matters. Our physical environment affects longevity and the quality of life beginning before birth.  The environmental opportunities and assets will determine the likelihood that “individuals will be physically active, whether they will be socially isolated or engaged and how likely they will develop obesity, respiratory, cardiovascular or neurodegenerative diseases.” The advantages and disadvantages accumulate over the life course.  

Creating age-diverse communities is good for societies and the bottom line. The combination of the “olders” and “youngers” is a net gain; both contribute in different ways. Older people typically have the emotional intelligence, experience and wisdom from years of living that create new possibilities for families, communities and workplaces that have not previously existed. Younger people contribute speed, strength and zest for discovery according to the report. Today, we know that a multigenerational workforce drives innovation, problem-solving, productivity and more. The “changing mindset” is not to dwell on the costs of aging but rather reap the rewards of an age-diverse society.   

Creating the needed change to maximize these 30 years is the big question. It is not the responsibility of any one entity.  According to the report, building this new extended life is a shared responsibility among the government, the private sector, employers, healthcare providers and insurance companies. It will require the best ideas from the private sector, government, medicine, academia and medicine. The report says it is not enough to just think or reimagine this life. What’s important is to build and “build it fast.” The future of those five-year-olds is in our hands; it will require new policies, investments and a positive mindset to make the most of those 30 bonus years.  

Let’s consider what we can do today in our communities, with family and friends to take advantage of the bonus years we currently are experiencing. Policies and programs count.  However, it all begins with a belief that change for the good is possible and that we have a role to play, as family members, volunteers, elected officials, educators, voters and more. We all have the potential to be influencers and agents of change.  Small changes add up.     

Let’s all live long and well.  And let’s spread those random acts of kindness. 

Helen Dennis is a nationally recognized leader on issues of aging and the new retirement with academic, corporate and nonprofit experience. Contact Helen with your questions and comments at Helendenn@gmail.com.  Visit Helen at HelenMdennis.com and follow her on facebook.com/SuccessfulAgingCommunity

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​ Orange County Register 

Senior Moments: Giving myself a gift to cherish this Father’s Day

• June 18, 2023

The lavender dress was hanging on a window latch in my girlhood bedroom. 

I inherited the room upon the unexpected arrival of my little brother eight years after I was born. A small converted den, the room had French doors that opened into the living room.

Absent a closet, I sometimes hung my clothes on the latches of the open-in casement windows.

I had hung my new lavender chiffon dress there on the morning of my friend’s Bar Mitzvah. The evening party was to be a fancy affair. Because he was the son of a family friend, I was attending with my parents.

As I stood there, admiring my new dress with the smocked bodice that fell into a softly pleated skirt, there was a knock at the front door which was next to my room.

I never remember that first house we lived in having a doorbell. Visitors always knocked. 

I opened the door to an older gentleman who said he had a delivery for a Miss Patty Bunin. Wide-eyed, I took the small box he handed me and sat down on the living room sofa to open it. My mother appeared just as I lifted the corsage from its box. Next to it was a small envelope with a note inside.

“I wanted to be the first man to give you flowers. Love, Daddy.”

Stunned, I held up what looked like a bracelet with tiny purple orchids attached to it. I looked quizzically at my mother.

“It’s a wrist corsage,” Mom said, “for you to wear to the party tonight.” 

I had mixed feelings about my father. I loved him, but I didn’t really like the person he was. 

By the time he got home from work, I had on my new dress and was wearing the flower bracelet on my wrist, feeling very grown up for a 12-year-old. My father smiled when he saw it and I gave him a careful hug so as not to smush the orchids. 

His gift set a standard that I realized years later. When I was going to prom and my date brought me a corsage, I remember feeling disappointed that it wasn’t an orchid.

That story came back to me today when I saw the orchid displays in the market.

My dad and I were at odds on many issues. Most of the time I didn’t even bother to argue with him. But I spent a lot of time resenting him. Looking back, I realize that I erected a wall that did not allow in any good traits he might have had.

One of my gifts of growing older has been recognizing the possibility of softening hardened feelings. This year on Father’s Day I am continuing a tradition I started last year — I’m giving myself the present of allowing some good memories of my father. 

I might even buy myself a tiny orchid.

Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on Twitter @patriciabunin and at patriciabunin.com.

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​ Orange County Register 

Reappropriate ‘illegal immigrant’ to shine a spotlight on injustice of U.S. immigration restrictions

• June 18, 2023

Ana, a frontline nurse during the pandemic, spent over two years singularly focused on providing the best care possible for her patients and staying updated on scientific research surrounding Covid. Despite her exhaustion, she was happy to work.

Ana had put herself through nursing school and graduated with honors. She now devotes herself to her work and to building the best life possible for herself.

Originally from Central America, Ana decided to leave her country a few years ago. By her late teens, cartels had taken over her city. Cartel feuds, extortion and murder made it extremely unsafe, especially for a young woman. It was hard to focus on her education while her family faced demands from a cartel to use their business as a front to sell drugs. This environment of rampant violence and economic chaos made it impossible for an ambitious person like her to thrive.

Ana knew the ideal place to live was the U.S. because, while visiting a relative here years ago, she had seen America with her own eyes: the busy streets, the number of prosperous businesses, the safety, the abundance in the supermarket, the potential for growth — her home country paled in comparison. In America, she realized, someone like her could make the most out of life.

By any reasonable standard, Ana is an admirable person: she takes her life seriously and works hard to pursue her values. But there’s one more thing to know about Ana: she’s in the U.S. after overstaying her tourist visa. Some people call her an illegal immigrant.

But should we call people like Ana “illegal immigrants” — a term loaded with shame?

The anti-immigrant camp uses that term in an attempt to smear immigrants. Many like to paint a picture of illegal immigrants as gang members who jump the border to smuggle drugs and commit heinous crimes. But the reality is that most illegal immigrants are peaceful, hard-working people like Ana. A majority enter the U.S. on a temporary visa (which means they’ve been previously vetted like Ana), and decide to stay beyond their allotted time—which violates U.S. immigration laws.

Because of the pejorative intent of the term, it is understandable that people who think of themselves as pro-immigrant see it as offensive. Being staunchly pro-immigration, I too resisted using it, preferring euphemisms like “undocumented” or “unauthorized.” But I’ve changed my mind.

The term attempts to shame people like Ana, who come to America to work, to earn their own way, to build a better life. But the shame doesn’t lie with her—it lies with the system that is designed to keep her out.

If we rethink and repurpose the term “illegal immigrant,” we can use it to re-orient attention to this unjust system. We can use it to highlight the fact that our immigration system criminalizes the moral decision to come to America in pursuit of happiness, a system that treats wanting to work as a vice instead of a virtue. A system that criminalizes millions of people for wanting to make something out of themselves by working—something that is otherwise rightly admired in America – is un-American.

Related: Open the borders to those seeking a better life

Some people will ask: “why didn’t Ana come here legally?” Because the U.S. immigration system is designed to keep productive would-be immigrants like Ana out. Ana would have had to try to get a loan to pay thousands of dollars in fees and other visa requirements, wait out the process in her cartel-infested country and wander for years through a multilevel bureaucratic maze. And then she’d be a citizen, right? No, that’s just to gain authorization to study and work in the U.S. temporarily. And that’s only if she manages to qualify for one of a narrow list of visas in the first place. When I tell Americans about my own legal immigration story and what I had to go through, their jaws drop. The process is not feasible for a vast majority of productive people who want to live and work here, so it’s unsurprising that ambitious individuals like Ana end up immigrating illegally.

A lot of peaceful, courageous people are eager to immigrate to the U.S. in order to work to make their lives better, but the immigration system locks them out. Those who dare to come anyway are made to live their life in the shadows and in fear, because their actions are illegal.

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We should abandon the euphemisms like “undocumented immigrants” and “unauthorized workers.” Those euphemisms imply that people like Ana have in fact done something wrong and only help mask the real problem: that these individuals are being criminalized by unjust laws for a moral decision that they made.

“Illegal immigrant” works as a smear because what it actually means is rarely put out in the open — that the presence of peaceful, hard-working people is illegal in America. It’s time we confront this shameful fact and bring clarity to the debate by using the term in the appropriate way. Repurposing it is about illuminating the injustice of the U.S. immigration system, not about abusing immigrants.

Next time you hear the term “illegal immigrant,” don’t think of gang members or think it’s derogatory to call a hard-working immigrant that. Think of Ana and just how moral and brave her decision was to come to America, and how shameful it is that our immigration laws brand her a criminal.

Agustina Vergara Cid is a junior fellow at the Ayn Rand Institute. You can follow her on Twitter @agustinavcid

​ Orange County Register 

Federal indictment against Trump just the latest attempt to bring him down

• June 18, 2023

In 1920, nearly one million Americans voted for Socialist Party candidate Eugene V. Debs for president even though he was in a prison cell at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary.

Debs had been convicted two years earlier of violating the Espionage Act of 1917. He was charged for giving a speech that was critical of America’s involvement in World War I. “I know of no reason why the workers should fight for what the capitalists own,” he said.

The government said he was interfering with military enrollment.

Today the Espionage Act of 1917 has been exhumed to charge former president Donald Trump, the 2024 GOP frontrunner, with 37 counts that could put him in prison for 400 years. Trump has gone up in the Republican primary polls since the indictment was announced, a development that First Lady Jill Biden called “shocking.”

Is it? Trump has been hit with baseless, false allegations non-stop since he entered politics — the pee tape, the Russia hoax, the steering wheel, the tax returns. So many accusations. So much nothing.

This federal indictment may also turn out to be nothing, because the rules for handling government documents and classified information are simply different for presidents than for anyone else who works for the government. Presidents have an absolute power to declassify anything, and there is no official process that they must follow to do so. The relevant Supreme Court case is Department of the Navy vs. Egan in 1988, in which the court said, “As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States,” the president has the “authority to classify and control access to information bearing on national security,” and this authority “flows primarily from this constitutional investment of power in the President, and exists quite apart from any explicit congressional grant.”

Congress did provide for presidents to determine, in their sole discretion, what materials are presidential records and what materials are personal records, and to take with them when they leave the White House whatever personal records they choose to keep. The law is the Presidential Records Act of 1978, and the relevant case is Judicial Watch, Inc. v. National Archives and Records Administration, in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, in 2012.

In this case, Judicial Watch had filed a Freedom of Information Act request for audio tapes of President Bill Clinton, which were recorded by historian Taylor Branch. The tape recorder in the room sometimes captured Clinton’s half of telephone conversations. Judicial Watch demanded that the court declare these tapes “presidential records” under the Presidential Records Act and order the National Archives to take control of the tapes and make them available at the Clinton Presidential Library.

But that didn’t happen.

President Clinton had determined the tapes to be personal records under the Presidential Records Act and he kept them in his sock drawer, a location not under the control of the National Archives and Records Administration. Under the PRA, NARA had no power to override the president’s determination that the tapes were personal records.

And neither did the court.

“The question of whether a court can review a records classification decision under the PRA is not as open and shut as either side suggests,” wrote Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

Citing 44 U.S.C. Section 2203(b), Judge Jackson wrote, “Under the statutory scheme established by the PRA, the decision to segregate personal materials from Presidential records is made by the President, during the President’s term and in his sole discretion.” And further, “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office, it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”

The whole subject of presidential records management has been complicated by litigation ever since the end of the Nixon administration. However, there’s no dispute that while he was president, Trump had the authority to declassify anything, to make the determination of what records were personal, and to take the personal records with him when he left the White House. No one had the authority to override his decision. And the National Archives had no legal control over the personal records in Trump’s home.

So why did the FBI raid Mar-a-Lago? The House Judiciary Committee is trying to get answers to that question. The Biden administration has not been cooperative.

The FBI says it found documents “with classification markings” at Mar-a-Lago, but documents with classification markings are not necessarily classified documents. The burden of proof is on the government.

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In between the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Presidential Records Act of 1978, there’s another set of laws from the early years of the Cold War, when the modern system of national security classification was created. Trump was not charged under the classification laws, which prohibit negligence or gross negligence in the handling of classified material. The indictment charges Trump with willful retention of national defense information as defined, or not defined, in the Espionage Act.

Perhaps the reason has something to do with all the high-ranking government officials who have not been charged for negligent handling of classified information, none of whom were covered by the Presidential Records Act. As a U.S. senator and as vice president, Joe Biden improperly retained classified documents and kept them in his home, office and garage. Awkward.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was so negligent with classified information that some of it ended up on the computer Anthony Weiner used to send sexting messages to teens he met on the internet. Yet there were no search warrants for Chappaqua, and no charges for Clinton.

President Warren G. Harding eventually commuted the sentence of his imprisoned and defeated Socialist Party opponent, Eugene Debs. Today, Debs is remembered for his anti-war speech, and Harding is remembered for the Teapot Dome bribery scandal.

If history doesn’t repeat itself, it certainly rhymes trying.

Write Susan@SusanShelley.com and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley

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