Reading List: December 29, 2016

Thursday and my corner of the world is rapidly becoming blanketed with snow.

I wrote about the Trump administration’s Islamophobic view of the world for Paste.

“Aside from all the rhetoric that we heard from Trump during the campaign season, the most troubling thing looming on the horizon is his choice of cabinet members and advisers,” Imraan Siddiqi told Paste recently.

Siddiqi is the Executive Director of CAIR and the founder of the anti-Islamophobia group Hate Hurts. Paste contributor Roqayah Chamseddine also weighed in.

“Muslim Americans have already faced a security state that’s swiftly closed in around them,” Chamseddine said. “A Trump administration that’s now brimming with anti-Muslim right wing ideologues means that Muslims are now facing even more trying times.”

Ken Klippenstein interviewed Noam Chomsky about the UN resolution calling on Israel to cease its illegal settlement activity. You can find the interview at Alternet.

AlterNet contacted Noam Chomsky, famed linguist, dissident and professor emeritus of MIT. Chomsky said of the resolution, “The UNSC resolution is essentially the same as UNSC 446, March 1979, passed 12–0–3. The main difference is that then two countries joined the U.S. in abstaining. Now the U.S. stands against the world; and under Trump, in even more splendid isolation, on much more crucial matters as well.”

Ed Kilgore hypothesizes at New York Magazine that Obama could take action to fill the court vacancies created by GOP obstructionism. It won’t happen, of course, but it should.

But wait: Didn’t the Supreme Court eliminate recess appointments in a recent decision? Not exactly. In a 2014 decision, SCOTUS unanimously ruled that recess appointments by the president (which only remain in force until the end of the ensuing congressional session) could be thwarted by Senate “pro forma” sessions that technically keep Congress in session perpetually. But the Senate does have to eventually end the session before beginning a new one on January 3, 2017. And a precedent was set by none other than Republican Theodore Roosevelt that a president could make “intercession” recess appointments in the seconds between one swing of the gavel and the other. TR made 193 recess appointments at the beginning of 1903, and while the legality of the action has been questioned, it has never been clearly overturned. If Obama were to follow this procedure, it would take extensive litigation to reverse it, and it might stand after all.

Stay warm.