US Politics

‘It’s a tough time’: why is Biden one of the most unpopular US presidents? Puzzle of Biden’s unpopularity has some pieces within his control and some not, experts say, as Covid casts a shadow over his first year in officeJoe Biden ends his first year in office at a particularly bleak moment for a US president who promised competency and normalcy.Much of his domestic agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill, impeded by members of his own party. The virus is once again raging out of control: daily infections of Covid-19 have soared to record levels, hospitalizing more Americans than at any previous point during the pandemic. The administration’s vaccine-or-testing mandate for large employers was blocked by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority. Inflation is at a nearly 40-year high. Diplomatic talks have so far failed to pull Russia back from the brink of war with Ukraine.Attack, attack, attack: Republicans drive to make Biden the bogeymanRead moreAfter winning more votes than any presidential candidate in American history, Biden is now – just 12 months later – one of the country’s most unpopular presidents.For months, Biden’s approval ratings have languished in the mid to low 40s, with an average approval rating of 42%. ​​A Quinnipiac poll released last week found him at a dire 33%, which the White House has dismissed as an outlier. Nevertheless, among his modern predecessors, only Donald Trump fared worse at this point in their presidencies.The puzzle of Biden’s unpopularity has many pieces, pollsters and political analysts say.Biden came to office with lofty ambitions: he promised to lift the threat of deadly virus and usher in a new era of responsive governance and bipartisanship in Washington. One year into his presidency, Biden remains confronted by an unabating pandemic, a nation still very much divided and a Republican party that continues to embrace the lie that Donald Trump won the 2020 election.“Whenever a president disappoints expectations, that’s a problem,” said Bill Galston, a senior fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution who also served as a White House policy adviser to former President Clinton.Galston said the administration has “not done a good job of managing expectations” around Covid. In July, Biden came just shy of declaring “independence” from the virus, only to be proven wrong by the arrival of the fast-spreading Delta variant.Now, amid a surge caused by the Omicron variant, the president and his team are recalibrating. Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease specialist, recently said that Omicron would “find just about everybody”. Biden recently conceded that eradicating the virus was unlikely, but that it was possible to “control” it.It is the case for swing voters who believed Biden would govern as a centrist bridge-builder in an age of deep division, Galston continued, and for Democrats to whom Biden promised an ambitious legislative agenda despite holding wafer-thin margins in Congress.Sarah Longwell, a prominent anti-Trump Republican strategist, has observed support for the president decline among voters in the focus groups she has convened over the past year. When asked to grade Biden’s first year, many voters she spoke to, including Democrats, gave him Cs, Ds and Fs.The grades, Longwell said, not only reflected their views of the president, but also a shared discontent as the pandemic enters its third year and inflation continues to rise.“There’s an element of it that has nothing to do with Joe Biden,” Longwell said. “It’s just a tough time.”Line chart of President Biden’s job approval rating in 2021 by political party. All US parties approval of Biden declined.Asked about Biden’s gloomy reviews, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, offered a similar explanation.“People are fatigued across the country. It’s impacting how they live, how they work. There are worries about their kids, their ability to experience joyful things in life like concerts and going to restaurants and seeing friends,” Psaki said. “We understand that.”“The president knows that the best, most important step he can take is to continue to fight to get the pandemic under control and also to lower costs for Americans across the country,” she added.Biden’s popularity began to slip as the Delta variant of Covid-19 spread across the country, falling sharply after the US’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, during which 13 service members were killed by a suicide bombing at the Kabul airport.Though a majority of Americans favored withdrawing troops from Afghanistan, the desperate scenes from Kabul as the Taliban took control undercut perceptions of Biden as a seasoned foreign policy expert who would restore America’s standing on the world stage.“The way in which we left Afghanistan inflicted a blow on the president’s general image of experience and competence, which had a lingering effect,” Galston said.Historically, voters tend to punish the president’s party in the first midterm elections after a new administration takes power. But the defeats tend to be steeper when a president is unpopular. According to Gallup polling, presidents with job approval ratings below 50% have seen their parties lose an average of 37 House seats during the midterm elections.Already Republicans’ unexpected strength last year in off-cycle elections in states Biden won by wide margins in 2020 – like Virginia and New Jersey – has delivered a stark warning of a dangerous future to Democrats.The results suggested that the resistance-driven passion that drove Democratic victories during the Trump era had fizzled. Perhaps most alarming for Democrats was the electorate’s deep sense of malaise. Despite a mass vaccination campaign and trillions of dollars in relief money, voters feel worse now about the state of the pandemic and the economy than they did earlier in Biden’s presidency, according to a CBS News/YouGov survey.Few voters give Biden credit for muscling through a trillion-dollar investment in the nation’s infrastructure or passing the American Rescue Plan, which sent checks to most Americans and slashed poverty rates.“It’s an ironic situation where the policies are more popular than the politicians, which is very rare,” said Celinda Lake, a veteran Democratic pollster. “Usually it’s the other way around.”Further capturing that frustration, a Gallup poll released on Monday found a dramatic shift in party preference over the last year, swinging from a nine-point Democratic advantage at the beginning of 2021 to a five-point Republican advantage by the end of the year. The change follows the collapse of Biden’s presidential approval ratings.Line chart of a Gallup poll surveying US political party affiliation in 2021. Democrats advantage to begin 2021 flipped to a Republican lead by the end.This augurs poorly for Democrats, leaving a narrowing window to deliver on their campaign promises, from Build Back Better to voting rights and immigration reform.Messy intra-party negotiations over Biden’s sprawling climate and social policy bill overshadowed the policy, leaving the public with a shallow understanding of its contents and concern over its cost. The legislation remains in limbo after Senator Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, announced he could not support the measure in its current form.Amid the stalemate over his agenda, Democrats have become disenchanted with Biden.He is bleeding support among young voters angry over inaction on climate change, health care and student debt forgiveness. Hispanic voters have lost confidence in Biden’s handling of the pandemic and the economy, a red flag for Democrats after they shifted toward Trump and the Republican party in 2020. And support has been sliding among Black voters, who were critical to Biden’s victory but have been disappointed by the lack of progress on voting rights and police reform.In an attempt to reset, Biden recently delivered a pair of searing speeches, during which he implored the Senate to pass federal voting rights legislation and accused Republicans who stand in the way of standing on the side of Bull Connor and Jefferson Davis.Though not all the variables are within Biden’s control, Lake said there is still plenty of time– and opportunities – to improve his standing before the midterms in November. She said the president’s newly emboldened tone was a good start, that would help to “energize” Democrats, while signalling “strength” to wary independents.“He’s in leadership mode now,” she said.Democrats widely applauded Biden’s rhetorical shift, but some civil rights leaders and voting rights advocates boycotted the speech in Atlanta to express disapproval of what they view as a belated push on an issue that is paramount for their communities and the functioning of democracy itself. In a statement, the president of the NAACP Derrick Johnson, said it was past time for the administration to “match their words with actions”.Lorella Praeli, co-president of the progressive group, Community Change Action, said voters need to see Biden fighting on their behalf.She urged the president to use every executive tool at his disposal to ease the financial pressures facing millions of Americans, like canceling student debt, as he continues to push for a path forward on Build Back Better, voting rights and immigration reform.Part of the challenge for Biden, she said, is to convince a demoralized public that “the future is still up for grabs”.“Fight for people, deliver for people and then make sure they know what has happened,” she said. “It’s really that simple.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsDemocratsfeaturesReuse this content More

In an era of rightwing populism, we cannot destroy democracy in order to save itJeff SparrowDemocracy isn’t an institution – it’s a practice that becomes stronger through use. The key to defeating Trump lies in mobilising ordinary people to articulate their real needs The recent anniversary of the Trumpian riot at the Capitol building highlighted a growing anxiety about the state of democracy both in America and around the world.In a widely circulated article, the Canadian professor Thomas Homer-Dixon warned of a rightwing dictatorship in the US by 2030. At the same time, a Quinnipiac University poll found nearly 60% of Americans believed their democracy is “in danger of collapse”.Internationally, the Stockholm based-NGO International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance says more nations than ever before faced “democratic erosion”, while Freedom House argues that “in every region of the world, democracy is under attack by populist leaders and groups that reject pluralism and demand unchecked power”.Trump’s ‘cult-like control’ of Republican party grows stronger since insurrectionRead moreUnfortunately, in response to that rightwing populist threat, many centrists fall back to the bad arguments of the past.In the wake of the first world war, US journalist Walter Lippmann claimed the mass media and its techniques of persuasion rendered the ordinary voter so susceptible to propaganda as to render democracy unworkable.“The world about which each man is supposed to have opinions,” he complained, “has become so complicated as to defy his powers of understanding.”Lippmann drew explicitly on a critique made by Plato in The Republic, where the philosopher described the Athenian assembly as giving liberty to demagogues. Such men, Plato explained, used rhetoric and emotion to whip up the masses behind power-hungry rogues, rather than allowing competent leaders to rule.Following Trump’s shock election in 2016, a modern-day version of this argument became a kind of centrist common sense, neatly captured in a viral New Yorker cartoon by Will McPhail. The drawing showed an airline passenger addressing others in the plane: “These smug pilots have lost touch with regular passengers like us. Who thinks I should fly the plane?”One from this week’s @NewYorker. Hello politics, my names Will. pic.twitter.com/5LfNYnOgMA— Will McPhail (@WillMcPhail) January 2, 2017
The gag was widely circulated by liberals aghast at Trump’s policies. Yet, as I’ve argued elsewhere, rather than critiquing his racism and sexism the cartoon implied that the problem lay with a system that allowed ordinary people to opine on matters they weren’t qualified to adjudicate. Running the country, the image suggested, was like flying a plane: a matter best left to the experts.That was pretty much Plato’s argument – the basis on which he advocated a dictatorship by philosopher kings.Yet, contrary to what centrists claim, the real problem with rightwing populism is not that it’s populist but rather that it’s not – and can’t be – populist enough.The evolution of the Republican party into a vehicle for Trumpian populism provides a good illustration. The Washington Post recently noted that at least 163 politicians who accept Trump’s false claims about fraud in the 2020 poll are now running for “statewide positions that would give them authority over the administration of elections’”.That matters because legislatures dominated by Trump supporters have already been cracking down on mail-in ballots, imposing onerous ID requirements and otherwise making voting more difficult, with the nonpartisan Brennan Centre for Justice reporting at least 19 states imposing laws in 2021 that restricted voting access in some way.Why do those associated with Donald Trump seek a restricted franchise?A movement dominated by the super-wealthy and exploiting racial and gender anxieties relies upon exclusion. Despite its “populist” rhetoric, Trumpian demagoguery appeals to a minority: it cannot offer solutions to the population of an increasingly diverse nation.The key to defeating Trump thus lies in mobilising ordinary people to articulate their real needs.But across the United States, the legislative response to the Capitol riot pushed by Democrats has centred not on extending democratic rights but on laws criminalising demonstrations.As Branko Marcetic points out, the aftermath of 6 January saw “a crackdown on dissent: a dramatic increase in anti-protest bills around the country, including at least 88 that have been introduced since the Capitol riot; a massive buildup of the Capitol police into a national force to target ‘terrorism’; as well as the rollout by the Biden administration of a sweeping domestic counter-terror strategy.”Covid will not be our last global health crisis – we need a long-term plan | Jeff SparrowRead moreThe strategy includes on its list of “domestic violent extremists” groups such as environmentalists, anti-capitalists and animal rights activists, all of whom you’d expect to play an important role in a movement against Trump to cultivate.During the Vietnam war, an American commander supposedly explained the necessity of destroying a village in order to save it. In an era of rightwing populism, we need to ensure that the defences of democracy doesn’t follow a similar logic.Instead, progressives require a program that, as Nicholas Tampio puts it, treats “people as citizens – that is, as adults capable of thoughtful decisions and moral actions, rather than as children who need to manipulated”. That means entrusting them “with meaningful opportunities to participate in the political process” rather than simply expecting them to vote for one or another leader on polling day.Democracy isn’t an institution. It’s a practice – and, as such, it becomes stronger through use.That’s the real problem. When’s the last time you felt your opinion actually mattered in your daily life? How often do you take part in democratic debates in your workplace, your neighbourhood, your trade union or your community group?The withering of opportunities for ordinary people to exercise meaningful power over their collective affairs gives the Platonic critique of democracy an unwarranted credibility.Conversely, the more we practise governing ourselves – by debating, by organising, by demonstrating and protesting – the more natural democracy seems and the more isolated demagogues become.
Jeff Sparrow is a Guardian Australia columnist
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US airline officials warn of ‘catastrophic’ crisis in aviation with new 5G serviceIntroduction of the new technology near airports could interfere with critical airplane instruments such as radio altimeters US airline chiefs have warned that the introduction of a new 5G service could cause US commerce to “grind to a halt” due to possibly grounding a significant number of aircraft and might “strand tens of thousands of Americans overseas”.Warnings of an impending “catastrophic” crisis in aviation came in a letter sent to White House National Economic Council director Brian Deese, transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) administrator Steve Dickson and Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel, Reuters reported Monday.Airbus and Boeing express concerns over 5G interference in USRead more“Unless our major hubs are cleared to fly, the vast majority of the traveling and shipping public will essentially be grounded,” the letter, signed by the chief executives of American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, Southwest Airlines and Jet Blue, as well as freight and parcel carriers UPS and FedEx, said.They warned new C-Band 5G technology could interfere with critical airplane instruments such as radio altimeters – which judge the distance from the ground to the bottom of the flying vessel – and have an impact on low-visibility operations.“This means that on a day like yesterday, more than 1,100 flights and 100,000 passengers would be subjected to cancellations, diversions or delays,” the letter cautioned, adding a call for urgent action to be taken.“To be blunt, the nation’s commerce will grind to a halt,” the executives said.Airlines for America, the lobbying group that organized the letter, and government agencies were not immediately available for comment.In a letter dated 4 January, the group thanked Buttigieg, Dickson and Deese for “reaching the agreement with AT&T and Verizon to delay their planned 5G C-band deployment around certain airports for two weeks and to commit to the proposed mitigations”.“Safety is and always will be the top priority of US airlines,” it said. “We will continue to work with all stakeholders to help ensure that new 5G service can coexist with aviation safely.”As part of the agreement – which was dated 3 January – AT&T and Verizon agreed to create buffer zones around 50 US airports to reduce interference risks and take other steps to cut potential interference for six months.But the agreement to delay wider implementation of the technology to 19 January is about to expire. The airlines had requested “that 5G be implemented everywhere in the country except within the approximate 2 miles (3.2 km) of airport runways” at some key airports.“Immediate intervention is needed to avoid significant operational disruption to air passengers, shippers, supply chain and delivery of needed medical supplies,” Reuters reported the letter as saying.It also warned that flight restrictions will not be limited to poor weather operations.“Multiple modern safety systems on aircraft will be deemed unusable causing a much larger problem than what we knew … Airplane manufacturers have informed us that there are huge swaths of the operating fleet that may need to be indefinitelygrounded.”The airlines urged action to ensure “5G is deployed except when towers are too close to airport runways until the FAA can determine how that can be safely accomplished without catastrophic disruption”.On Sunday, the FAA said it had cleared an estimated 45% of US commercial airplanes to perform low-visibility landings at many airports where 5G C-band will be deployed starting on Wednesday.The warning follows previous alerts that Medevac helicopters or the aircraft that hospitals and rescue missions may also be affected by the technology.According to a Bloomberg report, 5G interference on radio altimeters on emergency helicopters could ground operations. The 5G will not necessarily shut down the altimeter, but could cause it to give inaccurate readings.Topics5GAirline industryUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

MLK is revered today but the real King would make white people uncomfortable Michael HarriotMartin Luther King Jr was a walking, talking example of everything this country despises about the quest for Black liberation Every year, on the third Monday in January, America hosts a Sadie Hawkins-style role-reversal where the entire country pretends to celebrate a man whose achievements and values they spent the previous 364 days ignoring, demonizing and trying to dismantle. Today, your favorite vote suppressors will take a brief respite from disenfranchising Black voters, denying history and increasing inequality to celebrate a real American hero.That’s right, it’s MLK Day!You might think it’s a little disrespectful to refer to a great American hero by his initials but, in this specific case, it’s perfectly fine. The actual Martin Luther King Jr who lived and breathed is not the man most people will be honoring today because that Martin Luther King is dead and gone. No, the man upon whom they will heap their performative praise with social media virtue-signaling is MLK, a caricature of a man whose likeness has been made palatable for white consumption. Like BLM, CRT and USA, the people who King fought against have now managed to flatten a three-dimensional symbol to a three-letter, chant-worthy phrase worthy of demonization or deification.I am not condemning this all-American tradition of gaslighting. I had an imaginary friend growing up and he was not nearly as eloquent as this history – refurbished MLK they have invented. I, more than anyone, can appreciate the effort this country has put into manufacturing a version of King that is based on a true story. Whitewashing an entire human being is not as easy as you think. Plus, I understand why they do it:The real Martin Luther King would make white people uncomfortable.Anyone who knows the unwhitened story of Martin Luther King Jr understands why whitesplaining “what MLK would have wanted” is a favorite pastime of politicians and performative sympathetic social media “allies”. The average American might get the heebie-jeebies if they knew they were celebrating a radical who challenged systemic racism, supported reparations and advocated for a universal basic income.Although, in death, he became one of the most revered figures in US history, for the entirety of the 39 years that King lived and breathed, there wasn’t a single day when the majority of white Americans approved of him. In 1966, Gallup measured his approval rating at 32% positive and 63% negative. That same year, a December Harris poll found that 50% of whites felt King was “hurting the negro cause of civil rights” while only 36% felt he was helping. By the time he died in 1968, three out of four white Americans disapproved of him. In the wake of his assassination, 31% of the country felt that he “brought it on himself”.One does not have to reach back into the historical archives to explain why King was so despised. The sentiments that made him a villain are still prevalent in America today. When he was alive, King was a walking, talking example of everything this country despises about the quest for Black liberation. He railed against police brutality. He reminded the country of its racist past. He scolded the powers that be for income inequality and systemic racism. Not only did he condemn the openly racist opponents of equality, he reminded the legions of whites who were willing to sit idly by while their fellow countrymen were oppressed that they were also oppressors. “He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it,” King said. “He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”To be fair, King readily admitted that it was his goal to make white people uncomfortable. Just before he condemned white moderates in A Letter from Birmingham Jail, he revealed that his goal was to “create the kind of tension in society that will help men to rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism”. He went on to explain that nonviolent direct action – King’s primary strategy to affect progress – was an attempt to induce the white community to a point where marginalized people’s desperate cries could no longer be ignored.Yet, this new, more compassionate America is just as intolerant when Black Lives Matter demonstrators flood into the streets to protest police brutality. Of course, if teaching Black history wasn’t criminalized as critical race theory, more people might know that the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers’ original intent was to confront their governor about police brutality – namely the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper. The people who believe the NFL should have kicked Colin Kaepernick out of football for his “un-American” protests would have really loathed Roberto Clemente, who convinced his teammates to protest King’s death by refusing to play on Major League Baseball’s opening day in 1968. They were furious when Clemente told his local paper: “If you have to ask Negro players, then we do not have a great country.”I wonder how Tim Scott and Mitch McConnell would’ve felt about that. After all, they both invoked King’s name while claiming that America is not a racist country. But I’m sure MLK would never go as far as painting his place of birth as a racist country.“The first thing I would like to mention is that there must be a recognition on the part of everybody in this nation that America is still a racist country,” said King days before a white supremacist put a bullet in his face. “Now however unpleasant that sounds, it is the truth. And we will never solve the problem of racism until there is a recognition of the fact that racism still stands at the center of so much of our nation and we must see racism for what it is.”See how many times someone mentions that quote today.Oh, wait … King made that speech at Grosse Pointe High School, where Michigan’s Republican-controlled House of Representatives recently passed an anti-CRT bill making it illegal to teach that the “United States is a fundamentally racist country”.Never mind.That’s why, despite what people who cherry-pick quotes from the I Have a Dream speech would have you believe, King has never suggested that white people should be judged “by the content of their character and not by the color of their skin”. In fact, he regularly judged white people to explain the insanity of white supremacy.“In their relations with Negroes, white people discovered that they had rejected the very center of their own ethical professions,” King wrote in 1956. “They could not face the triumph of their lesser instincts and simultaneously have peace within. And so, to gain it, they rationalized – insisting that the unfortunate Negro, being less than human, deserved and even enjoyed second class status… White men soon came to forget that the Southern social culture and all its institutions had been organized to perpetuate this rationalization. They observed a caste system and quickly were conditioned to believe that its social results, which they had created, actually reflected the Negro’s innate and true nature.”Even as a 17-year-old, King used Georgia’s largest newspaper to make the entire state uncomfortable when he reminded the Atlanta Constitution’s readers: “It is fair to remember that almost the total of race mixture in America has come, not at Negro initiative, but by the acts of those very white men who talk loudest of race purity.”To white America, that Martin Luther King Jr was an America-hating, anti-white commie, just like today’s outspoken Black people who are criticized for “playing” all the things that white America hates: the “race card”, the “victim”, and – my favorite – “identity politics”.But, now that King is dead and gone, leaders like Ted Cruz and Ron DeSantis will sing hosannas for MLK while demonizing Black Lives Matter and critical race theory as Marxist, un-American race-baiting that poses American values. It is no coincidence that Alabama’s governor George Wallace described King as “perhaps the most dangerous racist in America today. Long before “race-baiting” became a popular term, South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond said King “must always have an agitation objective lest he end up in the street one day without a drum to beat or a headline to make”. One of Thurmond’s first acts after leaving the Democratic party to become a Republican was to implore the FBI to investigate King’s activities as a communist. (Years later, Thurmond voted for the MLK holiday.) Even after his death, conservative leaders sought to sully King’s legacy by erasing the prospect of a holiday honoring him. “Rev. King’s motives are misrepresented,” wrote then Ohio senator John Ashbrook. “He sought not to work through the law but around it.”And they won.They only agreed to honor King’s legacy after enough time had passed to sufficiently whitewash the radical who unapologetically fought for liberty and justice for all. This might be why they contend that he “gave his life” for civil rights – as if he agreed to take a projectile from a high-powered rifle to his temple in exchange for a statue, a church fan with his face on it, and a three-day weekend in the future.But, let not your heart be troubled when you hear them shower the memory of Martin Luther King Jr with bouquets of reverence. The people who continue to protect broken systems of criminal justice, education and democracy might not necessarily hate King but they do not love him or anything he stood for.That’s not even an opinion. The polling data proves it. Historical facts prove it. The bits of blood and bone that stained the balcony outside of a Memphis hotel proves it. More importantly, the fact that Black Americans are still fighting the same battles against voter suppression, inequality and the right to have a dream almost 54 years after his death is the most accurate measuring rod of what this nation thinks about Martin Luther King.Perhaps that is the most uncomfortable fact of all.
Michael Harriot is a writer and author of the upcoming book Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America
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‘Florida’s Trump’: DeSantis focusing on nonexistent issues as election looms, critics sayOpponents say the governor leans on ‘wokeness’ and culture war issues that are irrelevant to the real needs of Floridians There are still almost 10 months until Florida’s voters elect their next governor, but the campaign of the Republican incumbent, Ron DeSantis, appears well under way.In a red-meat-for-the-base address at the opening of Florida’s legislature last week, themed around the concept of “freedom” but described by critics as a fanfare of authoritarianism, DeSantis gave a clear indication of the issues he believes are on voters’ minds. They include fighting the White House over Covid-19, ballot box fraud, critical race theory in schools and defunding law enforcement.Yet to opponents of the Donald Trump protege, who is tipped for his own presidential run in 2024, DeSantis has chosen to focus on problems that don’t exist in Florida, either to distract from real priorities or to bolster the Trumpist base and improve on his narrow victory over the Democrat Andrew Gillum in 2018.“We have real issues that need to be addressed, and the governor is chasing boogeymen,” said Carlos Guillermo Smith, a Democratic state representative and frequent DeSantis critic.“We have an affordable housing crisis with exorbitant rent hikes of up to 30% that people can’t afford. We have surging property insurance rates. We have a healthcare crisis with 22,000 Floridians with disabilities who are on waitlist to get the services that they deserve.“And Governor DeSantis is focused on fighting ‘wokeness’ in the 2022 legislative session, with the Stop Woke Act. He wants to focus on fighting critical race theories in our schools. That does not exist. It’s not even a thing.”A wave of criticism followed DeSantis’s speech, which came at the start of a 60-day legislative session in Tallahassee during which Republicans will also pursue a Mississippi-style 15-week abortion ban under the guise of “reducing fetal and infant mortality”.DeSantis has said the proposal, which has no exception for rape or incest, is “very reasonable”.But it is his anti-mask approach to Covid-19, and his constant feuding with Joe Biden and Anthony Fauci, of which DeSantis appears most proud, lauding Florida as “the freest state” for his outlawing of “authoritarian, arbitrary and seemingly never-ending mandates”.“While so many around the country have consigned the people’s rights to the graveyard, Florida has stood as freedom’s vanguard,” DeSantis insisted. On Thursday, Florida’s death toll from Covid-19 surpassed 63,000.“Floridians are exhausted by the politicization of Covid-19,” Smith said. “They’re tired of fighting about masks, they’re tired of fighting about vaccines. And they’re tired of the governor continuing to focus on these culture wars that do nothing to promote the prosperity of our state.”It was the Omicron-fuelled surge pushing the state’s coronavirus numbers up by almost 950% that caused more controversy over the recent holidays, when critics accused DeSantis of being missing in action.The governor’s press team inadvertently added to the “Where’s Ron?” confusion by posting on social media two-week-old pictures of him at a bagel store, insisted it was his prerogative to take a few days off if he wanted, then regrouped to attack anybody who suggested he was taking a vacation.DeSantis reappeared after a 13-day absence to say he had been attending chemotherapy sessions with his wife, Casey, who has breast cancer.The first weeks of the new year, in which he will seek his second term, possibly as a springboard to a likely 2024 presidential run, were also bumpy. Nikki Fried, the Democratic Florida agriculture commissioner and potential opponent in November, accused the DeSantis administration of stockpiling about 1m Covid-19 tests in a warehouse as they expired, which state officials later admitted was true after earlier denials.And a planned press briefing in Jacksonville was abruptly postponed after the unseemly spectacle of a peaceful, disabled Black community activist led away in handcuffs and cited for trespass after asking to speak with DeSantis about his coronavirus policies.“No, this isn’t from 1955. This is from an hour ago. At the Governor’s press conference,” Democratic state congresswoman Michele Rayner tweeted, noting that Ben Frazier, founder of Jacksonville’s Northside Coalition, was also denied use of his electric scooter.“A Black man dared to refuse to leave until he met with the governor. From my understanding he wasn’t disrespectful. But you know Ronnie can’t handle criticism of any kind.”Christina Pushaw, DeSantis’s spokesperson, said in a statement that Frazier had a history of “disruptive behavior” and was trespassing “in a secured facility”, even though the meeting took place in a public building.Critics say that while DeSantis has been promoting the rights of citizens to make their own decisions, he has become increasingly authoritarian. He stripped local authorities of powers to instigate coronavirus mitigation efforts and banned school districts from imposing mask mandates.In south Florida in particular, schools say they are “struggling to cope” with staff shortages and student absences.A self-professed law-and-order governor, DeSantis has also offered unvaccinated cops a $5,000 bounty to relocate to Florida, and plans a state paramilitary force outside federal control. The former Florida governor Charlie Crist, another possible opponent in November, accused DeSantis of wanting his own “handpicked secret police”.Democrats, however, concede they face challenges in unseating DeSantis, a strong favorite for re-election in polls taken last year. Florida’s new restrictive voting rights law limits drop boxes and mail-in ballots, and Democrats have recently been overtaken by registered Republican voters for the first time.Analysts say DeSantis also has the advantage of a strong state economy, alongside his pugnacious style of leadership.“DeSantis is, to many Republicans, Florida’s incarnation of Donald Trump, his successor, his alter ego, his clone, whatever you want to call it,” said Darryl Paulson, professor emeritus of government at the University of South Florida.“He’s certainly run very much in the style of Trump, this in-your-face, critical stance he has taken on a lot of issues, which have ingrained him with Republicans. But the GOP in Florida makes up a little less than 40% of the electorate, so to win a statewide race you need to appeal to the no-party-affiliated, independent voters.“How do you appeal to those when you run a campaign trying to bash other people in the face, so to speak? That can play well with your base but not so well especially with independents.”Paulson, however, sees an uphill battle for Democrats. “Every election cycle you’re really appealing to a completely new electorate. When you add in the elderly factor in Florida, people dying off and replaced by newcomers in the state and younger people, it’s hard to project how they’re going to align themselves,” he said.“Right now, the advantage is clearly Republican. But all sorts of things could quickly change. It could be a policy issue that emerges, or a politician that emerges, the two most important things to affect Florida politics.”TopicsRon DeSantisRepublicansUS politicsanalysisReuse this content More

Attack, attack, attack: Republicans drive to make Biden the bogeyman The president has had to withstand a barrage from rightwingers – and for Republicans the formula might be workingIt seemed that Joe Biden would be bad for business in “Make America great again” world.In theory, the US president, a white man with working-class roots and moderate policy positions, was a more elusive target for Donald Trump’s increasingly extreme support base than other prominent Democrats.But after his first year in office, it transpires that Biden is not too boring to be a rightwing boogeyman after all.“He’s our best salesperson,” said Ronald Solomon, a merchandiser who sells a $21.99 T-shirt depicting the president with an Adolf Hitler-style mustache and the slogan “Not My Dictator”. “Sales for Trump stuff and anti-Biden merchandise is the highest it’s been except for the three months leading up to the 2020 election.”The demonization of Biden as a Hitler, Stalin or anti-white racist bears no relation to reality. But for many Republican voters it appears to stick, the product of relentless conservative media attacks, the president’s own missteps, and seething frustration during a seemingly never-ending pandemic.At first Biden did excite less animus than Barack Obama, the first Black president who was subjected to conspiracy theories about his birthplace and the rise of the populist Tea Party movement. Biden never had to go through the misogyny endured by Hillary Clinton.His policy record was also non-incendiary. When Trump supporters gathered at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference under the banner “America vs socialism”, the biggest hate figures were Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist from Vermont, and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a liberal Latina from New York.Since moving into the White House, however, Biden has granted Sanders a prominent voice in shaping his policy agenda. The unexpected scale of the president’s ambition to spend trillions of dollars on coronavirus relief, the social safety net and the climate crisis has fed into a Republican narrative that he is a puppet of the radical left.And although Biden’s identity as a white man neutralised other “isms”, he cannot escape ageism. At 79, he is the oldest American president in history, his every verbal slip seized upon as cause to doubt his mental fitness. Last May, Fox News host Sean Hannity displayed a sippy cup with the presidential seal on it, floating the nickname “Sippy Cup Joe”.In August, Tucker Carlson told viewers of the same network: “Maybe the most important thing we’ve learned is that Joe Biden is not capable of running the country. Joe Biden is senile.” (Such commentators rarely note that Mitch McConnell, Republican minority leader in the Senate, is also 79.)Another popular line of attack is to compare Biden to Jimmy Carter, whose presidency in the 1970s ended in failure after one term. “Joe Biden Is Jimmy Carter 2.0,” said one such press release from the Republican National Committee. “On Joe Biden’s watch, America is grappling with a gas crisis, record-breaking inflation, weak leadership abroad, and Americans trapped behind enemy lines, all reminiscent of the Jimmy Carter years.”But there is no greater symbol of anti-Biden sentiment than “Let’s go Brandon”, a phrase that originated at a Nascar race in Alabama in October. Brandon Brown, a 28-year-old driver, had won his first Xfinity Series and was being interviewed by an NBC Sports reporter.The crowd behind him was chanting something that at first was hard to hear. The reporter suggested they were saying “Let’s go, Brandon!” to support the driver. But it became increasingly clear they were chanting, “Fuck Joe Biden!” So it was that “Let’s go, Brandon” became conservative code for insulting the president and went viral.On a Southwest flight from Houston to Albuquerque, the pilot signed off his greeting over the public address system with the phrase, leaving some passengers aghast. On Christmas Eve, when Biden fielded a few phone calls to the Norad Santa Tracker, Jared Schmeck, a Trump supporter from Oregon, said: “Merry Christmas and let’s go, Brandon!”Speaking from Las Vegas, Solomon, president of the Maga Mall, said he has a line of “Let’s go, Brandon” merchandise including banners, buttons, T-shirts for men and women and hats in four different colors. “One, it’s an attack on the mainstream media: this gal from NBC Sports immediately tried to make it like they were saying something that they weren’t,” he explained.“Two, it’s a way for Republicans that don’t want to use a four-letter word to have a chance to say something that attacks the president of the United States, who they can’t stand any more.”In a nod to the Trump base, Republican senator Ted Cruz posed with a “Let’s go, Brandon” sign at baseball’s World Series. McConnell’s press secretary retweeted a photo of the phrase on a construction sign in Virginia. Congressman Jeff Duncan of South Carolina wore a “Let’s go, Brandon” face mask at the US Capitol. Jim Lamon, a Senate candidate from Arizona, used the slogan a TV campaign ad.Critics point out that goading, provoking and outraging their opponents, known as “owning the libs”, has become the defining principle of a Republican party that lacks a coherent ideology of its own. McConnell reportedly told donors last month that he would not be putting forward a legislative agenda for November’s midterm elections because he was content to merely hammer away at Democrats.But with Biden’s approval rating hovering in the low 40s, and his Build Back Better agenda stalled in Congress, the Republican formula might be working.John Zogby, a pollster and author, said: “They have made significant inroads into demonizing him. In the beginning, of course, it was hard. He was a softer target, he was Uncle Joe, he had a high favorability rating and he’d been around a long time.“But definitely in the second half of this first year, the almost-mantras of the Republican party have gained hold: he’s too old, he’s a socialist, and then this whole ‘Let’s go, Brandon’ thing. Plus the fact that they’ve been able to successfully block the bigger initiatives so not only a socialist, but a socialist who can’t succeed, is the message.”Barbs and brickbats aimed at a Democratic president are hardly new. Before Obama there was Bill Clinton, who drew his share of rancor, vitriol and baseless conspiracy theories. In today’s hyper-polarized Washington, inflamed by social media, the incumbent can expect to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them.Allan Lichtman, a distinguished history professor at American University in Washington, said: “As long as you have the capital D as your political designation, you are a target for the Republicans. It doesn’t matter if you are a leftwing or moderate Democrat – it makes absolutely no difference.“Bill Clinton was a centrist. He was the head of the Democratic Leadership Council, dedicated to moving the Democrats to the centre, and yet they relentlessly attacked him, even impeached him. Republicans will oppose essentially anything that a Democratic president proposes and relentlessly attack them.”Others argue that Biden has done Republicans’ work for them with a botched Afghanistan withdrawal, a crisis at the southern border, the highest inflation for 40 years and an inability to curb the pandemic. The president’s newly aggressive stance on voting rights and safeguarding democracy has also rallied Republicans against him.Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and strategist, said: “Incredibly, Joe Biden has a worse approval rating at this point than Donald Trump did and it’s not because of Republican critiques. It’s because of Biden’s failures.“He’s failed to communicate effectively. He’s failed to try to bridge the gap; in fact, he’s been promoting greater division. He’s promised too much on Covid and hasn’t delivered. And nothing bothers people more than rising prices because that affects everyone, whether you are working class, middle class or somewhat affluent.”TopicsUS newsRepublicansUS politicsJoe BidenfeaturesReuse this content More

Glenn Youngkin attempts to ban critical race theory on day one as Virginia governorNewly elected Republican unveils sweeping conservative orders, including loosening public health mandates during the pandemic Virginia’s newly elected Republican governor has immediately passed a swath of conservative orders – ranging from attempts to alter local school curriculums to loosening public health mandates during the pandemic – after being sworn into office on Saturday.Glenn Youngkin, a former private equity CEO who has never served in public office before, became the state’s first Republican governor since 2010 after a closely watched gubernatorial election last year.The 55 year-old placed the issue of critical race theory (CRT) at the centre of his campaign, capitalizing on a conservative backlash against the discipline and pledging to ban teaching of it in Virginia’s schools. Critical race theory is an academic practice that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society.The fight to whitewash US history: ‘A drop of poison is all you need’ Read moreOn Saturday, after taking the oath of office, Youngkin unveiled a list of nine executive orders and two executive directives, with the first on the list described as a directive to “restore excellence in education by ending the use of divisive concepts, including Critical Race Theory, in public education”.The order lists 13 instructions, many directed to the state’s school superintendent, who has been tasked with reviewing the state’s curriculum and policies within the department of education, to identify “inherently divisive concepts”. The order also bans an executive employee from “directing or otherwise compelling students to personally affirm, adopt, or adhere to inherently divisive concepts”.The order does not define “divisive concepts” but cites critical race theory as an example.At least 22 other states have moved towards imposing limits on the teaching of critical race theory in recent months, as rightwing media in the US continues to fuel disinformation about the teaching of the previously little-known discipline.Despite the sweeping and ambiguous language, the governor’s power to intervene in local school districts is limited. And although Virginia’s general assembly has the power to compel school boards to adopt specific policy via legislation, state Democrats hold a slim majority in the Senate, meaning new laws are unlikely.From viral videos to Fox News: how rightwing media fueled the critical race theory panicRead moreOn Saturday, senior state Democrats told local media they planned to block much of the new governor’s agenda.The sweeping executive orders also included loosening of public health mandates, aimed at slowing the spread of Covid-19 during the coronavirus pandemic. Youngkin’s second order eliminated mask ordinances for pupils in the state’s schools, while his last executive directive abolished vaccine mandates for state employees.Like many other areas of the US, Virginia continues to see a surge in Covid cases as the omicron variant rips through the country. Cases are up 288% in comparison to last winter’s surge, according to the New York Times. The current seven day positivity rate sits at over 35%, according to the state health department.15,803 have died in the state from the virus since the pandemic began.TopicsVirginiaRepublicansUS politicsCoronavirusUS educationnewsReuse this content More

The Guardian view of Joe Biden: he needs to face opponents within – and withoutEditorialIf the president can’t build better he won’t be back. Instead Donald Trump might return The US president, Joe Biden, suffered his worst day in office – so far – last Thursday. Mr Biden had begun that morning hoping to convince his party to support his push to change Senate rules to pass two voting rights bills. Even before he got a chance to make his case, Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a rightwing Democrat, rejected the president’s plan. At a stroke, two key parts of Mr Biden’s agenda – racial justice and democracy – appear stalled. On the same day, the US supreme court struck down the Biden administration’s requirement for businesses to make employees either be vaccinated against Covid-19 or test weekly and wear a mask at work. The president’s pledge to lift the threat of the pandemic won’t be redeemed any time soon.Mr Biden’s opponents paint him as a leader of drift and dwindling energy. If this view settles, then it’ll be ​​an image hard to shift. There’s little room for reassessment in politics. That is why the president must change course and have a clear-eyed view of his opponents within and without. The “moderate” wing of the Democratic party has already gutted the president’s climate plans. These Democrats, like most Republicans, depend on a donor class which wants to ​​render legislation inert that would hit corporate profits.On the campaign trail Mr Biden said he would deal with the threat. In office he has not done so. The president faces a concerted campaign of leveraging money to protect money. Employers claimed that his “vaccine-or-test” mandate would cost billions of dollars to implement. A number of Republican-dominated states have fought its imposition. Covid-19 has killed almost a million Americans and hospitals are overwhelmed with unvaccinated patients. Conservative judges share an ideological aim with the Republican party to dismantle the system – at the cost of American lives during a pandemic – which permits the federal government to repeal unfair state laws.Mr Biden’s problem is that, on paper, the Democrats seem unassailable: controlling both houses of Congress and the presidency. But this is far from the case. Democrats were once something of a “party of state”. They controlled both the House and the Senate between 1933 and 1981, interrupted only by two brief Republican interludes. The Democrats won the presidency two-thirds of the time during this period. Today neither party perceives itself as a permanent majority or permanent minority. This helps to polarise politics as party differences cut against collaboration.Slim majorities now make radical change. Democrats demonstrated this with Obamacare. Republicans did the same with taxes in 2017. Bernie Sanders advises the Democrats to boil down their offer to its most popular elements and hold votes to extend child tax credits, cut drug prices and raise the federal hourly minimum wage to $15. This feels right and ought to appeal to Mr Biden: putting Democrats on the right side, and Republicans on the wrong side, of public opinion before November’s midterm elections. The stakes could not be higher. Maureen Dowd in the New York Times warned: “Joe Biden better Build Better or he won’t be Back”. That might open the door to Donald Trump – or someone worse.TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS supreme courtUS CongresseditorialsReuse this content More