this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all of you in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you from new york. ♪ ♪ today on the program, the knesset votes to take away a key power of israel's supreme court, and as benjamin netanyahu urges calm, the nation's political center and left erupt in anger. ♪ >> i'll talk to "the new york times" paul friedman about the politics involved and with his colleague emily bazilon about the legal issues. then the secretary of homeland security alejandro mayorkas on the good news and the bad news from america's southern border. ♪ ♪ >> finally, did president putin lose or gain power after prigozhin's failed mutiny? i'll ask russian journalist in exile mikhail zigov. but first here's my take. the mysterious disappearance of china's foreign minister qin gang is a timely reminder that the future of u.s.-china relations will be determined not just by american policy and what's happening domestically in the united states such as the presidential election campaign. it will also be shaped by developments in china which at this point are opaque, but troubling. from what outsiders can tell, they are reverting to a mao-era style of politics that we have not seen for decades and more mysterious than qin gang's are you moval of power after the a authority attributed his absence for health reasons is the doctoring of press sites and press releasees to expunge his participation and achievements of the past. who controls the past controls the future george wrote in his novel in 1984 and the ominous victim seems to be the guide for china these days and this is a far cry from the technocratic government that he ushered in in the 1980s. in those days the chinese political system seemed a contradiction in terms. a dick tirtship that had term limits for high offices. where else did one see this limitation of authoritarian rule? today, once again, there are no limits to the power of china's ruler. while the scholar of elizabeth economy has called china's third revolution and the first personified by mao, and the second by dong and now by xi is still going strong. that third revolution is not just about domestic politics. xi has consolidated his own power and put the chinese communist party back in the center of society and he's sought to present a much stronger and a more assertive china to the world and those decisions have had ripple effects across the globe especially in asia where china's neighbors have been rattled by xi's more aggressive posture and policies. the u.s. has not handled relations with china perfectly. the biden administration was needlessly confrontational from the outset publicly berating beijing at their first meeting of senior officials and the u.s. has maintained donald trump's tariffs on china despite the fact that they've been expensive failures. remember, it is american consumers who pay for those tariffs, not the chinese. trump provided tens of billions in additional subsidies to farmers just to make up for the losses they suffered because of these policies. and for a while, it seemed that american policies toward beijing were being allowed with no effort to maintain the working relationship with china despite its status as the world's second largest economy, a nuclear weapons power with a u.n. veto, but biden has corrected course. several of his senior officials including the secretaries of state, commerce and treasury had met with the chinese counterparts and tried to stop the decline in relations between the two countries. antony blinken said to me in an interview that world leaders had been telling me that they expected the u.s. and china to build a decent working relationship. the administration has taken seriously the idea that it would restrict only a limited number of high-end technologies from being shared with china using the metaphor of a small yard with a high fence. even some american policies that would provoke chinese opposition such as looming new regulations around u.s. investment into china are now being signaled to the chinese in advance in that particular case by janet yellen. there are still areas where the u.s. could make a more serious effort if the biden administration wants to have pris productive military to military dialogue, it would seem an odd way to signal that desire, far better to waive the sanctions so the two sides can talk and avoid misunderstandings on issues like taiwan, but the ball is really in china's court. unfortunately, chinese policy has been marked by an assertiveness and vel kosity that hasec broen sharply with the past three decades. xi has expansive claims for china and the south china sea, increased military activity around taiwan, clashed with india in the himalayas, demanded that australia cease any criticism of his country. pledged his country's unqualified support for moscow and even as russia's aggression in ukraine escalates, and he has ramped up criticism of the united states. none of these policies seem to be working. countries around china have become far more active in countering beijing's influence and searching for assistance elsewhere especially with america. from japan to the philippines to india, nations are pushing back. will beijing recognize this and change? is an increasingly autocratic and closed decision making system capable of learning and adapting? qin gang's mysterious removal does not suggest a positive answer. go to cnn.com/fareed for a link to my washington post column this week and let's get started. ♪ ♪ israel finds itself embroiled in deep political crisis days after the parliament passed the first major step in prime minister's netanyahu judicial overhaul. this part of the legislation eliminated the israeli supreme court's power to block government actions that the court deems unreasonable. the controversial move drove crowds of israelis back into the streets in protest upon the white house weighed in, as well, saying the move was unfortunate. to understand the complexities of israel and the middle east, who better to ask than "the new york times" kohl am nift tom friedman who won two pillulitze prizes reporting from the region. welcome, tom. it feels like a small step, but it is a part of a series of moves planned to curtail the supreme court's power and why are they trying to do that? why is this narrow majority trying to do that? >> so being fareed, you have to start with a political comeback and he's become so unpopular that he had to reach over the fence of israeli politics and bring into israeli politics people who had never been there before, to prado, the former head of the mossad basically equated him to the american ku klux klan. imagine if the president brought members of the ku klux klan into the cabinet. the only way to hold people together in the coalition with his other allies left and the ultra orthodox in israel he basically had to ak seed to their to their demand or the you can ku klux klan or the proud boys. what do the ultra orthodox want? they want their sons not to have to serve in the military and they want their schools to be free to teach only religious subject, no math, science, reading or democratic civics. who stands in the way of that? one body left in israel with independents, the judiciary, the supreme court. so the religious want the supreme court out of the way basically so it won't interfere with their efforts basically to teach purely religious subjects and not have to serve in the military and the right-wing jewish supremacists want it out of the way so it won't be interfering with their attempts to seize a more palestinian land and build more palestinian settlements and to legalize more wild cat illegal israeli settlements. that's what this is about. >> it is fair to say that these people are in the street because there are very few limits on the -- on an elected government in israel. there no written constitution and no upper house and no senate and there are no state governments. this is what you have and that's why people are out on the street because in a sense, the street is where you can be heard. >> you know, you really can't make this up in some ways, fareed. the supreme court's ability to, basically, curtail government excess is this a reasonableness caused that comes out of british law. why would a government want to get rid of a reasonablist cause that the court enjoyed unless they wanted to do things that were unreasonable? that's what the israeli public understood and netanyahu's been saying this is a small thing, this is a little thing. nonsense. this was a power grab. it had nothing to do with legal reform. none of of that is on the level. if you wanted to do legal reforms and if you wanted to do the israeli equivalent of a constitutional amendment in the united states oh, my goodness, you would have done that over a long period of time and brought in legal experts and worked for a consensus. they had a majority and they rammed it through, end of story. >> now, when you think abouting forward, what is a little worrying and i've talked to israeli friends of mine who talk about this and the parts of the coalition that you're describing that are backing netanyahu, particularly in some of the more extreme stuff, there are all the people in israel who have eight children and the people who are opposing, the old secular leads and such, the tech guys and they're all having two children, if that. is this a potential for israel's future, demographically? definitely, fareed. this is both a legal fight and a social revolution, basically. the ultra orthodox represent about 20% of the population. their numbers double every ten to 25 years. that will be 40% of israel in 20, 25 years. 40% of israel would not have studied, science, math, english or democratic civics. the secular, tech, educated, western or in part of israel basically pays -- is 20% of the population. they pay about 90% of the taxes and they fight 105% of the wars. so behind this sort of legal issue is a feeling that, hey, you know, i was ready to do that as long as it was live and let live. fareed, i've lived in two countries in the middle east intensely, lebanon and israel and they have one big thing in common. they're tiny countries with incredibly diverse populations. very small, but incredibly diverse. the only way countries like that can work is on the principle of live and let live, no victor, no vanquish. that's when lebanon blew up, unfortunately e over the last len years, that's what israel is blowing up now, live and let live and netanyahu is ready to burn it up just in order to pursue political power and keep himself out of jail. >> one more thing, tom. in your reporting you've talked to the presidents a bunch of times about all of this and you say there is a hail mary here that might save the situation which is that israel and bibi netanyahu want a normalization with saudi arabia, but the saudis might impose terms that make it very hard to do some of the more radical stuff that bibi wants to do. how likely is that given that the saudis have not seemed particularly interested in the fate of the palestinian people? >> yeah. the problem for the saudis is they can't get this deal through except under a joe biden presidency because democrats wouldn't support it at all under a republican presidency and that means joe biden has to be attentive to his base and his base to the party cares a lot that this would be a fair deal and fair part palestinians and the saudis would not be interested in this and the base of the democratic party is interested in this. it's an ironic situation, fareed. the crown prince of saudi arabia muhammad bin salman holds a lot of the future in his hands. he may not be interested in jewish history, but jewish history is interested in him. >> tom friedman, to talk to you. >> thank, fareed. is netanyahu right that its judges have become too powerful? should the u.s. 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become too strong an impediment to democratic rule. many on the left say the same thing about the u.s. supreme court, so what is the proper role of high courts? joining me now is emily bazelo, in a staff writer of "the new york times "qwest magazine and a felly at yale law school and co-host of slate's political gabfest podcast. emily, first, let's talk about israel. why is it that so many people feel that this is kind of overreach on the part of the -- the democratic or legislative branch of the israeli government in terms of curtailing the court's power? >> israel has an unusual checks and balances and separation of powers and the israeli supreme court plays a kind of singular, very important role as a primary check on the government's power. you know, in the united states we have several checks and balances. we have two houses of government, both the house and congress and the senate. we have a separation between the executive and the legislative branches and we have a written constitution that's really hard to change. none of thosz things exist in israel. there is one house of parliament, the knesset. it is very much connected to the executive branch because the prime minister leads the party that rules the guesset and there isn't a written constitution, the ordinary majority of parliament can change what are called basic laws that have a kind of con sstitutional statusn israel and for those reasons the israeli supreme court as a protector of minority rights and the check on the rule is crucial and that's why these reforms from this right-wing government of netanyahu have such dramatic impact and have generated such a swell of protest. >> people say that the supreme court and israel have sort of abrogated to itself powers, but in a sense the american supreme court did that. there was never in the constitution the power of judicial review whether the court can essentially decide whether something is consti constitutional or not. that happens later when chief justice marshal took that and decided that that was one of the court's missions. >> right. in the united states our constitution is written in the 1780s and then in this famous case you're talking about, marbury versus madison, that's 1803. that's when the supreme court says we have the power to say what the law is, to say what the constitution means. for a long time the united states was kind of an outliar. lots of countries did not have judicial review, but then, you know, starts in the '60s and '70s partly relating to the fall of communism for lots of different reasons around the world countries start to write constitutions in which judicial review, the power of courts becomes very important and so israel kind of joins with that transformation and constitutional revolution in the 199 s when the israeli supreme court declared that the basic laws were like a constitution and that it, the supreme court had the power to interpret those laws. >> and what netanyahu's government is trying to do by curbing the power of the judiciary seeps to me quite similar to what some of these populist governments in eastern europe are doing, hungary, the polish. in every case it seems that the effort does say brute majority rule should be more important than what judges do. >> right. so if you're an elected party, you've been chosen to rule the country and the court is obstructing you, getting in your way, you get frustrated and this idea that minority rights should continue to party and that there is this larger framework of the constitution you want to get that out of your way and so you're absolutely right that in h hungary and poland and other countries and turkey and the attack on the power of the courts to try to sweep the judges out of the way is a sign of trouble for democracy and in some other countries, it has been the first step toward a slide from democracy to autocracy. >> and how should we think about america because there is this fear on the american left largely that you have this very conservative supreme court that is up ending a lot of settled law in america. >> right. we've been talking about what happens when the courts become too weak. it is also possible for courts to become too strong. so in the united states we have a feature that no other country has. we have life tenure for judges. that means the supreme court justices can sit for 30 or 40 years. we are having a huge amount of power amassed on the hands of a very small group of people and it's random when they leave the bench and so you have a kind of disconnect between political influence over the court, the ability of republicans or democrats to appoint the justices they want and the composition of the court. the court can kind of lurch pretty far away from american public opinion, and it also is very hard to amend the constitution of the united states. we haven't really done that at all in 50 years, and so that means that the court's k declaration about what the constitution means holds sway for all of us. for those reasons liberals in the u.s. are arguing right now that the supreme court has too much power, and that there are reasons to try to pull back and give more power to the congress, more power to the executive branch. how good an idea that is and whether it can really happen, that all remains to be determined. >> emily bazelon, we always get smarter for hearing you. thank you so much. >> thanks for having me, fareed. next on gps, i'll talk to the man in charge of tackling america's border crisis homeland security secretary alejandro mayorkas. we are back after the break. your company is eligible. 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baby, only on game nights. you know you are retired right? am i? ya! save up to $500 on the new sleep number® smart bed. plus, 60 month financing on most smart beds. shop now only at sleep number®. there was a very heated house judiciary committee hearing on oversight of the department of homeland security. many of the republicans on the committee berated secretary of homeland security alejandro mayorkas for what chairman jim jordan called a biden border crisis. on the other side of the aisle the committee stopped democrat warned at the start of the hearings that the hearings would be nothing more than political theater. i sat down with secretary mayorkas the prior week to understand what is really going on at america's southern border and most specifically what has happened since the expiration of title 42 in may. that was the covid-era policy that allowed law enforcement to send migrants swiftly away from the american border. >> mr. secretary, pleasure to have you on. >> great to see you, fareed. thank you for having me. >> tell us what the situation is on the border now because in may there were fears that we were going to be overwhelmed. what is happening? >> so we have dispelled those fears through a very thoughtful, comprehensive approach to irregular migration to our southern border. it has two main components to it. one is to build lauchl pathways for people to come to the united states, those qualify in a safe and orderly way. a humanitarian way of enabling people to seek asylum in the united states as our laws provide and the second part of it is to disen sent viez those who do not avail themselves of the lawful pathways. we have seen an approximately 70% drop in the number of individuals encountered in our southern border as a result. >> all that sounds like you're handling the kind of crisis of the moment, but you have 2.4 million a prehedges at the border. you're getting all these people trying to come in. they're all essentially claiming to be asylum seekers. they seem to me, adlt least economic migrants and fleeing poverty, disease as people have traditionally. isn't the asylum system broken if anybody can claim, if there's no real distinction between a migrant and the asylum seeker. the asylum system is broken. the time from initial encounter of an individual who makes a claim for relief in the final adjudication of the claim is all too often many years and the difficulty is people settle. they have children here in the united states and then it becomes very difficult to remove them should they not succeed in the ultimate asylum claim. we are dealing with -- fundamentally, we are dealing with a broken immigration system and that includes the asylum process. >> why not overhaul the system? it seems like europeans are beginning to think about the same thing. >> we are gridlocked in congress. >> it's as simple as that. >> i think there's unanimity about the fact that we're dealing with a broken immigration system and yet the solution is proving tremendously elusive for decades now. >> and that relates -- >> the '90s is the last time our immigration system was legislated. >> another part that strikes me as clearly broken, we have lost the ability to really take in skilled migrants. canada is taking in 250,000 whereas we're taking in 185,000 skilled migrants h-1 visas. we have eight times the population of canada and they're take four times as many skilled migrants and we now do something which strikes me as almost the symbol of how broken the system is. we do a lottery. a lottery suggests capriciousness, and whimsy and not rules or qualifications or any kind of functioning system. it's literally saying you're taking a gamble. >> number one, we have a lottery. number two, we have a numerical cap, a numerical limit that is not in any way tied to market needs. it is a historic, legislative numerical limit. canada needs laborers, skilled, unscaled and the like, and they can calibrate their openness to migration according to market needs. >> we are divorced. >> and no prospect for any legislative needs? >> i remain hopeful, but it does not look promising right now, and it has alluded us year in and year out for decades. >> after we taped that interview, a judge struck down the new biden asylum policy, but then temporarily citistayed his ruling and the biden policy remains in effect and we will be watching what happens next. >> coming up next on "gps" a russian journalist on whether putin's grip on power was shaken at all by the recent would-be mutiny.dug an d dug until i found some information. i was able to find out more than just a name. and then you add it to the tree. i found ship manifests. birth certificate. wow. look at your dad. i love it so much to know where my father work, where he grew up. it's like you discover a new family member. discover even more at ancestry.com i'm a bear. i'm coming out of hibernation, and papa is hungry. and while you're hittin' the trail, i'm hitting your cooler. and your cut-rate car insurance might not pay for all this. so get allstate. the first time you connected your godaddy website and your store was also the first time you realized... well, we can do anything. cheesecake cookies? 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>> yes. it was revealed -- it has just been confirmed that he was attending the summit -- the russia africa summit. >> the subtitle of your book gets at a very interesting question that a lot of people have and everybody from henry kissinger to europeans say they thought putin was rational and he was calculating and he was incremental and they did not, as a result, predict or think that he would declare war in february when he did. why did he make that decision? >> you know, putin is not as rational as some people in the west believe. he is -- he's very irrational and most of his decisions are deeply rooted in his psychology, in -- in how -- in the people he used to talk to many years ago. i described it my book that moat most of his prejudice for ukrainian nationalists is just because of his favorite novel, he was reading when he was a youngnationalists is just becau his favorite novel, he was reading when he was a young student. that was a detective student who was fighting against ukrainian nationalists, so it's really very weird how putin perceives russian history, but at the same time he is part of his generation and he is the part of russian traditional historical narrative. imperia imperialist historical narrative and that's the only piece of russian history we've had, and with this book i am trying to debunk the russian historical mythology because it is probably the most dangerous part of russian propaganda's narrative. putin will go and for all those people all of those myths would remain the same. >> one of the things that people say is that putin has always had, as you said, this ultra-russian nationalist narrative and then covid happens. he stops meeting with anybody, foreigners. he gets more and more isolated. he restricts himself to a circle of real kind of acolytes and courtiers. you had to quarantine for two weeks before you could even see him, and maybe that also explains that he really got into a hothouse of just these highly nationalist russians. >> sure. absolutely, and it's weird that during the covid months he has become even more obsessed with history than before because after that he started writing articles about the history of poland and the history of ukraine and he's always lecturing russians about history, but it's all false. it's all falsified version of russian history. he has created some kind of imaginary inquire and he is trying to impose that point of view and actually it works for so many people who are not -- not -- i don't think that it was for a majority of russians, but many people buy it. >> there was an anecdote in the ft that sergey lavrov, the longtime foreign minister who was apparently told about the inflation only two hours before was asked who is advising vladimir putin. oh, i can tell you, he has three main advisers, peter the great, and ivan the terrible. >> and the fourth and important one is stalin. >> interesting. >> at the end of the day, do you think his days are numbered in any meaningful sense? >> you know, actually the sources in moscow, i believe right after prigozhin's mutiny started telling me that they used to be sure that his situation was very stable and he's there -- he might be there for years to come, but now they think that probably one year at least because the situation -- the system is shaky. many people understand that he's not there and they have to prepare for russia after putin, and at the same time, he thinks that he underestimates all of the difficulties of his situation and he thinks that -- that the time is on his side because he's waiting for american elections. he's waiting for donald trump to be back and he's sure that once trump is back in the white house, he's going to be fine, there's going to be no war -- no resistance from ukrainians side, no support for ukraine. >> he'll deal with trump, and that's the ideal happy answer for president putin. >> mikhail, pleasure to have you on. your reporting has been fantastic. thank you. next on "gpse," two officials ad two disappearances and what can we learn about these two troubling events, one in russia, one in china. that story when we come back. ...a "chow down" day... a "take a big bite" day... a "perfectly delicious" day... - mm. 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on top of the worlddddd!!! before advil. advil targets pain at the source of inflammation. when pain comes for you, come back fast with advil liqui-gels. i'm christine mahon. i'm retired from public health nursing and from the army reserve. my retirement funds allow me to enjoy what i love to do. as long as you can make an impact, why stop? now for the last look. in recent weeks, two high-profile figures in two notoriously shadowy political capitals have gone missing, and their disappearances speak volumes about their respective countries. i'll start with the case of the missing chinese foreign minister, ching ghan. he was last seen publicly at a slate of meetings on june 25th. this week it was announced that has ching was removed at his most of foreign minister. beijing is thick with rumors about him. ching's disappearance and remove is all the more astounding considering that he was the protege of xi jinping, hand-picked as a u.s. ambassador two years ago. he then catapulted over many experienced leaders to become the youngest foreign minister of china in seven years. whatever happened to him, this episode highlights the opacity of the chinese political system. senior officials often disappear from view, with little, if any, public explanation. presumably some of the secrecy in this case is due to the fact that ching was close to xi jinping, and any investigation into him would reflect poorly on president xi's judgment. but if ching had become the victim of his political rival, then it's a shame, as the economist notes, ching was clever and surprisingly candid with diplomats. he spent years studying the united states. he was capable of charming foreign dignitaries, diff fusing ten tensions and holding firm to the communist party line. these are skills that ching ought to value. that brings me to the case of the other missing person in another country, known for the murkiness of its domestic politics. i'm speaking of general sergey of russia, who was last seen in a hostage-style video last month, as the wagner group's yevgeny prigozhin and his troops marched on moscow. in the video, wearing fatigues, but stripped of all insignia pled awkwardly with prigozhin to abandon the coup. the awkwardness perhaps indicates coercion. he was close to yevgeny prigozhin, who has called him a man who is not afraid of responsibility. u.s. intelligence officials told "the new york times" that seravikin has advanced acknowledge of the attempted coup. and they believe that he was detained for questioning late last month. this is actually a disappearance that is bad for putin and his immediate objective, winning the war in ukraine. seravikin earned the nickname general armageddon. his tactics are brutal and abhorrent, but kurg putin's aims, they are effective. he is known as dangerously competent military leader. in october, putin apointed seravikin head of the forces in ukraine. he withdrawn from kherson, built up the defensive positions and stepped up the power plants. i am not praising the man or the russian invasion of ukraine, but these were clear-eyed tougher decisions given that the kremlin wanted an aggressive offensive. and for these efforts, he was demoted in favor of another general who spearheaded an ineffective russian offensive that cost forces dearly. now seravikin is missing. the current defense minister and gerasimov, both of whom are willing to tell putin only what he wants to hear, will continue to conduct the war in an inept fashion, for the sake of familiarity, the kremlin has chosen to reinforce failure. it's the nature of a close political system that yes-men and political operators win out over competence every time. these twin events in china and russia remind us of the virtues of an open and democratic political system, despite all its messiness. you know, we often despair the tumult of democracies, look at british politics over the last few years, with this revolving door of prime ministers and constant leaks, resignations, and recriminations. we cringe at the volatility of trump's cabinet, his abrupt, much-publicized dismissals of his generals and other staff, their attacks on him. it also seems undignified like a soap opera unraveling before our eyes. but on the whole, it's a good thing. it is open politics, openly engaged in. there is no mystery as to why boris johnson had to resign. no claims that rex tillerson left the state department because he got ill. in democracies, we wash offer dirty laundry in public. and the events in china and russia in recent weeks show us that perhaps that laundry system is a key ingredient of democracy's resilience. thanks to all you've for being part of my program this week. i will see you next week. ng to d their money with chase. the chef's cooking up firsts with her new debit card. hungry? 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