US Politics

Workers are being punished for inflation. The real culprit is corporate greedRobert ReichBig corporations are using inflation as cover to raise prices. Yet the US Federal Reserve is raising interest rates – further hurting Americans The US Federal Reserve is aiming its powerful firehose at the living room but it’s the forest that’s ablaze. As a result, people may drown even as their house catches fire.This about sums up the sorry state of inflation-fighting in America.On Wednesday, the Fed – America’s central bank – raised interest rates by three-quarters of a percentage point, and signaled more rate increases to come, perhaps as soon as September.This followed a quarter-point increase in March, another half a point in May, and three-quarters of a point in June.On Thursday, the commerce department announced that the US economy had shrunk for the second quarter in a row.While not technically a recession (economists in and out of the White House have spent much of the last several days deconstructing the word “recession”), there’s no question but that the US economy is slowing.This, to put it mildly, makes no sense.Inflation has broken out all over the world – the consequence of pent-up demand from more than two years of pandemic and of limited supplies of everything from computer chips to wheat, due to difficulties getting the world economy up and running.Add in Putin’s war in Ukraine driving up world energy and food prices, and China’s lockdowns against Covid, and you get a perfect conflagration.That’s not all. Big corporations are busily raising their prices because consumers have so little choice. Corporations are using inflation as cover.Prices at the gas pump have drifted down a bit in the last month but are still eye-popping. (Here in California, I’m paying over $6 a gallon.)At the same time, big oil has hit a gusher. Exxon just reported second-quarter profits of $17.9bn, more than three times what it earned a year ago. Chevron’s profit more than tripled to $11.6bn.The two giant American oil companies aren’t pouring their profits back into energy, green or otherwise. They’re buying back their shares of stock to reward investors and executives.Or consider giant corporations selling consumer staples, such as Proctor & Gamble (maker of everything from Gillette razors to Tide detergent).On Friday, P&G reported another quarter of rising profits despite the increasing costs of raw materials and transportation. How did it manage this feat? By raising its prices even more.Meanwhile, half of the recent rise in grocery prices is from beef, pork and poultry. Just four large conglomerates control these markets, and they’ve been coordinating their price increases to score large profits – here again, using “inflation” as an excuse.If markets were competitive, companies would keep their prices down to prevent competitors from grabbing away customers. But they’re raising prices even as they rake in record profits.The Fed’s firehose is hitting none of this.Meanwhile, we’re told not to worry because the labor market is doing just fine.Rubbish.There are two aspects to the labor market – jobs and wages. The number of jobs has been increasing nicely. Let’s hope this continues. But hourly wages have plummeted, when adjusted for inflation.If the Fed keeps raising interest rates – even if the national economy avoids an official “recession” – most workers will fall even further behind.The living standards of nearly everyone who borrows money are already dropping. Because of the Fed’s rate hikes, the average rate on credit card debt has reached 17.25% (up from 16.34% in March, before the Fed began raising interest rates). Rates on student loans, car loans and mortgages are also rising.The government should use a firehose better aimed at the conflagration, which won’t so badly burden the bottom 80%.For starters, impose a temporary windfall profits tax on big oil, on giant sellers of consumer staples and on big ag. This would reduce their incentive to engage in price gouging.Bolder antitrust enforcement – even the threat to block mergers and break up giant companies – could also reduce their ardor to raise prices.If Congress refuses to allow the government to use its bargaining power to reduce the prices of pharmaceuticals, big pharma is a good candidate for temporary price controls. (FDR controlled prices via executive order.)Finally, higher taxes on the wealthy – such as Democrats seem finally ready to enact – will help dampen total demand, thereby dousing some of the inflation fire.The Fed’s single tool for fire-fighting – interest-rate increases – is aimed in the wrong direction. It’s hitting working people rather than corporations responsible for most price increases (over and above the rising costs of global supplies).We need to fight rising prices, not working people.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
TopicsUS economyOpinionInflationFederal ReserveUS politicsOil and gas companiesEnergy industrycommentReuse this content More

InterviewLucas Kunce: ‘Populism is about everyday people coming together’Martin Pengelly Former US Marine with a progressive take on identity and masculinity hopes Missouri Democrats will pick him as their nominee for US Senate Lucas Kunce thinks populism has been given a bad name. “It’s outrageous,” he says, “that people call the Josh Hawleys, the Eric Greitens, the Donald Trumps of the world populist. Populism is about everyday people coming together to have power in a system that’s not working for them. So do that, Josh Hawley. I mean, good Lord, what a charlatan.”Josh Hawley, senator who ran from Capitol mob, mocked by home paperRead moreKunce is running for the Democratic nomination for US Senate in Missouri, in the fight to take the state’s second seat in Washington, alongside Hawley. The primary is on Tuesday.Kunce’s main challenger is Trudy Busch Valentine, a prominent donor from the Anheuser-Busch brewing dynasty. Kunce’s fundraising has been hugely successful but polling is tight.Kunce has attacked Busch Valentine for representing the donor class, but in conversation he focuses more on attacking Republicans. Hawley, he says, is “always talking about masculinity – this, that, the other – meanwhile, he skitters out of the Capitol from a riot he essentially started. The guy votes for every corporate judge that comes up in front of him. He doesn’t do anything that would actually empower everyday people.“And Donald Trump, I mean, he put the president of Goldman Sachs, Gary Cohn, in charge of our economy. That’s not populism. What they do is divide people based on race, religion, where you come from, in a way that doesn’t give everyday people power. They make sure folks are divided so that they don’t have power as a whole against the system that’s not working.“And so I just think it’s a tragedy that we give sort of any sort of populist label to these guys because they don’t want to change the system.”Now 39, Kunce is a Yale law grad who joined the US marines, went to Iraq and Afghanistan and worked in international arms control. He’s a persuasive speaker, even over Google Meet, laptop camera on the fritz.He is for gun control but he is running in gun country. That in part explains an ad in which Kunce holds an AR-15-style assault rifle, makes as if to fire it and then says that unlike potential Republican opponents including Mark McCloskey, the lawyer who infamously pointed such a gun at protesters for racial justice, he doesn’t need to indulge in such macho posturing.Kunce is also for abortion rights, in a state with a post-Roe v Wade trigger law.He grew up in Jefferson City, “in what would be considered a pro-life house and pro-life neighbourhood. That’s what I knew. And then I joined the Marine Corps. I went out and saw what it was like for these countries where they have oppressive Big Brother governments, where women have no rights. I saw what it was like to live in countries where there’s this two-tiered system of rights, where if you have wealth, access and power, the world’s literally your oyster.“And then I see what they did in Missouri here, how these country club Republicans passed the country’s first trigger law, saying abortion is not even available in cases of rape or incest. It’s like they’re willing to do that because they know it’s not going to affect them. Because they’re gonna go out of state, they have the wealth and the means. And so I think that’s messed up. People in my old neighborhood, that’s who’s not gonna have access. We’re gonna have a two-tier system here.The dystopian American reality one month after the Roe v Wade reversalRead more“And I’ve seen people from from my life go through very hard pregnancies I don’t think they should ever have to be forced to go through. People should be able to have that right and opportunity … And so my position is that I will vote to end the [Senate] filibuster and codify Roe v Wade. I think we need to make that happen.”The Republican primary in Missouri is certainly messy, an all-in scrap in which Greitens, a pro-Trump ex-governor who quit in disgrace and is accused of sexual and physical abuse, could yet come out on top.Polling suggests a Missouri US Senate seat remains a stretch for any Democrat. All the same, Kunce has attracted national attention. He says that was a surprise.“I had no expectations going into this. I was a guy nobody knew. I wanted to run a campaign where I rejected corporate Pac money, federal lobbyists’ money, big farm executive money, big fossil fuel executive money. People basically said that wasn’t possible and that was stupid.“And we just decided we’d do it the right way anyway. To actually stand for something and to win and to make sure you only represent people like the ones who took care of me growing up, rather than these folks who are buying off politicians and using them to strip our communities for parts.“I’m thrilled we’ve gotten the attention that we’ve gotten for what we’re doing and how Democrats can win in the midwest again – if they take a real straightforward populist message.”Kunce talks of “big, bold investment” in the midwest, of spending the sort of billions previously spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan on building “the next generation of energy technology right here, to build out manufacturing, research and development, we’re talking wind and solar but we’re also talking hydrogen, distributed nuclear or modular nuclear, battery technology [and] good union jobs”.Independence, Missouri: tribalism, the flag and 4 July in the age of TrumpRead moreSuch aims are part of the Green New Deal and Build Back Better, progressive and Democratic plans fiercely opposed by big business and the right. Kunce’s description of a “Marshall plan for the midwest”, a reference to US aid for postwar Europe under a Missourian Democratic president, Harry Truman, seems in part a repackaging. He isn’t big on progressive labels. Asked about identity politics, he prefers to talk about class.“My focus is on top-bottom, as far as identity politics go. There are a lot of people who are being used as targets, usually the most vulnerable people in our society, by the shareholder class, these massive corporations who are funding campaigns against trans youth, against gay people, against minority communities. They do whatever they can to fund divisive campaigns in order to make it so we don’t have a top-bottom race.“This is what I was talking about earlier with these charlatans who pretend to be populist but they’re actually dividing people as much as they can. I’m absolutely for protecting communities that are vulnerable. I just don’t want to lose sight of this top-bottom dynamic that’s really killing us and making it so everybody is fighting for crumbs underneath the table rather than actually having to sit at it.”Kunce has been presented as a representative of progressive masculinity, a type of Democrat who might appeal away from the coasts. He connects the issue back to Republican posturing.“It’s crazy. I mean, Mark McCloskey on his AR-15, frightening people who are walking by his house. You don’t even hold it right. He would have burned himself up with hot brass if he’d shot a round. The fakeness here is just incredible. Josh Hawley’s right there too.“Real men aren’t a bunch of posers. They are people like my dad who sacrifice for their family, sacrifice for their community, stay in the first job they ever took out of school for their entire life, even when they’re miserable, because they needed their little girl to have health insurance so that she would survive. People that invest in their community, in their families.“It’s like the guy who inspired me to join the marines. This guy named Al. When I was a kid, we always volunteered at the church soup kitchen. Twice a month we’d go down there … and this guy who ran the kitchen, he was always like, ‘OK, what chores do all the kids want to do?’ And my little sister and I were always like, ‘Oh, we want to do the dishes.’ And Al was always confused about why two kids wanted to do the dishes.‘If I’d not got help, I’d probably be dead’: Jason Kander on PTSD, politics and advice from ObamaRead more“But at my house with a big family, doing the dishes, man, it was like 40 minutes of standing at the sink, hurting your back, scrubbing hard and drying. Well, the church kitchen had a dishwasher. So doing the dishes was a scam there. You just threw a bunch of stuff in and walked away. I was like, ‘This guy’s an idiot, he thinks we’re doing a chore.’ And so Al figured that out.“And two years later, when he renovated the kitchen in his house, he took his old dishwasher, put it in his pickup truck, drove it to our house and installed it for us, because he remembered that and he wanted to do something for somebody.“That’s what a real man does. That’s masculinity. Al was a marines officer in Vietnam. Never talked about it. Just, you know, quiet fortitude. That’s what I think being a man is and it’s why I joined the Marine Corps and it’s why I think these [Republican] guys are just a bunch of posturing peacocks.”My last question is in part prompted by Kunce’s mention of “quiet fortitude”. Kunce is a fan of Clint Eastwood movies. Which is his favorite?“Unforgiven. Because Unforgiven was such a comeback for the western brand. It brought it back in the early 90s. And I thought that was really cool. I mean, I watch all the old ones. Pale Rider, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly … but I think Unforgiven was just, it was a real comeback story for the genre which I love.”I’m for In the Line of Fire. If Kunce wins on Tuesday, the Republicans will be too.TopicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsMissouriUS politicsUS SenateUS CongressinterviewsReuse this content More

How Bernie Sanders and conservatives united against US semiconductor billVermont senator opposed ‘corporate welfare’ to firms paying huge salaries to executives – but Chips and Science Act passed Congress When it comes to alliances in Washington, few are as unlikely as the common ground the democratic socialist senator Bernie Sanders briefly found with the Heritage Foundation and Americans for Prosperity, two architects of conservative policies across the United States.Yet that is what happened this week when Sanders, a Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats, made a lonely and unsuccessful stand against a $280bn bill funding scientific research and, controversially, giving computer chip manufacturers financial incentives to build more production in the United States – one that rightwing groups also encouraged lawmakers to make.Pro-Israel group pours millions into primary to defeat Jewish candidateRead more“The question we should be asking is this: should American taxpayers provide the microchip industry with a blank check of over $76bn at a time when semiconductor companies are making tens of billions of dollars in profits and paying their executives exorbitant compensation packages? I think the answer to that question should be a resounding no,” Sanders said during a Monday speech on the Senate floor.The senator’s objections ultimately amounted to naught. The bill passed Congress on Thursday, and Joe Biden is expected to soon sign it.But the episode underscores the tensions that arise when Washington moves to help an industry facing tough times. In this case, the stricken businesses were semiconductor makers who are struggling to keep up with demand and fearful of the threat from ascendant Chinese industry.“The left in this country has generally sort of failed to recognize the importance of capital investment. At the same time, they’re sort of complaining about companies not investing in America, they haven’t actually supported the companies that do invest in America,” said Michael Mandel, chief economist and vice-president of the Progressive Policy Institute thinktank.“My personal view is that capital investment is absolutely essential, and anything we can do to get more investment in this country is a plus for workers and a plus for consumers.”Dubbed the Chips and Science Act, the measure represents Washington’s response to the shortage of semiconductors that began during the pandemic and has snarled the assembly lines of US industries while helping drive up inflation. The bill would offer computer chip manufacturers $52.7bn in incentives to build factories in the United States, as well as $24.3bn in tax breaks.The proposal has taken a tortuous path to passage, with the Senate first approving a version of it last year, before the idea was caught up in the legislative logjam that struck Biden’s agenda in the closing months of 2021.But, unlike some of what the Democratic president hoped to get out of Congress, many Republicans supported the concept of helping the semiconductor industry, particularly because it was seen as an effort to counter China, which has heavily invested in its own microchip industry.And while the US ally Taiwan is one of the biggest manufacturers of computer chips globally, another motivation for Chips is concern about what would happen to its supply if Beijing moves against the island. In July, the commerce secretary, Gina Raimondo, and defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, wrote a letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress, saying that the measure was “critical for our national security”.Mike Pompeo, a former secretary of state under the Republican president Donald Trump, made an unlikely contribution to calls for its passage. “Congress must pass the Chips Act for both our national and economic security. We have to become less dependent on China for critical technologies – and this is how we do it,” he tweeted as the House of Representatives was considering it.But some of the most influential conservative groups in Washington didn’t buy in.“The answer to the [Chinese Communist party’s] malevolent ambitions is not spending billions of dollars to help Fortune 500 companies, with no guarantee those dollars won’t end up supporting these companies’ business operations in China,” the Heritage Foundation president, Kevin Roberts, said in a statement.“Additionally, the act’s $250bn price tag will contribute to record inflation and increase the already historic cost of living for working- and middle-class Americans.”Americans for Prosperity, which was funded by the conservative industrialists Charles Koch and his late brother David, who are well known for their work promoting climate change denialism, sees the bill as “corporate welfare”.“The United States didn’t become the strongest and most prosperous society in the history of mankind by emulating the Chinese government’s central planning, and we shouldn’t start now,” the group’s vice-president of government affairs, Akash Chougule, said. “If we want to see more American investment, the US government needs to stay out of the way.”The effort ultimately failed, with 24 Republicans voting for Chips in the House and 17 Republicans in the Senate, along with almost all Democrats. While Sanders voted against it, none of his usual allies in that chamber or the House joined him in opposition.It wasn’t just the Biden administration that lawmakers were hearing from. Semiconductor firms invested heavily in lobbying to make the bill become law, with Bloomberg reporting major manufacturers spent $19.6m in just the first half of this year, after $15.8m in the same period of 2021.Particularly vocal was Intel, which has announced a $20bn investment in two new semiconductor factories in Ohio. But amid the Chips Act delay in June, the company announced those plans could be pushed back or curtailed without the funding.“My message to our congressional leaders is: hey, if I’m not done with the job, I don’t get to go home. Neither should you. Do not go home for August recess until you have passed the Chips Act, because I and others in the industries will make investment decisions. Do you want those investments in the US?” Intel’s chief executive, Ryan Scott, said in an interview on CNBC. “Get the job done.”Ro Khanna, a California Democrat who sponsored a bill that was a precursor to Chips, denied that the legislation was corporate welfare, saying there were guardrails in its text to stop corporations from using the funds for their own enrichment. Instead, he likened it to a return of 1940s-era industrial policy, in which the government makes investments in industries deemed strategically important.“I think there’s understandable concern about corporate welfare, but corporate welfare is different than the FDR model of mobilizing for production,” he said, referring to the Democratic president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the country through most of the second world war.He envisioned Chips as a template for future efforts that could boost green technologies such as electric vehicles, and solar and wind energy.“I think it’s a first step for how we continue to industrialize America, how we bring our production back, how we reduce our trade deficits. I absolutely think this should be a model,” Khanna said. “And the commerce department should enforce this so none of the money is going to stock buybacks, that it is going to building factories.”TopicsBernie SandersDemocratsUS politicsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

US faces new era of political violence as threats against lawmakers riseMembers of the House will now get up to $10,000 to upgrade their home security as experts warn such threats endanger the health of US democracy Members of the US House of Representatives will now receive up to $10,000 to upgrade security at their homes in the face of rising threats against lawmakers, the House sergeant at arms announced last week, in yet another sign that American politics has entered a dangerous, violent new phase.Pro-Israel group pours millions into primary to defeat Jewish candidateRead moreAs support for political violence appears to be on the rise in the US, experts warn that such threats endanger the health of America’s democracy. But they say the country still has time to tamp down violent rhetoric if political leaders, particularly those in the Republican party, stand up and condemn this alarming behavior.The announcement over increasing security for people in Congress came days after a man attacked Lee Zeldin, a New York congressman and Republican gubernatorial candidate, with a sharp object during a campaign event.Two weeks before that, a man was arrested outside the home of Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, for allegedly shouting racist obscenities and threatening to kill her. Last month, authorities filed federal charges against a man who they say traveled from California to Maryland with the intent of murdering the supreme court justice Brett Kavanaugh.Public service has clearly become an increasingly dangerous endeavor in America.Recent polls show an increasing number of Americans are comfortable with political violence, although there is a wide range of opinions on the type of violence that is acceptable.According to a mega-survey conducted by researchers at University of California, Davis, and released this month, one in five US adults say political violence is justified at least in some circumstances. A much smaller portion of survey respondents, 3%, believe that political violence is usually or always justified.Liliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, said the phrasing of survey questions on political violence can drastically affect results. But having studied such polling since 2017, Mason said it is clear that support for political violence is indeed on the rise in the US.“I think of it as pretty low numbers of people who actually approve of violence at all,” Mason said. “The problem is that, if you go from 7% to 20%, that means that there are certain social spaces where the norms around anti-violence are eroding.”The impact of that trend can be seen at every level of American government, from the halls of Capitol Hill to local polling places.The US Capitol police reported 9,625 threats and directions of interest (meaning concerning actions or statements) against members of Congress last year, compared to 3,939 such instances in 2017.The members of the House select committee investigating the January 6 insurrection have frequently been the targets of violent threats, requiring them to get personal security details.One member of the committee, Republican Adam Kinzinger, recently shared a threatening letter sent to his wife last month. The sender vowed to execute Kinzinger, his wife and their newborn son. He is not seeking re-election in 2022.Even those who help administer elections in the US have reported an increase in threats against them. According to a poll conducted by the Brennan Center for Justice this year, one in six elec­tion offi­cials have received threats because of their job, and 77% believe threats against them have increased in recent years.Jennifer McCoy, a political science professor at Georgia State University whose research focuses on polarized democracies, said: “The kinds of threats and intimidation to … election administration officials and poll workers is very concerning and is also new.”The apparent increase in threats against public servants has sparked broader concerns about the health of American democracy, particularly in the wake of the January 6 insurrection.“There is simply no place for political violence in a healthy democracy. The increase in threats and harassment being leveled at people across our government is deeply concerning,” said Jennifer Dresden, policy advocate for the group Protect Democracy.“To be clear, we’re not yet at a point where political violence has fundamentally undermined our democracy. But when violence is connected to other authoritarian tactics, like disinformation and efforts to corrupt elections, that sets a dangerous path for our democracy that we cannot ignore.”While threats and harassment against lawmakers and political candidates appear to have increased across many government institutions, they are not evenly distributed.One study of online messages sent to 2020 congressional candidates found that women, particularly women of color, were more likely to be the target of abusive content. Of all the candidates reviewed, the progressive congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who is Somali American, received the highest proportion of abusive messages on Twitter. Fellow progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is Puerto Rican American, saw the most abusive comments on Facebook.Women of color serving in Congress have spoken publicly about the threats they face, which have become a regular part of their lives on Capitol Hill.Congresswoman Jahana Hayes, who is Black, told PBS Newshour last year: “I remember, at the beginning of the 116th Congress [in 2019], when we were just spotlighting and highlighting the beautiful diversity of this incoming Congress, but then, on every caucus call, we had members who were getting death threats on a daily basis.”The acts of political violence carried out in the US are also unevenly distributed across the ideological spectrum. According to a study conducted by the Anti-Defamation League, rightwing extremists have committed about 75% of the 450 political murders that occurred in the US over the past decade. In comparison, Islamic extremists were responsible for about 20% of the murders, while leftwing extremists were blamed for 4% of the killings.Expert argue the frequency of rightwing violence compared with leftwing violence can be partly explained by Republican leaders’ failure to condemn threatening rhetoric.“We see justifications for violence that are similar on the left and right,” said Rachel Kleinfeld, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who studies political conflict. “But we see incidents of violence that are vastly higher on the right and that has to do with all of the normalization of violence from leaders on the right.”That normalization has been on vivid display over the past couple of years in the US. Donald Trump infamously referred to his supporters who carried out the deadly January 6 insurrection as “very special”, telling them: “We love you.” Trump was impeached by the Democratic-controlled House for his role in the 6 January riot, but acquitted in the Senate.Last year, House Democrats, over near-unanimous Republican opposition, voted to strip the far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, after it was discovered that she had previously expressed support for assassinating Barack Obama and the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi.In November, Congressman Paul Gosar received the same punishment, as well as a House censure, after he shared an animated video depicting violence against Joe Biden and Ocasio-Cortez. Only two Republicans supported the censure.Most recently, the Senate candidate Eric Greitens was widely criticized for airing a campaign ad that appeared to encourage violence against more moderate Republicans. In the ad, Greitens, who resigned as Missouri governor over allegations of sexual harassment, is seen carrying a shotgun and bursting into homes as he urges the “hunting” of Rinos, meaning Republicans in Name Only.Research indicates that the messages supporters receive from their political leaders have a large impact on whether they actually carry out violent acts, several experts said. In experiments conducted by Mason and her colleagues, some participants were asked to read a quote from Biden or Trump condemning violence while others read nothing. Those who had read the quote were significantly less approving of violence.“Leaders are actually uniquely powerful in being able to tamp down violence,” Mason said. “Republicans in particular are not using that power. And they could, but they’re not.”Although political leaders are particularly powerful when it comes to reducing violent rhetoric, Mason’s research indicates that average people may have some leverage of their own. Mason’s team saw some positive results when they asked participants to read messages from random Twitter users condemning political violence. For the overwhelming majority of Americans who oppose such violence, the findings could offer some hope.“For Americans in general, I think it’s sort of empowering to know that every single one of us has the potential to reduce violence by simply rejecting it,” Mason said. “We can all do that. All the 80% of us who don’t think violence is acceptable have a real voice, and it’s important to use it.”TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

The Big Lie review: Jonathan Lemire laments what Trump hath wrought The Politico reporter and MSNBC host’s book is an indictment of the former president but also his Republican partyJoe Biden sits in the Oval Office but Donald Trump occupies prime space in America’s psyche. Mike Pence’s most senior aides have testified before a federal grand jury. An investigation by prosecutors in Georgia proceeds apace. In a high-stakes game of chicken, the message from the Department of Justice grows more ominous. Trump’s actions are reportedly under the microscope at the DoJ. He teases a re-election bid. Season two of the January 6 committee hearings beckons.Thank You For Your Servitude review – disappointing tale of Trump’s townRead moreInto this cauldron of distrust and loathing leaps Jonathan Lemire, with The Big Lie. He is Politico’s White House bureau chief and the 5am warm-up to MSNBC’s Morning Joe. He has done his homework. He lays out facts. His book is a mixture of narrative and lament.Lemire contends that Trump birthed the “big lie” in his 2016 campaign, as an excuse in the event of defeat by either Senator Ted Cruz in the primary or Hillary Clinton in the general election. Trump held both opponents in contempt.In the primary, Trump lost Iowa – then falsely claimed Cruz stole it.“Based on the fraud committed by Senator Ted Cruz during the Iowa Caucus, either a new election should take place or Cruz results nullified,” Trump tweeted.In the general, a half-year later, he dropped another bomb.“I’m afraid the election is going to be rigged. I have to be honest.”In the final presidential debate he upped the ante, refusing to say he would accept the electorate’s verdict.“I will look at it at the time,” Trump said. “I will keep you in suspense.”He definitely warned us. Lemire’s first book is aptly subtitled: “Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020.”Then and now, Trump posited that only fraud could derail him. After he beat Clinton in the electoral college, he claimed he actually won the popular vote too. In Trump’s mind, he was the victim of ballots cast by illegal aliens.“In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally,” Trump tweeted.To those within earshot, he said people who didn’t “look like they should be allowed to vote”, did.To soothe his ego, he appointed a commission headed by Kris Kobach, a nativist Kansas secretary of state, to vindicate his claims. It found nothing.In a blend of fiction and wish-fulfillment, Sean Spicer, Trump’s first White House press secretary, and Kellyanne Conway, a senior adviser, embarked on flights of fantasy. Spicer declared that Trump’s inaugural crowd was larger than that for Barack Obama. Conway introduced us to alternative facts.Lemire’s indictment goes way beyond that offered by Clinton, who called Trump voters deplorable. He casts the issue as systemic – and punches up. He is angered but does not condescend. The Big Lie is also about elite conservative lawyers, Ivy League-educated senators, Republican House leadership and Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy.Like Gollum in Tolkien’s Rings trilogy, the House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, wants to get his hands on the speaker’s gavel that badly. Peter Navarro, Trump’s trade adviser and author of the ill-fated “Green Bay Sweep” plan to overturn the election, faces charges of criminal contempt. Such acolytes know exactly what they do.Extremists in Congress like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert are vocal totems, empowered by an enraged ex-president and a vengeance-filled base. In such a world it seems no surprise cries of “hang Mike Pence”, makeshift gallows and Confederate battle flags in the halls of the Capitol came to supplant “fuck your feelings”, the mantra of Trump 2016.As expected, Steve Bannon appears in The Big Lie. He loves dishing to the press. It is in his DNA. The former Trump campaign guru and White House aide, now convicted of contempt of Congress, trashes his former boss as a reflexive liar.According to Lemire, Bannon said: “Trump would say anything, he would lie about anything.” On cue, a Bannon spokesperson disputed Lemire’s sources, telling the Guardian they were inaccurate.In Jeremy Peters’ book, Insurgency, Bannon mused that Trump would “end up going down in history as one of the two or three worst presidents ever”. In Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury, he described the Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr and a group of Russians amid the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”.And yet Bannon’s role in Trump’s bid to stay in power remains of central interest to the January 6 committee. On 5 January 2021, Bannon announced on-air that “all hell is going to break loose tomorrow”. He spoke to Trump that morning.Despite his thoroughness, Lemire does omit the role of one group of Republicans in giving the big lie added heft. In May 2021, the Washington Post reported on the efforts of Texas Republicans led by Russell Ramsland, a businessman with a Harvard MBA.After the 2018 midterms, Ramsland and colleagues pressed convoluted theories concerning “voting-machine audit logs – lines of codes and time stamps that document the machines’ activities”. Pete Sessions, a defeated congressman, didn’t buy what Ramsland was selling. Trump did.For Trump’s minions, this remains a war over lost place and status.“Republicans need to prove to the American people that we are the party of … Christian nationalism,” says Greene, a first-term congresswoman from Georgia.Like a toxic weed, the big lie has taken root.“It is now part of the Republican party’s core belief,” Lemire writes. Violence and insurrection have become legitimate. “The Big Lie was who they were.”Our cold civil war grows hotter.
The Big Lie: Election Chaos, Political Opportunism, and the State of American Politics After 2020 is published in the US by Macmillan
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Jared Kushner: I stopped Trump attacking Murdoch in 2015In forthcoming memoir, obtained by the Guardian, former adviser claims to have made hugely consequential intervention In a forthcoming memoir, Jared Kushner says he personally intervened to stop Donald Trump attacking Rupert Murdoch in response to the media mogul’s criticism, at the outset of Trump’s move into politics in 2015.Trump said sorry to Cruz for 2016 insults, Paul Manafort says in new bookRead moreIn the book, Breaking History, Kushner writes: “Trump called me. He’d clearly had enough. ‘This guy’s no good. And I’m going to tweet it.’“‘Please, you’re in a Republican primary,’ I said, hoping he wasn’t about to post a negative tweet aimed at the most powerful man in conservative media. ‘You don’t need to get on the wrong side of Rupert. Give me a couple of hours to fix it.’”Kushner says he fixed it. If his claim is true, he could be seen to have made a hugely consequential intervention in modern US history.Murdoch’s support, chiefly through Fox News, did much to boost Trump to victory over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Despite persistent reports of friction between the two men, Murdoch supported Trump through four tumultuous years in power which culminated in Trump’s refusal to admit defeat and the deadly attack on Congress.The Guardian obtained a copy of Kushner’s book, which will be published next month.The book lands at a time when Murdoch’s newspapers and to some extent Fox News are widely seen to be pulling away from Trump, amid congressional hearings into his election subversion and the January 6 attack, speculation about criminal charges and as he prepares another White House run.In his book, Trump’s son-in-law, who became a senior White House adviser, describes a friendship with Murdoch built on time on Murdoch’s yacht and at Bono’s house in France, watching the U2 frontman sing with Bob Geldof and Billy Joel. Kushner also describes how Wendi Murdoch, Rupert Murdoch’s third wife, helped get him back with Ivanka Trump after a breakup.Kushner claims to have convinced Murdoch to support Trump in 2015.Trump and Murdoch were not close before Trump entered politics. But in July 2015, after Trump launched his explosive campaign for the Republican presidential nomination with a racist rant about Mexicans, the Fox News owner tweeted: “When is Donald Trump going to stop embarrassing the whole country?”A week later, the New York Times described Murdoch disparaging Trump. Trump was furious and threatened to tweet. Kushner was not then an official adviser to his father-in-law but he writes: “I called Rupert and told him I had to see him.“‘Rupert, I think he could win,’ I said, as we sat in his office. ‘You guys agree on a lot of the issues. You want smaller government. You want lower taxes. You want stronger borders.’“Rupert listened quizzically, like he couldn’t imagine that Trump was actually serious about running. The next day, he called me and said, ‘I’ve looked at this and maybe I was misjudging it. He actually does have a real following. It does seem like he’s very popular, like he can really be a kingmaker in the Republican primary with the way he is playing it. What does Donald want?’“‘He wants to be president,’ I responded.“‘No, what does he really want?’ he asked again.“‘Look, he doesn’t need a nicer plane,’ I said. ‘He’s got a beautiful plane. He doesn’t need a nicer house. He doesn’t need anything. He’s tired of watching politicians screw up the country, and he thinks he could do a better job.’“‘Interesting,’ Rupert said.“We had a truce, for the time being.”Kushner also writes about Trump’s clashes with Fox News during the 2016 campaign, including a clash with the anchor Megyn Kelly. Kushner says he agreed a deal with Roger Ailes, then in charge of Fox News, for a donation of $5m to a veterans’ organisation of Trump’s choice, in return for Trump choosing not to skip a debate.Murdoch rejected the deal, Kushner writes, saying if he took it he would have to “pay everyone to show up to debates”.Kushner also describes how Murdoch helped shape his view of why the US needed Trump. At a rally in Springfield, Illinois in November 2015, Kushner was reminded “of a book that Rupert Murdoch had given me months earlier: Charles Murray’s Coming Apart, which makes a case that over the last 50 years America has divided into upper and lower classes that live apart from each other, geographically and culturally”.Trump, Kushner writes, appealed to the “forgotten and disenfranchised”. For his son-in-law rally in Illinois “was a wake-up call”.Is Murdoch tiring of Trump? Mogul’s print titles dump the ex-presidentRead moreKushner’s version of another call with Murdoch, on election night 2020, has been widely reported. He says Murdoch told him Fox News’s call of Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden in Arizona, a decision which infuriated the president and his advisers, was “ironclad – not even close”.Arizona played a central role in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election through lies about voter fraud. Fox News is now the subject of a $1.6bn defamation suit from a maker of voting machines, over conspiracy theories pushed by Trump and his allies and repeated on the network.Fox News has said it is “confident we will prevail as freedom of the press is foundational to our democracy and must be protected, in addition to the damages claims being outrageous, unsupported and not rooted in sound financial analysis, serving as nothing more than a flagrant attempt to deter our journalists from doing their jobs”.TopicsBooksJared KushnerDonald TrumpRupert MurdochRepublicansUS politicsPolitics booksnewsReuse this content More

House-passed assault weapons ban appears to be doomed in the SenateBill would require support from at least 10 Senate Republicans, and it isn’t certain that all 50 Democratic senators are onboard The assault weapons ban in America passed by the House appears set to be doomed in the Senate amid implacable Republican opposition to gun reform, even in the wake of a series of mass shootings in the US.The legislation in the House, which would ban assault weapons for the first time since 2004, is interpreted as a sign that Democrats plan more aggressive gun violence prevention after a series of mass shootings using the military-derived weapons, including in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.It was passed 217-213, with two Republicans voting in favor and five Democrats opposing. The legislation would criminalize the knowing sale, manufacture, transfer, possession or importation of many types of semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.“Our nation has watched in unspeakable horror as assault weapons have been used in massacre after massacre in communities across the country,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, said on Friday before the vote. “We know that an assault weapons ban can work because it has worked before.”The Democrat-controlled House judiciary committee estimated last week that the five major gun manufacturers have collected more than $1bn from the sale of assault rifles in the past decade.New York Democrat Carolyn Maloney said that gun manufacturers use “dangerous selling tactics to sell assault weapons to the public”, including “marketing to children, preying on young men’s insecurities and even appealing to violent white supremacists.”.Cogressman Brad Schneider, who represents Highland Park in Illinois where a mass shooter recently disrupted a Fourth of July parade with a hail of gunfire, killing seven, said at the hearing that “the shooter was able to fire off his bullets so fast that they couldn’t even identify where they were coming from”.But in the 50-50 evenly-split Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass despite a political breakthrough last month in bringing the bill forward. In that chamber, it would require support from at least 10 Republicans. Nor is it certain that all 50 Democrat senators are on board.Congressional Republicans argue that the legislation is unconstitutional and would result in the confiscation of firearms. “Today, they’re coming for your guns,” said rightwing Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a senior member of the judiciary committee. “They want to take all guns from all people.”The last time the legislature passed an assault weapons ban was in 1994. A 2019 study in the Journal of Trauma and Acute Care Surgery showed the number of mass shooting deaths declined while the law, which expired in 2004, was in effect.Since then, the number of assault-style weapons in private hands has proliferated to 19.8m, according to a November 2020 statement by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, with mass-shooting growing in frequency alongside.The legislation has not yet been scheduled in the senate for before or after the August recess. On Friday, Joe Biden said he welcomed the House vote, saying a majority of Americans “agree with this common sense action”.“There can be no greater responsibility than to do all we can to ensure the safety of our families, our children, our homes, our communities and our nation”, he added in a statement issued by the White House.TopicsUS SenateUS gun controlHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansnewsReuse this content More

Yes, Republicans really did try to make abortion punishable by deathArwa MahdawiA bill introduced in the North Carolina legislature last year was largely performative but was part of the right’s strategy to make the unthinkable mainstream Sign up for the Week in Patriarchy, a newsletter​ on feminism and sexism sent every Saturday.Anti-abortion zealots want to legalize murderIs it legal to kill someone who is about to have an abortion? I know that sounds like a ridiculous question, but some people on the far right would like it to be. Social media was recently awash with outrage over a bill introduced by North Carolina state legislators that would legalize violence against anyone undergoing or performing an abortion. North Carolina House Bill (HB) 158, sponsored by a Republican state representative, Larry Pittman, proposed that abortion be considered first-degree murder and would allowed civilians to use deadly force to prevent someone from ending a pregnancy.While this is clearly terrifying, it should be noted that a lot of discussion circulating about the bill online wasn’t accurate: the outrage was sparked by a somewhat misleading post that made it look like the bill was actively being considered. In fact, however, HB 158 was introduced in February 2021 and didn’t advance out of committee. An AFP fact check also notes that it received little support from legislators.Still, even though the bill was largely performative, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be taken seriously. The far right constantly introduce extreme bills like this into state legislatures with the full knowledge that there is zero chance they will pass. It’s part of a broader strategy to further their agenda that can be summed up as exhaust and inure. Exhaust: the more they overwhelm legislatures with extreme legislation, the harder it becomes for liberals to fight them. It becomes a game of “Whac-a-Mole”. Inure: proposing extreme ideas like this via legislation helps gradually desensitize people and shifts the Overton window to the right; step by step the unthinkable becomes mainstream.All this isn’t just my personal opinion, by the way: it’s extracted from a playbook written by Christian nationalists. A few years ago a researcher called Frederick Clarkson uncovered an initiative from a coalition of far-right Christian groups called Project Blitz that gave their supporters detailed instructions on how to codify their views into law and gradually destroy the division between church and state. I highly recommend reading Clarkson’s writings on Project Blitz: they are essential for understanding the current moment. As Clarkson said when he first found the playbook: “It’s very rare that you come across a major primary source document that changes the way you view everything, and this is one of those times. This is a 116-page strategy manual hidden away on a website explaining at least what a section of the religious right are doing in the United States.”Bills like the one in North Carolina, it can’t be stressed enough, are not just frivolous one-offs by extremists. They’re part of a coordinated – and highly effective – strategy to consolidate power by the right. Democrats should really be paying more attention to these tactics and learning from them. So many centrists are afraid that suggesting things like free healthcare will make them look like radicals hellbent on bringing communism to America. You think the right care about looking “radical”? Of course not. They care about power. And they’re very good at doing whatever it takes to get it.South Carolina bill outlaws websites explaining how to get an abortionWant another example of that “Whac-a-Mole” strategy in action? South Carolina state senators recently introduced legislation that would make it illegal to host a website or “[provide] an internet service” with information that is “reasonably likely to be used for an abortion”. This is incredibly far-reaching language that means even news stories related to reproductive rights could be censored. This bill is unconstitutional and it’s not clear that it will be law anytime soon. But, again, that doesn’t make it any less worrying. As one expert told the Washington Post: “These are not going to be one-offs. These are going to be laws that spread like wildfire through states that have shown hostility to abortion.”A 99-year-old’s dying wish was for a giant penis statue over her graveI would describe this as a snippet of much-needed light news, but there is nothing light about the penis and testicles that now sit on top of Catarina Orduña Pérez’s grave: they weigh nearly 600 pounds. The statue is also five-a-half-foot tall. “She told me that [the statue] was her desire so that no one would forget her and that everything we loved about her would be remembered more easily,” Pérez’s grandson told Vice. A legend.Shireen Abu Akleh’s family demand US actionIt has been over two months now since the Palestinian American journalist was killed while covering a military raid in the occupied West Bank. A UN rights body investigation found that the shot that killed Abu Akleh came from Israeli security forces, echoing eyewitness accounts of the shooting and analysis by other rights groups. Still, the US seems to have no desire to ensure there is accountability for her death; the journalist’s family travelled to Washington to beg the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, to do something this week and he fobbed them off. If Abu Akleh had been murdered in Ukraine by Russian forces, I think the US response would be rather different. When journalists are killed by US allies (Jamal Khashoggi comes to mind), the US seems to rather relax its concerns about things like human rights and accountability.‘I will never regret the time I spent with my children, but society is punishing me for it in my 60s’“Precarity can happen so easily to anyone,” writes Louise Ihlein in a powerful piece in the Guardian. “[B]ut it happens a lot to women who have spent their lives caring for others.”Being a woman in Afghanistan has become ‘death in slow motion’A chilling new report released by Amnesty International documents how the rights of women and girls in Afghanistan have been “decimated by the Taliban” in less than a year. Child marriage has surged and safeguards protecting women have collapsed.Lebanese politician says used condoms were left in her office by male colleaguesAmnesty International has condemned the sexist harassment of a newly elected female MP in Lebanon, Cynthia Zarazir. The legislator spoke out on Twitter about being catcalled and bullied, saying her colleagues gave her a filthy office full of pornographic magazines and condoms. “If this is how they treat an elected fellow MP, how will they deal with those who are voiceless?” she tweeted.The week in pawtriarchyA group of roaming macaque monkeys have been terrorizing a southern Japanese city in recent weeks, attacking more than 50 individuals. Most of the victims have been children and women (who knew macaques could be so misogynistic?!) but it seems attacks on men are on the rise. “I have never seen anything like this my entire life,” one city official said. Like many other things unfolding right now, the wild monkey attacks are unprecedented. What I would give to live in precedented times.Arwa Mahdawi’s new book, Strong Female Lead, is available for orderTopicsAbortionThe Week in PatriarchyUS politicsRoe v WadecommentReuse this content More