US Politics

OpinionJoe BidenIf Democrats return to centrism, they are doomed to lose against TrumpSamuel MoynBiden was once touted as the ‘New FDR’. That ambition is fast dying – as are Democrats hopes of remaining in power Mon 8 Nov 2021 08.56 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 15.52 ESTCongress’s passage on Friday of Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill would ordinarily have been a cause for celebration. But there is a good chance it was the beginning of the end of his presidency. After all, the bill’s final days marked a new consensus around a centrist set of economic remedies, chosen out of fears of what will supposedly happen when progressives with a transformative agenda exercise too much influence on the Democratic party agenda.Only 10 months ago, Biden came into office with great expectations – but greater terrors. Even more apparent at the start than now, Biden’s presidency has been defined by fear rather than hope. With the assault on the Capitol earlier in the month, the culmination of a four-year deathwatch for American democracy, the emergency could hardly evaporate overnight. With Donald Trump temporarily ousted, his replacement also drew 1930s comparisons. The question “is he or isn’t he?” had been asked of Biden’s predecessor for four years. To redeem the country from the fascist, was Biden going to be Franklin Roosevelt?Like FDR, Biden led Democrats who have rightly stressed economic transformation for the sake of the poor and vulnerable but also for the angry and disaffected voters of the stagnating middle. But unlike Roosevelt, Biden’s coalition is fragile and fissures emerged to threaten his success almost from the start – fissures that broke it apart definitively last week even in the midst of Biden’s infrastructure victory.Other causes were forced to the margins along the way. Biden subordinated even critical fixes to American democracy, like reforms of courts and elections, to the economic agenda. As for his immigration policies, which mostly resembled the disgusting ones of prior presidents, they were treated with a partisan silence, provoking rage among the few principled enough to demand fewer cruelties and restrictions no matter who is imposing them. But Biden got a pass because enough agreed with the priority to address the economic reasons for Trump’s breakthrough, which are undeniable.Yet in comparison to Roosevelt’s first “100 days” – which saw 15 major bills and gave the early phase of every presidency its name – Biden’s first 100 days were bogged down. A Covid-19 relief and stimulus bill was passed, adding $1.9tn in emergency spending to the $2.2tn of the first such bill signed by Trump in March 2020. But the real hopes fell on the big-ticket measures for “infrastructure” and welfare that Biden resolved to pursue separately. After all, the American Rescue Plan was only meant to be a temporary stopgap for an American society beset with deeper ills even beyond those that the virus laid bare.The game was on. At first the debate seemed to be about how costly to make the bills and how to fund them. This was especially true for the American Families Plan, which was supposed to take steps towards an American welfare state – including by making relief measures for children in earlier bills permanent. Progressives in Congress, understanding the risks, were lauded for an early victory in August, refusing to back the first narrower infrastructure bill if Democrats abandoned the second more ambitious social spending bill. Centrists tried to tag progressives as the obstructionists. But the mainstream narrative remained that by holding infrastructure hostage, progressives were wisely keeping centrists from returning to form.Even as it became clearer and clearer that the Democratic centrist senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, and like-minded Democratic colleagues in the House of Representatives, were doing damage to the ambition of the bills, a breakthrough after generations of Democratic austerity and neoliberalism still seemed possible. Then came the critical event that allowed for the centrist breakthrough last week: the election for Virginia governor last Tuesday.In an electoral shock, Republican Glenn Youngkin won – and, more important, grizzled and uncharismatic Democratic party sage Terry McAuliffe, who had once held the governor’s office, lost. Even though McAuliffe’s reputation for decades has been one of a centrist on economics – he served as Bill Clinton’s campaign chair in the 1990s – centrists scored a narrative victory. Wasn’t it because of progressive excess that voters were turning on the party? “Wokeness derails the Democrats,” one headline ran. Lawmakers in Washington scurried to marginalize progressives by passing the infrastructure bill, with some progressives voting no, and others citing promises that Democrats will still continue on to the welfare measures.The rush to judgment was peculiar. It is not until 2022 that the Democrats will need to show something for themselves, and there was no reason to abandon the social spending plan. Suddenly, however, progressives holding tough – since some Republicans supported the infrastructure plan – were dispensable.The new narrative was that Youngkin won because of antiracist rhetoric many Democrats have adopted, along with elites branded as “out of touch” by other elite commentators. Centrists saw a golden opportunity to call for a return to their moderation, including in containing spending.In an extraordinary op-ed, the New York Times called for an “honest conversation” about abandoning progressive goals across the board – including the economy, where Americans demand “bipartisan solutions” that respect inflationary risks and refuse to spend very much. The truth was that Americans had gotten bipartisan neoliberalism for decades, but no matter. One Twitter commentator snarkily noted that it was hardly surprising that “the lessons from Tuesday’s election” matched the “ideological goals” neoliberal elites “had before the election and decades before that. What are the odds!”Democrats blew by the possibility that McAuliffe’s failures were mainly his fault, and due less to “critical race theory” that allegedly was already reshaping public education than to an abandonment of parents forced to endure school closures for years (itself an economic issue). Either way, the critical error is assuming that voters rejected progressive economic policies, which are popular across the board.Even before the events the other day, Democrats defined what was in Build Back Better – their slogan and the name of the welfare bill – downwards. Free college was stripped out early, family and medical leave – standard across industrialized democracies for decades – were killed late, and Biden kowtowed to centrists who demanded a more marketized version not just of environmental concern but of funding government across the board, as taxes hikes were reversed. With its fate no longer hostage to infrastructure, in spite of written promises from some centrists that progressives reportedly exacted at the last minute, there is no reason to be optimistic about the final bill’s fate.An infrastructure bill for a country in decay and decline was much needed and has itself eluded Democrats for decades. Though cut in half to win acceptance, its $1tn for a grab bag of spending – much focused on transport – is nothing to trivialize. But rarely in history has a greater looming defeat been snatched from the jaws of a political victory as the other day.In the first year of Biden’s presidency, Democrats agreed that the only alternative to barbarism is, if not socialism, some modicum of economic change. Many agreed that opening acts of Barack Obama’s administration had been fatefully insufficient. Now, despite the lessons of the Obama presidency, Republicans are set to recapture one house of Congress after two years – or both. By contrast, FDR gained seats in both houses after delivering substantive change, and won the presidency three more times.Of course, even if progressives were to secure a welfare package and retain influence in their party, Trump – or an even more popular Republican – could still win the presidency. But this outcome is a near certainty if the Democrats return to centrist form – as seems the likeliest outcome now.
Samuel Moyn is a professor of law and history at Yale and the author of Not Enough: Human Rights in an Unequal World
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OpinionBiden administrationBiden’s infrastructure success is a historic – and sorely needed – win Gary GerstleInfrastructure bill’s passage opens a path to victory in 2022. Democrats should be encouraged by this breakthrough Mon 8 Nov 2021 06.19 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 11.08 ESTThe infrastructure deal struck late on Friday evening gave Biden a desperately needed win. It represents an opportunity to regain control of the political narrative that the Afghanistan debacle in August had stripped from his grasp. Since that time, his presidency has taken a series of damaging hits, culminating in the party’s dispiriting losses in Tuesday’s elections. The deal reached between the moderate and progressive wings of the Democratic party had to happen for the party to have any chance of keeping its congressional majorities in 2022.The passage of the billion-dollar-plus infrastructure bill is the largest appropriation of its kind since the Eisenhower Congress gave America its interstate highway system in the 1950s. Infrastructural improvements in the country are urgently needed and, if handled well, will be greeted with enthusiasm by Democrats and Republicans alike. The size of this bill, in combination with Biden’s $1.9tn American Rescue Plan passed last spring, and the likelihood that some version of the social infrastructural bill will pass Congress before the end of the calendar year, puts Biden’s ambition in New Deal-second world war territory. It will quiet critics of the FDR-Biden comparisons, at least for a time.The bill’s passage coincides with encouraging news on the economic and Covid-19 fronts: Friday’s jobs report was better than expected, the virulence of the Delta variant may have peaked, and Pfizer’s report of an effective treatment for those ill with the disease may turn out to have as much significance as the announcement a year ago that vaccines were on their way. Imagine if the Pfizer medicines, by election season 2022, turn Covid infections into nothing worse than a bad cold or the flu. Credit will fall to the Democrats.Friday’s victory is also notable for delivering on Biden’s promise of bipartisanship. Thirteen Republican votes in the House of Representatives hardly constitute a wave but they represent 13 more than the total cast by Republicans for Obama’s Affordable Care Act in 2010. Those 13 yea votes, moreover, breached the rules governing Trump-style politics, which dictate giving opponents no quarter. Trump will not take kindly to hearing reports that “sleepy Joe” has succeeded on infrastructure where the Great Leader himself had failed. It may be that a movement out of the Trump era, if it is to happen, will occur through a series of modest steps rather than through one big bang.It will take days and weeks for full reports of Friday’s tense negotiations to emerge. But already there are two details worth highlighting. First, Black politicians, this time in the form of the Congressional Black Caucus, came to Biden’s rescue much as Jim Clyburn had in the crucial South Carolina primary in February 2020. Nancy Pelosi helped this maneuver along by sending out Joyce Beatty, head of the Congressional Black Caucus, to deliver a message to the progressives that, at this critical moment, they needed to check their legislative utopianism at the door and vote for the infrastructure bill. Biden must take appropriate notice of this Black Caucus intervention, and find ways to reward it.Second, Biden must also understand that the progressives compromised more than the moderates did. For months, the former had pledged to hold up the infrastructure bill until its fraternal twin, the social infrastructural bill known as the Build Back Better Act (BBBA), passed as well. The skillful Pramila Jayapal, head of the House’s Progressive Caucus, extracted the equivalent of sworn oaths from key party moderates to vote for BBBA when it comes up for a vote (as it will) sometime in November. But these moderates will have an escape hatch: If the Congressional Budget Office’s costing of BBBA turns out to be much higher than expected, they will claim that such a “worrisome” estimate relieves them of their solemn obligation to vote yea.Biden and Pelosi cannot allow the moderates to wriggle free in this way. Progressives will regard this as a betrayal, and their willingness to contribute their essential energy and support to the Democrats in 2022 will ebb. Collaboration between progressives and moderates in the Democratic party has rarely been easy. But, historically, the party has made its greatest advances when the alliance has held. To sustain that alliance in this moment, both groups must come out of the current legislative season with a win.Biden must now convert his Capitol Hill accomplishment into economic and technological achievements. He must use his bully pulpit to talk up the virtues of his infrastructure bill. He must demonstrate in concrete terms that work on multiple projects is under way via hiring commencing, diggers breaking ground, cranes sprouting across city skylines, and landscapes transforming. Biden should emulate the success of the New Dealers in using infrastructural initiatives to demonstrate to Americans of all kinds that the federal government was working on their behalf. He doesn’t have a lot of time. He’d help his cause by finding and unleashing his own Harry Hopkins, the irrepressible New Deal administrator who was brilliant at cutting through red tape and moving major infrastructural projects from blueprint to reality.There will be challenges galore: completing environmental impact studies in a timely manner, pushing projects through the country’s balky federal system, honoring principles of diversity in issuing contracts while also overcoming labor shortages stemming from the “great resignation”, to name only a few. But this is also Biden’s opportunity to show that he, not Trump, is the man who knows how to make American great again. The passage of the infrastructure bill opens a path to victory in 2022.
Gary Gerstle is Mellon Professor of American history at Cambridge and is writing The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order (2022). He is a Guardian US columnist.
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Parents and parentingI’m a gig worker with zero parental leave. Even four weeks off would make a huge differenceAs US politicians argue over paid time off for parents, workers like me are forced to keep working while caring for children Andrew Lawrence@by_drewMon 8 Nov 2021 06.00 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 12.21 ESTNine months ago I was not yet a bleary-eyed dad juggling work and two baby boys, but I did know a second baby was imminent. What should’ve been a happy milestone was quickly blunted by a boomeranging lament – that there would be no taking any paid parental leave for me, a gig worker.When my first was born, just before the pandemic, I was a freelance writer in the throes of an MFA program. My wife decided it was more cost-effective to stay home with our son than return to work; soon after Covid forced everyone inside, local daycare options vanished.And even though our son was thriving in preschool and my work wasn’t drastically affected by stay-at-home precautions, a second child – blessing and all – was still a nervous endeavor that was going to demand so much more of me. Still, for all of my agita about the challenge ahead, I was still well equipped. I write from anywhere (the kid’s room, the car), keep odd hours and that flexibility meshes well with diaper changes, school runs and bedtime stories. I can stay on the grind and contribute at home. I’m fortunate, sure, but I’m still killing myself to live. And it’s not just me.Working American parents are stretched thinner than ever. In the past half-century the share of working moms has jumped from 51% to 72%, according to Pew Research; almost half of two-parent families include two full-time working parents. And yet despite this trend toward balanced parenting the US remains the glaring exception among 41 resourceful countries that offer a national paid parental leave mandate. A 2019 congressional survey estimated 16% of private-sector workers qualified for family leave, and even then a recent Ball State University study found that only 5% of new dads take two or more weeks of leave. The figures are even more discouraging when you zero in on race. And yet there’s no question that part-time workers – 11% of whom have access to family leave, according to the Department of Labor – have it hardest. In a country that is increasingly pivoting toward a gig economy, this patchy social safety net should be an acute concern.Only nine states and Washington DC mandate paternity leave – and even then it isn’t paid. The Family and Medical Leave Act gives parents unpaid leave for public agency workers and employees who have worked at least one year at private companies with at least 50 employees. That’s even as the benefits of paid leave have been well established for decades – most obviously in kids who grow up to be happy and self-assured. But paid family leave is good for the economy too, as workers with access are much more likely to return to their jobs and strengthen the overall labor force.You’d think a president whose origin story derives from his being there for his kids after his wife and infant daughter were tragically killed in a car accident would have an easier time making a case for paid family leave. But it had been a sticking point in Joe Biden’s Build Back Better bill, with the terms going from 12 weeks to four weeks to out entirely (for Dino Senator Joe Manchin) to back in the fold when the bill narrowly survived a House vote last Friday. The haggling persisted even as Ball State researchers also found that 86% Americans supported some form of paid family leave, with participants on average pushing for 13 months off. When the Atlanta Braves utility player Ehire Adrianza took paternity leave before game six of the World Series, Braves fans mostly cheered – probably because it didn’t cost them the championship.Of course some will find demands for paid family leave laughable, especially coming from a parent who didn’t push. Last month Joe Lonsdale, a smirking tech venture capitalist and father of three, gaslit the Twitterverse after pronouncing any prominent man who takes six months off with his newborn was “a loser”. It was a not-so-subtle jab at the US transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, who continues to draw harsh criticism for exploiting the 12 weeks of paid parental leave he receives from the federal government after he and his partner, Chasten, welcomed twins in September. “This idea that both parents should get maternity and paternity leave at the same time is a little weird,” quipped Joe Rogan, also a father of three, on a recent podcast episode.Allow Instagram content?This article includes content provided by Instagram. We ask for your permission before anything is loaded, as they may be using cookies and other technologies. To view this content, click ‘Allow and continue’.Allow and continueBut then again that figures. Rogan just scored a $100m deal from Spotify – which, incidentally, offers its employees six months of paid parental leave regardless of gender. (“And we strongly urge you to take it,” the company tells prospective workers.) Lonsdale and Rogan’s considerable fortunes don’t just buy home help on demand. (Tellingly, Ball State researchers found high-income-earning fathers were most likely to take leave.) It assumes not just that moms must bear the majority of infant caregiving, but also that they don’t need or aren’t deserving of undivided physical or emotional postpartum support. It assumes that same-sex parents can’t be overwhelmed, too. And it assumes childbirth to be a fairly straightforward affair.It dismisses the mounting challenges for women who choose to start their families after 35 (the start line for “geriatric” pregnancies), and altogether overlooks the childbirthing risks for black women – who are four times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Beyoncé, Serena Williams and Allyson Felix have been candid about their struggles. Meghan Markle, who has been just as open about her own pregnancy trials, made personal appeals to lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. Given the broad, bipartisan public support for paid family leave, it’s especially galling that pro-choice championing, family values-espousing conservatives and progressive Democrats were so obstinate about this. Even four paid weeks off makes a massive difference for workers like me. My wife and I committed to a home delivery. As we inched closer to the due date I promised to begin winding down my workload, but as a creative contractor running a small business, that’s easier said than done – and then not done at all when work got really nuts. The further we sailed past our due date, the more the frustration built. Ten days later I was finally forced to hit the pause button when the baby arrived and was immediately rushed to the hospital. While he lay in a NICU bed, there was still a toddler back home who’d be waking up any minute expecting a wardrobe change and a hot breakfast. If it weren’t for family rushing in from out of state and the profound generosity of so many friends and neighbors, I don’t know how we’d have made it through. Finally, just before Halloween, we brought the baby home to a hero’s welcome; his brother, dressed as Iron Man with hands outstretched, shouting “Gimme!” A baby in the hospital, Tony Stark back home, pets to feed, dishes to wash – this is a heaping plate in the best of times, let alone with the extra pressure of urgent work deadlines. But for the moment gig workers and small business owners who survive by eating what they kill have no choice but to press ahead with their jobs and react to the new additions to the family as they come. Now comes the hard part: reconfiguring routines, redrawing responsibilities, reckoning with the increased diaper flow, setting up the rest of the nursery – when all I’d rather do is take a nap. In a world where paid family leave is the norm it’s past the time the US did better by its working parents. TopicsParents and parentingFamilyUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

Abortion‘Catastrophic implications’: UN health expert condemns US over threat to abortion rightsSpecial rapporteur Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng argues in brief filed in a US court that overturning abortion rights would violate international human rights treaties ratified by the US Jessica Glenza@JessicaGlenzaMon 8 Nov 2021 05.00 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 12.50 ESTThe United Nations special rapporteur on the right to health has called on the US supreme court to uphold the right to abortion in America or risk undermining international human rights law and threatening that right elsewhere in the world.The special rapporteur, Dr Tlaleng Mofokeng, is one of just a handful of global observers whose mandate is to travel the world defending human rights.Mofokeng has argued in a brief filed in a US court that overturning abortion rights would violate international human rights treaties ratified by the US, including the convention against torture, should women be forced to carry pregnancies to term.In an interview, Mofokeng told the Guardian she could have filed a brief on abortion rights, “in any other court, in any other abortion case,” globally. However, she chose the US courts because of the direct threat posed to abortion rights in the supreme court’s upcoming session.“We have this joke among us that when the US sneezes the rest of the world catches a [cold],” said Mofokeng. “So we know that politically that what happens in the United States… does have an impact in precedents elsewhere in the world.”Mofokeng’s brief was filed ahead of oral arguments in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case advocates fear will undermine abortion rights nationally. Dobbs poses a direct threat to Roe v Wade, the landmark 1973 case that established a Constitutional right to abortion based in privacy.Roe invalidated dozens of state abortion bans and restrictions, and allowed people to terminate a pregnancy up to the point a fetus can survive outside the womb, generally understood to be about 24 weeks gestation. A full term pregnancy is 39 weeks.“If that gets overturned, it has catastrophic implications, not just for the US,” said Mofokeng, who said she feared overturning Roe would embolden global attacks on reproductive rights.Mofokeng is also a practicing doctor and well-known sex-positive author in South Africa. Most often, she goes by “Dr T”, an informal title which underscores the empathy in her academic analysis. Her most recent UN report outlined the challenges Covid-19 posed to reproductive rights, and how colonialism continues to affect global policies on reproduction, from sterilization to abortion bans.“It means that even those people who are conservative, who are anti-rights, in any country in the world, will actually now start referencing the US court as an example of jurisprudence that should be followed,” said Mofokeng. “And this is why this is so dangerous”.In Dobbs, the court will consider whether Mississippi can ban abortion at 15 weeks gestation. For the court to uphold Mississippi’s law, it would require the court to rewrite standards that determine whether abortion restrictions are constitutional. Advocates fear that could once again allow states to severely restrict or ban abortion.A majority of the court’s nine justices would need to agree to rewrite such standards. Conservative justices hold a 6-3 supermajority on the court. Many observers view the court’s decision to take the Mississippi case as an ominous sign. About six in 10 Americans believe abortion should be legal in “all or most cases”.“If Roe … [were] overturned, many US states will implement bans or near-bans on abortion access that will make individual state laws irreconcilable with international human rights law,” the brief argued. “This would cause irreparable harm to women and girls in violation of the United States’ obligations under the human rights treaties it has signed and ratified.”While the US has not ratified several United Nations treaties, it has ratified the convention against torture, which Mofokeng’s brief argued would be violated if states were allowed to ban abortion.“The denial of safe abortions and subjecting women and girls to humiliating and judgmental attitudes in such contexts of extreme vulnerability and where timely health care is essential amount to torture or ill treatment,” Mofokeng’s brief said, citing a 2016 report by the rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.Conversely, Mofokeng’s brief argued, contrary to Mississippi’s assertions, that “the right to life emanating from human rights treaties does not apply prenatally,” and that the “overwhelming trend for the past half-century has been toward the liberalization of abortion laws worldwide”.Further, since the court has accepted the Dobbs case, it also allowed a six-week abortion ban to go into effect in Texas in September, effectively allowing the nation’s second largest state to nullify Roe within its borders. Experts estimate that if Roe were overturned, roughly two dozen US states mostly in the south and midwest would immediately ban abortion.Such bans would have immediate and direct consequences for women and people seeking abortions.In one recent analysis, the Guttmacher Institute found 26 states are certain or likely to outlaw abortion should Roe be overturned. In just one example, that would require a woman seeking a legal abortion in Louisiana to travel to Kansas to access care.“The rise in global anti-gender and anti-women’s rights is such that people will grasp at anything that seems to make their case solid,” said Mofokeng. And, she said, the case before the supreme court now relies on “non-medical, non-scientific” misinformation.“It means we have a risk of now having global jurisprudence – or at least influences in the global world – using jurisprudence that’s ill-informed. And that’s very dangerous,” said Mofokeng. “To undo the court’s decisions takes decades, sometimes a lifetime – and that’s why it’s dangerous.”TopicsAbortionUnited NationsHealthUS politicsUS supreme courtfeaturesReuse this content More

US newsRepublicans slam Biden vaccine rule for businesses as health groups defend itDivided reaction to mandate requiring that large companies either vaccinate staff or administer tests mirrors vaccine rollout in US Eric BergerMon 8 Nov 2021 05.00 ESTLast modified on Mon 8 Nov 2021 12.07 ESTBiden administration plans to get US companies with 100 or more workers to vaccinate their staff or bring in regular tests have been welcomed by public health groups but slammed by Republicans and trade groups, who claim government overreach with negative economic consequences.Federal court temporarily blocks Biden’s vaccine mandate for larger businessesRead moreSuch divided reaction to the rules announced last week mirrors much of America’s problematic vaccine rollout, where social and political headwinds have seen vaccination take-up slow down worryingly. US vaccination rates are some of the lowest in industrialized countries where the vaccine is readily available.Subject at least to a temporary stay issued by a circuit court in New Orleans on Saturday, the new rule from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Osha) will take effect on 4 January.It requires that large companies either ensure employees have been vaccinated or regularly administer Covid-19 tests and require masks at work for those who refuse to get the shot.The rule will affect an estimated 84 million workers.The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services also issued a rule requiring healthcare workers to be vaccinated by the same deadline, with no option for weekly testing rather than vaccination. That will affect 76,000 providers and more than 17 million workers.The administration also extended a deadline for federal contractors to comply with the same sort of rule – vaccination without the testing option – from 8 December to 4 January.“Too many people remain unvaccinated for us to get out of this pandemic for good,” Joe Biden said in a statement.But the rules sparked new backlash from Republican lawmakers and conservative groups who described the measures as unconstitutional. Republican governors or attorneys general in 15 states plan to file lawsuits against the mandate, according to the Associated Press.“This rule is garbage,” South Carolina’s attorney general, Alan Wilson, a Republican, said, according to the AP. “It’s unconstitutional and we will fight it.”Celebrating the Saturday ruling in Louisiana, the state attorney general, Jeff Landry, said: “The president will not impose medical procedures on the American people without the checks and balances afforded by the constitution.”While courts have largely declined to block state and local vaccine mandates, the federal government “has more constraints on it than state and local governments do when it comes to public health and vaccination”, said Lindsay Wiley, a public health law professor at American University.On whether the Osha rule could be overturned, Wiley said: “It’s difficult to predict, in part because the environment has become so politicized.”Plaintiffs could also seek to file lawsuits in circuits with conservative judges appointed by Donald Trump, Wiley said.Lawrence Gostin, a global health law expert at Georgetown Law, tweeted earlier this week that “Biden is on rock-solid legal ground. He’s acting to protect the US workforce and will get us all back to normal sooner.”But groups such as the National Retail Federation (NRF), the country’s largest retail trade group, condemned the Osha rule because they said it places an unreasonable burden on businesses during the holiday season, which for many ventures is the busiest time of the year.The NRF is requesting an extension of the deadlines, though Edwin Egee, a vice-president of the group, did not provide a preferred date.“NRF members have for months taken extraordinary efforts to distribute the vaccine, to incentivize the vaccine. We have been, and will continue to be, very much in favor of the vaccine and its efficacy,” Egee said.Republicans have also warned that the vaccine requirements could cause employees to quit. If faced with a mandate, 11% of the unvaccinated said they would be most likely to get the vaccine and 46% said they would opt for weekly testing, according to an October survey from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF). More than a third of unvaccinated workers said they would quit if their employer required them to get a vaccine or get tested weekly. But that amounts to just 5% of all adults in the US.“When we are looking at the bigger picture amongst all adults … it’s a pretty small share of the population,” said Lunna Lopes, senior survey analyst for KFF.There is evidence that workers often opt to get vaccinated rather than lose their jobs. For example, Houston Methodist hospital required 25,000 workers to get a vaccine by 7 June, the Conversation, a non-profit news organization, reported. Before the mandate, about 15% of employees were unvaccinated. By mid-June, that had dropped to 3%.David Michaels, a former Osha chief now a professor of public health at George Washington University, argued the new rules would help businesses who wanted to institute requirements but were constrained by state and local rules or feared litigation.“This actually allows employers to do what they want to do and blame the federal government,” said Michaels, who has advised the Health Action Alliance, a coalition of corporations such as Starbucks and Amazon and non-profits such as the CDC Foundation and the Ad Council aimed at promoting Covid-19 vaccination and prevention.The rules will make the workplaces safer, Michaels said.“The retail industry should give a gift to the American people and start to be supportive of vaccination requirements,” Michaels said. “That’s the only way that we will save lives and return to normalcy. It’s outrageous to ask for an exception to a public health measure.”TopicsUS newsVaccines and immunisationCoronavirusBiden administrationUS politicsUS healthcareUS domestic policynewsReuse this content More

US taxationSenator behind billionaires tax denounces Elon Musk Twitter poll stuntTesla owner offers to sell 10% of shares – as poll demandsRon Wyden has proposed tax to help fund Biden plans Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 14.19 ESTFirst published on Sun 7 Nov 2021 07.45 ESTAfter Elon Musk asked his Twitter followers to vote on whether he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock, the architect of the proposed billionaires tax that prompted the move dismissed the tweet as a stunt.It’s not all about the culture war – Democrats helped shaft the working class | Robert ReichRead more“Whether or not the world’s wealthiest man pays any taxes at all shouldn’t depend on the results of a Twitter poll,” said Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and chair of the Senate finance committee. “It’s time for the billionaires income tax.”When the poll closed on Sunday, nearly 3.5 million people had voted: 58% said Musk should sell the Tesla stock and 42% said he should not.Asked for comment, he tweeted: “I was prepared to accept either outcome.”Musk, who also owns SpaceX, was named by Forbes magazine as the first person worth more than $300bn. Reuters calculated that selling 10% of his Tesla shareholding would raise close to $21bn.Wyden has led Democrats pushing for billionaires to pay taxes when stock prices go up even if they do not sell shares, a concept called “unrealised gains”.Proponents of the tax say it would affect about 700 super-rich Americans, who would thus help pay for Joe Biden’s $1.75tn 10-year public spending proposal, which seeks to boost health and social care and to fund initiatives to tackle the climate crisis.Unveiling his proposal last month, Wyden said: “There are two tax codes in America. The first is mandatory for workers who pay taxes out of every paycheck. The second is voluntary for billionaires who defer paying taxes for years, if not indefinitely.“The billionaires income tax would ensure billionaires pay tax every year, just like working Americans. No working person in America thinks it’s right that they pay their taxes and billionaires don’t.”Musk has a history of controversial behaviour on Twitter. Responding to Wyden’s original proposal, he tweeted: “Eventually, they run out of other people’s money and then they come for you.”On Saturday, he said: “Much is made lately of unrealised gains being a means of tax avoidance, so I propose selling 10% of my Tesla stock. Do you support this?“I will abide by the results of this poll, whichever way it goes. Note, I do not take a cash salary or bonus from anywhere. I only have stock, thus the only way for me to pay taxes personally is to sell stock.”In one response, the Berkeley economist Gabriel Zucman tweeted: “Looking forward to the day when the richest person in the world paying some tax does not depend on a Twitter poll.”When Wyden introduced his proposed billionaires tax, Chuck Marr of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan think tank, used the example of Jeff Bezos, with Musk a competitor for the title of world’s richest person, to explain how the proposal would work.The Amazon founder, Marr said, would contribute to the federal government on the basis of unrealised gains from his stock holdings, worth around $10bn, rather than a declared salary of around $80,000.Citing a bombshell ProPublica report from June this year which showed how little Bezos, Musk and other super-rich Americans pay into federal coffers, Marr titled his analysis: “Why a billionaires tax makes sense – or why the richest people in the country should pay income taxes as if they were the richest people in the country.”Democrats ‘thank God’ for infrastructure win after state election warningsRead moreThe Biden spending plan Wyden wants to help fund, known as Build Back Better, remains held up in Congress. House centrists are demanding nonpartisan analysis of its costs while centrist senators remain opposed to many of its goals.Democrats are also split over the proposed billionaires tax. Among those opposed is Joe Manchin, the senator from West Virginia who with Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona stands in the way of Build Back Better, wielding tremendous power in a chamber split 50-50 and therefore controlled by the casting vote of Vice-President Kamala Harris.Speaking to reporters in October, Manchin said: “Everybody in this country that has been blessed and prospered should pay a patriotic tax.“If you’re to the point where you can use all of the tax forms to your advantage, and you end up with a zero tax-liability but have had a very, very good life and have had a lot of opportunities, there should be a 15% patriotic tax.”TopicsUS taxationElon MuskUS domestic policyBiden administrationUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

US Capitol attackLiz Cheney condemns ‘false flag’ Capitol attack claim seen in Tucker Carlson film
6 January panel member: ‘It’s un-American to spread those lies’
In Trumpland, election was stolen and racism was long ago
Martin Pengelly in New York@MartinPengellySun 7 Nov 2021 13.43 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 13.46 ESTIn an apparent swipe at the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the anti-Trump Republican Liz Cheney said on Sunday it was “dangerous” and “un-American” to suggest the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January was a “false flag” attack.Virginia victory gives some Republicans glimpse of future without TrumpRead moreConspiracy theorists say “false flag” attacks are staged by the government to achieve its own ends. A documentary produced by Carlson for the Fox Nation streaming service, Patriot Purge, contains such a suggestion about the Capitol attack.Five people died around the events of 6 January, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election defeat by Joe Biden.Trump was impeached for inciting the attack but escaped conviction when sufficient Republican senators stayed loyal.Cheney, who has condemned Carlson’s series before, spoke to Fox News Sunday. The host, Chris Wallace, asked if there was “any truth” to claims 6 January was “a false flag operation, a case of liberals in the deep state setting up conservatives and Trump supporters”.Cheney replied: “None at all. It’s the same thing that you hear people saying 9/11 is an inside job. It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies, and they are lies.”Cheney, who voted to impeach Trump, is one of two Republican members of the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack. The other, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, will retire from the House next year.But the Wyoming congresswoman, a stringent conservative whose father is the former vice-president Dick Cheney, has shown no sign of yielding despite losing her leadership position in Washington and attracting a primary challenger back home.Cheney appeared on Sunday with the South Carolina congressman Jim Clyburn, the Democratic chief whip, with whom (and Wallace) she was this weekend honoured for being willing to work across the aisle.“We have an obligation that goes beyond partisanship,” Cheney said, “Democrats and Republicans together, to make sure that we understand every single piece of the facts about what happened [on 6 January] and to make sure that people who did it are held accountable.“And to call it a false flag operation to spread those kinds of lies is really dangerous.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansFox NewsUS televisionDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

RepublicansVirginia victory gives some Republicans glimpse of future without Trump
Liz Cheney and Chris Christie lead calls to move on from 2020
In Trumpland, election was stolen and racism was long ago
Ed Pilkington in New York@edpilkingtonSun 7 Nov 2021 12.56 ESTLast modified on Sun 7 Nov 2021 16.45 ESTProminent Republicans are seizing on the victory of Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race last week to call for a realignment of the party that would move beyond Donald Trump and his “big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen.House 6 January panel to issue new round of subpoenas for Trump alliesRead moreWhile most Republicans remain either in lockstep with, or silent about, the former president’s campaign of misinformation surrounding his defeat by Joe Biden, a number of voices have begun tentatively to argue for a reboot.Liz Cheney, the Wyoming representative ousted from the No 3 leadership position in May over her resistance to Trump’s lies, told Fox News Sunday her party needed to change tack. She said that it was imperative for the wellbeing of the US that it had two strong parties.“The only way the Republican party can go forward in strength is if we reject what happened on 6 January,” she said. “If we reject the efforts that President Trump made frankly to steal the election, and if we tell voters the truth.“In order to win elections we have to remember that the most conservative of ideals is embracing the constitution and the rule of law.”Cheney was also asked about attempts, notably by Tucker Carlson of Fox News, to divert blame for the deadly attack on the US Capitol away from the Trump supporters who sought to overturn his election defeat.“It’s the same thing that you hear people saying 9/11 is an inside job,” she said. “It’s un-American to be spreading those kinds of lies, and they are lies.”Cheney’s comments came a day after Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey and candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, made an impassioned plea to the Republican Jewish Coalition conference in Las Vegas.Christie, a longtime confidant of Trump, nonetheless called for the party to move beyond the former president’s obsession with the last election.“We can no longer talk about the past and the past elections – no matter where you stand on that issue, no matter where you stand, it is over,” he said.He added: “Every minute that we spend talking about 2020 – while we’re wasting time doing that, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer are laying ruin to this country. We better focus on that and take our eyes off the rearview mirror and start looking through the windshield again.”Youngkin defeated a former Democratic governor, Terry McAuliffe, in a bitter contest in which the issue of race in education was pivotal. The Republican assiduously avoided anything to do with Trump in his pitch to Virginian voters.But he did run a campaign that borrowed heavily from Trump’s tactics, not least his use of dog-whistles to drive a wedge between white suburbanites and Democrats and his willingness to exploit falsehoods and misinformation. Youngkin ran heavily on his opposition to critical race theory, an academic discipline that examines the ways in which racism operates in US laws and society, saying he would ban its use in Virginia schools. It is not taught in a single Virginia school.Trumpism without Trump appears to be gaining ground among Republicans in the wake of Youngkin’s success in a state that has been trending Democratic. But with Trump hinting at another bid for the White House, and with his threat still hanging over the party that he will endorse primary challengers to anyone who defies him, many Republicans continue to act with extreme timidity, for fear that they too will be ousted.Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, chose his words carefully on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday.He began by saying that Trump’s endorsement was welcome.“We would love Donald Trump’s endorsement. If you’re a Republican, you want his endorsement.”But he then emphasised that candidates should campaign on issues.“I think you’d be foolish not to want and accept Donald Trump’s endorsement. But you’re going to win not because somebody endorses you, you’re going to win because you focus on making sure inflation gets stopped, making sure people get a job, making sure your kids aren’t indoctrinated on critical race theory. That’s going to be the issues that people care about.”Larry Hogan, the Republican governor of Maryland and a frequent critic of Trump, was unsurprisingly more outspoken.Glenn Youngkin condemns report his son twice tried to vote in VirginiaRead moreSpeaking to CNN’s State of the Union, he said the lesson of Youngkin’s win was that “voters want to hear more about what you are going to do for them, rather than what you want to say for or against the former president”.Hogan said he was concerned about the damage Trump could do in the presidential race in 2024, should he continue to use his power of endorsement to promote extremist Republican candidates.“If the former president interferes with primaries and tries to nominate people who are unelectable in the swing and purple states,” he said, “that’s going to hurt”.Hogan added: “Trump is likely not going away. But if the Republican party wants to be successful at winning elections I agree with Governor Christie, we can’t look back and constantly re-litigate what happened in 2020, we have to look to ’22 and ’24.“We have to have a message that appeals to more people that’s not about the former president.”TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022VirginianewsReuse this content More