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The US congressional hearings on the Capitol Hill attack have been primetime viewing. And the case against Donald Trump has been building for all to see, says Lawrence Douglas

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The testimony was unprecedented. In an extraordinary sitting in Washington DC of the congressional committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol building, a White House staffer detailed how Donald Trump had attempted to grab the steering wheel of his presidential car in determination to join his supporters as they rioted. Cassidy Hutchinson also testified that Trump would fly into rages, on one occasion throwing a plate at the wall, smashing it in anger and leaving ketchup dripping down a White House wall. Lawrence Douglas, a professor of law at Amherst College, tells Michael Safi that, throughout the series of slickly produced hearings, the committee has told a compelling narrative of the events that led up to the riots on January 6. And it goes beyond that, to alleged attempts to “steal” the election via slates of “fake electors” and by piling pressure on key officials such as the vice-president and the justice secretary. As the case against Trump and many of his aides is laid out, though, the next steps are far from certain. Even if the evidence unearthed by the committee does reach the standard needed to bring prosecutions, would a prosecution of the former president be deemed in the public interest – and could a jury be found of 12 people who would act completely impartially, in what is now a deeply polarised country? More

Women’s rights have suffered a grim setback. But history is still on our sideRebecca SolnitYou can take away a right through legal means, but it is harder to take away the belief in that right. The uproar over the court’s hideous abortion decision is a reminder of how unpopular it is As it happened, I was in Edinburgh the day Roe v Wade was overturned, and the next day I caught a train back to London and did what I usually do when I get anywhere near King’s Cross station. I took the short walk to the old St Pancras churchyard to visit the tombstone of the great feminist ancestor Mary Wollstonecraft, author of that first great feminist manifesto A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. To be there that day was to remember that feminism did not start recently – Wollstonecraft died in 1797 – and it did not stop on 24 June.The Roe ruling is not about states’ rights. It’s about power and control | Derecka PurnellRead moreWomen in the US gained this right less than half a century ago – a short time when the view is from Wollstonecraft’s memorial. I have regularly heard the opinions in recent decades that feminism failed or achieved nothing or is over, which seems ignorant of how utterly different the world (or most of it) is now for women than it was that half century ago and more. I say world, because it’s important to remember that feminism is a global movement and Roe v Wade and its reversal were only national decisions.Ireland in 2018, Argentina in 2020, Mexico in 2021 and Colombia in 2022 have all legalized abortion. So many things have changed in the last half century for women in so many countries that it would be hard to itemize them all; suffice to say that the status of women has been radically altered for the better, overall, in this span of time. Feminism is a human rights movement that endeavors to change things that are not just centuries, but in many cases millennia old, and that it is far from done and faces setbacks and resistance is neither shocking nor reason to stop.Wollstonecraft did not even dream of votes for women – most men in the Britain of her time didn’t have voting rights either – or of many other rights we now consider ordinary, but you don’t have to go back to the eighteenth century to encounter radical inequality on the basis of gender. It was everywhere in large and small ways into recent decades – and culturally still persists in the widespread attempts to control and contain women and the prejudices women still encounter about their intellectual competence, sexuality, and equality.Half a century ago it was legal in the US to fire women because they were pregnant – it happened to Elizabeth Warren, then a young schoolteacher. The right to access birth control – for married couples – was only guaranteed by the 1965 Griswold decision this rogue supreme court may also be gunning for. The right of equal access to birth control for the unmarried was only settled in the supreme court in 1972. The 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act rendered illegal the discrimination by which unmarried women had trouble getting credit and loans while married women routinely required their husbands to cosign for them.Marriage in most parts of the world including North America and Europe was, until very recently, a relationship in which the husband gained control by law and custom over his wife’s body and nearly everything she did, said, and owned. Marital rape was hardly a concept until feminism made it one in the 1970s, and the UK and US only made it illegal in the early 1990s. The 17th-century English jurist Matthew Hale argued “the husband of a woman cannot himself be guilty of an actual rape upon his wife, on account of the matrimonial consent which she has given, and which she cannot retract”. That is, a woman having once consented could never thereafter say no, because she had consented to be owned. Incidentally, the current supreme court decision revoking reproductive rights repeatedly cites Hale, who is also well-known for sentencing two elderly widows to death for witchcraft in 1662.Wollstonecraft, who had participated in the French Revolution, wrote: “The divine right of husbands, like the divine right of kings, may, it is hoped, in this enlightened age, be contested without danger.” Contested, but hardly overcome for almost two more centuries. As coercive control and domestic violence, men still impose their expectation of dominance and punish independence, while rightwing Republicans seek to return women to inferior status under the law and in the culture, citing that ancient text the Bible as their authority.Their supreme court may go after marriage equality next. I have long thought that the marriage equality that means equal access to same-sex couples would be impossible, had marriage as an institution not been made over, thanks to feminism, as a freely negotiated relationship between equals. Equality between partners is threatening to the inequality inherent in traditional patriarchal marriage, which is why – along with homophobia, of course – they’re so hostile to it. And, of course, it too is new; a very different supreme court recognized this right in June of 2015, only seven years ago (and Switzerland and Chile only did so in 2021).The last decade has been a rollercoaster of gains and losses, and there is no neat way to add them up. The gains have been profound, but many of them have been subtle. Since about 2012, a new era of feminism opened up conversations – on social media, in traditional media, in politics and private – about violence against women and the many forms of inequality and oppression, legal and cultural, obvious and subtle. Recognition of the impact of violence against women expanded profoundly and brought on real results. The Me Too movement has been much derided as a celebrity circus but it was only one manifestation of a feminist surge begun five years earlier, and it helped lead to changes in US state and federal laws governing sexual harrassment and abuse, including a bill that passed the senate this February and the president signed into law in early March.This week’s sentencing of R Kelly to 30 years in prison and Ghislaine Maxwell to 20 are the consequence of a shift in who would be listened to and believed, which is to say who would be valued and whose rights would be defended. Of people being included in the conversations in the courts of law who had not before been heard there. Perpetrators who had gotten away with crimes for decades – Larry Nassar, Bill Cosby, Harvey Weinstein among them – lost their impunity, and belated consequences came crashing down on them. But the fate of a handful of high-profile men is not what matters most, and punishment is not how we remake the world.The conversations are about violence and inequality, about the intersectionalities of race and gender, about the rethinking of gender beyond the simplest binaries, about what freedom could look like, what desire could be, what equality would mean. Just to have those conversations is liberatory. To see younger women reach beyond what my generation perceived and claimed is exhilarating. These conversations change us in ways the law cannot, make us understand ourselves and each other in new ways, reconceive race, gender, sexuality, and possibility.You can take away a right through legal means, but you cannot take away the belief in that right so easily. The supreme court’s Dred Scott and Plessy v Ferguson decisions in the 19th century did not convince Black people that they did not deserve to live as free and equal citizens; it merely prevented them from doing so in practical terms. Women in many US states have lost their access to abortion, but not their belief in their right to it. The uproar in response to the court’s decision is a reminder of how unpopular it is, and how hideously it will impact the ability of women to be free and equal under the law.It is a huge loss. It does not exactly return us to the world before Roe v Wade, because in both imaginative and practical terms US society is profoundly different. Women have far more equality under the law, in access to education, employment, and institutions of power, and to political representation. We have far more belief in those rights and a stronger vision of what equality looks like. That the status of women is so radically changed from where it was in, say, 1962, let alone 1797, is evidence that feminism is working. And the supreme court’s hideous decision confirms that there is still a lot of work to do.
Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist
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Explosive testimony suggests Trump was set on a coup that evokes America’s darkest hourSarah ChurchwellThe 6 January hearings already confirm a plan for insurrection and recall the civil war and its ‘lost cause’ aftermath ‘I’m from a part of the country where people justify the actions of slavery, Ku Klux Klan, and lynching. I’m reminded of that dark history as I hear voices today try and justify the actions of the insurrectionists of 6 January 2021,” declared congressman Bennie Thompson, chairman of the select committee, as he opened the 6 January hearings last month.That drop of American history was quickly lost in the cloudburst to come, the extraordinary revelations culminating last week in the testimony of Cassidy Hutchinson, former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows. But Thompson opened proceedings with that reminder for a very good reason: because the 6 January insurrection did not merely resemble the dark history of the civil war and its aftermath, it continued it. “Some people are trying to deny what happened,” Thompson added. “To whitewash it. To turn the insurrectionists into martyrs. But the whole world saw the reality of what happened on January 6th. The hangman’s gallows sitting out there on our National Mall. The flag of that first failed and disgraced rebellion against our union, being paraded through the Capitol.”The denial that followed that first disgraced insurrection – the civil war – was a myth-making disinformation campaign known as the “lost cause”. Slavery, southern apologists said, was a mere pretext for the war, which, they insisted, was started by an aggressive and spiteful north, much as Trump and his defenders claimed for many months that the 6 January insurrection was, in fact, planned and carried out by antifa.The most famous version of the lost cause appeared not in the aftermath of the civil war, however, but decades later, during the interwar years: Gone With the Wind, first published in 1936 and filmed as Europe went to war over fascism. Many critics called that story fascist when it appeared, including African Americans furious at the dangerous myths it was peddling, sparking a furious debate that anticipated the arguments 80 years later over whether Trump’s administration was accurately described as fascist. The testimony of Hutchinson should end that debate (but won’t).Hutchinson revealed that as of 2 January, Rudy Giuliani was already boasting of plans to go to the Capitol on the 6th, where the president would “look powerful”. On the 6th, Trump and Meadows were both informed that some insurrectionists were armed with military grade automatic weapons, after which Trump demanded that the metal detectors (“mags”) be removed, partly to make his crowd larger: “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons,” she heard Trump say. “They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags away.” The White House had seen intelligence revealing the insurrectionists’ plans to “occupy federal buildings” and for “invading the capitol building”, declaring: “Congress itself is the target on the 6th.” When Trump heard the chants of “Hang Mike Pence”, and urged the crowd to find Pence, he knew that they were armed and dangerous and planning a political coup.White House counsel Pat Cipollone begged Hutchinson to stop Trump and his allies from joining the insurrectionists, saying: “Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol… we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable.” But Trump was so determined to be there, she was told, that he lunged at his secret service in the car, shouting “I’m the fucking president, take me up to Capitol now,” and trying to grab the steering wheel. (These details have been reportedly disputed, but not by anyone under oath.) As committee member Zoe Lofgren later rightly tweeted: “No one is denying that the former president wanted to go to the Capitol and lead this armed mob, and be there while they attacked the Capitol. That’s the point.”In sum: Trump was hellbent on leading an armed militia to storm the US Capitol and overturn the election, supported by officials who refused under oath to confirm their belief in a peaceful transfer of power. That is a textbook and full-fledged fascist coup.It is also a variation on the political violence that followed the civil war, 160 years ago, when white supremacist groups violently overthrew elected officials in several states in the deep south, including Louisiana and North Carolina. The Klan was only the most famous of those white supremacist groups – there was also the White League, the Red Shirts and the Knights of the White Camellia, among many others. Several of these organisations were revived by white supremacists and self-identified fascists in the 1930s.In 1934, a retired major general named Smedley Darlington Butler testified before Congress that he had been approached in 1933 by America’s financial leaders to spearhead a coup against Franklin Roosevelt, a plan backed by the American Liberty League. Butler said he was asked to mobilise an army of disgruntled veterans to march on Washington and install a military fascist dictatorship.Butler was widely accused of being a fantasist and historians later followed suit in suggesting that the Business Plot, as it was known, was an empty threat that shouldn’t have been taken seriously. Many said the same thing about Trump – until the events of 6 January. Historian Robert O Paxton, for example, America’s pre-eminent expert on fascism, had long resisted calling Trump a fascist, but wrote in the wake of the insurrection that he had changed his mind.Members of the Trump administration agreed: “Senior Trump Official: We Were Wrong, He’s a ‘Fascist’”, as a New York magazine headline succinctly put it. Now, thanks to the testimony of Hutchinson, we know why some of them changed their minds.But not all. Hours after the insurrection, more than two-thirds of House Republicans voted with the coup, and against the election results, to effectively install Trump as dictator. Six months later, in the summer of 2021, influential conservatives put forward their own thought experiment, arguing for the necessity of an “American Caesar” to seize power, a hypothetical figure to whom they soon gave the less than hypothetical name Trump. They discussed strategies such as declaring a national emergency in the inaugural address, communicating directly with supporters using a “Trump app” and encouraging them to mobilise once more at the Capitol.As the testimony of Hutchinson makes clear, Trump had done everything he could to seize the laurel crown and declare himself an American Caesar. He hasn’t given up yet – and, what is more, neither have most of his supporters.TopicsUS Capitol attackOpinionDonald TrumpUS politicscommentReuse this content More

As Trump’s star wanes, another rises: could Ron DeSantis be the new Maga bearer? With the January 6 hearings chipping away at the former president’s image, the Republican Florida governor is quietly working to turn the tide in his favorHe was the most powerful man in the world, the possessor of the nuclear codes. Yet he behaved like a deranged manchild who threw temper tantrums and food against the wall.That was the tragicomic story told to America last Tuesday at a congressional hearing that had even seasoned Donald Trump watchers lifting their jaws off the floor and speculating that his political career might finally be over.Mark Meadows’ associate threatened ex-White House aide before her testimonyRead moreIn two seismic hours in Washington, Cassidy Hutchinson, a 25-year-old former White House aide, told the panel investigating the January 6 attack on the US Capitol that the former president had effectively gone haywire.She described how Trump knew a mob of his supporters had armed itself with rifles, yet he asked for metal detectors to be removed. She also recounted how his desire to lead them to the Capitol caused a physical altercation with the Secret Service, and how in a fit of rage he threw his lunch against a White House wall, staining it with tomato ketchup.Trump, who once called himself “a very stable genius”, vehemently denied the allegations but the political damage was done. Infighting and plotting engulfed a Republican party that had hoped the House of Representatives’ committee hearings would pass as a non-event.Instead they have exceeded all expectations and could prove terminal to Trump’s ambition of regaining the presidency in 2024 if Republican leaders, donors and voters run out of patience and decide to move on.02:44“Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s Tuesday testimony ought to ring the death knell for former President Donald Trump’s political career,” said an editorial in the Washington Examiner, a conservative news website. “Trump is unfit to be anywhere near power ever again.”The column concluded: “Trump is a disgrace. Republicans have far better options to lead the party in 2024. No one should think otherwise, much less support him, ever again.”Seemingly aware of his growing political vulnerability, Trump is reportedly considering announcing another run for the White House sooner than expected. He has teased the prospect at recent rallies and, according to the New York Times, told advisers that he might declare his candidacy on social media without warning even his own team.Such a move could have the added impetus of heading off a new star rising in the Republican firmament. Ron DeSantis, the pugnacious governor of Florida, is widely seen as his heir apparent and biggest rival for the Republican presidential nomination in two years’ time. At 43, DeSantis is more than three decades younger and is free of Trump’s January 6 toxicity.Speaking from Tallahassee, longtime Republican strategist Rick Wilson of Florida said: “I’ve picked up the same rumors that everybody else is hearing that Ron DeSantis’s people are practically picking out curtains in the White House after Tuesday.“Apparently they feel like this was a phenomenal day for them, that it was a great breakdown of Trump’s malfeasance and they didn’t have to bring the attack – it was brought by one of his former loyalists. If you look at it in terms of the 2024 nomination process, it was a consequential day.”Wilson, author of Everything Trump Touches Dies, cautioned that the twice impeached former president has been written off countless times before only to bounce back. But Trump has not faced a challenger like DeSantis.“DeSantis has been very carefully building out a presidential campaign for 2024 to primary Donald Trump, raising money, building relationships, going out there and quietly whispering: ‘He’s crazy, I’m not, I’m younger, I’m smarter, I’m thinner, I’m better looking. I can deliver more for you than the crazy old orange guy,’” Wilson said.DeSantis certainly has political buzz. Ed Rollins, another Republican strategist, also believes Trump could be done, and has launched a group called Ready for Ron to gather details of DeSantis supporters ahead of an expected presidential bid.An opinion poll released last week in the state of New Hampshire, traditionally the site of the first presidential primary, showed DeSantis in a statistical tie with Trump among likely Republican voters.The University of New Hampshire poll found 39% supported DeSantis, with 37% backing Trump – a big swing from October, when Trump had double the support DeSantis did. Former vice-president Mike Pence, who is exploring a 2024 campaign after breaking with Trump post the Capitol insurrection, was in a distant third at 9%.There have been other clues that Trump’s hold on Republican voters is not what it was. He has seen mixed results for his most high-profile endorsements in key states during this year’s midterm elections, in which DeSantis is seeking reelection as Florida governor.DeSantis has proved himself a financial powerhouse, raising more than $120m since winning office in 2018. Recent financial disclosures showed his political accounts had over $110m in cash in mid-June.Trump’s Save America group, meanwhile, had just over $100m in cash at the end of May.Republican donor Dan Eberhart told the Reuters news agency that three-quarters of roughly 150 fellow donors with whom he regularly interacts backed Trump six months ago, with a quarter going for DeSantis. But now the balance has shifted and about two-thirds want DeSantis as the 2024 standard bearer.Eberhart was quoted as saying: “The donor class is ready for something new. And DeSantis feels more fresh and more calibrated than Trump. He’s easier to defend, he’s less likely to embarrass and he’s got the momentum.”And the January 6 hearings are far from over. The six sessions so far have pointed the finger firmly at Trump as the unhinged architect of a failed coup who pushed conspiracy theories about voter fraud he knew to be false and was willing to let his supporters hang his own vice-president.‘He thinks Mike deserves it’: Trump said rioters were right to call for vice-president’s deathRead moreA survey from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 48% of American adults say Trump should be charged with a crime for his role. The crisply presented hearings would have been enough to bury any other politician for good.Political scientist Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “If the testimony stands as delivered, many Republicans will begin to ask themselves whether it wouldn’t be preferable to find a candidate with Mr Trump’s views but not his vices.“And, of course, there is such a candidate waiting in the wings. Tuesday’s hearing was a ‘Ron DeSantis for president’ rally because it underscored the risks of sticking with Mr Trump for a third consecutive presidential election.”Galston, a former senior policy adviser to President Bill Clinton, described DeSantis as “the distilled essence of what the post-Reagan Republican party has become. In addition, it’s clear to the Republican base that, like Trump, he’s a fighter. Like Trump, he is not at all deterred by liberal criticism.”Some believe the cumulative effect of the January 6 hearings could be enough to persuade many in the “Make America great again” base that, even while they remain devoted fans of Trump, he is no longer the pragmatic choice to oust Democrat Joe Biden from the Oval Office.“The big question for Republicans moving forward is: do they want to carry this baggage of Trump into 2024?” said the director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, Larry Jacobs.“When you’re battling to win over independent voters and when you’re going to be handed a platform that could very well present a referendum on the insider party, the Democrats, it doesn’t make sense even for a lot of Republican Trump supporters. Trump and his influence and his future prospects are fading fast.”But the populist-nationalism that the ex-president branded “America first” does look set to survive him, Jacobs added.“In the primaries, there’s going to be a battle of who can carry Trumpism without Trump and that’s going to be ethnic nationalism, attacks on the liberal cultural tilt of this moment,” Jacobs said. “You go to a Trump rally, a lot of those lines are going to be evident.”For Democrats, it may be a case of being careful about what you wish for. DeSantis was a relatively obscure congressman when Trump endorsed him for Florida governor in 2018 and has proven a worthy disciple, sparring with everyone from journalists to Disney to what he calls the “woke left”.After the coronavirus pandemic took hold in 2020, he relaxed restrictions on businesses and schools in defiance of federal guidelines and overruled local officials who sought to preserve mask mandates.DeSantis has also enacted numerous conservative bills with the help of Florida’s Republican-controlled legislature, including an election “police force” dedicated to investigating alleged voter fraud, new voting limits and banning teachers from discussing gender identity with young children – which critics decry as the “don’t say gay” law.He also effectively commandeered the redistricting process from Florida’s state legislature, vetoing their congressional map and substituting his own proposal that eliminated two majority-Black districts while delivering four additional seats to Republicans.Florida supreme court declines to rule gerrymandered voting map unconstitutionalRead moreSome fear that, as president, DeSantis would represent Trump 2.0 – a refined, purified version without the incompetence, more efficient and ruthless and able to get things done.Wilson, the longtime Republican consultant and Trump critic from Florida, commented: “Ron DeSantis in Florida has accumulated enormous power. He has taken power away from the legislature. He is attempting to take power away from independent colleges and universities and to literally replace governance at every institution in Florida from top to bottom with the governor’s office.“I grew up in a time where Republicans thought a hyper powerful executive was not a great thing but Ron DeSantis has a very different opinion of executive power and he, as president, would engage in its use at a scale that would be dangerous for the country at a lot of levels.”The first nominating contests for the 2024 election are more than 18 months away, and the long term impact of the January 6 hearings remains uncertain. Lou Marin, executive vice president of the Florida Republican Assembly, does not think they will change minds. “People who are paying attention realize that it’s a kangaroo court,” he said. “They need to move on and start doing their job instead of wasting taxpayer dollars.”DeSantis will also be wary of peaking too early and keenly aware that Trump, who famously boasted that he could shoot someone and not lose any voters, remains his party’s most popular figure. A Harvard CAPS-Harris Poll this week found 56% of Republican voters said they would back the former president – well ahead of DeSantis on 16%.Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said: “A lot of people want to put a tombstone on the grave but Donald Trump is still above ground. He’s still walking the earth and has a lot of political clout with a lot more people inside the party than folks may want to admit.“Those bridges are in front of us. We haven’t come to them yet to see exactly what these extra revelations will now present in terms of further chiseling away Donald Trump’s hold on the party.”Some Democrats argue that DeSantis would be preferable because, unlike Trump, he would not threaten the foundations of America’s constitutional democracy.But Steele warned: “Who’s the better thief, the one who breaks the window to get into your house or the one who’s craftily picked the lock? DeSantis knows how not to trip the alarm system.”TopicsRepublicansThe ObserverUS politicsRon DeSantisDonald TrumpFloridaWashington DCfeaturesReuse this content More

Under the Skin review: US healthcare, racism and a terrible toll takenLinda Villarosa paints a horrifying picture of embedded inequality and prejudice, yet still finds hope for the future Persistence, intelligence, a fierce devotion to the facts and an easy capacity for outrage. These are the building blocks of great journalism and they are the virtues that have made Linda Villarosa one of our most important activist-journalist-authors for several decades.A Way Out of No Way review: Raphael Warnock, symbol of hope for AmericaRead moreHer latest book, subtitled “The Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of our Nation”, is a culmination of her important work going back to 1986, when her story Nobody’s Safe in Essence was the first article about HIV/Aids published in an ethnic magazine.That piece marked the moment Villarosa realized “that these kinds of stories would be my life’s work”. Americans have been benefiting from her persistence and intelligence ever since.Her new book tells a horrifying story about all the reasons Black Americans have been mistreated by doctors for centuries, beginning with the idea propagated under the transatlantic slave trade that Black men had a “primitive psychological organization” that made them “uniquely fitted for bondage”.Dr Samuel Cartwright of New Orleans went so far as to assert that the desire to escape was itself proof of a mental illness.It has been common knowledge for centuries that Black people suffer worse health outcomes than whites in America. But American racism has been so virulent for so long, it took even Villarosa many years to reject the idea that poor choices by Black people were the main reason for their misfortune.She writes: “As recently as 2016, a survey of 22 white medical students and residents … showed that half of them endorsed at least one myth about physiological differences between Black people and white people, including that Black people’s nerve endings are less sensitive than whites.”When asked to imagine how much pain white or Black people experienced from getting their hands slammed in a car door, the students “insisted that Black people felt less pain, which made the providers less likely to recommend appropriate treatment”.The proven facts are appalling: the racial disparity in infant mortality is “actually greater in the present day than in 1850, when Black women were human chattel”. African Americans aged 18 to 49 “are twice as likely to die from heart disease”. Black infants are more than twice as likely as white babies to die before their first birthday.Like the white medical establishment, Villarosa assumed poverty had to be a key factor in these statistics. But as researchers became more sophisticated, they discovered that “babies of more educated, higher-income Black parents were still more likely to be born small compared to their white counterparts”.In 1997, researchers developed nine questions to determine scientifically how much racism an individual has been subjected to, ranging from “people act as if they think you are not smart” to “people act as if they think you are dishonest”.What the data proved was that while socio-economic status and education are relevant, “the lived experience of being Black in America regardless of income and education, also affects health”.One proof came from a 1997 study comparing the birth weights of children from US-born Black people with the babies of African-born Black people and US-born whites.“The infants of the immigrant women from Africa closely matched in size to the white, not the Black, US-born babies. In other words, despite the disadvantages they experienced by being brought up in poorer countries, “their newborns were larger and more likely to be fuller term than babies born to African American women”.And then, “the grandchildren of the Caribbean and African immigrant women were born smaller than their mothers had been at birth”.As a super high-achiever with access to excellent health, Villarosa was shocked when she herself had a baby with below-average body weight.Some of the most depressing parts of the book are the stories about the persistence of racism at elite American institutions like Stanford University, where a talented Black pre-med female student was routinely dismissed by white classmates who assumed she was only there because of affirmative action.The same student said her four-year residency starting in 2002 was “a toxic mix” of racism and sexism.“If you were a woman who wasn’t traditionally feminine” or “a person of color … the mainly older white men who ran the residency treated you horribly.”And yet Villarosa remains resolutely optimistic. When part of this book was first published in a different version in the New York Times Magazine, under the title Why America’s Black Mothers and Babies Are in a Life-or-Death Crisis, in 2018, she was thrilled when the then governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, responded with a pilot program to expand Medicaid coverage for birth doulas, “citing the need to target racial disparities in maternal mortality”.And even when the Covid epidemic arrived as she was writing this book, confirming her essential thesis about the inequitable treatment of Black people by the American healthcare system, Villarosa remained hopeful.She writes: “Together, America’s racial reckoning and a pandemic that has exposed long-standing racial health inequality have thrown an accelerant on a slow-burning fire of awareness, forcing America to grapple with issues of race and justice.”Villarosa’s unquenchable faith in the power of journalism makes her a worthy successor to another famous muckraker, Ida B Wells, whose fearless journalism focused a nation’s attention on the horrors of lynching more than a century ago.This book uses the same kind of ferocity to attack the persistent racism that infects the healthcare system in America.
Under the Skin: the Hidden Toll of Racism on American Lives and on the Health of Our Nation is published in the US by Doubleday Books
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Environmentalists condemn Biden administration’s offshore drilling planPolicy would ban new ocean drilling but allow up to 11 lease sales in Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s south coast Joe Biden’s administration on Friday unveiled a five-year offshore oil and gas drilling development plan that blocks all new drilling in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans within US territorial waters while allowing some lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska’s south coast.The plan, which has not been finalized, could allow up to 11 lease sales but gives the interior department the right to make none. It comes two days after the US supreme court curbed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to respond to the climate crisis.Environmental groups criticized the plan, and some expressed concern that the administration was backing away from the president’s “no more drilling” pledge during a March 2020 one-on-one debate with Bernie Sanders.Biden at the time said, “No more drilling on federal lands, no more drilling, including offshore – no ability for the oil industry to continue to drill – period.”Environmental groups also argued that new leasing would impede the Biden administration’s goal to cut carbon emissions by at least 50% by 2030 in an effort to keep global heating under the threshold of 1.5C (2.7F).“President Biden campaigned on climate leadership, but he seems poised to let us down at the worst possible moment,” said Brady Bradshaw, senior oceans campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “The reckless approval of yet more offshore drilling would mean more oil spills, more dead wildlife and more polluted communities. We need a five-year plan with no new leases.”Wenonah Hauter of Food & Water Watch said: “President Biden has called the climate crisis the existential threat of our time, but the administration continues to pursue policies that will only make it worse.”On Friday, the interior secretary, Deb Haaland, said she and the president “had made clear our commitment to transition to a clean energy economy”. The department’s proposal, she said, was “an opportunity for the American people to consider and provide input on the future of offshore oil and gas leasing”.California passes first sweeping US law to reduce single-use plasticRead moreThe proposal to sell off 11 leases must go through a series of reviews and a period of public comment that is likely to be contentious. Most of the new leases would be offered in parts of the western and central Gulf of Mexico, far from where legislators have outlawed new drilling near Florida.The executive director of Healthy Gulf, Cyn Sarthou, said the organization was troubled by the apparent change of policy.“Now is not the time to continue business as usual,” Sarthou said. “The continuing threat posed by climate change requires the nation to focus on a transition to renewable energy.”Nearly 95% of US offshore oil production and 71% of offshore natural gas production occurs in the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council. About 15% of oil production comes from offshore drilling.The proposed leases come after sales in two regions of the Gulf were abandoned because of legal challenges.Advocates for the oil industry welcomed the new proposal, including the Democratic senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia.“Our allies across the free world are in desperate need of American oil and gas,” Manchin said in a statement. “I am disappointed to see that ‘zero’ lease sales is even an option on the table.”One of the proposed new leases could be granted in Alaska’s Cook Inlet, an area that is already highly vulnerable to the effects of climate breakdown. “This decision is incredibly disappointing in the face of ongoing climate impacts that are already being deeply felt by our community around Alaska,” said the advocacy director at Cook Inletkeeper, Liz Mering.Mering added: “Alaskans have worked to ensure that Lower Cook Inlet remains this incredible place for our fisheries and tourism industry, which support a thriving local economy. Thirty-three years after the horrific Exxon Valdez disaster, Alaskans still remember and recognize the risk of more oil fouling our waters, killing our fish and hurting Alaskans.”The proposal came a day after the administration held its first auction of onshore lease sales, drawing bids of $22m from energy companies seeking drilling rights on about 110 square miles of public land across Colorado, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.After the sale, the Western Environmental Law Center attorney Melissa Hornbein said: “Overwhelming scientific evidence shows us that burning fossil fuels from existing leases on federal lands is incompatible with a livable climate.”TopicsBiden administrationJoe BidenOilGasUS politicsCommoditiesClimate crisisnewsReuse this content More

Uvalde school police chief quits city council amid fury over shooting responseState public safety chief blamed Pete Arredondo for delaying officers’ confrontation with gunman The Uvalde, Texas, school district police chief is resigning from his community’s city council amid criticism of the law enforcement response to the shooting that killed 19 students and two teachers at Robb elementary in May.Pedro “Pete” Arredondo told the Uvalde Leader-News that he was stepping down from the city council post to which he was sworn in just seven days after the massacre, the outlet reported on Saturday.Why did they wait? Uvalde anger grows over bungled police responseRead moreA statement from Uvalde’s mayor, Don McLaughlin, said the city government had received Arredondo’s resignation letter only after he announced his intentions through the local newspaper.McLaughlin’s statement called stepping down “the right thing to do” for Arredondo.According to the Leader-News, Arredondo continued maintaining that he was not the commander of officers who waited more than an hour before confronting and killing the shooter at Robb on 24 May. His statement is contrary to the findings from the state’s department of public safety chief, Steve McCraw, who concluded it was Arredondo’s call to delay officers that day despite the fact that they had adequate numbers and weaponry to put a stop to the carnage much sooner than they did.A copy of Arredondo’s resignation letter, released by McLaughlin’s office, offered prayers to the school massacre victims’ families.“In speaking with other communities that have had similar tragedies, the guidance has been the same: continue to support the families, continue to support our community and definitely to keep our faith,” Arredondo said.He also said he was leaving the council behind “to minimize further distractions” for the city.Arredondo had missed the first two city council meetings of his tenure and was facing expulsion from the panel if he had a third unexcused absence. The city council late last month rejected a request to grant him a leave of absence that would have protected him from being expelled from the body if he missed more than the two meetings.After Uvalde shooting, tech companies tout their solutions. But do they work?Read moreResidents had gone to the meeting where the council considered the leave of absence and urged his colleagues to vote it down. Some said he failed the slain students and teachers on the day of the attack, with the relative of one victim saying: “We’re begging – get this man out of our lives”.Before stepping down from the council, he was placed on paid administrative leave from his position as the school district’s police chief while federal and state investigations into the officers’ response to the attack at Robb continued.Residents had pondered subjecting Arredondo to a recall election if he insisted on keeping his seat on the city council. It would have required fewer than 50 signatures to compel the election, yet local laws prevented residents from taking such a step until February next year.After Arredondo’s resignation takes effect, voters in his council district will have the opportunity to elect a replacement to serve the rest of his four-year term.Arredondo was his county’s highest paid law enforcement official, earning $90,750 each year after becoming the Uvalde school district’s police chief in 2020. The local sheriff’s salary, by contrast, is about $77,915, the Leader-News reported.His ability to serve in his public positions seemingly became tenuous after a committee of state lawmakers examining the shooting released a timeline showing 11 officers had been positioned outside two classrooms under attack within seven minutes of the first 911 call.At least two of the officers had rifles, providing a team that was adequate to mount an assault against the intruder, who was fleeing the scene of another shooting, McCraw has said.Police responding to so-called active shooters have been trained for at least two decades to confront the assailants as soon as practical rather than wait for reinforcements, a practice that was developed amid countless mass killings across the US over the past two decades.But instead of ordering officers to go in, Arredondo – who was on site at the school – reportedly had them wait while he called the city police force for reinforcements.“We don’t have enough firepower right now,” Arredondo said, in part, according to a committee transcript of that call.Arredondo also purportedly worried that the door to the classroom where the intruder was cornered had potentially been locked, and he couldn’t immediately track down its key. But the door was in fact not locked – and even if it was, officers had a “hooligan” tool that could pry locked doors open, according to the committee’s evidence.Officers stormed the classroom 77 minutes into the attack and killed the gunman. But by then he had already murdered 21 and wounded 17 others.McCraw ultimately assessed Arredondo’s performance that day as an “abject failure and antithetical to everything we’ve learned” about mass shootings.TopicsTexas school shootingUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Biden urged to do more to defend abortion rights: ‘This is a five-alarm fire’ Furious Americans have taken to the streets, but many Democrats believe Biden has failed to capture the urgency and angerHigh above America’s capital, pro-choice activists scaled a construction crane, inching across its latticed steel arm, to affix a banner with a message for the president to see. It read: “BIDEN PROTECT ABORTION.”In the days since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to an abortion, legions of furious Americans have taken to the streets to protest a decision that was once unimaginable. But as a new reality takes shape, many are demanding the president and Democratic leaders do more to defend reproductive rights.Biden backs exception to Senate filibuster to protect abortion accessRead more“Is it that they can’t, or they won’t, go as far as they need to to stem the tide of the radical Republican agenda?” said Aimee Allison, founder of She the People, a progressive advocacy group that works to mobilize women of color.For many Democrats, the president has failed to capture the urgency and fear they feel as conservative states and courts rush to ban abortion. “Is this a five-alarm fire? Yes, absolutely,” Allison said, adding that Democrats must show voters they are prepared to “fight like hell”.In the week since the ruling was issued, Biden stepped up his rhetoric. During a meeting with Democratic governors, Biden said he “share[d] public outrage of this extremist court that’s committed to moving America backward.” He also endorsed a change to the Senate’s filibuster rule that would create an exception for abortion and other privacy rights potentially under threat by the conservative court.“Now we’re talking!” tweeted Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat of New York, who has pushed Democrats to deliver a more aggressive response. “Use the bully pulpit. We need more.”With narrow majorities in Congress, Biden is under pressure to use the full force of his executive authority to protect reproductive rights.More than 20 Black Democratic congresswomen sent a letter to Biden asking him to immediately declare a public health emergency. “In this unprecedented moment, we must act urgently as if lives depend on it because they do,” the lawmakers wrote.Other proposals include expanding access to abortion medication, covering expenses for federal employees who have to travel out of state, ensuring women serving in the military can receive care regardless of where they are stationed and using federal lands to perform abortions in states where it is banned.Advertisement: What would the end of abortion rights in America mean for the world? Join our live discussion on Wednesday, 6 July, 3pm-4pm ET. Button says ‘book tickets here’Warning of potentially “dangerous ramifications,” the White House has so far resisted calls to open federal lands for abortion, led by Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and echoed on Friday by the governors of New York and New Mexico.“Do it anyway,” said Amanda Litman, co-founder of Run for Something, a progressive organisation that helps young people run for local and state office. “Show me you are willing to put some skin in the game.Democrats need to give voters concrete plans, she said. When Biden warns voters Republicans would ban abortion nationwide if they win control of Congress, they also need to hear him say he will not sign any restrictions they send to his desk, she added.In recent days, the justice department has said it would seek to protect any woman who travels out of state for an abortion while the health department said it is working to expand access to medication abortion.Biden has promised additional actions but has repeatedly said the only way to “truly” protect abortion access is to elect enough Democrats to codify Roe v Wade into federal law. “Vote, vote, vote. That’s how we’ll change it,” Biden said during a press conference in Madrid.But Democrats face a historically difficult election environment in the midterms this November, with inflation at a four-decade high and fears of a recession weighing down Biden’s approval rating. Yet there are early signs that the court’s ruling on abortion and the potential threat it poses to other rights such as same-sex marriage and contraception, is energizing Democrats’ demoralized base.The number of Americans who identified abortion as top concern more than doubled since December, particularly among Democrats, a new poll by the Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research found. Meanwhile, public opinion polls show a shift toward Democrats in the wake of the court’s decision, which drew thousands of people to the streets. To successfully galvanize voters around the issue, Democrats must “connect the dots” by showing them that Republicans’ end goal is a total ban on abortion, said Molly Murphy, a Democratic pollster who has surveyed voters’ views on the issue.“Being against abortion is potentially for some voters not an indictment,” she said. “But wanting to make it illegal and trying to make it illegal is – and that’s where the debate needs to go.”This week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sent a letter to Democrats outlining potential votes the caucus could take. They include protecting personal data stored on reproductive health apps from “sinister” prosecutors who might use it to target women who have abortions; ensuring the right to travel between states; and enshrining the right to an abortion into federal law, a version of which has already passed the House but has no path forward in the Senate.Much of the fight has now shifted to the state and local level, where Democrats are vowing to use their power to expand access or, where they can, block new restrictions.Across the country, Democratic governors and attorneys generals are vowing to protect abortion access. Governors in states like California and Illinois want to become havens for women seeking abortions in states where it’s banned.Progressive local prosecutors and officials in conservative states say they will not enforce strict abortion laws against patients or providers. Some liberal-run cities are considering plans to set up funds for women who have to go out of state for an abortion.Meanwhile, activists have declared a “summer of rage”, vowing to keep marching and resisting until a national right to abortion is restored.But cracks are also in display in the party.Many progressives remain furious with party leaders for backing Texas congressman Henry Cuellar, the lone House Democrat to oppose abortion, over his progressive, pro-choice challenger, Jessica Cisneros. Cuellar won the primary by fewer than 300 votes.They are also mobilizing to stop Biden from nominating an anti-abortion Republican attorney for federal judgeship in Kentucky, which was reported by the Courier Journal.Democrats increasingly believe the problem is the supreme court itself. A number of Democratic lawmakers have backed efforts to expand the number of justices on the court or impose term limits. Some lawmakers are calling for Congress to investigate – or even impeach– justices who signaled during their Senate confirmation hearings they would respect precedent but then voted to overturn Roe.Biden has mostly resisted those calls. But as long as there remains a 6-3 conservative majority of justices on the court, little else will change, said Christopher Kang, cofounder and general counsel of Demand Justice, a liberal group that advocates for expanding the supreme court.“Having spent 50 years wresting a supermajority of power on the court, they’re not likely to give that away,” he said. “Unless you have a balanced supreme court, none of these other reforms will get a fair shot.”TopicsJoe BidenThe ObserverUS politicsAbortionRoe v WadenewsReuse this content More