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5.14pm EDT
17:14

Key points: Biden’s pandemic plan

5.05pm EDT
17:05

Biden explains Covid-19 strategy

5.00pm EDT
17:00

Today so far

4.44pm EDT
16:44

DeSantis suffers legal defeat over anti-riot law

3.23pm EDT
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Biden administration sues Texas over six-week abortion ban

3.03pm EDT
15:03

Charter flight from Kabul safely lands in Qatar, White House says

2.27pm EDT
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Federal workers will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated under Biden’s new policy

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5.36pm EDT
17:36

“We have the tools. Now we just have to finish the job,” Biden said in his concluding remarks.
More details of his pandemic plan will be revealed in the coming weeks, he said. He ended his speech with a whisper: “Get vaccinated”.
He did not take questions from the press.

5.27pm EDT
17:27

The president said he will also enact measures to disincentivize those seeking to undermine vaccine and masking mandates.
Implicitly referring to leaders like Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who threatened to withhold salaries from school board members and superintendents in districts with mask mandates, Biden said: “Talk about bullying in schools.”
“Right now, local school officials are trying to keep children safe in a pandemic while their governor picks a fight with them and even threatens their salaries or their jobs,” he said.
If teachers’ pay is withheld by states, the federal government will step in to pay it, he said. “I promise you, I will have your back.”
The president also said that the TSA will double fines for passengers who refuse to wear masks. “And by the way, show some respect,” he said.

5.18pm EDT
17:18

“My message to unvaccinated Americans is this: what more is there to wait for? What more do you need to see?” Biden said. “We’ve made vaccinations free, safe and convenient.”
“We’ve been patient but our patience is wearing thin and your refusal has cost all of us,” he said.
Here’s an overview of vaccination stats across the US:

5.14pm EDT
17:14

Key points: Biden’s pandemic plan

David Smith

The Labor Department will require all employers with more than 100 employees to ensure their workers are vaccinated or tested weekly. Employers must also provide paid time off to allow workers to get vaccinated. This will affect more than 80 million workers in private sector businesses. Companies that do not comply could face fines of up to nearly $14,000 per violation.
Workers in healthcare settings that receive Medicaid or Medicare reimbursement must be vaccinated, a move that applies to 50,000 providers and covers more than 17 million healthcare workers.
All federal government workers, as well as employees of contractors that do business with the federal government, must get vaccinated, or regularly tested.

Updated
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5.09pm EDT
17:09

“We are in a tough stretch and it could last for awhile,” Biden said, stressing that the Delta variant had complicated the US recovery.
Stressing that vaccines protect people from hospitalizations and deaths from the Delta variant, he called the surge in cases a pandemic of the unvaccinated.
A quarter of adults still haven’t gotten any vaccine shot, he said. “That 25% can cause a lot of damage, and they are,” he said. He implicitly called out the Republicans who are hindering a vaccination push – calling the behavior “unacceptable”.

Updated
at 5.50pm EDT

5.05pm EDT
17:05

Biden explains Covid-19 strategy

“We can and will turn the tide of Covid-19,” the president said.
Speaking from the White House, Biden started by recapping progress made so far in getting Americans vaccinated.
“We have the tools to combat the virus if we come together and use those tools,” he said, acknowledging frustrations with the 80m who are unvaccinated.

5.00pm EDT
17:00

Today so far

That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:

Joe Biden will soon lay out his new strategy to combat the spread of coronavirus. The White House has said the president will outline six steps to boost vaccinations and limit the spread of the Delta variant. Biden is expected to announce he is requiring coronavirus vaccinations for all federal workers, without the option to undergo regular testing instead of getting vaccinated.
The justice department filed a lawsuit against Texas over its six-week abortion ban, a week after the supreme court declined to block the law’s implementation. “The act is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding supreme court precedent,” attorney general Merrick Garland said at a press conference this afternoon.
Biden confirmed he will withdraw the nomination of David Chipman to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Chipman had attracted intense criticism from Republicans and a handful of Democrats for his advocacy work with the gun control group Giffords. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the White House is in “active discussions” with Chipman to find another role for him in the administration.
Liz Cheney signaled she is ready for a fight following Donald Trump’s endorsement of one of her primary opponents, Harriet Hageman. After Trump mocked Cheney as the “number one provider of sound bites” for Democrats, the Republican congresswoman replied, “Here’s a sound bite for you: Bring it.” Cheney has repeatedly criticized Trump over his lies about fraud in the 2020 election, and she supported his impeachment for inciting the Capitol insurrection.
A charter flight carrying US citizens out of Kabul has safely landed in Qatar, the White House said. The flight’s departure was facilitated by the US government, as the Biden administration continues its efforts to evacuate American citizens out of Afghanistan, even after the military formally ended its Kabul mission last week.

Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

4.44pm EDT
16:44

DeSantis suffers legal defeat over anti-riot law

Richard Luscombe

It’s been another busy day in court for Florida’s litigious Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who followed up yesterday’s rebuff by a federal judge over his ban on mask mandates in schools with another defeat on Thursday – this time over his flagship anti-riot law.
US district court judge Mark Walker, in a 90-page ruling, determined that the state’s HB 1, which DeSantis signed into law in April, is unconstitutional. Touted by the governor as a means of enhancing public safety and clamping down on mob violence in the wake of protests nationwide in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the law created, among other provisions, a new crime of “mob intimidation” and protected motorists who hit protestors during a riot.
Walker, however, was not impressed with the language contained in the law. “[Its] new definition of ‘riot’ both fails to put Floridians of ordinary intelligence on notice of what acts it criminalizes, and encourages arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement, making this provision vague to the point of unconstitutionality,” he wrote.
His temporary injunction effectively prohibits enforcement of the law while legal challenges to it make their way through the courts.
If DeSantis’s recent actions are anything to go by, it won’t be long before the issue is back in the courtroom. On Thursday, DeSantis filed an emergency appeal to reverse Wednesday’s mask mandate ruling, asserting a “high likelihood” of winning the case on appeal, and claiming that the court of district judge John Cooper “abused its discretion” by lifting a stay the governor had previously won that halted Cooper’s earlier order freeing school districts to require masks.
A decision is likely within the next few days.

4.27pm EDT
16:27

Kamala Harris sharply criticized the Texas abortion law this afternoon, as the vice-president met with reproductive health providers and patients to discuss abortion rights.
Harris noted many US states beyond Texas have enacted restrictive laws that have made it extremely difficult to access abortion services, underscoring the need for a robust response to such policies.

Tim Perry
(@tperry518)
NEW: @VP Kamala Harris makes first on camera comments about the DOJ lawsuit filed against the state of Texas following TX Senate Bill 8. Harris says the DOJ understands that the TX law is “patently unconstitutional” pic.twitter.com/LUJrAxibQp

September 9, 2021

“The United States department of justice has spoken loudly in saying that this law is patently unconstitutional,” Harris said of the new federal lawsuit against Texas.
Asked what other steps the Biden administration can take to protect abortion rights, the vice-president said, “We need to codify Roe v Wade.”

4.10pm EDT
16:10

The abortion rights group NARAL praised the Biden administration for filing a lawsuit against Texas over its six-week abortion ban.
“We are pleased to see the Biden administration taking action to fight for Texans’ reproductive freedom by filing a lawsuit to block SB 8—the harshest and most extreme ban on abortion in the country,” NARAL acting president Adrienne Kimmell said in a statement.
“Let’s be clear: Texas is the tip of the iceberg. This lawsuit sends a strong message to anti-choice lawmakers across the country who are racing to enact copycat versions of SB 8 in their own states. The threat to the future of safe, legal abortion is looming larger than ever, and safeguarding reproductive freedom requires bold and immediate action.”

3.54pm EDT
15:54

Merrick Garland noted the justice department is seeking a preliminary injunction to prevent enforcement of the Texas abortion law, out of concern for private citizens acting as “bounty hunters” to ensure the statute is respected.
“The department of justice has a duty to defend the Constitution of the United States and to uphold the rule of law,” the attorney general said at his press conference.
“Today, we fulfill that duty by filing the lawsuit I have just described.”

3.41pm EDT
15:41

A reporter asked Merrick Garland whether he expected the justice department to file additional lawsuits against states threatening to pass laws similar to Texas’ six-week abortion ban.
“The additional and further risk here is that other states will follow similar models with respect not only to this constitutional right but theoretically against any constitutional right,” the attorney general said.
“So if another state uses the same kind of provisions to deprive its citizens of their constitutional rights, and in particular to deprive their citizens of the ability to seek immediate review, we will bring the same kind of lawsuit.”

3.23pm EDT
15:23

Biden administration sues Texas over six-week abortion ban

The Biden administration is suing Texas over its six-week abortion ban, which went into effect last week after the supreme court declined to block the law’s implementation.

CBS News
(@CBSNews)
Garland says Texas’ abortion ban is “clearly unconstitutional” and the state doesn’t dispute that. He says the ban creates “bounty hunters” who can file lawsuits “to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible” pic.twitter.com/jPwMJHFf02

September 9, 2021

Attorney general Merrick Garland confirmed the news at a press conference this afternoon.
“The act is clearly unconstitutional under longstanding supreme court precedent,” Garland said.
The attorney general warned that the law “deputizes all private citizens, without any showing of personal connection or injury, to serve as bounty hunters” to ensure the law is respected.
“The obvious and expressly acknowledged intention of this statutory scheme is to prevent women from exercising their constitutional rights by thwarting judicial review for as long as possible,” Garland said.

Joe Biden had previously promised that he would pursue a “whole-of-government effort” to respond to the supreme court’s decision, specifically looking at what tools the justice department may have to push back against the Texas law.

Updated
at 5.04pm EDT

3.03pm EDT
15:03

Charter flight from Kabul safely lands in Qatar, White House says

A charter flight carrying American citizens out of Kabul has now safely landed in Qatar, the White House said in a new statement.
The flight’s departure was facilitated by the US government, as the Biden administration continues its efforts to evacuate American citizens out of Afghanistan, even after the military formally ended its Kabul mission last week.
“The Taliban have been cooperative in facilitating the departure of American citizens and lawful permanent residents on charter flights from HKIA,” Emily Horne, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in the statement.
“We will continue these efforts to facilitate the safe and orderly travel of American citizens, lawful permanent residents, and Afghans who worked for us and wish to leave Afghanistan.”
It’s unclear how many US citizens were on the charter flight and how many Americans remain in Afghanistan. Ron Klain, the White House chief of staff, said on Sunday that there were roughly 100 Americans still in Afghanistan.

2.45pm EDT
14:45

Jen Psaki hinted that Joe Biden will be pursuing actions to put pressure on major employers to set coronavirus vaccine requirements for their workers.
A reporter asked the White House press secretary at her briefing, “Can the Department of Labor or anybody else compel major employers, large employers, to force the vaccine mandates on their employees?”
Psaki replied, “Yes. Stay tuned. More to come this afternoon.”

CBS News
(@CBSNews)
Reporter: “Can the Department of Labor or anybody else compel major employers, large employers, to force the vaccine mandates on their employees?”Jen Psaki: “Yes. Stay tuned. More to come this afternoon.” https://t.co/yRbPtR0ZVi pic.twitter.com/HsNZGEDUWb

September 9, 2021

The president is scheduled to deliver a speech on his new strategy to boost coronavirus vaccinations and limit the spread of the Delta variant in about two hours.
Biden is expected to sign an executive order requiring coronavirus vaccinations for all federal workers, without a testing alternative to opt out of the mandate.
Some major private-sector employers, including McDonald’s, Google and United Airlines, have already established vaccine mandates for their workers.

2.27pm EDT
14:27

Federal workers will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated under Biden’s new policy

Jen Psaki offered some details on Joe Biden’s speech this afternoon, in which he will outline his new strategy to boost coronavirus vaccinations and limit the spread of the Delta variant.
The White House press secretary said federal workers will have 75 days to get fully vaccinated under an executive order that Biden will sign later today.

Bloomberg Quicktake
(@Quicktake)
Federal employees will have about 75 days to get fully vaccinated under the executive order Biden will sign Thursday, Psaki says https://t.co/jYfQW3U8gY pic.twitter.com/jNVpgN4qng

September 9, 2021

Psaki noted the vaccine order will include “limited exceptions for legally recognized reasons,” such as religious objections and disabilities that prevent vaccinations.
Biden announced in July that federal workers would be required to get vaccinated or undergo regular coronavirus testing, but the newest order will not include a testing option.
Psaki confirmed that federal workers who do not comply with the vaccination mandate will go through the “standard HR process,” which could include facing “progressive disciplinary action”. She later added that employees could potentially be terminated if they do not get vaccinated.

2.08pm EDT
14:08

One reporter asked Jen Psaki whether Joe Biden intends to name another nominee to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, now that David Chipman’s nomination has been withdrawn.
“We certainly would at an appropriate time,” the White House press secretary said. “I don’t have a timeline on that at this point in time.”
As Psaki previously noted, there has only ever been one Senate-confirmed ATF director in the history of the bureau, so it will likely be extremely difficult to get any nominee confirmed. More

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Wyoming‘Bring it’: Liz Cheney throws down gauntlet after Trump endorses primary challengerRepublican congresswoman signals she is ready for a fight after former president endorses rival Harriet Hageman Martin Pengelly and Joan E GreveThu 9 Sep 2021 13.13 EDTLast modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 13.14 EDTRepublican congresswoman Liz Cheney had a short answer for Donald Trump on Thursday, after the former US president endorsed a challenger for her seat in Wyoming.Republicans in crosshairs of 6 January panel begin campaign of intimidationRead more“Here’s a sound bite for you,” Cheney wrote on Twitter. “Bring it.”Cheney is a stringent conservative but is nonetheless one of two Republican members of the House committee investigating the 6 January assault on the US Capitol by Trump supporters seeking to overturn his election defeat. The other is Adam Kinzinger of Illinois.Republican leaders withdrew cooperation after the Democratic speaker, Nancy Pelosi, rejected committee spots for Jim Jordan of Ohio and Jim Banks of Indiana, both potential witnesses given their closeness to Trump and role in advancing his lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud.Cheney was also among a handful of Republicans in the House and Senate who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the deadly Capitol attack, making his second impeachment the most bipartisan in US history.Cheney’s criticism of Trump has made her a Republican pariah, losing a leadership role, and her position has become a proxy war in the broader fight for control of the Republican party between Trump and his allies and more traditional figures – one that the Trumpist forces are largely winning.In a statement on Thursday, Trump endorsed Harriet Hageman in the Republican primary for Cheney’s seat ahead of midterm elections next year. He also called Cheney “the Democrats [sic] number one provider of sound bites” and a “warmonger and disloyal Republican”.Cheney is the daughter of former vice-president Dick Cheney, who promoted and presided over the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq under George W Bush from 2001 to 2009. She has fiercely criticised Joe Biden for his handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan last month.Hageman, Trump said, “is a fourth-generation daughter of Wyoming, a very successful attorney, and has the support and respect of a truly great US senator, Wyoming’s own Cynthia Lummis”.Want to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson Davis | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreLummis did not confirm her endorsement, but called Hageman “a fabulous choice for President Trump”.Hageman said Cheney “betrayed Wyoming, she betrayed this country, and she betrayed me” when she set herself in opposition to Trump and Republican leaders.Cheney has welcomed the prospect of a competitive primary, telling NBC in May that if Republican leaders wanted to “make the argument that the people of Wyoming should vote for someone who is loyal to Donald Trump over somebody who is loyal to the constitution, I welcome that debate”.Hageman is not the only challenger to Cheney. Trump has also endorsed challengers to other Republicans who supported impeachment.TopicsWyomingRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

Anthony Fauci‘Not even modestly good control’: Fauci says US Covid cases 16 times too high to end pandemicUntil cases dip to 10,000 a day, we are still in full ‘pandemic mode’, infectious disease expert says M More

The ObserverChinaJonathan Mirsky obituaryJournalist and historian of China who went from admiring the regime to being one of its sternest critics Jonathan SteeleThu 9 Sep 2021 12.15 EDTLast modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 12.17 EDTJonathan Mirsky, who has died aged 88, was a prominent American historian of China who switched to journalism and won the international reporter of the year title in the 1989 British Press Awards for his coverage in the Observer of the Tiananmen uprising.Getting the story had been a bloody experience. Armed Chinese police gave him a severe beating when they discovered he was a journalist. He was lucky to be rescued by a colleague from the Financial Times who led him away, his left arm fractured and three teeth knocked out.Mirsky’s career encapsulated the shifts in the way the western left viewed China, from the first decades of communist rule to Beijing’s move to capitalism while still under single-party control.He began as an early and prominent academic critic of the US’s role in the Vietnam war, starring in numerous protest marches and campus teach-ins. Opposing the US strategy of isolating China in the years before Nixon and Kissinger’s 1972 visit to Mao Zedong in Beijing, Mirsky supported the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, a group of radical US academics who criticised the senior faculty elite of US Asian studies for their silence on the immorality of the war.He had his first direct encounter with Maoism on an extraordinary boat trip led by Earle Reynolds, a Quaker peace activist. In 1969 Reynolds took Mirsky and four other Americans on his ketch, Phoenix, heading for Shanghai. It was meant as a goodwill gesture in the hope of starting a dialogue between Americans and Chinese officials. When they were stopped by a Chinese naval vessel 20 miles from the coast and ordered to leave, Mirsky – according to his account to friends – thought: “OK. In that case I’ll swim to China.” He jumped into the sea. The Chinese vessel hurriedly pulled away, and the Phoenix sailed back to Japan.Mirsky was never a “110 percenter” like some western admirers of Maoism but he was prepared to be impressed on his first foray to China in April 1972. With a dozen other young China scholars he spent six weeks travelling around the country with official guides. As he recalled in a book of essays by alumni of King’s College, Cambridge, he had gone “convinced that the Maoist revolution and even the Cultural, which was still going on, were good for China”. After only a few days he became convinced something bad was happening that their hosts were covering up. Many colleagues on the trip resented his growing scepticism. Some years later Mirsky met one of the guides again and complained about his deception. The guide replied: “We wanted to put rings in your noses and you helped us put them there.”Over the next four and a half decades Mirsky was to develop into one of China’s sternest and most knowledgable critics, a trajectory that he described as “From a Mao fan to a counter-revolutionary” in his contribution to the book My First Trip to China: Scholars, Diplomats, and Journalists Reflect on Their First Encounters with China (2012). He regularly lambasted western leaders for downplaying human rights violations for the sake of trade.In typically colourful language in a 2014 article for the New York Review of Books, he deplored the lack of political and social progress. “I may have been inadvertently right in May 1989 [just after Tiananmen] when I said China would ‘never be the same again’. It is sleeker, richer, internationally more reckless, more corrupt – and its leaders are ever more terrified … I am reminded of the old street sweeper in 1990 at a corner in Beijing. She was shovelling donkey dung into a pail. I asked her if she thought things had changed for the better. She replied, ‘This city is like donkey dung. Clean and smooth on the outside, but inside it’s still shit.’”Mirsky was born in New York to Reba Paeff, a children’s author and harpsichord player, and Alfred Mirsky, a pioneer in molecular biology. Educated first at Ethical Culture Fieldston school in the city, he went on to obtain a BA in history at Columbia University. He spent a year at King’s, Cambridge, in 1954, during which he met an American woman who had been a missionary in China and who urged him to study Mandarin. Three years of language study in the US followed before Mirsky, with his first wife, Betsy, also a Mandarin student, went to Taiwan to run a language school for four years.Back in the US he was awarded a PhD in Chinese history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1966. He and Betsy divorced in 1963 and he married Rhona Pearson, a British neurobiologist, with whom he moved to Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, in 1966. There he became co-director of the East Asia Language and Area Studies Center. However, he was refused tenure, in part because of his anti-Vietnam protest activity, and in 1975 he and Rhona moved to London.Mirsky was attracted to journalism and became the Observer’s China correspondent, based in London but frequently travelling to the country. His critical views of communist rule were strengthened when he made the first of six visits to Tibet for the paper. He decided the fault was not just communism but racist imperialism by Han Chinese towards ethnic minorities. Later he visited the exiled Dalai Lama in north India, who became a close friend. They shared the same sense of humour, and Mirsky was delighted to receive a long message from the Dalai Lama a few weeks before he died.During a trip to China in 1991 Mirsky was asked by the foreign ministry to leave the country and told he would never again receive a visa. In 1993 he moved to Hong Kong to become East Asia correspondent of the (London) Times until he resigned in 1998 in protest at its owner, Rupert Murdoch’s, accommodating line on China. Back in London, Mirsky wrote dozens of book reviews, mainly for the New York Review of Books. They were always erudite and colourful, and are admired today by scholars of China for their astute observation.For at least a quarter of a century Mirsky loved to hold court with friends over lunch at the same table at Fortnum and Mason’s in Piccadilly, usually enhanced by at least one Jewish and one off-colour joke. In the words of a close friend, Michael Yahuda, a former professor at the London School of Economics, “Jonathan was a master of anecdotes and he was never shy of embellishing them in favour of a good story. Above all, he enjoyed friendships and a good meal. Life with him was never dull.”He and Rhona divorced in 1986. While in Hong Kong, a decade later Mirsky married Deborah Glass, an Australian specialist in financial regulation who became deputy chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission when they moved to London. In 2014 they separated and Deborah returned to Australia.He is survived by his sister Reba. TopicsChinaHistory booksNewspapers & magazinesUS politicsThe ObserverobituariesReuse this content More

Fight to voteTexasThe Texas county that explains why Republicans are terrifiedDemographic shifts in places like Fort Bend mean the GOP is desperate to pass its extreme agenda while it can The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam LevineThu 9 Sep 2021 10.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 11.10 EDTHappy Thursday,I’m writing from my hotel room in scorching-hot Sugar Land, Texas, a city that’s just south-west of Houston, where I’m doing some reporting for our ongoing series this summer about gerrymandering. Stay tuned for more details on that story, and you can read the first, second and third pieces in our series in the meantime.As you may have heard recently, Texas has become a kind of epicenter of conservative political extremism, as Republicans who control the legislature have pushed through the most restrictive abortion law in the United States, significantly loosened gun laws and passed harsh new voting restrictions. To understand why that’s happening, you have to understand what’s happening in Sugar Land, and in Fort Bend county.Since 2010, the population in Fort Bend county has just exploded. Last year, the census counted 822,779 people living here, a staggering 40% increase from a decade ago. It’s part of the metro and suburban growth that helped Texas’s population grow by 16% over the last decade, making it one of the fastest-growing places in the US.The county is also now extremely diverse; it is nearly 32% white, 25% Hispanic or Latino, 21% Asian and 21.3% Black.“​​Fort Bend county is probably the most ethnically diverse county in the United States,” Stephen L Klineberg, the founding director of Kinder Institute for Urban Research, who closely studies the demographics of the Houston area, told me. “And so it’s a perfect model for what the American future [will look like].”Even though Sugar Land is just a short drive from Houston, it is a bona fide city in its own right. There’s a walkable town square with shops and an array of restaurants. In the center is city hall, flanked by a huge plaza and fountains where kids were chasing each other around last night.“You walk into a new restaurant, you walk into a bar, you walk into a bookstore, you see the diversity in Fort Bend county,” said Mustafa Tameez, a Democratic political strategist. “What used to be just a suburb is now becoming very much like an urban community – highly educated, diverse voters living in close proximity to each other.”The population isn’t the only thing that’s changing – the politics are too. In 2012, Mitt Romney handily won the county over Barack Obama by about 10 points. But in 2016, Hillary Clinton defeated Donald Trump by six points. In 2018, Beto O’Rourke won the county in his US Senate campaign against Ted Cruz. Biden carried the county in 2020.In 2018, Democrats won all the top county positions on the ballot, including ousting the county judge, the highest elected position in the county, a Republican incumbent who held the post for a decade.The winning candidate was KP George, an Indian-American immigrant and Democrat, who was trounced when he ran for county treasurer in 2010 and then became a commissioner on the school board in 2014. He decided to run for judge when he saw how many people supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. “That was an eye opener,” he told me over the phone a few weeks ago.These are the kinds of elections that are scaring Republicans in Texas, who still maintain complete control over state government. And it helps explain why they are imposing such extreme policies in the state legislature.“​​There’s been explosive growth in the suburbs of Texas and that is driving through the change in politics that is creating this kind of last hurrah kind of thing for people like [Texas Lieutenant Governor] Dan Patrick, and Governor Abbott and others that are trying to get as many conservative things as they can possibly get done. Because it’s not a reflection of the population and where the population is headed,” Tameez said.Klineberg, the demographer, added that there was no way for Republicans to stop the kind of demographic change happening in Fort Bend county. “The Republicans see the handwriting on the wall,” he said.I’m also thinking about …
The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, signed the sweeping new legislation restricting voting access into law on Tuesday. The new law faces several challenges already in state and federal court.

Several places are seeing a flood of people signing up for lower-level GOP positions that could play a big role in how elections are administered, according to a remarkable story from ProPublica. “I’ve never seen anything like this, people are coming out of the woodwork,” one Florida GOP chairman told the outlet.Have any questions about elections and voting?Send them to me! Starting this week, you can send me your burning questions about voting rights in America and I’ll do my best to answer them in next week’s newsletter. You can send your questions to [email protected] or DM me on Twitter @srl
TopicsTexasFight to voteUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

OpinionUS politicsWhy are Americans paying $32m every hour for wars since 9/11?Barbara LeeI was the sole member of Congress to vote against the war in Afghanistan. Congress has yet to stand up against endless militarism Thu 9 Sep 2021 06.19 EDTLast modified on Thu 9 Sep 2021 06.21 EDTOn 11 September 2001, the world witnessed a terrible attack against our nation that took thousands of lives and changed millions more lives forever. The events of that day fundamentally changed the way we view American national security. But the decision to plunge the US into a state of perpetual war was taken rashly, without the debate that such a momentous decision demanded.Twenty years on, the US and the world are much worse off for this failure of leadership. It is time to turn the page on two decades of endless war with a vague and ever-shifting mission. While this begins with removing the 2001 and 2002 authorizations for use of military force from the law books, it will also require decisive changes in our foreign policy decision processes and resource allocation.Shortly after the attacks, President Bush sent a 60-word blank check to Congress that would give him or any other president the authority to wage war against enemies of their choosing. It was a sweeping resolution known as the 2001 authorization for use of military force, or the 2001 AUMF. I was the lone vote in Congress against the authorization because I feared it was too broad, giving the president the open-ended power to use military force anywhere, against anyone.The human cost has been high: an untold number of civilian casualties overseas, two generations of American soldiers sent to fight without any clear objective or oversight and thousands of our troops and other personnel killed, wounded and traumatized in action.The Afghanistan war alone has cost more than $2.6tn taxpayer dollars and killed more than 238,000 individuals. The 2002 AUMF, which authorized war against Iraq based on fabricated claims of weapons of mass destruction, has cost $1.9tn and killed an estimated 288,000. Together, these two AUMFs have been used by three successive presidents to engage in war in at least seven countries – from Yemen to Libya to Niger – against a continually growing list of adversaries that Congress never foresaw or intended. The Bush, Obama and Trump administrations have further identified to Congress combat-ready counter-terrorism deployments to at least 14 additional countries, indicating that the AUMFs could justify armed combat in those places as well. Only 56 current members of the House and 16 senators were present at the 2001 vote, making a mockery of the constitutional principle that only the people’s elected representatives in Congress can send our country to war.The results today are a perpetual state of war and an ever-expanding military-industrial complex that consumes a greater and greater amount of our resources every year. Pentagon spending since 9/11 (adjusted for inflation) has increased by almost 50%. Each hour, taxpayers are paying $32m for the total cost of wars since 2001, and these wars have not made Americans safer or brought democracy or stability to the Middle East. To the contrary, they have further destabilized the region and show no sign of ending or achieving any of the long-ago stated goals.Additionally, many of these actions were essentially hidden from the American people by using funds from an account meant for unanticipated developments called overseas contingency operations. Congress appropriated nearly $1.9tn for this account, enabling continuing military actions and wars in several countries, exempted from congressional budget rules. Thankfully, President Biden ended this budget practice this year. But two decades of reliance on emergency and contingency funding sources has resulted in less oversight, less transparency and higher levels of waste.It’s time we end these forever wars. With a coalition of partners, allies and advocates both inside the halls of Congress and out, we are finally on the cusp of turning the page on this state of perpetual war-making.To begin with, I worked with colleagues on a bipartisan basis to urge President Biden to withdraw troops from Afghanistan swiftly and efficiently. He heeded our calls and undertook an evacuation operation unprecedented in its scale, while keeping our commitment to withdraw military occupation before 11 September. The ill-defined AUMF allowed the Afghanistan war to drag on for two decades, even after we had achieved the ostensible mission of eliminating the threat posed by al-Qaida to the United States. The challenges of our evacuation, and the fact that the Taliban could regain control of Afghanistan despite our 20-year war, merely underscore why Congress should not authorize open-ended military engagements.For that very reason, it’s not enough just to withdraw our forces. We must rein in executive power and keep it from being abused by any more administrations – Democratic or Republican. In my role on the Democratic platform drafting committee, I successfully advocated for including a repeal of the 2001 and 2002 AUMFs in the Democratic party platform. In a historic 268–161 vote, the House passed my legislation to repeal the 2002 AUMF in June, and the Senate foreign relations committee voted 14-8 in August to do the same, with both votes drawing bipartisan support. I am also calling on Congress to address the outdated 2001 AUMF. Any new authorization for use of military force must include safeguards to protect against overreach – including a clear and specifically defined mission objective, reporting requirements to increase transparency and accountability and a sunset clause or timeline within which Congress should revisit the authority – among other provisions.Congress must reclaim its constitutional duty to oversee matters of war and peace. In addition to repealing these AUMFs, we also need to revisit the broader statutes that govern war powers so that Congress can more effectively rein in presidential war-making – a project being pursued in earnest by my colleagues, Representatives Jim McGovern (D-MA) and Gregory Meeks (D-NY). But we need to go beyond just changing the law. We need to change our approach to the world, away from framing every challenge as one that requires military force as a response. When we use the frame of war to analyze the challenge of terrorism, we artificially limit the solutions available to us, crowding out the political and diplomatic approaches that offer the only real durable solutions for US security.Helping to build an equitable world that values inclusion and human rights won’t make terrorism disappear. But it would dramatically shrink the space for terrorist groups to operate and weaken the real grievances that they exploit. Not only that, but a US foreign policy based on supporting development and human rights would allow us to pursue a proactive strategy in line with progressive values, rather than one where America finds itself constantly in a militarized defensive crouch.A new foreign policy approach requires a significant reallocation of our resources to address the very real and immediate threats we face. The world is still confronting a global pandemic. Hundreds of millions of people are living in extreme poverty, with many more pushed out of the middle class by Covid-19. And the climate crisis looms over us, threatening every gain in human progress we have made over recent decades. It is unacceptable to continue to pour billions of dollars into the Pentagon when the real challenges we face require diplomatic and development solutions.A new and better approach also requires empowering our civilian foreign policy agencies to set the agenda. For too many years, we have outsourced our foreign policy to the Pentagon. The overwhelming human and financial resources that the Pentagon brings to foreign policy decision-making too often push diplomatic or development concerns to the background. Rebalancing the emphasis of our foreign policy will give us the opportunity to explore solutions that could be both more humane and more durable.The president has a role in fixing the errors of the past 20 years. But ultimately Congress must step up. For two decades, Congress has failed to exercise its constitutionally mandated role to conduct proper oversight, to make appropriate decisions about budgets and resource allocation, and – most importantly – to play the singular role the constitution assigns to us of making decisions about war and peace. The American people have made clear their preference for moving beyond endless war. Congress needs to hear their voice and act.
Congresswoman Barbara Lee is a member of the House appropriations committee, chair of the subcommittee on state and foreign operations, and co-chair of the House steering & policy committee. As a member of the House Democratic leadership, she is the highest-ranking Black woman in the US Congress
This essay is co-published with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law as part of a series exploring new approaches to national security 20 years after 9/11
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