There is much that must be done to meet the test of this moment. But today I’d like to focus on two defining questions at the root of so many of our challenges -- whether the nations here today will be able to renew the purpose of the UN’s founding; and whether we will come together to reject the cancer of violent extremism.

First, all of us -- big nations and small -- must meet our responsibility to observe and enforce international norms. We are here because others realized that we gain more from cooperation than conquest. One hundred years ago, a World War claimed the lives of many millions, proving that with the terrible power of modern weaponry, the cause of empire ultimately leads to the graveyard. It would take another World War to roll back the forces of fascism, the notions of racial supremacy, and form this United Nations to ensure that no nation can subjugate its neighbors and claim their territory.

Recently, Russia’s actions in Ukraine challenge this post-war order. Here are the facts. After the people of Ukraine mobilized popular protests and calls for reform, their corrupt president fled. Against the will of the government in Kyiv, Crimea was annexed. Russia poured arms into eastern Ukraine, fueling violent separatists and a conflict that has killed thousands. When a civilian airliner was shot down from areas that these proxies controlled, they refused to allow access to the crash for days. When Ukraine started to reassert control over its territory, Russia gave up the pretense of merely supporting the separatists, and moved troops across the border.

This is a vision of the world in which might makes right -- a world in which one nation’s borders can be redrawn by another, and civilized people are not allowed to recover the remains of their loved ones because of the truth that might be revealed. America stands for something different. We believe that right makes might -- that bigger nations should not be able to bully smaller ones, and that people should be able to choose their own future...

While the New York case was making its way through the courts, the Justice Department repeatedly made another claim that turns out to be false (or, at the very least, that the Trump administration itself now claims to be false). The ACLU brief filed on Friday lists twelve separate occasions where Trump administration lawyers claimed that “the census forms must be finalized for printing by the end of June 2019.”

Because of this claim by Trump’s Justice Department, courts processed this case on an unusually expedited basis. Among other things, the Supreme Court invoked a rarely used procedure that bypassed review by a federal appeals court and allowed the nation’s highest court to review a trial court’s decision directly.

Not long after the Trump administration lost in the Supreme Court, however, it started singing a different tune. Though Justice Department lawyers initially signaled that they were giving up the fight to defend the citizenship question, they were later contradicted by President Trump himself. On July 3, they told a federal judge that they’ve been “instructed to examine whether there is a path forward, consistent with the Supreme Court’s decision, that would allow us to include the citizenship question on the census.”

It’s no secret that in 21st-century America, power over public opinion doesn’t reside exclusively with editorialists or news anchors. We are now Entertainment Nation, and society’s jesters — Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Trevor Noah, Bill Maher, etc. — have become as influential as the Walter Cronkites and David Brinkleys of yore...
...Rainbow, with his snappy riffs on the politics of the day, is a prominent part of this new and influential group, but he offers something distinct: a very old tradition of musical satire updated for the YouTube age. Think of him as a modern-day Gilbert and Sullivan, or the millennial version of the piano-playing Mark Russell or Tom Lehrer — the key difference being that his get-it-out-fast production marathons and savvy use of social media bring his commentary to the public quickly, directly and with no filter. Competitors like the Capitol Steps strive to put the mock in democracy as fast as possible, but with multiple writers and cast members, they can’t equal Rainbow’s speed. In a world on hyperdrive, he delivers near-instant gratification: Within minutes of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s appearance before members of Congress, for instance, Rainbow was taking song requests from fans on Twitter. Three days after Roger Stone was arrested in January, Rainbow posted a video parody of a number from the musical “Chicago.”


A sampling of Rainbow’s hot takes includes “Desperate Cheeto” (a take on Luis Fonsi’s “Despacito”), “Border Lies” (Madonna’s “Borderline”), “How Do You Solve a Problem Like Korea?” (“Maria” from “The Sound of Music”) and “GOP Dropout” (“Beauty School Dropout” from “Grease”). Actor-comedian Steve Martin told Rainbow that “A Very Stable Genius” — a takedown of you-know-who sung to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major-General” — is a favorite ditty in the Martin household:

He is the very model of a very stable genius.
Of all the U.S. presidents he is the Mussoliniest.
He learned a lot of things according to his Wikipedia.
And demonstrates his ample intellect on social media.
When people are in need he is the best at making fun of them.
He knows 11 words although he can’t spell even one of them.

...reports estimated that $5-billion was washed through the province’s real-estate market in 2018, inflating prices by 5 per cent.

There is good reason to believe that the same is happening in other Canadian cities. A report in March from Transparency International tallied almost $30-billion of “unknown funds” – from entities whose true ownership is cloaked – that have been pumped into the Greater Toronto Area housing market since 2008. Of that figure, $9.8-billion worth of deals were done in cash, avoiding the few checks on money laundering that exist in real estate.

B.C.’s money-laundering reports – on casinos, luxury cars and real estate – are the beginning of the story, not the end. The province last week announced a public inquiry, which should be a prelude to action.

An essential first step is a public registry of who owns what real estate. B.C. has taken the lead with first-in-Canada legislation introduced this spring that will reveal beneficial owners – the names of actual people – behind structures such as numbered companies.

As Transparency International argues, disclosure of beneficial ownership “should be a prerequisite for any property transfer.”