Center for Business and Human Rights

President Trump signed a proclamation on Friday that contains draconian restrictions on the rights of refugees seeking asylum in this country. The president’s action undermines a 50-year U.S. commitment to providing safe haven for those fleeing ethnic, religious or political persecution. The proclamation invokes “national security” concerns and responds to what the president calls the “overloading of our immigration and asylum system.” Under the new rules, immigrants who do not enter the country legally through official border crossings will be ineligible to apply for asylum regardless of the merits of their cases.

Earlier this month, the European Union put Cambodia on notice that its preferred trade status is at risk.

The mass murder of 11 Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue has brought home to America the scourge of anti-Semitic violence. For decades, European countries from France to Denmark and from Hungary to Greece have experienced violent extremist attacks on Jews. But now Americans also must come to terms with a rising tide of anti-Semitic rhetoric and action here at home. As the Anti-Defamation League and others have carefully reported, anti-Semitic hate has surged in the United States in recent years, fueled by social media extremism. That hatred spilled over into Saturday’s carnage.

The diplomatic fallout from the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi accelerated as three prominent U.S. business leaders withdrew from the Future Investment Initiative conference in Riyadh, also known as Davos in the Desert. Laurence Fink, the CEO of Blackrock, Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, and Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and CEO of Blackstone, joined a growing list of heavyweights who are demonstrating corporate leadership by declining to attend this celebration of Saudi’s emerging economic power. Their withdrawal underscores that this should not be a “business as usual” moment with the Kingdom.

Great democracies advance their national interests by upholding their values.  British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt exemplified this approach earlier this week when he warned Saudi Arabian Foreign Minster Adel al-Jubeir that “friendships depend on shared values.” The impetus for his comment was the disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was last seen entering the Saudi Embassy in Istanbul last week. After speaking with the Saudi Foreign Minister, Hunt tweeted that “violence against journalists worldwide is going up and is a grave threat to freedom of expression.”

Major Internet companies today find themselves in the cross-hairs of European regulators and facing increased public distrust in Europe and the U.S. One reason is that the full scope of harmful content online has become more evident. Until recently, Facebook, Google, and Twitter sought to downplay the magnitude of their problems in this regard, arguing that the amount of hate speech and political disinformation online was relatively tiny, a minor inconvenience when compared to the overall volume and value of Internet communications.

This week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced a further retreat from U.S. leadership on refugee protection, reducing the cap on refugee admissions next year to 30,000. That’s down 80,000 from the last year of the Obama administration. Since the end of World War II, the U.S. has played a leading role protecting refugees, reflecting broad bipartisan support for policies that provided safe haven to those fleeing religious and political persecution.

Four years ago, Gap, the clothing giant, boldly announced it would begin garment production in Myanmar. Promising to apply “best practices” on human rights, a company spokesperson called Gap’s production agreement “a historic moment for Myanmar.” Today, the case for Gap’s continued presence in that country is much harder to justify.

President Donald Trump’s attack on Google has received a lot of attention over the past couple of days. But the outburst really is nothing new. It echoes a highly cynical conservative campaign to demonize Google, Twitter and Facebook as stealthy liberal agents seeking to suppress right-leaning views.