In addition to those issues, there was another one that put Haley dramatically at odds with what was once bipartisan U.S. policy. In a remarkable “Cabinet Exit Memo for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations” filed by Ambassador Power three weeks before she left her position, she noted the accomplishments of her tenure. Among them: “We have… repealed the ‘global gag rule,’ which prevented women from gaining access to essential information and healthcare services.”
That initiative was not listed at the beginning of the memo Power submitted. It came toward the end. But there were some Americans who put the issue at the top of their agendas: members of the anti-
choice movement that provided critical, arguably definitional, support for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Trump and Mike Pence ran in 2016 on a Republican platform that decried U.S. support of the UN’s Population Fund and decried the institution in general for the respect it had displayed for a woman’s right to choose. The platform hailed former president Ronald Reagan for making the U.S. debate about abortion rights part of U.S. foreign policy, by setting up what the platform described as “a wall of separation—his Mexico City policy, which prohibits the granting of federal monies to non-governmental organizations that provide or promote abortion.” Deferring, as Republican platforms so frequently do, to the idolized Reagan, the manifesto declared that “we affirm his position and, in light of plummeting birth rates around the world, suggest a reevaluation of the U.N.’s record on economic progress.”
It may surprise international observers, and most American voters, that this particular issue is such a very big deal for Republican voters, many of whom, especially in the Trump era, tend toward an isolationist worldview. But opposition to the “global gag rule,” which bars the allocation of U.S. global family planning assistance money to international nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) unless they certify that they will not “perform or actively promote abortion as a method of family planning,” is a huge issue for American anti-abortion rights activists or, as they prefer, “pro-life champions.”
Restricting access to abortion is such a big deal for these activists, in fact, that social conservatives have over the years resisted, challenged and opposed human rights initiatives for women and girls that might lead to the expansion of reproductive health and family planning services. That’s especially important now because, as the International Women’s Health Coalition notes: “Advocates worldwide have (in recent years) looked to the US to play a lead role in championing reproductive rights at the United Nations. The Obama Administration’s leadership at the United Nations was critical toward ensuring the inclusion of universal access to sexual and reproductive health and reproductive rights in the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—a bold set of global goals aimed at ending poverty and reducing inequality and injustice by 2030.”
As of now, analysts with the coalition explain: “The US has committed to achieving each of the 17 goals and targets outlined by the SDGs domestically and through its foreign policy. These include ending all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls, and ensuring universal access to sexual and reproductive health services.” But, they conclude, “nothing about the current composition of the Trump Administration, with Governor Haley playing a key role in multilateral negotiations and commitments, indicates that the US could meet its obligations to the SDGs.”
That 2016 Republican platform left little doubt that, in a Trump-Pence administration, working with the United Nations to advance human rights for women and girls was off the agenda. “Precisely because we take our country’s treaty obligations seriously,” the document declared, “we oppose ratification of international agreements whose long-range implications are ominous or unclear. We do not support the U.N. Convention on Women’s Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and the U.N. Arms Trade Treaty, as well as various declarations from the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development.”
Even if Nikki Haley was never the biggest fan of Donald Trump when he was running for the presidency, she announced that she would vote for him in October 2016 because “what it is about is policy.” And if there is one policy Nikki Haley has always abided by, it is the one that says every option, every angle, every position should be exploited to restrict the ability of women to make choices about their own bodies.
Haley, like most Republican political careerists in recent decades, clearly and unequivocally aligns herself with the anti-choice movement in the United States. She is best known to most Americans as the first woman governor of South Carolina, as the daughter of Sikh Indian immigrants and as the rare southern Republican who hauled down a Confederate battle flag, having finally come to the conclusion—as the forty-three-year-old chief executive of a state that had experienced unspeakable violence at the hands of a gun-toting white supremacist who murdered nine African American worshipers in a Charleston church—that the symbol of the rebellion waged by the defenders of human bondage “should have never been there.” All of that may have counted for something with Donald Trump when, at a point when he was taking heat for naming too few women and people of color to key posts in his administration, he decided Haley belonged at the United Nations. But what counted with Trump’s political team was the fact that Haley had a proven track record of opposition to abortion rights, as the social-conservative voters who elected Trump demanded of his pick for the ambassadorship.
“President-Elect Donald Trump Names Pro-Life Gov. Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador,” announced the front page of the LifeNews.com website that has been “harnessing the power of the Internet since 1992 to bring pro-life news to the pro-life community.” LifeSiteNews took time out from warning about “secularists attempting to eliminate Christian morality and natural law principles which are seen as the primary obstacles to implementing their new world order” to announce that “Pro-life Nikki Haley’s confirmation as ambassador could lead to UN reining in abortion promotion.”
“She is going to have a tough job, especially since she is unfamiliar with how the UN bureaucracy operates,” explained Stefano Gennarini, a lawyer whose work includes “advising UN delegations and liaising with pro-family organizations around the world.”
“But,” added Gennarini, “we are confident that Nikki Haley will be able to push back against the global abortion lobby.” Other Trump picks might not “wake up in the morning thinking about abortion rights,” suggested Susan Yoshihara, the senior vice president for research at the conservative Center for Family and Human Rights, which serves as an anti-abortion lobby at the UN. “But Nikki Haley has a solid pro-life background, and we are hopeful.” The National Right-to-Life Coalition echoed that assessment: “The appointment and confirmation of pro-life Ambassador Haley to the United Nations brings hope to all who seek to protect women and children from the violence of abortion globally and who struggle against UN elitists who feverishly promote abortion.”
What gave them such confidence? It wasn’t just Haley’s record as a militantly anti-choice state representative and as a governor who capped her tenure by signing South Carolina legislation that made it illegal for a woman to obtain an abortion after her pregnancy reaches twenty weeks—with no exceptions for rape or incest and a provision for jailing physicians who violate the law for up to three years. It wasn’t just that NARAL Pro-Choice America gave Haley a zero rating as a defender of reproductive rights. It wasn’t just that Haley had a history of making wild assertions, like her announcement on ABC’s The View that “women don’t care about contraception; they care about jobs and the economy and raising their families and all those things.” It wasn’t just that Haley’s late-in-the-2016-race endorsement of Trump—after she had called him “everything a governor doesn’t want in a president”—highlighted the prospect that he could name one or more Supreme Court justices: a decision-
point issue for religious-right voters. It was that Haley made no concessions to diplo
macy as she moved to assume the nation’s most high-profile and influential ambassadorial assignment.
When Haley appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, New Hampshire senator Jeanne Shaheen explained the vital role that the United Nations Population Fund and related programs play internationally, placing particular emphasis on the importance of family planning services for millions of women around the world. Haley responded by making her position plain: “I am strongly pro-life, so anything we can do to keep from having abortions, or to keep them from not knowing what is available, I will support.” The nominee accepted the notion that women can have access to some information about family planning methods. But when Shaheen pressed Haley on the issue, Trump’s choice to represent the United States at the United Nations repeated her absolute commitment to “pro-life principles.” New Jersey senator Cory Booker tried another angle but got the same answer: “Well, and as we discussed,” said Haley, “I am strongly pro life and will always be pro life.”
Nikki Haley’s representation of the United States at the UN will define the direction of global policymaking on thousands of issues—from war and peace to climate change, from extreme poverty to failed states, from human rights to humanitarian aid, from the status of refugees to disputes over Antarctica. As such, Slate noted, she is “an odd choice” for the position once occupied by Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., Adlai Stevenson, George H. W. Bush, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Andrew Young, Thomas Pickering, Madeleine Albright and Samantha Power. “Other than participating in some trade delegations as governor,” noted the news site, “she has basically no foreign policy experience.”
This odd choice was not, however, an “outside the box” masterstroke by a president committed to opening up fresh global vistas. Haley was not named to the ambassadorship to provide new leadership or new vision at what remains an essential forum for international negotiations and an essential force for human progress. She was not even chosen to advance reform of a global body that has at times struggled to adjust to the demands of the twenty-first century. She was chosen because she is a domestically focused social conservative. “To Trump, the U.N. is just a talking shop,” explains Charles Tiefer, a former solicitor of the U.S. House of Representatives and member of the federal Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan, who argues that Trump selected Haley “to show his contempt for conducting foreign affairs through the U.N. in particular and multilateral organizations in general. He is giving the post to someone with no foreign affairs credentials (or any other national security credentials, for that matter).”
The Haley pick is, argues Tiefer, “a throw-away” for Trump that might score him a few points for adding a woman and an Asian American to his Cabinet. But it also scores him a lot of points with social conservatives for whom restricting reproductive rights in general and access to abortion in particular is an obsession.
Unfortunately, this is one area where, no matter how disconnected and disempowered Haley may be within the Trump administration, she can do immense harm.
“Reproductive rights have been embedded in UN agreements for more than two decades, since the landmark International Conference on Population and Development in 1994. Feminist advocates from Africa to Latin America and beyond have leveraged landmark treaties to secure laws and policies in their home countries that promote healthy lives and benefit millions of women and girls. A rollback of these commitments could dramatically set back decades of progress,” explained the International Women’s Health Coalition’s review of President Trump’s appointment. “Her hostility toward the United Nations, lack of credible foreign policy experience, and history of opposing women’s rights make her poorly suited to the task.”
— 15 —
“PART AND PARCEL OF AN
ORGANIZED ARMY OF HATRED”
David Friedman
U.S. Ambassador to Israel
David Friedman, the New York bankruptcy lawyer who helped Donald Trump save his empire when the supposed billionaire’s hotels failed in Atlantic City, was the featured speaker at a “Trump for president” rally just weeks before the 2016 election. In some ways, it was a typical Trump rally. References to Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton were greeted with chants of “Lock her up!” Conspiracy theories were indulged. But this was not quite like the Trump rallies in Fayetteville, Georgia, or Fayetteville, Louisiana, or in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, or Grand Rapids, Michigan.
For one thing, the “Make America Great Again” signs were in Hebrew.
For another thing, the turnout was disappointing, as the organizers of Donald Trump’s “get out the vote” rally in Jerusalem had trouble attracting an “A” list speaker.
Only about 250 people showed up for the gathering on a rooftop overlooking Jerusalem’s Old City. Scheduled by Republicans Abroad Israel as an effort to remind Americans living in West Bank settlements to cast their absentee ballots for Trump, the rally’s organizers had hoped to attract a big-name Trump backer like former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani or bombastic former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton. Instead, they got videos from Trump and Republican vice presidential nominee Mike Pence, as well as Friedman, who was in Israel anyway and agreed to drop by.
Once he got started, however, Friedman had a lot to say. “It’s very simple. The simple act that Americans living in Israel need to do to protect the eternal city of Jerusalem, and the sanctity and the safety and the security of the state of Israel, is very simple: just vote,” he began. “Just vote. And I think we all know who you ought to vote for.”
Then things got interesting. “Let me tell you a little about what a Trump administration is going to look like,” said the bankruptcy lawyer. “Under a Trump administration, there’s going to be no daylight, none, no daylight between the United States and the state of Israel. If there are disagreements—and none are anticipated—but if there are disagreements they’re handled in private as would befit the closest of friends.”
How private did Friedman envision? It certainly did not sound like he was planning to invite any career diplomats from the U.S. Department of State.
“Every president gets elected and he says to the State Department—what about this law, should we move the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, and they say ‘absolutely not, absolutely not,’” griped Friedman. That was a reference to the decades-old debate about where to locate the U.S. embassy for Israel—in the modern oceanfront city of Tel Aviv, where it has been headquartered for decades at 71 HaYarkon Street, or in Jerusalem, the holy city for the three major Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam that is claimed as a capital by citizens of both Israel and Palestine.
The embassy debate is one of the bitterest areas of dispute between Israelis and Palestinians. It is infused with historical, political, religious and economic passion. It is complicated by the complex claims that competing states and competing peoples make on specific neighborhoods, specific streets, specific homes. And it is charged by all the external stresses and strains that inflame so many issues in the Middle East. But, never mind, as far as David Friedman was concerned, this was not a complicated issue at all.
Why hadn’t the embassy been moved when the U.S. Congress said the shift could be made in 1995? “Because the law provides that the requirement for the embassy to be moved can be waived at the desire of the State Department. The same State Department that has been anti-Semitic and anti-Israel for the past 70 years,” Friedman explained.
That might have come as something of a surprise to former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger (who as a Jewish child fled Nazi persecution in Germany), Madeleine Albright (the daughter of Czechoslovakian Jewish converts to Catholicism who also fled European fascism) or John Kerry (whose paternal grandparents were Austro-Hungarian Jewish immigrants to the United States) and to the hundreds of Jewish Americans who have served alongside Arab Americans and Americans of all backgrounds in vital State Department positions over the decades, including the staff of the Office to
Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism and the department’s former special envoys to monitor and combat anti-Semitism, such as Hannah Rosenthal and Ira Forman.
No matter. Friedman was on a roll.
“The lifers in the State Department are absolutely, positively committed to never moving the embassy to Jerusalem. What’s different about Donald Trump? You all know Donald Trump. If there is anybody in world politics who could stand up to the State Department it is Donald Trump,” declared Friedman. “When Donald Trump has his first meeting with the lifers in the State Department and they say, ‘Mr. Trump, with all due respect, you have only been president for a couple of days, we’ve been living here for the last 20 years, we don’t do it that way, we do it this way—we don’t move the embassy, that’s been State department policy for 20 years,’ the reaction from Donald Trump is going to be, ‘You know what guys, you’re all FIRED!’”
Once Friedman had that issue sorted, he moved on to the main event of the evening: warning Israelis not to even think of placing their trust in Hillary Clinton.
“Who does Hillary Clinton get her advice from?” Friedman asked rhetorically.