Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Jason Miks.

June 27, 2018

A Swing Voter Shakes Up America

Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced he will be retiring at the end of next month. The implications for America over the loss of the court's frequent swing voter can't be overstated, suggests Mark Joseph Stern for Slate.

"Kennedy's absence will mark a sea change in American jurisprudence. Without him, the Supreme Court may well rule that women have no constitutional right to abortion access. Courts may chip away at same-sex marriage or overturn it altogether. Voting rights plaintiffs will have little hope of winning their battles against voter suppression. Victims of race and sex discrimination will face much rougher sledding at the court," Stern writes.

"This retirement sets up a huge battle in the Senate, where Republicans hold a slim majority…Republicans abolished the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees during the fight over Justice Neil Gorsuch, so Democrats cannot blockade Trump's pick. It seems inevitable that Trump will eventually get his candidate on the court. Once there, he or she will have an opportunity to overrule myriad liberal precedents and reshape constitutional law for decades."

Let's Make a Deal…Without America

The Trump era has ushered in a wave of global trade deal activity among US allies. There's just one problem, writes Wendy Cutler in The New York Times: America isn't part of the fun.

"The long and growing list of tariffs, particularly those based on dubious national security grounds, has weakened the administration's ability to form coalitions with other countries to tackle legitimate concerns," writes Cutler, a US trade representative in the Obama administration.

"Instead, our closest trading partners are scrambling to find new markets for exports subject to tariff increases by the United States, and to secure new suppliers for the American products that their own countries are planning to hit with retaliatory tariffs."

Meanwhile, the US is missing the "chance to help write the rules and set standards for trade in advanced technology, such as alternative-fuel vehicles, 3-D printing and artificial intelligence."

Collateral damage. The Trump administration's pledge to slash the trade deficit with China could have unintended consequences, write Jane Cai and Sarah Zheng for the South China Morning Post. Cutting imports from China will likely hurt US allies, too.

"Whereas US goods exported to China are mostly agricultural produce or finished products consisting of mostly American components, China's exports to the US are typically Chinese-assembled goods that contain many foreign parts and components," they write.

Why Zero-Tolerance Won't Scare Migrants Away

The Trump administration's zero-tolerance policy toward migrants entering from the US-Mexico border is unlikely to act as much of a deterrence, writes Sofía Martínez for The Atlantic. Previous migrant flows from Central America were about economics. Now, it's about safety, too.

"Yes, there are still male heads of household seeking to pursue the 'American Dream' in the US so as to send home a couple of hundred dollars each month to their families. But the crux of the recent crisis at the border is that there are…many more families, newborns, children, and pregnant women escaping life-or-death situations as much as poverty," Martínez writes.

"The region's civil wars left behind tens of thousands of young people from broken families. That reality, combined with extreme inequality, policies of mass incarceration of suspicious youth, and weak judicial and security institutions created the new monster that is today's gang problem. Over the past 15 years, they have taken over both rural and urban areas across North Central America, setting up roadblocks in poor neighborhoods and imposing their own law."

The "Rock Star" at the Center of Europe's Battle Royal

At 31, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz is one of the world's youngest leaders and has been dubbed a "rock star" by the US ambassador to Germany. He also represents the current tug of war for Europe's future, suggest Griff Witte and Souad Mekhennet in The Washington Post.

"At a time when the left barely registers in the top echelons of European power, the most important contest shaping the continent's direction is a struggle between competing visions on the right," they write.

"On one side is Merkel, a master of consensus and survival who was shaped by her youth behind the Iron Curtain and is perhaps best known for welcoming more than a million asylum seekers to her country in 2015-2016. Merkel...has fiercely resisted concessions to the anti-immigrant far right even as its popularity has surged on her watch.

"On the other side is Kurz, a millennial who came of age in post-Cold War Europe and who claims credit for shutting down the asylum route that he blames Merkel for popularizing."

Now's a Bad Time for a
Team Trump Peace Plan

Jared Kushner's Middle East trip last week suggests the administration is determined to press forward on a peace plan. That's the last thing the region needs right now, writes Ilan Goldenberg for Foreign Policy.

"Palestinian leaders have not met with senior US officials for the past six months, since Trump announced that he would move the US Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. In that context, the content of a plan would not matter. The Palestinians would reject it out of hand," Goldenberg writes.

"Rather than focus on a long-term peace plan that has little chance for success, the administration should instead focus on the immediate emergency in the Gaza Strip, where the population gets only about four hours of electricity per day, more than 90 percent of the drinking water is not potable, and the situation is growing increasingly unstable and could trigger another Israel-Hamas war."

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