US Politics

Jonathan Freedland hosted a special Guardian Live event where he spoke to the former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. As the US commemorated the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the pair talked about her memories of the day, given she was the senator for New York at the time; how US politics has changed since then; and whether or not retaliation by American forces has made the US and the world a safer or more dangerous place

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OpinionUS politicsTwo disbarred lawyers sued a Texas doctor who performed an abortion. Flustered ‘pro-lifers’ are backpedalingMoira DoneganAnti-choice groups are embarrassed that their draconian law is being enforced the way it was designed

Democrats present last line of defense for abortion rights
Sun 26 Sep 2021 06.27 EDTLast modified on Sun 26 Sep 2021 13.08 EDTDr Alan Braid, an OBGYN based in San Antonio, broke the law on purpose. In an essay published in the Washington Post last Saturday, the doctor announced that he performed an abortion on a woman who was past six weeks of gestation, the limit imposed by Texas’s new abortion ban, SB8. The doctor wrote that he felt morally obliged to perform the procedure, his worldview shaped by his years in obstetric practice having conversations with patients who revealed that they were terminating their pregnancies because they couldn’t afford more kids, because they had been raped, because they were with abusive partners, or because they wanted to pursue other dreams.He wrote, too, of beginning his practice in 1972, the year before Roe v Wade, the last time an outright ban on abortion was in effect in his state. “At the hospital that year, I saw three teenagers die from illegal abortions,” Dr Braid wrote. “One I will never forget. When she came into the ER, her vaginal cavity was packed with rags. She died a few days later from massive organ failure, caused by a septic infection.” Dr Braid reasoned that to avoid such needless deaths, he had a “duty of care” to the woman whose newly illegal abortion he performed.He was promptly sued. Two complaints – both from men living out of state – were filed against Dr Braid on Monday morning. One, a rambling, weird document, comes from a convicted felon and disbarred former attorney named Oscar Stilley, who is serving a prison term on house arrest in Arkansas. That complaint, which Stilley seems to have written himself, makes multiple references to Dr Braid’s conduct regarding “bastards” and his supposed belief in a god referred to by the Hebrew name “Elohim.” Stilley, who has said he does not personally oppose abortion, feels strongly that “if there’s money to be had, it’s going to go in Oscar’s pocket.”The second lawsuit is from a man named Felipe Gomez of Illinois, another disbarred lawyer, who labels himself “pro-choice plaintiff”, and whose complaint asks only that SB8 be overturned. These test cases, strange and off-putting as they are, now represent the best chance for SB8 to be vacated, and for abortion rights to be returned to Texans – at least for now.It didn’t have to be this way. When a conservative state passes an abortion ban – as they do with some regularity – state employees are usually tasked with enforcing the law, those employees are named as defendants in lawsuits brought by pro-choice groups, and the law is blocked from going into effect by courts that declare it unconstitutional before any real patients are denied abortion care. But Texas’s SB8 was designed to elide this normal process of judicial review, with a novel enforcement mechanism that bars state agents from acting to enforce the law. Instead, the law can only be enforced by private civil suits against people suspected of facilitating abortions – lawsuits, that is, like the ones filed by Stilley and Gomez.This private enforcement mechanism is like a legal Rube Goldberg machine built into SB8, creating a clever way to evade courts recognizing the bill’s abortion ban as unconstitutional. Created by an insidious conservative lawyer named Jonathan Mitchell, the loophole was designed to confound lawsuits against the law’s constitutionality with procedural, rather than substantive, questions, and to guarantee that SB8 would go into effect. The device is transparent bid to circumvent the authority of the federal courts. But those same federal courts, by now warped by decades of anti-choice influence on the judicial nominations process, let it slide anyway. Judges on the fifth circuit court of appeals, and later on the supreme court, found that the procedural questions that were engineered by SB8 provided them a sufficient pretext to do what they wanted to do anyway: allow a state to outlaw abortion within its borders, and effectively end Roe.And so, when the supreme court allowed SB8 to go into effect, it left the pro-choice movement with no choice. Pre-enforcement litigation failed on flimsy and artificial procedural grounds; what was needed was an illegal abortion, performed by someone willing to take on enormous personal risk, to create a test case. Only a deliberate legal violation would allow SB8 could be reviewed on the merits. This is where Dr Braid comes in. In addition to the enormous service he gave to the patient whose abortion he performed, he also did a service to the pro-choice movement, and to women statewide. He took on enormous personal liability so that the question of their right to an abortion could get a fair hearing.Interestingly, the anti-choice movement doesn’t seem entirely happy that the lawsuits that enforce the abortion ban they championed are now actually arriving in Texas courts. John Sego, a legislative director of the anti-choice group Texas Right to Life, which supports SB8, expressed displeasure that the law is being enforced – well, exactly the way it was designed. He called the lawsuits “self-serving legal stunts”. Yet he also claimed that “Texas Right to Life is resolute in ensuring that [SB8] is fully enforced.” If Sego and other anti-choice groups want the law enforced, why do they oppose private citizens enforcing it, using the bill’s own remedy?It might be that Sego and his anti-choice colleagues are embarrassed to have their interests represented by a plaintiff like Stilley, with his flamboyant feloniousness. Maybe they have realized that the bounty-hunting provision of the law is deeply unpopular, and that the suits are terrible PR for the anti-choice movement. At any rate, it is hard to take Sego seriously when he says, “We believe Braid published his op-ed intending to attract imprudent lawsuits, but none came from the pro-life movement.” In fact Sego’s group is legally not able to file bounty-hunting lawsuits to enforce SB8: although the group established an “abortion snitch” website that seemed designed to solicit tips about possible defendants in SB8 enforcement suits against those who facilitate abortions, a judge issued a restraining order preventing Texas Right to Life from filing them.But perhaps the real reason Sego is displeased with the lawsuits against Braid is that SB8’s bounty hunting enforcement system was only one small part of the anti-choice vision for the law. The real way that abortions would become inaccessible in Texas under SB8 wasn’t that people would sue; it was that abortion providers, faced with the prospect of being bankrupted by lawsuits, would preemptively stop performing abortions. It was an attempt to do by intimidation what the anti-choice movement was not confident they could do by law: strip Texan women of their constitutional right to control their own bodies and lives. And, mostly, this gambit has worked. In the more than three weeks since SB8 went into effect, legal abortions after six weeks have come to a halt in Texas. Fearing liability, clinics are turning pregnant patients away. So far, only Dr Braid has called the anti-choice movement’s bluff.
Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
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US politicsDemocrats position themselves as last line of defense for abortion rights Party sees new urgency – and political opportunity – amid growing threat to Roe v Wade

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OpinionBiden administrationWhy corporate social responsibility is BSRobert ReichWhile big corporations tell Americans how virtuous they are, they lobby up a storm against Biden’s social policy bill Sun 26 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 27 Sep 2021 09.46 EDTIn recent years, “corporate social responsibility” has been viewed by some as the answer to the multiple failings of capitalism. Chief executives have responded to all sorts of problems – worsening climate change, widening inequality, soaring healthcare costs and so on – by promising their corporations will lead the way to solutions because they’re committed to being “socially responsible”.House Democrats are scared to tax billionaires – that’s a costly mistake | Robert ReichRead moreNinety-eight percent of this is rubbish. CEOs won’t do anything that hurts their bottom lines. They’re in the business of making as much money as possible, not solving social problems.In fact, real social change would prevent them from doing many of the hugely profitable things they now do. Which means they won’t change their ways unless they’re required by law to change (and even then, only when the penalty times the probability of getting caught is higher than the profits from continuing anyway). Their soothing promises of social responsibility are intended to forestall such laws.I’ve seen this repeatedly. When I was secretary of labor, big corporations would violate laws on worker safety, wages and hours and pensions, whenever doing so was cheaper than obeying the laws. And they’d fight like hell against such laws to begin with – all the while telling the public what wonderful citizens they were.You may recall that in August 2019, the Business Roundtable – one of Washington’s most prestigious corporate groups, on whose board sit the CEOs of Apple, Walmart and JPMorgan – issued a widely publicized statement expressing “a fundamental commitment” to the wellbeing of “all of our stakeholders” (emphasis in the original), including their employees, communities and the environment.The statement was widely hailed as marking a new era of corporate social responsibility.Since then, the Roundtable and its members have issued a continuous stream of jejune statements about their dedication to such things as providing childcare, pre-K and affordable healthcare, promoting community college and workforce training, alleviating poverty and reversing climate change.It turns out these are exactly the priorities in Joe Biden’s $3.5tn reconciliation bill. But guess what? The Business Roundtable isn’t lobbying for the bill. It’s lobbying intensely against it.Jessica Boulanger, a spokeswoman, told the Washington Post the Roundtable is engaged in “a significant, multifaceted campaign” to stop tax increases that would finance the bill, and will “continue to ramp up our efforts in the coming weeks”. The group is launching a seven-figure digital advertising campaign to oppose the bill.Hypocrisy? Only if you believed the Roundtable BS about corporate social responsibility. If you know the truth – that corporations will do whatever they can to maximize their profits and share values, social responsibility be damned – there’s nothing surprising here.Why didn’t business groups fight the president’s infrastructure bill? Because government spending on infrastructure helps their bottom lines by lowering their costs of procuring supplies and getting goods to market. Social responsibility had nothing to do with it.It’s tempting to chalk all this up to “corporate greed”. But that makes sense only if you think corporations are capable of emotions, such as greed. They’re not. Corporations aren’t people, no matter what the supreme court says. They’re bundles of contracts.The specific people who enter those contracts (on behalf of big corporations as well as thousands of people who run vast investment funds on behalf of millions of shareholders) are neither greedy nor socially responsible. They’re merely doing what they understand to be their jobs. Greed and social responsibility have been laundered out of these transactions.If we want these transactions to change – to align better with public needs rather than private profits – laws must change. For example, taxes on big corporations must rise in order to fund public investments and safety nets.But such laws won’t change if corporations continue to spend vast sums on politics. Corporate spokespeople like Boulanger of the Business Roundtable – along with platoons of corporate lobbyists and influence peddlers, corporate lawyers and hired-gun economists, corporate political operatives and PR flaks – together form in effect a fourth branch of government, wielding huge and increasing power. About one out of every four people now working in downtown Washington fills one of these roles.US’s wealthiest 1% are failing to pay $160bn a year in taxes, report findsRead moreThe result is clear. The most telling trends over the last three decades have been the growing share of the economy going into corporate profits – generating ever-greater compensation packages for top executives and ever-higher payouts for big investors (all of whom live off shares of stock) – and the declining share going to most Americans as wages and salaries.The meaningless blather over “corporate social responsibility” is intended to mask these trends. Biden’s $3.5tn plan is aimed at reversing them.But big business is doing everything in its power to sabotage Biden’s plan. The only way to stop this sabotage is to ignore all mention of corporate social responsibility and make one hell of a ruckus in support of Biden’s plan, as well as laws to reduce the power of big money in politics.
Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
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BooksThe Cause: a history of the American revolution for our own troubled timeIn his new work on 1776 and all that, Joseph Ellis sees the roots of anti-government intransigence and conspiracy theories John S GardnerSat 25 Sep 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 25 Sep 2021 01.01 EDTA word to know: semiquincentennial, which will appear with increasing frequency as the 250th anniversary of American independence approaches. Joseph Ellis, author of well-regarded biographies of America’s founders, is out early with a history of the revolution.Travels with George review: Washington, America’s original sin … and its divided presentRead moreOr, as he terms it, the “American Evolution”. For generations, treatments of the revolution have reflected the interests and prejudices of their times. Ellis provides numerous analogies to the politics of the moment, notably bitter opposition to a strong national government, the dangers of debt and misplaced hubris.The work covers some familiar ground from his other works with a focus on “bottom-up” politics. Ellis terms the story “The Cause”, because the patriots used it as “the operative term from the summer of 1775 to the summer of ’76”. Leaving aside the actual cause of the split (briefly, “power, not money” and George III’s policy after the peace of 1763), Ellis’ emphasis is the uncomfortable nature of its legacy and its impact on politics. The revolutionary “cause” contained the seeds of others.That the promises of the revolution and Jefferson’s “unalienable rights” failed, not least on slavery and Native Americans, is a shameful blight on the founding. But as Ellis writes, “not all revolutions end in gulags and guillotines”. Compromise was indispensible to uniting 13 colonies to achieve victory.Was that compromise the essence of the revolution or a painful cost of it, laying a deposit or “promissory note” of freedom? On that question hangs the meaning of the revolution, both for greater understanding of the past and applying its lessons in the present.Ellis succeeds more on the first, noting many founders’ discomfort with the compromises they made.On politics, Ellis takes the division back to the war itself, when conspiracy-minded “True Whigs” asserted that those who favoured strong national government were seeking to replicate George III’s power, even as the continental army went unpaid and Washington prevented a military coup against Congress, shaming those who would “overturn the liberties of our country and open the flood gates of civil discord”. The conspiratorial mindset found a home early in American politics.History is by definition selective, and what is selected reflects the historian’s perspective as well as the zeitgeist. This is a relatively short history for the general reader, reflecting contemporary concerns, including relative brevity. There are some curious omissions, notably the Boston Massacre, in which Crispus Attucks, a Black and Native American patriot, was probably the first killed. Ellis cites three, not all four, of the 1774 Coercive Acts. Writing about the British North America (Quebec) Act would have enabled him to address religious prejudice in American history. More prosaically, Emerson, not Longfellow, wrote of the “shot heard round the world”.Much of the book concerns military history.Vietnam/Iraq analogies to British policy and warfare serve a purpose but become tiresome. Ellis argues that “Great Britain never had a realistic chance to win … American victory was not a miracle; it was foreordained”.That seems wrong. A failed crossing of the Delaware, an annihilation of American forces on Long Island (where even Ellis admits “the fate of the war … would have become uncertain”), Cornwallis escaping at Yorktown, the French fleet not arriving in time, Americans tiring of war – there are many points at which the military outcome could have been different, despite repeated failings of British leadership. Here, the “triumphalist” perspective (which Washington endorsed, calling victory a “standing miracle”) seems justified: the world turned upside down. Valley Forge really was as terrible as popular myth holds, Washington’s leadership preserving the army in impossible circumstances was equally strong.There is an urgent need for history for the general reader. Ellis’s story is generally told well. British perspectives receive sensitive attention, continuing a tradition exemplified by the great Bernard Bailyn.Ellis ends with an emotional recounting of Washington’s resignation of his commission in 1783 but also on a sour, pessimistic note, describing an “antinational”, even “antigovernment” feeling seeing “an American nation-state as a preposterous distortion of The Cause”. He identifies two legacies from the revolution: “Any robust expression of government power … was placed on the permanent defensive; second, conspiracy theories that might otherwise have been dismissed as preposterous shouts from the lunatic fringe enjoyed a supportive environment because of their hallowed association with The Cause”.This is presumably description, not endorsement. But then why not add a chapter taking the history to the 1787 Constitutional Convention, to show the victory of the nationalist view Washington espoused? Ellis has written this before.Shining a bright light on terrible moments in American history and expanding the understanding of the founding to include other voices is necessary and wise. Contemporary Americans should understand that “The Cause contained a double-barreled legacy: government was ‘Them’ and government was ‘Us’” – a debate that continues sharply today.Forget the Alamo review: dark truths of the US south and its ‘secular Mecca’Read moreThe danger, though, is that Ellis’ approach merely becomes history for an age of debunking history, which contains its own dangers – not least when others try to offer “alternative” history for their own, for conspiratorial agendas.. Ellis tries to defend history against both “presentistic” and conspiratorial views but may not succeed as well as he hopes.“Like the deepest meaning of The Cause itself,” he writes, “if you had not lived it, no one could explain it to you”. That’s what historians are supposed to do – explain. Ellis eschews triumphalism, yet on occasion even he gets caught up in the wonder of it all: “There was something almost elegiac about ordinary farmers, accustomed to gather in order to pass regulations about roaming cows or pigs, meeting now to debate the fate of America’s role in the British Empire.”Despite the revolution’s serious “discontents” and compromises, perhaps one need not force a choice between triumphalism and skepticism. Perhaps one may even consider the place of idealism, permitting Americans to be inspired once again by the Declaration of Independence and Valley Forge – and to redeem their implicit promises of union, freedom and justice for all.
The Cause is published by Liveright
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