norms

This week, legislators from over 120 national parliaments are meeting in Geneva to assess the world’s collective response to humanitarian crises.

Unprecedented rates of armed violence and forced displacement, together with climate change, public health emergencies, and food insecurity, have combined with the disintegration of our systems for international solidarity.

This has created a toxic cocktail that is causing untold suffering and costing lives.

The numbers are staggering. More than 122 million people are forcibly displaced, and almost 310 million people need humanitarian assistance.

As is so often the case, the vulnerable are the most brutally affected. One in every five children in the world—approximately 400 million—are living in or fleeing conflict zones.

Children caught up in crises often face the double jeopardy of losing their homes and their education.

Before entering parliament, I was a teacher, drawn to the profession because I knew how crucial education is to children.

But education is often the first casualty during crises and too frequently neglected by an overstretched and underfunded humanitarian system.

As a result, 234 million crisis-affected children and adolescents need urgent educational support, and over 85 million are out of school.

Depriving children in these contexts of an education robs them not just of the opportunity to learn the vital skills they need for life but also to a platform to receive life-saving services like food, water, and basic health care.

Thankfully, in many crisis situations where governments lack the resources to provide education, local and international non-government organisations step in and help ensure that children get the chance to go to school.

However, the drastic cuts to development and humanitarian assistance that many countries have made this year are putting this vital work at risk.

Projections indicate that total official development assistance for education may decline by USD3.2 billion by 2026, representing a nearly 25 percent decrease from 2023 – which could potentially displace another six million children from school in the coming months.

Earlier this year, humanitarian appeals were slashed by up to 90 percent in Sudan and Chad, leaving 33 million adults and children in need of life-saving assistance, without any support.

Despite a record number of refugees, the UN refugee agency, UNHCR, has received only a quarter of the funding that it needs in 2025, forcing it to halt or suspend about $1.4 billion in programs and to slash more than one-third of its education budget.

In the refugee camps that host Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, up to half a million boys and girls are now left without any form of schooling.

Ninety per cent of the world’s refugees live in low- and middle-income countries whose education systems already struggle to ensure every child is in school and learning.

In such cases, it is evident that host countries need support from the international community to provide the refugees they are hosting with access to education.

Education is also what crisis-affected communities want. Displaced parents and children consistently identify access to quality education as one of their highest-priority concerns.

Despite the enduring hardships they face, the determination of displaced communities to provide their children with an education is inspiring. They deserve our support.

That is why I am proud that Denmark, where I am a member of the national parliament, has affirmed its commitment to provide aid funding at or above the UN target of 0.7% of its gross national income (GNI).

With crises and conflicts multiplying around the world, it is more necessary than ever to strengthen international solidarity, and I hope that Denmark can inspire others to renew their commitment to solidarity through development cooperation and humanitarian assistance.

Tragically, a lack of funding is not the only threat to humanitarian response. The most fundamental humanitarian norms are being challenged in today’s war zones.

Current conflicts show, in appalling and devastating ways, the significant challenges facing international humanitarian law in providing effective and meaningful protection for people affected by armed conflicts.

Once again, education proves the point.

In 2022 and 2023 – the latest years for which comprehensive data is available – there were around 6,000 reported attacks on education and incidents of military use of schools and universities, harming more than 10,000 students and educators globally.

This represents a 20% increase on the previous two years, and the fear is that the number and severity of attacks on education personnel, facilities, and schools has continued to grow.

But there is a different way.

In 2015, Argentina and Norway launched the Safe Schools Declaration with the objective of avoiding military use of schools and strengthening the protection of children and education in conflict. It has since been adopted by 121 states.

Meanwhile, just last year, the International Committee of the Red Cross launched a global initiative to galvanize political commitment to international humanitarian law (IHL). Some 89 states have signed up to support the initiative.

International cooperation, like these initiatives, to address global challenges, has never been more critical.

As the institutions that represent the people, parliaments are uniquely positioned to mobilize political will, champion inclusive governance and dialogue, challenge narratives, and be the voice of the most vulnerable.

Parliaments are also key actors in translating global humanitarian norms into domestic legislation and policy, scrutinizing government action over humanitarian commitments, and allocating resources to tackle pressing humanitarian challenges.

Right now, parliamentary diplomacy – MPs from different parliaments talking and working together – has the opportunity to play a pivotal role in reinforcing multilateral values such as inclusion, solidarity, cooperation, shared responsibility, and the rules-based international order.

This week’s meeting of national parliaments in Geneva won’t solve the multiple crises we face, but it might just begin the process of reminding us that the challenges we face are global in nature and need global solutions, and forging new people-to-people relationships to do precisely that.

Aug. 19 (UPI) — Nexstar Media announced it will purchase Tegna, the broadcast arm of Gannett.

The announcement said Nexstar will buy all outstanding shares of Tegna for $22 per share in a cash transaction valued at $6.2 billion. It includes all of Tegna’s net debt.

The price is a 31% premium to Tegna’s 30-day average stock price.

“Following completion of the transaction, the combined entity will be a leading local media company, well-positioned to compete in today’s fragmented and rapidly evolving marketplace,” the press release said. “The new company will be better able to serve communities by ensuring the long-term vitality of local news and programming from trusted local sources and preserving the diversity of local voice and opinion. Nexstar will also be able to provide advertisers with an even greater variety of competitive local and national broadcast and digital advertising solutions to serve brands and consumers more effectively.”

Tegna is headquartered in Tysons, Va., and was formed in 2015 when Gannett split into two publicly traded companies.

Nexstar is the largest television station owner in the United States, owning 197 stations. It also owns WGN Radio in Chicago and operates the CW network and NewsNation (formerly WGN).

The company will have 265 stations in 44 states and the District of Columbia, representing 80% of U.S. TV households after the merger.

Public interest groups and many Democrats have expressed concern about allowing a single owner to control so much media in the United States.

Nexstar said the deal is expected to close by the second half of 2026.

Nexstar CEO Perry Sook lauded Trump in the press release.

“The initiatives being pursued by the Trump administration offer local broadcasters the opportunity to expand reach, level the playing field, and compete more effectively with the Big Tech and legacy Big Media companies that have unchecked reach and vast financial resources. We believe Tegna represents the best option for Nexstar to act on this opportunity,” he said.

In downtown Los Angeles, Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference with Democratic leaders when the Border Patrol showed up nearby to conduct a showy immigration raid.

In Washington D.C., hundreds of National Guard troops patrolled the streets, some in armored vehicles, as city officials battled with the White House over whether the federal government can take control of the local police department.

President Trump has long demonized “blue” cities like Los Angeles, Washington and New York, frequently claiming — often contrary to the evidence — that their Democratic leaders have allowed crime and blight to worsen. Trump, for example, cited out-of-control crime as the reason for his Washington D.C. guard deployment, even though data shows crime in the city is down.

But over the last few months, Trump’s rhetoric has given way to searing images of federal power on urban streets that are generating both headlines and increasing alarm in some circles.

While past presidents have occasionally used the Insurrection Act to deploy the military in response to clear, acute crises, the way Trump has deployed troops in Democratic-run cities is unprecedented in American politics. Trump has claimed broader inherent powers and an authority to deploy troops to cities when and where he decides there is an emergency, said Matthew Beckmann, a political science professor at UC Irvine.

“President Trump is testing how far he can push his authority, in no small part to find out who or what can challenge him,” he said.

State and local officials reacted with shock when they learned Border Patrol agents had massed outside Newsom’s news conference Thursday. The governor was preparing to announce the launch of a campaign for a ballot measure, which if approved by voters, would redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor Democrats before the 2026 midterms.

Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter: “We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves.” When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”

However, local law enforcement sources told The Times that the raid was not random and that they had received word from the federal authorities that Little Tokyo was targeted due to its proximity to the governor’s event. The raid, the sources told The Times, was less about making arrests and more of a show of force intended to disrupt Democrats.

Whatever the reason, the raid generated news coverage and at least in the conservative media, overshadowed the announcement of the redistricting plan.

Trump’s second term has been marked by increased use of troops in cities. He authorized the deployment of thousands of Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June after immigration raids sparked scattered protests. The troops saw little action, and local leaders said the deployment was unnecessary and only served to inflame tensions.

The operation reached a controversial zenith in July when scores of troops on horseback wearing tactical gear and driving armored vehicles, rolled through MacArthur Park. The incident generated much attention, but local police were surprised that the raid was brief and resulted in few arrests.

After the MacArthur Park raid, Mayor Karen Bass complained “there’s no plan other than fear, chaos and politics.”

Beckmann said the situation is a “particularly perilous historical moment because we have a president willing to flout constitutional limits while Congress and the court have been willing to accept pretext as principle.”

UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the university’s Institute of Governmental Studies, said the recent military displays are part of a larger mission to increase the power of the president and weaken other countervailing forces, such as the dismantling of federal agencies and the weakening of universities.

“It all adds up to a picture of really trying to turn the president into the one dominant force in American politics — he is the boss of everything, he controls everything,” Schickler said. “And that’s just not how the American political system has worked for 240 years.”

In some way, Trump’s tactics are an extension of long-held rhetoric. In the 1980s, he regularly railed against crime in New York City, including the rape of a woman in Central Park that captured national headlines. The suspects, known as the Central Park Five, were exonerated after spending years in prison and have filed a defamation suit against Trump.

Trump and his backers say he is simply keeping campaign promises to reduce crime and deport people in the country illegally.

“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law — not about Gavin Newsom,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Federal agents “patrol all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make L.A. safe,” she said.

In Washington D.C., where the federal government has began assuming law enforcement responsibilities, the business of policing the streets of the nation’s capital had radically transformed by Friday. Federal agencies typically tasked with investigating drug kingpins, gunrunners and cybercriminals were conducting traffic stops and helping with other routine policing.

Twenty federal law enforcement teams fanned out across the city Thursday night with more than 1,750 people joining the operation, a White House official told the Associated Press. They made 33 arrests, including 15 people who did not have permanent legal status. Others were arrested on warrants for murder, rape and driving under the influence, the official said.

Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow with the Council on Criminal Justice, said the administration’s actions not only threaten democracy, but they also have real consequences for local leaders and residents. Citizens often can’t distinguish between federal or local officers and don’t know when the two groups are or aren’t working together.

“That breeds a lot of confusion and also breeds a lot of fear,” Johnson said.

Thomas Abt, founding director of University of Maryland’s Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, emphasized that pulling federal agents from their jobs can hurt overall public safety.

“There’s a real threat to politicizing federal law enforcement, and sending them wherever elected officials think there’s a photo opportunity instead of doing the hard work of federal law enforcement,” Abt said.

Already, D.C. residents and public officials have pushed back on federal law enforcement’s presence. When federal officers set up a vehicle checkpoint along the 14th Street Northwest corridor this week, hecklers shouted, “Go home, fascists” and “Get off our streets.”

On Friday, the District of Columbia filed an emergency motion seeking to block the Trump administration’s takeover of the city’s police department.

“This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement on Friday. “The Administration’s actions are brazenly unlawful. They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD.”

The show of force in L.A. has also left local officials outraged at what they see as deliberate efforts to sow fear and exert power. Hours before agents arrived in Little Tokyo, Bass and other officials held a news conference calling for an end to the continued immigration raids.

Bass said she believes the recent actions violated the temporary restraining order upheld this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting agents from targeting people solely based on their race, vocation, language or location.

The number of arrests in Southern California declined in July after a judge issued the order. But in the past two weeks, some higher profile raids have begun to ramp up again.

In one instance, an 18-year-old Los Angeles high school senior was picked up by federal immigration officers while walking his dog in Van Nuys. On Thursday, a man apparently running from agents who showed up at a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia was hit by a car and killed on the 210 Freeway.

Bass appeared to be seething as she spoke to reporters after Newsom’s press conference on Thursday, calling the raid in Little Tokyo a “provocative act” and “unbelievably disrespectful.”

“They’re talking about disorder in Los Angeles, and they are the source of the disorder in Los Angeles right now,” she said.

Former UN Senior Humanitarian and Reconstruction Coordinator for Gaza Sigrid Kaag speaks to Talk to Al Jazeera about delivering aid under Israeli siege, amid what many world leaders call genocide. She discusses blocked aid, famine, the collapse of humanitarian norms, and the UN’s credibility crisis. Kaag, also a former deputy prime minister, finance minister, and foreign minister of the Netherlands, offers her perspective on what future remains for a rules-based order when even humanitarian principles are no longer guaranteed.

President Trump wants new congressional maps in Texas — now. Not in the next decade. Not after the next census. Not when it’s traditionally done. He wants it done smack dab in the middle of the decade.

Why the odd timing? Because he wants it done in time to help his presidency.

In Trump’s mind, Texas is a vending machine: insert redistricting, receive five shiny new Republican seats. “We are entitled to five more seats,” he declared on CNBC, his voice dripping with the royal “we” of someone who thinks democracy is nothing but a loyalty program.

This is merely the latest example of Trump’s fondness for procedural hardball. He recently sacked the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner for reporting job numbers he didn’t like. And his congressional minions just passed a bipartisan bill that required Democratic votes to get through, only to use budget “rescissions” to take back the Democratic priorities they never intended to fund.

Trump plays Calvinball with democracy — rules change mid-play, and he’s somehow always the one scoring.

And here’s the thing: It’s not illegal. “Not illegal” in the same way that drinking milk straight from the carton isn’t illegal — just gross, petty and an announcement to the room that you’re not interested in living by any mutually agreed-upon standards. (Trust me. I have teenagers.)

The Texas gambit, though, is utterly Trumpian in its ambitious recklessness. It might work. Or it might backfire and actually cost Republicans 2026 midterm seats. But either way, this aggression is radioactive.

Consider the immediate reaction. Texas Democrats, lacking the votes to block the move, fled the state entirely — denying Republicans the quorum they needed to conduct business.

This, in turn, was met with all the subtlety of a bounty hunt. The Texas House speaker signed civil arrest warrants for the missing lawmakers. The governor ordered state officials to search every warehouse, farmhouse, henhouse, outhouse and doghouse. (Just kidding. That was Tommy Lee Jones in “The Fugitive.” But, honestly, it’s a pretty close approximation.)

Powder keg vibes abound. What happens if and when a Texas lawman tries to slap cuffs on a Democrat in New York or California? Do we get a full-blown interstate standoff? A live cable news shootout of sheriffs and state troopers at the airport terminal gate?

Even if nothing that crazy happens, legislators making $600 a month are being fined $500 a day for their absence. And the governor has even threatened bribery charges against anyone helping them pay the fines.

But here’s where the escalation really kicks in. Even if the Texas Democrats fold and slink back to Austin (honestly, they don’t have much leverage), blue states are already eyeing retaliation.

California, New York, Illinois — they could all dust off the gerrymander machine to carve out extra Democratic seats. (Yes, some blue states handed map drawing to independent commissions, but power has a way of finding the crowbar it needs.)

This is mutually assured destruction with ballots instead of missiles.

And the kicker? After both sides squeeze every last seat out of their respective states, this whole exhausting mess could net Republicans one or two extra seats — or maybe none at all.

At this point, you might be wondering “How did we get here?”

I’m reminded of an old story — possibly true, probably apocryphal — about how circus elephants are trained.

When they’re babies (calves), elephants are chained to a stake they can’t pull up. They try and fail, and eventually they stop trying.

As adults, weighing several tons, they could walk away from the stake they are chained to at any time. But they don’t. They’ve learned the stake is “unbreakable.” Resistance is futile.

Trump is the elephant who never got that memo. To him, the stake — the norms, the Constitution, the institutions — is a suggestion, not a restraint.

The bigger problem? Everyone else has now seen Trump become unmoored from accountability — with impunity. They imagine they can do it, too.

Republicans who used to quietly admire their own prudent “restraint” now believe they just lacked imagination. And Democrats are starting to believe that playing nice equates to playing dead.

And so, the stakes are coming out of the ground everywhere.

We used to imagine there was an invisible line — one that politicians wouldn’t cross out of shame, duty or fear of the abyss.

Turns out, the abyss has a DJ and an open bar. The people hurtling toward it aren’t falling. They’re soaring.

Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”