US Politics

US CongressTop US general to face heated questions in Congress after Woodward revelationsMark Milley poised for tense cross-examination after book said he took steps to prevent Trump from starting a war Julian Borger in WashingtonTue 28 Sep 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 28 Sep 2021 02.01 EDTThe top US general will appear before Congress on Tuesday in what is expected to be the most heated cross-examination of a senior US military officer in over a decade.The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Mark Milley, can expect a hostile interrogation from Republicans on the Senate armed services committee after accounts in a recent book that he carried out acts of insubordination to prevent Donald Trump from starting a war as a diversion from his election defeat last year.In the book, Peril, the Washington Post journalists Bob Woodward and Robert Costa report that Milley twice called his Chinese opposite number to reassure him that the US would not conduct a surprise attack, and that the US general would alert Beijing if the president tried to order one.According to the book, Milley also ordered officers assigned to the Pentagon war room to let him know if Trump ordered a nuclear launch, despite the fact that the chairman of the joint chiefs is not in the chain of command.Milley will be facing senior Republican senators who have been calling for his resignation since the book came out this month. Some Democrats, though generally thankful that Milley stepped in to rule out a potentially catastrophic military diversion ordered by a volatile and defeated president, are also concerned about the precedent it sets for the future power balance between elected civilian leaders and US generals and admirals.The formal purpose of the Senate hearing is to hear testimony on “the conclusion of military operations in Afghanistan and plans for future counter-terrorism operations”.Milley, alongside the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, and the head of US central command, Gen Kenneth McKenzie, will face stern questioning from both sides over the chaotic last days of the 20-year US military presence in Afghanistan, and asked why some many Afghans who had been granted special immigrant visas or had visa applications pending were left behind to fend for themselves after Kabul fell to the Taliban.McKenzie will also have to answer questions about a 29 August drone strike that was meant to target an Islamic State car bomb but instead killed 10 members of a family, seven of them children.Milley will be asked why he deemed it a “righteous strike” before all the evidence was available, and all three men will have to respond to concerns that such deadly mistakes could become more concerning as the US resorts to an over-the-horizon approach to counter-terrorist operations in Afghanistan in the future, flying long-distance bombing sorties with little or no human intelligence on the ground to guide attacks.TopicsUS CongressUS militaryUS SenateDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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First ThingUS newsFirst Thing: How the US vaccine effort derailedWe shouldn’t be surprised by low vaccine rates, health researchers say. Plus the 21 biggest style tribes of 2021 Nicola SlawsonMon 27 Sep 2021 06.45 EDTLast modified on Mon 27 Sep 2021 07.37 EDTSince the first coronavirus vaccines were approved, the US bought enough to inoculate the entire population, and even potentially embark on a round of booster shots, but health professionals have found an essential element to a successful vaccination campaign has been lacking: trust.That low confidence has garnered the US an unenviable distinction – in mid-September it became the least vaccinated member of the world’s seven most populous and wealthy democracies, or G7, which includes Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan.Now, a surge of the Delta Covid-19 variant has killed more than 2,000 Americans a day on average and has taken the US death toll past the symbolic milestone of 675,000 deaths: the estimated number of Americans who died in the 1918 influenza pandemic.The US’s flagging vaccine uptake has flummoxed national health authorities, but researchers say we shouldn’t be surprised.
How many people are not getting vaccinated? Strategies to promote the vaccine have failed to encourage more than 900,000 Americans a day to get vaccinated in recent weeks.
What is behind the low uptake? Researchers say it is the predictable outcome of a campaign subject to entrenched social forces that have diminished American health and life expectancy since the 1980s.
Haiti deportations justified because of Covid, Biden’s homeland secretary saysThe US homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, on Sunday defended the Biden administration’s decision to send thousands of Haitians to a home country they fled because of natural disasters and political turmoil.Mayorkas told NBC’s Meet the Press the removals were justified because of the coronavirus pandemic, a point disputed by advocates and public health experts.“The Centers for Disease Control [and Prevention, or CDC] has a Title 42 authority that we exercise to protect the migrants themselves, to protect the local communities, our personnel and the American public,” Mayorkas said. “The pandemic is not behind us. Title 42 is a public health policy, not an immigration policy.”
Since Donald Trump’s administration implemented Title 42 in March 2020, advocates and dozens of public health experts have called for its end.
Under Title 42, people who attempt to cross the border are returned to Mexico or deported to their home countries without an opportunity to test asylum claims.
In January, Joe Biden stopped the rule from applying to children. Despite that, at least 22 babies and children were deported to Haiti in February.
Liz Cheney mocks Trump over bizarre insultThe Wyoming Republican Liz Cheney has responded to a bizarre insult from Donald Trump by tweeting a picture of George W Bush with the caption: “I like Republican presidents who win re-election.”Bush beat John Kerry for re-election in 2004. Cheney’s father, Dick Cheney, was vice-president to Bush.Liz Cheney’s tweet was a response to an image released by Trump on Thursday. Under the heading “ICYMI: Must-See Photo”, a Trump-affiliated political action committee sent out a Photoshopped image that spliced Cheney Sr and George W Bush.Trump displayed the image at a rally in Georgia on Saturday but he could not tweet it himself because he remains barred from the platform for inciting the deadly assault on the US Capitol on 6 January.
Why did Trump use the image? Cheney voted to impeach Trump over his role in the 6 January riot at the US Capitol. She was one of only 10 House Republicans to do so.
Why is he attacking her now? Cheney is up for re-election and the former president wants to unseat her with a candidate who supports him.
Five Palestinians shot dead in gun battles with Israeli troops in West BankFive Palestinians have been killed after gun battles erupted when Israeli troops conducted a series of raids against suspected Hamas militants across the occupied West Bank.The fighting on Sunday was the deadliest violence between Israeli forces and Palestinian militants in the West Bank in several weeks. Two Israeli soldiers were seriously wounded.There has been increased fighting in the region in recent months, with tensions fueled by Israeli settlement construction, heightened militant activity in the northern West Bank and the aftermath of a war between Israel and Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip in May.The Israeli military said it had been tracking the Hamas militants for several weeks and the raids were launched in response to immediate threats.
Why were there raids? Israel’s prime minister, Naftali Bennett, said the militants were preparing to carry out attacks “in real time”.
What has the the Palestinian Authority said? It condemned the killings and said the Israeli government was “fully and directly responsible for this bloody morning”.
Were those killed militants? Hamas confirmed four of the dead, including three killed in Biddu, were members of the Islamic militant group.
In other news …
The Alaska department of fish and game has alerted residents to a pack of otters that have attacked dogs, children and adults near creeks, rivers and lakes in Anchorage. Authorities said the otters would be tested for rabies, which could explain their aggression.
China will reduce the number of abortions performed for “non-medical purposes”, the country’s cabinet has said, in the latest apparent attempt to reverse its declining birthrate, which fell from 1.6 live births per woman in 2016 to 1.3 in 2020.
Vital UN climate talks, billed as one of the last chances to stave off climate breakdown, will not produce the breakthrough needed to fulfill the aspiration of the Paris agreement, key players in the talks have conceded.
Staff attrition, high demand for appointments and enraged human clients are straining vet practices across the US. The array of overlapping circumstances has created a cascade of problems powerful enough to threaten the entire delicate ecosystem of veterinary care.
Stat of the day: Male life expectancy declines in US by 2.2 years because of CovidData from most of 29 countries analysed by scientists – spanning most of Europe, the US and Chile – recorded reductions in life expectancy last year and at a scale that wiped out years of progress. The biggest declines in life expectancy were among males in the US, with a decline of 2.2 years relative to 2019 levels, followed by Lithuanian males (1.7 years). Dr José Manuel Aburto, a co-lead author of the study, said the scale of the life expectancy losses was stark across most of those countries studied, with 22 of them experiencing larger losses than half a year in 2020.Don’t miss this: My father was brutally killed by the Taliban. The US ignored his pleas for helpIn 1992, Muska Najibullah’s father, a former Afghan president, appealed to the US to help Afghanistan become a bulwark against the spread of Islamic fundamentalism. He said: “If fundamentalism comes to Afghanistan, war will continue for many more years. Afghanistan will turn into a centre of world smuggling for narcotic drugs. Afghanistan will be turned into a centre for terrorism.” His warnings were ignored. This is the first time Muska has shared her personal story and she says she is doing so because what is happening to her country now is distressingly similar to what happened then.Children likely to experience more climate disasters than their grandparents, research showsPeople born today will experience many times more extreme heatwaves and other climate disasters over their lifetimes than their grandparents, research has shown. The study is the first to assess the contrasting experience of climate extremes by different age groups and starkly highlights the intergenerational injustice posed by the climate crisis. The analysis shows a child born in 2020 will endure an average of 30 extreme heatwaves in their lifetime, even if countries fulfill their current pledges to cut future carbon emissions. That is seven times more heatwaves than someone born in 1960.Want more environmental stories delivered to your inbox? Sign up to our Green Light newsletter to get the good, bad and essential news on the climate every weekLast thing: the 21 biggest style tribes of 2021 and what they say about the worldOnce upon a time, fashion subcultures were simple: you could see skaters, ravers and goths all milling around shopping malls. But now the style tribes have moved online, and are more likely to be dressing up for TikTok and Instagram than the shops. There has also been a bigger change: a splintering and multiplying, with fantasy and dress-up coming to the fore. It used to be easy to recognise a punk, for example, but now there are forestpunks, icepunks and even lunarpunks. If all this has your head spinning, let us cut through the confusion.Sign upSign up for the US morning briefingFirst Thing is delivered to thousands of inboxes every weekday. If you’re not already signed up, subscribe now.Get in touchIf you have any questions or comments about any of our newsletters please email [email protected] newsFirst ThingUS healthcareUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.

Ever since The West Wing premiered in 1999, American television has loved series based on presidential politics. One could now spend months working through programs like Veep or Graves on streaming services. Rather like doctors and lawyers, politicians have become the basis for white collar TV series.

During the daily dramas of last year’s Trump campaign, television needed to do more than offer realism; the earnest liberalism of The West Wing felt oddly outdated amidst the realities of COVID, Black Lives Matter and the 2020 elections. What was needed was a television version of magic realism, able to speak to the events of the day but in ways that went beyond the documentary.

During the time of Trump, a different kind of political TV drama was required.
David Maxwell/EPA

There are few politicians in The Good Fight, but it remains the most interesting American political series of the past few years. A spin off from The Good Wife —which did have a politician as a central figure, it’s a legal drama set in an African-American law firm in Chicago headed by Liz (Audra McDonald) and Diane (Christine Baranski). That Diane is white, and married to a gun-loving Republican, becomes an on-going issue for the firm.

The fifth series of The Good Fight begins with a survey of 2020, in which COVID — “that thing from China” — the murder of George Floyd and the elections take centre stage.

Viewers of earlier episodes will recognise some of the main characters, although each series introduces new players. This one gives a starring role to Mandy Patinkin as the fake Judge Wackner.

Increasingly, the drama plays out in his parallel court, which dispenses the sort of immediate and sensible justice that the corrupt and choked systems of Cook County, including Chicago, fail to do.

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The idea of an unofficial court is already a television staple — Judge Judy Scheindlin’s move into reality television comes to mind — but here high mindedness develops into disillusion and ultimately disaster: watch the last episode to see how the series blends reality and fiction.

I watched the most recent episodes of The Good Fight during the latest Melbourne lockdowns, curious whether the sense of outrage at Trump that fuelled so many of the previous series would diminish. But the divisions in the United States that became so marked in the past four years have not gone away, and the series reminds us that despite his rhetoric, Biden has failed to bring the country together.

Solidifying faultlines

If anything, the show suggests that the political and cultural faultlines are solidifying. Over the past two years the show has become oddly bizarre, rather as if the writers of The X Files have wandered into the studios of Robert and Michelle King, the writers and producers of both The Good Wife and The Good Fight.

Their scripts take off from the news headlines and wander into fantasy, but fantasy that seems an acute harbinger of actual events.

The Good Fight stands out for sheer inventiveness, a willingness to take chances that rarely exists in American television dramas. Diane seeks advice from the ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsberg; the firm’s investigator, Jay (Nyambi Nyambi) hears the voices of Frederick Douglas, Karl Marx and Christ.

Jay (Nyambi Nyambi) hears the voices of Frederick Douglas, Karl Marx and Christ.

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The show espouses unapologetically progressive politics, but it does so without becoming didactic and at times with remarkable humour (you will need to go back to earlier series to see its skewering of Trump).

It is most challenging in the inclusion of sympathetic characters from the right, such as Diane’s husband (Gary Cole), who may or may not have been implicated in the riots at the Capitol, and the black Republican lawyer, Julius Cain (Michael Boatman), who is imprisoned after a false accusation of bribery, and then pardoned by Trump.

The personal is political

That the personal is the political is evident in Diane’s struggles, both with her right-wing husband and with her colleagues who increasingly question how an African-American law firm can have a white woman as one of their named partners.

If I have an unease with the way the series has developed it is that too much of it revolves around Diane, possibly because Baranski along with Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele) is the only major character to have survived the transition from The Good Wife.

I’ve now spent eight years of my life in the US, having first gone there as a callow graduate student when Lyndon Johnson was president. Like so many other Australians, I fell in love with the country, and my career has been largely shaped by it.

Yet the more I’ve visited, the more foreign it becomes. The Good Fight is exhilarating entertainment and a grim warning of what the US could become. More

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