crucial to deciding who controls congress, president trump has ramped up his rhetoric on illegal immigration — he's saying he'll deny asylum to people who enter the us outside legal ports of entry, and detain migrants indefinitely in massive tent cities. thousands of central americans are still making their way towards the southern border of the us. google staff have been walking out in a series of protests around the world. employees in various cities left their desks to show their anger at the tech firm's treatment of women and ethnic minorities. two former goldman sachs bankers and a fugitive malaysian financier have been charged in the us over a corruption scandal that helped bring down malaysia's former government. authorities say billions of dollars were embezzled from the state development fund, 1mdb, to buy art, property and a private jet. now on bbc news, hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk.

i'm stephen sackur. american politics in the era of donald trump is a polarised, partisan bearpit. but still there are pillars of the us system of governance, the constitution, the courts, which are supposed to safeguard the liberty of all — irrespective of creed, colour, or politics. well, my guest today is david cole, the legal director of the american civil liberties union, the century guardian of citizens‘ rights. has the aclu betrayed its mission by putting partisanship before principle in the age of trump? david cole, welcome to hardtalk.

thanks for having me. it seems quite clear that your organisation, the aclu, has rebooted itself to maximise its impact in this era of donald trump. what have you done and why? i think i first thing that happened is that citizens throughout the united states, concerned about president trump's election, turns to us as the oldest and largest civil liberties and civil rights organisation in the united states, and joined us in untold numbers. so we had, before donald trump was elected, 400,000 members, today we're over 1.6 million members. we quadrupled our membership. and your revenues? and our revenues. people, the members are giving us support, sometimes $25 a time. sometimes much more than that.

and so we have many more resources to deploy, but precisely because there are so many more threats to respond to and so we have, as we told president trump the week that he was elected, we ‘ll see you in court — if you put in place measures that we think are unconstitutional, we will challenge them in court. but you made it, i mean, as you'vejust said, you made it very explicit, even before he had taken office, after he won that november election, you were quite plain that you were going to be taking trump on. this was political for you, from the very beginning. it wasn't political. it was about the issues, the civil liberties and civil rights principles, he threatened. so during the campaign we at analysed both hillary clinton's agenda and proposals and donald trump's. we put out reports on both and raised concerns about a number of both of their proposals. but with trump you would hear him proposing keeping all muslims out of the united states, or he proposed overturning roe versus wade, which protects a woman's right to have an abortion. what we said was if you engage in measures that violate the constitution, then we will take you to court. it's not political, but principled. well, will go through some of those measures and your reaction and response to them, measured by measure later on.

just to continue with this point of a different spirit, a different soul within the american civil liberties union. it seems to me, was made explicit by your colleague, your executive director anthony romero, when he said, "look, we learned a lot from the nra," the national rifle association, which perhaps is the most successful lobbying organisation in the united states of america, specifically there to defend the rights of gun owners. he said, "look, we looked at the nra and we decided if we could be a little less legalistic, focus less on the brain and more on the heart, and trying to change the culture, we thought we could then have a bigger impact." it seems to me that's a major pivot. you are a lawyerly organisation,

based on a reading of the constitution, and suddenly you're talking about emotion, the issues of the heart, of passion. i think there are a couple of things there. first of all, the defence of civil liberties is notjust a defence of reason, it's a defence of passion as well. it's a passion for equality, a passion for dignity, a passion forfreedom. and you need to be able... with respect, all this talk of passion, surely the fundamental is that it has to be dispassionate, it has to be a dispassionate use of the constitution and a reading of the law. i don't know about that. ithink... we are a non—partisan organisation. so passion and partisanship and are not the same thing. you can be passionate about your values without being partisan in terms of which party you support.

so, for example, we are passionate about the first amendment. so we protect the rights of white supremacists to speak, we protect the rights of the nra in a suit against the governor of new york, who is trying to use his regulatory authority over banks there to ice out the nra. we're coming in on the side of the nra. we support the principle of free speech no matter who is speaking. you have raised two very interesting cases. you on the side of the nra is a fascinating one. and we'll get to that because it is important and you were personally very involved in that. but before we do, you said something earlier in that answer about we, the aclu, being a non—partisan organisation, which frankly does not stack up with the way you are handling your interventions in current american politics. the mid—term election season is on. you are pouring money into particular races across the country. not for named candidates, but on an issues—based basis which clearly is supporting democrats against republicans. i can cite you the various races. i will talk you through this.

one of the things we learned from the nra was that one of the ways you defend a right, and sometimes the most effective way to defend a right in a democracy, is by using the democratic process to defend that right. that is what the nra does. there is nothing illegitimate about that. you are going after candidates, you're going after named republicans. i mean, you went afterjoe arpaio, for a while, in arizona, of course he's not running now, but you made a point of going against him. you went against the guy, who's running, i believe kris kobach, running in kansas, for governor of kansas. you go after named people because you don't like their political positions and you pour hundreds, hundreds of thousands of dollars into these campaigns. the first thing to say is yes we are engaged in electoral politics, but principally,

most of our investments are on ballot initiatives, for example, restoring the rights of formally convicted people who have been denied the right to vote in florida. that is a principle position. 0r opposing ballot initiatives to try to take away protections from transgender individuals or from women, with respect to abortion. those are principle. and with respect to candidate elections, we are also engaged ina very... yes, you are. ..in a very small number of candidate elections... listen, if nonpartisa nship is so important to you — simple question — why are you spending $800,000, at least, on a television ad campaign boosting the democrat stacey abrams in her very close race for governor of georgia against republican brian kemp? we're not boosting stacey abrams. what we are talking about are the principles and values and civil liberties and civil rights issues that are at stake in that campaign. at the end of every ad we say we do not endorse either of the candidates. but there is nothing to stop a non—partisan organisation from doing voter education about issues. that is what planned parenthood, a non—partisan organisation, has done. the nra is a non—partisan organisation. it educates people about gun rights.

it supports whoever is the stronger supporter of gun rights, whether they are a democrat or a republican. we are the same way. if you are trying to protect civil liberties and you are a democracy, and the people who exercise power, the people get voted into office, why would you not engage in that election to make sure that people, when they go to the polls, vote like their rights depend on it. the problem is, some of your best friends don't buy it. i will quote you a few. i'm gonna start with former senator, former democrat and an independent, joe lieberman. he says this — and he used to be to be a good friend of the aclu. he said, "the aclu has chosen to become a direct actor in partisan politics, morphing what was once a non—partisan organisation into what looks like just another advocacy group on the left." that is very damning. well, you know, joe lieberman has not been a friend of the aclu

for a very long time. look, i think, the point is, again, that if you're going to be an effective defender of liberty you can use the courts and we do use the courts, you can use the legislature, and we ‘ve always used the legislature, but if you don't use the power of the people you are giving up. there is a famous quote, judge learned hand, one of the greatest judges in the united states‘ history, said that "liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. when it dies there, no court, no constitution, no law can save it. while it lies there it needs no court, no constitution to save it." the point there is that liberty has to live in people's hearts. what we do is gather people together in the fight for liberty. we use all the tools that are available. we do it in a non—partisan way. we defend the rights of republicans — as well as democrats. we do not support or oppose any candidate for office. we feel it would be irresponsible not to educate people about issues. you will be aware that a host of former aclu board members think you're going down

the wrong track here. michael meyers is one. ira glasser is another. ira glasser said this, and this is and this is an interesting point, in the new york times, just a few months ago, he said that, in his view, you are de facto backing of progressive candidates is a mistake because he says, "the problem is you get into politics and ultimately all power," he says, "is an antagonist of liberty." you are seen as lining up for a particular candidate. that candidate might win, that candidate might become the power, him or herself, and you in the aclu then have a problem, because you are seen to be backing the person, seen to be sympathetic to them, and then they represent the power that you should be safeguarding the people's interests against. it's a problem. i don't think it's a problem. first of all, again, just to be clear, typically, we do not endorse or back any particular candidate... we have had this debate for a few minutes no.

do you not recognise, many people look at what you're doing right now, the amount of money you're spending and how you're spending it, and their perception is just different from yours. does that not give you pause for thought? the people you have cited are essentially former aclu dissidents who had been criticising the aclu for decades and this is another one of their criticism. so you are deaf to this sort of criticism? i'm not deaf to it. i understand the concern. but my response is that if you don't use the democratic process to defend liberty you have given up on a critically important tool... and you will be less effective in defending liberty. and at the end of the day what we came together to do, as the aclu, is to defend liberty. in fact, when the aclu was founded in 1920 all its actions were direct action. it said, the first legal director of the aclu, on of my predecessors, said "we can never expectjustice from the courts."

because at that time the courts were very conservative, the only constitutional rights they would recognise were the rights of business owners to object to regulation of business. they said we have to use other forms. we use whatever forms are available to further the ideals. but here's the difference, we don't support any particular person because he is a democrat or because he is a republican. we support the principles of equality, dignity, liberty, and we use the democratic process to do so. and i think it would be irresponsible not to. all right. in brief, how do you feel the courts are handling the difficult challenges posed by different trump policies? take a couple in brief, one, the muslim travel ban, as it's become known, you challenged it in the courts. in the end, a modified version of the travel ban is in effect. and another key one,

the separating families at the border, illegal immigrants, or undocumented immigrants coming in, children are taken away from their parents. you challenge that very passionately in the courts. yes, the courts stopped happening. yep. but there are still hundreds of children who are separated from their parents. yeah, and we are fighting every day to make sure they are brought together. how do you feel about the way the courts are behaving in this era of challenge? i would say, for the most part, certainly in the lawsuits we have filed against president trump for violating civil liberties and civil rights, we have prevailed in virtually all of them. the muslim ban, we prevailed at every level for the first two versions, and at the third level until the supreme court. that is a big but. i think it was a failure on the court's part to recognise what was clearly an anti—religious measure on the part of the president and to give that a whitewashing. but otherwise the courts have enjoined the president in seeking to bar young women from getting abortions, and joined the president with respect to barring transgender people from the military, required them to end

the family separation, and the only reason there are still 200 families separated is that it takes time and the government is continuing to fight us, but we are using the court to bring what should have happened right away, bring families back together. so i think the courts are an important critical institution for defending liberty. and as we told president trump we'll see you in court. and we have seen him in court. and by and large the courts have done a good job. in the last couple of months, you at the aclu to get significant decision, deciding to oppose the nomination of brett kavanaugh to be the ninth, to be the latest supreme courtjustice. you have opposed justices before, but it's very rare. very rare. this is the fourth time in history that we have opposed any candidate for any office and it was justice kava naugh.

but the way you did it this time was quite extraordinary. you went after brett kavanaugh. again, talking of the money you spend. you spent over $1 million in particular ads to attack brett kavanaugh‘s nomination. there was an extraordinary ad aired where you featured bill cosby, harvey weinstein, the tv presenters matt lauer and charlie rose, with a voice—over saying, "we've seen all this before, denials from powerful men". you tied brett kavanaugh, who has not been tried in a court of law, who is guilty of nothing in a courtroom, who is innocent until proven guilty, you tied him to men like bill cosby, who is serving up to a ten—year prison sentence for drugging and molesting women. you're a lawyer. you think that's acceptable? so, he has not been convicted of anything, nor has matt lauer or harvey weinstein or bill clinton, who was in that ad. bill cosby has been. bill cosby was the person in that ad who has been convicted of anything. but that's the point, bill cosby is a convicted criminal,

a very serious sex offender. you put him in an ad, you put alongside the name of brett kavanaugh, used the line "we've this before, denials from powerful men". do you think that's acceptable? that was the point, what united all of those people was that they were powerful men who were accused of sexual assault, and then denied it. and in our view, brett kavanaugh was a powerful person who was accused of sexual assault and then denied it, and we are very credible allegations of sexual assault. going on to note that all those people in that ad are democrats, other than brett kava naugh, this has shown when we care about sexual assault victims being taken seriously and the benefit of the doubt not being given to powerful men in the past simply because they deny it. the question was not whether he should be convicted of a crime, the question was whether you should give someone about whom there are serious questions of sexual assault, a lifetime appointment in the most powerful court in the country, and i think the view we took was that it would be irresponsible

given those allegations. surely the aclu stands for one thing more than anything else, that is the rights of the individual under the law, the right to due process, the right to be regarded as innocent till proven guilty. that's right. yeah. but kavanaugh was not being tried. if there were credible allegations of sexual assault against you when you applied for a job and the interviewer concluded that the allegations were credible, he does not have to prove it in a court of law, he would say i'm not going to hire someone when there are credible allegations. that is just an ordinaryjob, this is a lifetime appointment to the supreme court. there were other people who were fighting and fighting very hard to get brett kavanaugh off that court and to block his nomination. i come back to what the aclu in particular is known for, let me quote you another former board member, wendy kaminer, who was appalled by that particular ad that we discussed, appalled

by your stand against brett kavanaugh. for a long time, she has been appalled by virtually everything the aclu does... you keep saying that, butjust because they disagree with your policies does not mean that they are wrong, it means they are worried about the aclu's. .. i am just giving you some context. what he says is i wonder how david cole is going to feel about arguing a case before justice kavanaugh because, of course, he has now gone on to the supreme court. kavanaugh will remember that david cole and the aclu labelled him a bill cosby—like sexual predator. so first of all, we did not label him as bill cosby—like. we said there had been a series of powerful men who have denied allegations of sexual assault. one of them is bill cosby, another is bill clinton. you, because you are a leading lawyer in civil rights and human rights cases, you inevitably at some

point will go to the supreme court to make a case. brett kava naugh will be staring at you. brett kavanaugh will probably remember how the aclu handled his nomination. yeah, and i hope he holds to his obligations as a judge to be very neutral, and i presume that he will, but here's what i would say with respect to this. we did not oppose brett kavanaugh because of his political views, we did not oppose brett kavanaugh because president trump appointed him. many other civil rights and civil liberties organisations came out against brett kavanaugh from the outset, we did not. we took a neutral position because we do not oppose or support nominees for office, but once christine ford testified and once brett kavanaugh testified in the way that he did, our board — and this is a decision of the board, it is not my decision but our board — felt that it would be irresponsible given that. it was based on the notion that someone who is accused of the kind of act that he was accused of credibly, no—one ever discredited christine ford's allegations,

should not get a lifetime appointment to the court. before we finish, a couple of other important challenges that the aclu has had to deal with. ijust wonder whether in retrospect, you think you got it right. 2017, there was a march of far right white nationalists in cha rlottesville in the united states. people remember that it ended in violence, one of the nonviolent left—wing protesters there to try and block the far right march was killed. the aclu had made a strong stand defending the right of those, a lot of people called them neo—nazis, to walk through charlottesville. in light of the death, in light of the loss of life, do you think the aclu got that one wrong? i do not think we got that one wrong in this sense. the right—wing nationalists, who had applied for the permit and got a permit, were at the last minute turned down for the permit by the city of charlottesville

because he was protesting the city of charlottesville‘s decision to take down a civil war monument. instead, the city of charlottesville gave the right to protest there to the counter protesters. so when the city comes in and says we do not like what you are saying, we are going to suppress your speech, we like what these other people are saying, so we are going to let them speak, that is exactly the right time for the aclu to get involved. of course, we had no idea that it was going to end in violence. our client swore under oath that he had no intention to pursue violence. maybe he did, maybe he did not. maybe, in retrospect, we could have done more research and determined that he intended to engage in violence, but i do not know that he did, and on the facts of what happens, it was a straightforward first amendment violation. it did cause debate within the aclu aboutjust how far the defence of freedom of expression should go in the future. you are very famous for having

defended a neo—nazi march in illinois in 78, which upset a lot of people, but you stuck fast to your principles. and now we are doing the same. but now we have seen this leaked document within the aclu, which discussed whether the free—speech limitation should be rethought, the extent to which the speech may assist in advancing the goals of white supremacists or others who are contrary to our values should be taken into account, this document said, we maybe need to think again about whether we defend the far right. i wrote that document, 0k? so i can tell you what that... and it was not leaked, it was an internal document that... they did not want the insiders to see... it was an internal document about case strategy... no, because here is what it says. it says we are a big tent organisation, we defend civil

rights, privacy, women's rights. inevitably, sometimes rights conflict. when they conflict, we should have a fulsome discussion with each of those who defend these rights in the room, and we should make a decision on understanding the cost of whether to go ahead and how to go ahead. in that document, we affirmed on page one, we have a policy of defending those with whom we disagree, including white supremacists, including the alt right, and will continue to do so. some of your own members now think that you should back off supporting powerful groups like the nra, but some of your members do not like that. are you going to win that fight, is the membership going to win that fight? the membership is behind us, we did not lose any members as a result of the nra fight. we have always been an organisation that is committed to defending the bill of rights, regardless of who you are. we are determined to do so. there has been no imitation whatsoever that we are stopping that fight and we are finding it harder than ever before. david cole, we have to end it there, but thank you for being on hardtalk. thank you.

hello. friday starts with the last widespread frost of this cold spell before things turn milder over the weekend. but windy, too. here is a look at things then for early risers on friday morning. quite a bit of blue. the cold spots will be down to —5 or —6. one or two mist and fog patches, so nothing widespread. there's still one or two showers dotted about western parts of the uk early on. when you have these, you will not be as cold as elsewhere. for most, it's a sunny

start to the day, and the sunshine will continue throughout. the sun will turn increasingly hazy across western parts of the uk on through the day. higher clouds spilling in ahead of this area of rain, which will be knocking on the door of northern ireland by the end of the afternoon. top temperatures around 9 or 12 degrees, and some sunshine, a gentle breeze. that will not feel too bad. as we go through friday evening and night, clearly the weather is changing. a system moving in from the atlantic, it will be turning wetter through scotland and northern ireland. the winds are picking up as well. gales developing through irish sea coasts. not as cold, but still quite chilly for the coldest parts of east anglia and south—east england. this weather system coming in is this deep area of low pressure, ex—hurricane 0scar. it is going to pass us well to the north—west, but still produce strong winds the closer you are to it on saturday, especially in the western isles. lots of rain, especially in western scotland. a soaking day here. some outbreaks of rain pushing through the rest of scotland. it's there in northern ireland as well, though it is going to clear later in the day. it starts to edge into western wales

and the west side of england, which means further in the east of england, it will be staying dry with some sunshine. windy across the uk, this is where we get gusts in excess of a0 miles an hour, and towards 65 miles an hour in the western isles. gales for parts of scotland, northern ireland, irish sea coasts. some winds could be disruptive, but the air coming in from the south—west, it is going to be a much milder day. and of course, it's a fireworks bonfire weekend. we're expecting on saturday evening for the rain to have cleared through belfast but still be there affecting parts of scotland, wales and western england. if you're going out on sunday evening, still the chance of seeing some rain around, particularly through wales and western england. part two of the weekend, on sunday, another weather system pushing rain through western areas of england, wales, into northern england. much of scotland and northern ireland will be fine. one or two showers in the north—west, where it's still quite windy. east anglia and the south—east look like staying dry as well. and it's still mild, not quite as mild as saturday. this is the briefing —

i'm victoria fritz. our top story: us troops mass on the mexico border as president trump steps up his controversial crackdown on migrants. at this very moment, large well—organised caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. some people call it an invasion. it's like an invasion. teenage pregnancy on the rise in south africa. we have a special report as health officials say they're struggling to cope. and a rare interview with yemen's houthi rebels on their bitter struggle against the saudis. in business, tougher times for alibaba as a slowing chinese economy weighs on the e—commerce giant.