US Politics

This past week Joe Biden gave a speech in which he touted his economic policies and, rather than deflecting, he leaned into what many of his opponents called “Bidenomics”.Bidenomics is the opposite of “trickle-down” theory, which holds that tax cuts to wealthy individuals and corporations ultimately find their way to the rest of the population through more spending and investment. For the president and his supporters, Bidenomics means government spending and investment in infrastructure and services that create jobs and growth.“I didn’t come up with the name, I really didn’t,” he said in his remarks. “I now claim it.”If you’re a small business owner or an entrepreneur a president’s economic policies – assuming they can get congressional support – really do matter. This is not to claim that Biden’s economic agenda will be any more or less successful than his predecessors’: for many the trickle-down v spending debate will never be resolved. But when a president sets an agenda it reveals where money will be spent. And my smartest, most experienced clients are watching closely. Why? Because regardless of where they stand politically, what’s best for their business is always, always, always to follow the money.They know that when you own a business your job is to create value and build an organization that provides a livelihood for all the people that rely on you. This includes your customers, your suppliers, your partners and of course your employee and their families, as well as your family. Which means that you put politics aside (until it’s time to cast your vote) and instead you follow the money. Get it?So where is the Bidenomics money going?For starters, there’s almost $300bn going towards building chip manufacturing plants under the 2022 Chips Act. There’s also another $391bn that’s being spent on companies that are improving their energy efficiency and making greener products under the Inflation Reduction Act. A trillion dollars is being expended on roads, buildings and other infrastructure projects thanks to the 2021 Infrastructure Act. That’s about $1.7tn, which is a lot of money. The president is also telling us that more will be spent on affordable healthcare, social services and education.That’s where the money’s going over the next few years and even more will be spent if he wins re-election in 2024. When it comes to your business, it doesn’t matter whether you agree with these policies. What matters is that you take advantage of them for the benefit of your business. So how are my clients doing this?If you want to sell products and services to the chip manufacturers and other players in the industry (and the most active ones – like Intel, Samsung, GlobalFoundries and Skywater Technologies – are already in line for the funding) then target these companies and their projects and consider what products and services of yours can be sold to them. Or you can do your research, identify opportunities and start filling out applications at places like the Department of Commerce’s Chips.gov, or at Chips Act which is a private organization that provides support for businesses looking for help writing grants and submitting proposals. Or you can go directly to the Semiconductor Industry Association or read the excellent guidance provided by Semi, an organization that supports companies in the electronic manufacturing and supply chain industries.If you want to get funding for energy-efficient projects or to help develop energy efficient products you should start with the White House Inflation Reduction Act Guidebook which lists dozens of government agencies that are doling out money to organizations of all sizes for just that purpose. The Department of Energy’s Office of Manufacturing and Energy Supply Chains has $6bn available for projects and, wow, you can’t get any more government-sounding than that, right? Or if you merely want to maximize your use of the expanded tax credits under the legislation visit the IRS’s Inflation Reduction Act web area.Maybe you want to get in on the $1tn infrastructure spending? The White House, Federal Highway Administration, Department of Energy and Department of Commerce all have funding opportunities related to the 2021 legislation.Follow the money. Start at any of the places I’ve mentioned above and get ready to go down the Federal Rabbit Hole.Finding this money, let alone applying, isn’t easy. Which is why many of my clients don’t do this. They’re lazy. My best clients – and I have a handful – have already hired summer interns whose jobs are to peruse the maze of government bureaucracy, identify opportunities and start filling out forms. Doing this takes time, effort, tenacity. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.Even if you’re not in the construction industry you can still leverage Bidenomics. That’s because all of the companies that are getting funding will need your products or services. Chip manufacturing plants will have employees that eat pizza. Highways have buildings that need to be cleaned. “Green” products need to be transported. People in these industries getting all that money will need accountants, lawyers, architects, marketing professionals and workplace consultants.Bidenomics. Obamacare. Supply side. Trickle down. These are just words. Political phrases to create headlines and catch the attention of voters. Smart business owners know this. They don’t get distracted by these terms. And they don’t let their politics muddle their strategies. What they do is follow the money. And my best clients have taught me that whether you’re a fan of Biden’s – or any president’s economic policies – there’s always plenty of money and opportunities to pursue if you just follow the money. More

Among the books still available in Florida despite Ron DeSantis’s ongoing purge of “unsuitable” material is one the Republican governor might want to peruse.Dale Carnegie’s 1936 bestseller How to Win Friends and Influence People would appear to be the antithesis of DeSantis’s stuttering push for his party’s 2024 presidential nomination, as Donald Trump’s closest challenger traverses the country turning off voters to his dull personality and extremist policies.By almost every measure, the rightwinger has had another lackluster week on the campaign trail, with “clumsy” missteps in New Hampshire, Texas, California and New York. Now, barely one month after his glitch-ridden launch on Twitter, DeSantis finds himself sinking in the polls, closer to the large field of optimists below him than the twice-indicted, twice-impeached former president who retains a stranglehold over the Republican party.“The more voters learn about him, the less they can stomach the idea of him running the country,” the online magazine Jezebel concluded.There are competing theories over the reasons for DeSantis’s decline. Analysts caution that with seven months still until primary season, and with Trump mired in legal troubles, it’s far too soon to write him off.“Primary elections are volatile and unpredictable. Don’t believe anyone who says they know how this is going to turn out,” said Stephen Craig, professor of political science and campaign expert at the University of Florida.But it is clear that many of DeSantis’s wounds are self-inflicted. In New Hampshire on Tuesday, he angered grassroots Republican women by scheduling a campaign event clashing with Trump’s appearance at their flagship lunch, a “stupid” and “rookie” mistake in the eyes of Republican strategists.In a similar breach of protocol in New York, he vexed local Republicans by arranging a fundraising event without the courtesy of a heads-up that he was in town, Politico reported.Another dollar-raising trip, to California, with whose Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, he is openly feuding over his controversial migrant flights to Sacramento, also provided an opportunity for mockery. After DeSantis railed against homelessness, and claimed in a campaign ad to have witnessed people “defecating in the streets” during a “comically short” 20-minute trip to San Francisco, pictures of squalor in large Florida cities began appearing on Twitter.And in perhaps the highest-profile “miss” of the week, DeSantis’s big immigration policy reveal, made during a visit to the Texas-Mexico border on Monday, fell largely flat. Aggressive proposals such as deadly force against drug traffickers, separating migrant families, building a border wall and pledging to end birthright citizenship, enraged immigration advocates and failed to offer more to the Republican base than Trump’s own agenda.“I used to characterize DeSantis as an awful lot like Trump, but smarter, and I’m not sure that applies any more,” Craig, the UF professor, said. “He just seems to be doing things that are not all that smart, his war with Disney for example, and some of the other things he does show a clumsiness that wasn’t so much apparent before he began being a national figure.“I think he’s still a credible threat. But he’s going to have to get his act together. He’s showing some weakness and you can’t really do that if you want to knock off the big guy.”Craig said DeSantis was in an awkward spot as Trump’s main challenger, targeted both by him and the field below.“He is vulnerable to his actions [and] if the other candidates all ganged up on him, hoping that one of them might replace him as the alternative to Trump, then I see the potential for him to sink well in advance of the primaries,” he said.“I’m not predicting that’s what’s going to happen. I’m saying that primaries are by their nature so volatile that I don’t think we should take any poll now as definitive evidence as to what is likely.”Some senior Republicans are even less convinced. Larry Hogan, the former governor of Maryland, said DeSantis had underperformed. “[His] campaign is one of the worst I’ve seen so far, and he’s dropped like a rock. I think it’s getting close to being over,” he told CBS’s The Takeout.The veteran Republican strategist Rick Wilson told the Guardian last month that the anti-woke governor was “all hat, no cattle”.The DeSantis campaign continues to project an air of confidence. “This is a marathon, not a sprint,” he told reporters in Texas, according to NBC, after the network’s poll showed him with only 22% support from Republican primary voters, down from 31% in April.“[Joe] Biden beats Trump in the swing states and I beat Biden handily in the swing states. That’s ultimately the election right there. If you don’t have a path to do that, then nominating [Trump] doesn’t make sense.”Despite the defiance, there is evidence to suggest DeSantis is becoming more aware that some of his extreme actions in Florida might not be popular on the national stage.He has largely avoided the debate over abortion after signing a six-week ban in his home state; and, significantly, made a legal move this week seeking to postpone the trial in Disney’s lawsuit against him until after the 2024 election. A wave of Republicans, including the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie, a presidential nomination rival, have accused DeSantis of betraying conservative values by retaliating against a private company for disagreeing with him.One national issue DeSantis believes will be a winner for him is his stance on immigration. He has made several trips to the border, where he has committed Florida law enforcement resources to combat what he calls “Biden’s border crisis”.But immigration advocates think DeSantis’s agenda and proposals will put off even more voters.“He wants to overturn the 14th amendment, indefinitely detain children, and create a mass-deportation regime that would uproot families and destabilize communities across the country. It’s as ugly as it is unworkable,” said Zachary Mueller, political director of America’s Voice.“It encapsulates the Republican party’s ongoing descent into dangerous extremism on immigration, all politics and red meat for the base and no real solutions or efforts to move beyond perpetual chaos, fearmongering, and bigoted extremes.”Craig, meanwhile, believes DeSantis is running short on both time and personality.“I used to view him as fairly charismatic, but his recent performance seems to belie that,” he said.“Maybe he can smooth it out. Richard Nixon wasn’t Mr Charisma and he got elected, so it’s certainly not impossible.“But DeSantis is facing the big guy and I don’t think he’s got a lot of room left. He needs to gain momentum somehow in the next month or two or some of the people who would like to move on from Trump may also decide it’s time to move on from DeSantis.” More

The first thing to remember about the damage done by the US supreme court this June and the June before is that each majority decision overturns a right that we had won. We had won a measure of student debt relief thanks to the heroic efforts of debt activists since 2011. We had won reproductive rights protection 50 years ago with Roe v Wade, and we won wetlands protection with the Clean Water Act around the same time. We had implemented affirmative action, AKA a redress of centuries of institutionalized inequality, step by step, in many ways over the past 60-plus years. We had won rights for same-sex couples and queer people in a series of laws and decisions.What this means is that the right wing of the US supreme court is part of a gang of reactionaries engaging in backlash. It also means we can win these things back. It will not be easy, but difficult is not impossible. This does not mean that the decisions are not devastating, and that we should not feel the pain. The old saying “don’t mourn, organize” has always worked better for me as “mourn, but also organize”. Defeat is no reason to stop. Neither is victory a reason to stop when victory is partial or needs to be defended. You can celebrate victories, mourn defeats and keep going.Each of those victories was hard-won, often by people who began when the rights and protections they sought seemed inconceivable, then unlikely, then remote, and so goes the road of profound change almost every time. To win environmental protections, the public had to be awakened to the interconnectedness, the vulnerability and the value of a healthy natural world and our inseparability from it. To win marriage equality for same-sex couples and equal protection for queer people involved changing beliefs, which was achieved not just by campaigns but by countless LGBTQ+ people courageously making themselves visible and audible in their communities.To recognize the power of this change requires a historical memory. A memory of rivers catching fire and toxic products being dumped freely in the 1960s. Of laws and guidelines treating queer people as criminal or mentally ill or both in ways that terrorized them and made them largely invisible to the public eye. Of women dying of or damaged by illegal abortions or leading the bleak lives to which unwanted pregnancies consigned them. Of the way the Ivy League universities in particular were virtually all white and all male into the 1970s. Of how inequality was so normalized that first people had to see and believe that women and Bipoc people should have equal rights and access to and a role in the places of power that decide the fate of each of us, the nation and the world. All that changed – not enough, of course, but a lot.Memory is a superpower, because memory of how these situations changed is a memory of our victories and our power. Each of these victories happened both through the specifics of campaigns to change legislation but also through changing the public imagination. The supreme court can dismantle the legislation but they cannot touch the beliefs and values. We still believe in these rights. We still recognize the harm and the destruction they were meant to prevent. If you didn’t believe that equal access and rights were wrong yesterday or last year, you don’t have to believe it now. Not just because those rights were denied by six justices, at least four of whom are so utterly corrupt in how they got their seats or what they’ve done while seated that they should be forced to resign.Last year’s attack on reproductive rights has produced its own backlash, with many states working to protect those rights, many elections seemingly pivoting on voter outrage about the Republican party’s brutality toward and hatred of women, and Republicans scurrying away from their own achievement and its hideous impacts. If the Republican party deserves admiration for anything, it’s for their long view, understanding of strategy and tenacity.The building up of an illicit rightwing supreme court took many years, and took fundamentalist Christians holding their noses to vote for Donald Trump because they understood that meant getting the justices to overturn Roe v Wade. It meant building power from the ground up to take state legislatures to gerrymander electoral maps and sticking vicious clowns like Jim Jordan into bizarrely tailored districts. It meant chipping away at voting rights, achieved in part by the supreme court’s attack on the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and its 2010 Citizens United decision that let a filthy tsunami of corporate dark money into electoral politics, thereby overturning two of its own earlier decisions.While each of the issues under attack need their own campaigns, voting rights and free and fair elections are crucial to all of them. Don’t forget that the only reason we have such a conservative government, including the supreme court, is voter suppression. If we truly had equal access to the ballot, American voters would choose more progressive candidates and pass more progressive legislation. That’s why what the public wants, believes and values so often differs from what the politicians chosen by dark money and voter suppression give us.One of the striking features of recent years is the baldfaced Republican effort to prevent Black people in particular, but also young, poor and other non-white demographics from voting. Baldfaced because it acknowledges that they are unpopular and that they’ve given up the goal of being in power because they represent the majority. As they become more marginalized through their own extreme and unpopular views, they have to use more extreme means – now including trying to steal and overturn elections – to hold onto power.This is as true of climate action as anything else: a new Yale 360 poll shows that “57% of registered voters support a US president declaring global warming a national emergency if Congress does not take further action” and “74% support regulating carbon dioxide as a pollutant.” The problem isn’t the people. It’s the power, and history shows us that when we come together with ferocious commitment to a shared goal we can be more powerful than institutions and governments. The right would like us to feel defeated and powerless. We can feel devastated and still feel powerful or find our power. This is not a time to quit. It’s a time to fight.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. Her most recent books are Recollections of My Nonexistence and Orwell’s Roses More

If you were a pollster, would you ever bet on elections? How about your clients’ elections? How about betting your clients would lose? For Sean McElwee, the wunderkind behind the liberal polling group Data for Progress, the answer was all the above.McElwee had clients including the 2022 Senate campaign of John Fetterman, in Pennsylvania. McElwee placed multiple bets on the midterms, including that Fetterman would lose. Fetterman’s organization became displeased. Following its victory, it severed ties with McElwee. It was just the beginning of a dramatic downfall heightened by the pollster’s connections to the pandemic-prevention advocate Gabe Bankman-Fried, whose billionaire brother Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire collapsed in scandal around election day.The rise and fall of Sean McElwee is one of many storylines in a new book The Big Break: The Gamblers, Party Animals and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington While America Loses its Mind. For the author, the Washington Post reporter Ben Terris, the individuals he profiles tell a collective story about DC processing the fallout from the Trump years.“Nobody knew what the world was going to be like post-Trump,” Terris says, adding: “If there is a post-Trump.”To explore that world, he turned to Democratic and Republican circles: Leah Hunt-Hendrix, an oil heiress turned funder of progressive causes, whose conservative grandfather HL Hunt was reportedly the world’s wealthiest man; Matt and Mercedes Schlapp, a Republican power couple whose fortunes crested after Matt decided to stick with Trump in 2016; Ian Walters, Matt’s protege until political and personal differences ruptured the friendship; Robert Stryk, a cowboy-hatted lobbyist who parlayed Trump connections into a lucrative career representing sometimes questionable clients; and Jamarcus Purley, a Black staffer for the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein who lamented the impact of George Floyd’s murder and the pandemic on Black Americans including his own father, who died. Disenchanted with his boss, Purley lost his job in disputed circumstances and launched an unconventional protest in Feinstein’s Capitol office, after hours.Terris is a reporter for the Post’s Style section, which he characterizes as strong on features and profiles. He can turn a phrase, likening Fetterman to “a Tolkien character in Carhartt”, and has an ear for the telling quote. Once, while Terris was covering the Democratic senator Jon Tester, from Montana, in, of all places, an organic pea field, nature called. A staffer asked: “Can the senator’s penis please be off the record?” Terris quips that he’s saving this for a title if he ever writes a memoir.His current book is “sort of a travelog, not a memoir”, Terris says. “I tried to keep myself out of the book as much as I could. I wanted the reader to feel like they knew Washington, knew the weirdos, the odd scenes … the backrooms, poker games, parties.”Hunt-Hendrix’s Christmas party is among the opening scenes. Attendees include her aunt Swanee Hunt, a former ambassador to Austria. Hunt-Hendrix aimed to make her own mark, through her organization Way to Win.“She’s very progressive,” Terris says, “trying to unwind a lot of projects, in a way, that her grandfather was all about. To me, it was fascinating, the family dynamics at play.”Just as fascinating was her “figuring out how to push the [Democratic] party in the direction she believed it should go in – a more progressive direction than some Democrats pushed for. It told the story of Democratic party tensions – money and politics, the idea of being idealistic and also super-wealthy … All of these things made for a very heady brew.”On the Republican side, Stryk went from running a vineyard to savoring fine wine in a foreign embassy, thanks to his connection to Trump. Stryk joined the campaign in 2016. When Trump won, Stryk celebrated on a patio of the Four Seasons hotel in DC. A dog sniffed his crotch. When its owner apologized, Stryk found she worked for the New Zealand embassy, which was having difficulty reaching Trump. It was Stryk’s lucky break.“He was in a position to connect New Zealand to Trump,” Terris says. “He got a phone number and was off to the races, a sideshow guy making major deals … $5m with the Saudis, that kind of thing.”When Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine last year, Stryk was in Belarus, exploring a potential relationship with that country’s government. He had to make his way home via the Baltics.“One of the themes of the book is that the Donald Trump era allowed a bunch of sideshow characters to get out on the main stage,” Terris says. “Stryk is a great example of that.”Others distanced themselves – eventually. Terris sees the rupture between Matt Schlapp and Ian Walters as illustrative. As head of the American Conservative Union, Schlapp presided over CPAC, the annual conservative conference, with Walters his communications director. As Schlapp welcomed fringe elements to CPAC – from Trump to Matt Gaetz to Marjorie Taylor Greene – Walters felt increasingly repelled.“It’s an interesting tale of a broken friendship,” Terris says. “It also helps the reader understand how did the Republican party get to where it is now – where are the fault lines, why one way over another.”The 2020 election was the point of no return. Schlapp stayed all-in on Trump, supporting his claim of a stolen election even in a graveside speech at the funeral of Walters’s father, the legendary conservative journalist Ralph Hallow.“We have to take confidence that he would want us, more than anything else, to get beyond this period of mourning and to fight,” Schlapp is quoted as saying. Walters and his wife, Carin, resigned from the ACU. Ian remained a Republican but marveled at the bravery of the whistleblower Cassidy Hutchinson in the January 6 hearings.As for Schlapp, he faced scandal late last year. Assisting with the Senate campaign of the ex-football star Herschel Walker, when Schlapp arrived in Georgia, he allegedly groped a male campaign staffer.“I had to go back into my reporting and ask, were there signs of this?” recalls Terris. “Could I run through all of this [with] the alleged victim over the phone? I did. I ran a bunch of questions by Matt – he never answered.”There was another last-minute controversy. McElwee’s polls proved inaccurate. Another red flag was his ties to Gabe Bankman-Fried, whose brother was arrested in December. Reports of McElwee’s gambling made clients wonder where their money was going. Senior staff threatened to resign. McElwee stepped down.“All of a sudden, it was national news in a way I was not prepared for,” Terris says.Can anyone be prepared for what comes next in Washington?“Donald Trump proved you can win by acting like Donald Trump,” Terris says. “There are a lot of people that learned from him – mostly in the Republican party, but [also] the Democratic party – how to comport yourself in Washington, what you can get away with. People’s confidence is broken, politics is broken, relationships.”Can it all be restored?“Nobody knows yet how to do it. It’s not the same thing as normal. Maybe that’s fine. Maybe normal led to Donald Trump.”
The Big Break is published in the US by Twelve More

Cost of living, poor air quality and environmental concerns are no match for Americans’ willingness to spend a record amount on fireworks, according to reports ahead of the Fourth of July holiday.According to the American Pyrotechnics Association, US consumer fireworks retailers have reported that sales of rockets, missiles, roman candles, aerial spinners, parachutes, sparklers, poppers, fountains, jumping jacks and firecrackers should increase by about $100m this year over 2022.“Fireworks use is expected to hit an all-time high this year, especially with July 4th falling on a Tuesday,” the director of the APA, Julie Heckman, said ahead of the holiday commemorating the US’s independence from the UK. “We predict revenues could exceed $2.3bn for the 2023 fireworks season.”The figures suggest Americans are spending three times more than they did in 2012, when consumer sales stood at $645m, and sales could top $3.3bn by 2028.Previous studies have show that firework sales are skewed toward young people, with 18- to 24-year-olds spending double the national average. According to a 2013 Visa study, the demographic’s members spend $70 each on fireworks, with that figure dropping to $13 for people who are 65 and older.Firework pyromaniacs were also more likely to be in the US south and midwest, where people spend twice as much on average as those in the north-east and west. Men typically planned to spend twice as much as women, Visa found.A national firework boom leaves Massachusetts residents out. Their state remains the lone one in the US that bans consumer fireworks entirely while Vermont and Illinois only allow wire or wood-stick sparklers.Lacking any federal guarantee, the legality or illegality of fireworks in different states is often perplexing. Minnesota is one of a handful of states that does not permit aerial consumer-grade fireworks but has legalized marijuana.The ongoing restrictions on fireworks “seem priggish”, wrote columnist Evan Ramstad in the Minneapolis Star Tribune this week. “Only Massachusetts keeps a tighter clamp on fireworks use, and it also permits marijuana.”Yet, Ramstad noted: “Fireworks advocacy doesn’t fit neatly on the lists of political values that drive the two parties.”The smoke from Canadian forest fires that have blanketed parts of the north-east over the past month may also have depressed firework sales.The boom comes as fireworks have been found to contribute massive environmental destruction. In 2021, a California couple were criminally charged for their role using a gender reveal smoke bomb to ignite the El Dorado wildfire in San Bernardino county that torched close to 23,000 acres, destroyed buildings and killed a firefighter.Across the US’s northern border, bad air quality from forest fires – and fears of sparking more – has led to the cancellation of some Canada Day firework displays in Montreal. No American cities have announced similar cancellations.According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), fireworks started 12,264 known fires in the US in 2021, including 2,082 structure fires, 316 vehicle blazes and 9,866 others. The NFPA estimates that fireworks could start some 19,000 fires annually in the US. More

The US is set to rejoin Unesco this month after a four-year absence from the global cultural and educational body that the country abandoned during the Donald Trump presidency over what his administration called “anti-Israeli bias”.The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s reunion with the US came after a two-day special session held at the body’s headquarters in Paris.Of Unesco’s 193 member states, 142 participated in Friday’s vote. Ten states voted against the US rejoining, including Russia, Belarus, Iran, North Korea and Nicaragua. China, which had become the organisation’s biggest financial backer in the absence of the US, also voted against readmittance.US efforts to rejoin Unesco have been building since last year when the Joe Biden White House said within a $1.7tn spending bill that the administration would seek to rejoin the organisation in order to “counter Chinese influence”.“I am encouraged and grateful that Unesco members have accepted the US proposal that will allow us to continue steps toward rejoining the organisation,” the American secretary of state Antony Blinken said in a statement.The US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, described the decision as “very good news”.“If we are not engaged in international institutions, then we leave a void and lose an opportunity to advance American values and interests on the global stage,” she added.Meanwhile, the UN’s director for the International Crisis Group, Richard Gowan, told CBS News on Tuesday: “The Biden administration has always made it clear that it is suspicious of China’s rising influence in the UN.“Biden’s team believes that Trump ceded a lot of ground to China with its anti-UN attitude. The decision to rejoin Unesco is just the latest example of the US deciding it can do more to counter China by actively engaging in UN institutions than sitting on the sidelines.”As a condition of readmission, the US will repay around $619m in unpaid dues, meet 22% of Unesco’s annual budget, and make contributions to programs supporting education access initiatives in Africa, Holocaust remembrance and journalists’ safety.Beyond stepping up actions for Africa, Unesco said it would be able to increase its efforts toward gender equality, a strategic priority.“With this return, Unesco will be in an even stronger position to carry out its mandate,” said Audrey Azoulay, Unesco’s director general.“Unesco’s mandate – education, science, culture, freedom of information – is absolutely central to meeting the challenges of the 21st century. It is this centrality, as well as the easing of political tensions within the organisation and the initiatives launched in recent years, that have led the United States to initiate this return.”Last month, the US acknowledged in a letter to Unesco that it noted the organisation’s “efforts to implement key management and administrative reforms, as well as its focus on decreasing politicized debate, especially on Middle East issues”.The organisation in 2011 had voted to admit Palestine, which is not formally recognized by the US or Israel as a UN member state. The Barack Obama White House cut Unesco contributions, sending the US into owing millions in arrears to the organization.Five years later, in 2016, the Unesco World Heritage Committee adopted a decision ruling that Israeli actions related to archaeology, tourism and freedom of movement in the Old City of Jerusalem contravened cultural heritage laws and practices.US and Israeli officials complained that not including the full Jewish history in any decision about Jerusalem was equivalent to a denial of Jewish history.In 2017, a year into the Trump presidency, the US cited “mounting arrears at Unesco, the need for fundamental reform in the organisation, and continuing anti-Israel bias at Unesco” as reasons for the decision.The decision by Unesco to readmit the US, which has 24 properties inscribed on the world heritage list, is the second time it has left and rejoined since the organisation was founded in 1945.In 1983, Ronald Reagan’s administration pulled the US out over what it saw as anti-Western bias. Unesco, it complained, “has extraneously politicized virtually every subject it deals with”.“It has exhibited hostility toward a free society, especially a free market and a free press, and it has demonstrated unrestrained budgetary expansion,” the Reagan White House added.But beneath that expressed rationale was frustration that Unesco, with an increasing number of members, no longer acted in consort with US foreign policy objectives.“The countries which have the votes don’t pay the bill, and those who pay the bill don’t have the votes,” the US ambassador to the UN Jeane Kirkpatrick said at the time.But in 2002, George W Bush’s administration negotiated readmittance as part of an effort to foster international goodwill to counter deep misgivings over the US “war on terror” in the Middle East.Reuters contributed reporting. More

The US supreme court rulings which struck down the White House’s student debt relief plan, affirmative action in college admission and a Colorado law that protected LGBTQ+ rights portend “a national movement to attack hard-won and hard-fought freedoms”, Vice-President Kamala Harris has said.In an interview with National Public Radio’s Michel Martin, Harris declared that “this is a serious moment” for people “who believe in the promise of our country [but] understand we have some work yet to do to fully achieve that promise”.“Fundamental issues are at stake,” Harris said, as she called on Americans to vote – including in the 2024 presidential race – for political candidates who would work to shield rights rather than rescind them.Harris’s remarks came after the supreme court’s conservative supermajority on Thursday ended race-conscious admissions at universities across the US, defying decades of legal precedent to the detriment of greater student diversity on the nation’s campuses. The court on Friday also ruled that both a Colorado law which compelled businesses and organizations to treat same-sex couples equally as well as Joe Biden’s landmark student debt forgiveness plan were both unconstitutional.The decision on the Colorado law came on the last day of Pride month, which annually celebrates LGBTQ+ achievements and commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, a key moment in the community’s civil rights movement.That decision and the two others all were handed down a year after the supreme court eliminated the federal abortion rights which had been established by the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling.Harris said she and other members of Joe Biden’s administration have a role in mounting a counteraction to the supreme court rulings, which she characterized as “moments of great consequence and … crises”.In the early stages of his 2024 re-election run, as some Republicans call for national abortion restrictions, the president has pledged to work to enshrine abortion rights, among other reproductive health care protections.Biden also outlined a new student debt relief plan within hours of the supreme court’s striking down his previous one.But Harris told Martin that voters can also help plot the way forward. Besides voting all the way down ballots during local, state and national elections, they can organize against the political forces which planted the seeds for this week’s volley of supreme court rulings, the vice-president said while appearing at the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday, according to Nola.com.The supreme court’s shift to the hard right became possible after the Donald Trump presidency succeeded in appointing the ultra-conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.Harris predicted the week’s supreme court decisions would “have generational impact” and described herself “deeply concerned about the implications of this … to the future of our country”, Nola.com added.In her remarks at the Essence Festival, one of the US’s top annual showcases for Black culture, Harris said: “I feel very strongly that the promise of America will only be achieved if we’re willing to fight for it.” More

As Joe Biden launches his 2024 re-election campaign, the White House is hoping to revamp the messaging on the president’s economic performance with a series of speeches, memos and the term “Bidenomics”.On Wednesday, Biden delivered what was billed as a major speech focused on the economy as he told an audience in Chicago that the Republican policy of “trickle-down economics” had “failed America”. In its place, Biden vowed to create policies that would prioritize growing the middle class, touted post-pandemic economic recovery and announced “Bidenomics is working” – one of 15 times he used the word over the course of his speech.Earlier in the week, a White House memo from two of Biden’s top advisers was sent to reporters and laid out a range of talking points. It touted the president’s various accomplishments on post-Covid economic recovery and job creation, while reiterating the theme that “Bidenomics is working.”“In the weeks and months ahead, the president, members of his cabinet, and senior administration officials will continue fanning out across the country to take the case for Bidenomics and the President’s Investing in America agenda directly to the American people,” the memo announced.The administration’s campaign appears to take aim at one of the president’s key vulnerabilities for the election, with polling showing voters have a dim assessment of how he has handled the economy. A Pew Research Center survey from this month found that inflation is the top concern among Republicans and Republican-leaning voters, while support for Democratic economic policies lags 12 points behind support for GOP policies. An AP/NORC poll from last month showed that only 33% of Americans supported Biden’s handling of the economy.The perceptions of Biden’s handling of the economy are at odds with a range of positive economic indicators that the White House is eager to highlight. Inflation has gone down to the lowest levels since 2021, while the administration has repeatedly touted months of consistent job growth and low unemployment. The US economy has generally outperformed economic experts’ forecasts, and for now has staved off a recession that seemed inevitable.But these gains have not appeared to resonate with voters, who have repeatedly given Biden poor marks on the economy as workers have struggled with rising prices that often outpaced growth in wages. Republicans have meanwhile been eager to capitalize on issues of inflation, labeling the spike “Bidenflation” and making it a frequent point of attack.Biden’s team attempted to defend the president’s economic achievements in the past, including dedicating a significant portion of his State of the Union address in February to highlight his record on job growth and unemployment. The White House even passed out small “palm cards” to Democratic lawmakers with a list of talking points about the economy. But as the presidential election begins to take shape it appears these efforts are intensifying, attempting to go on the offensive with a positive message about the administration’s economic agenda.Some Democratic politicians have embraced the talking points, earning them favorable positions as surrogates for the president. The California governor, Gavin Newsom, reportedly won praise from administration officials this month after an appearance on the Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show, in which Newsom forcefully challenged assertions that Biden’s economic plans were struggling and touted the president’s job creation.The “Bidenomics” memo sent to reporters earlier this week was the work of two longtime Biden advisers, Anita Dunn and Mike Donilon. Dunn is Biden’s most senior communications adviser and played a key role in turning around his 2020 presidential election bid. Donilon has worked with Biden for decades, and as his chief strategist during the 2020 election was key in shaping the campaign’s messaging.Biden initially joked about the “Bidenomics” term at a rally on 17 June hosted by union members in Philadelphia, where he said it was “time to end the trickle-down economics theory” that was commonly associated with former President Ronald Reagan’s plan of ‘Reaganomics’.“We decided to replace this theory with what the press has now called ‘Bidenomics’,” the president said. “I don’t know what the hell that is. But it’s working.” More