US Politics

The question has loomed over Los Angeles politics for years: when will the mayor resign?Pundits have long predicted that Eric Garcetti, the mayor with clear ambitions for higher office, would not finish out his second term. Now, it seems likely that the Democrat running the second largest city in the US will be stepping down more than a year early – with widespread reports that Joe Biden has selected him as his ambassador to India.If confirmed, Garcetti, 50, will be leaving behind a thorny legacy in a megacity facing a confluence of challenges: a warming climate, congestion and air pollution, a housing crisis, gentrification battles and some of the worst economic inequality in America.LA is facing some serious problems, and I think he understands that this isn’t a record that he is going to want for the rest of his careerWhile he has enacted major policies on climate and transit, he could be departing amid a sexual harassment case in his office and at a time when his popularity in the heavily Democratic city has slipped. Garcetti has increasingly become a target of progressive groups over his policies on policing, homelessness, and other racial justice issues.“LA is facing some serious problems, and I think he understands that this isn’t a record that he is going to want for the rest of his career,” said Jessica Levinson, a Loyola law professor. “It is hard to run for higher office when your most recent resume line is mayor of LA. He’s made the calculation that … he has to enter the national or international stage before he comes back home to try [to] move up the political ladder.”Garcetti, the son of a former LA district attorney, served as a city councilman before being elected mayor in 2013 on a “back to basics” platform of increasing jobs and fixing city streets. He had initially considered a 2020 White House run and later joined the Biden campaign as a co-chair. When it was rumored last year that he was under consideration for a cabinet position (possibly transportation or housing secretary), Black Lives Matter LA and other activist groups began holding loud, daily protests outside Getty House, the mayor’s residence, urging Biden not to pick a “self-seeking mayor for a cabinet position in which he is completely unqualified”.The mayor announced he would not be taking a secretary job in December, citing the city’s rapidly worsening Covid catastrophe.Garcetti, the youngest mayor in LA in more than a century, would likely defend his record by pointing to his leadership during Covid, his efforts to stabilize the economy, his bid to bring the Olympics to LA in 2028, and his green jobs plan, said Levinson. It remains to be seen how the Olympics will impact the city, with opponents arguing that the games would accelerate displacement, gentrification and inequality.The LA Times editorial board recently urged Garcetti to stay, praising his “vision for a more livable, transit-oriented, environmentally and technologically friendly city” and his success at passing a new earthquake safety law.Carlo De La Cruz, California deputy for the Sierra Club’s My Generation Campaign, praised the mayor’s goals of 100% clean energy by 2045 and committing to an entirely electric fleet for garbage trucks: “It’s an achievement that I think people will remember as a critical shift … that will create ripple effects for the west coast and hopefully the nation.”The mayor succeeded in pushing a key transportation funding measure in 2016 and set commendable goals for improved mobility and safer streets, said Juan Matute, the deputy director of the UCLA Institute of Transportation Studies. But the execution of his plans has been slow and haphazard, he said.“There was a lot of promise for changing mobility in southern California that came through in plans … but they’ve fallen short of implementation,” according to Matute.It’s his legacy on homelessness, however, that could haunt him for years, contributing to what some commentators have called the “jinx” of the LA mayor job, which has not generally led to higher office, observers say.“We are seeing homeless encampments increasing everywhere,” said Stephen “Cue” Jn-Marie, a pastor at Skid Row, the epicenter of the crisis. “His legacy with us is a total failure. The issue of housing is not taken seriously in this city, because this city has never taken Black people seriously … and Garcetti is more concerned with getting people off the street and out of sight than getting people housed.” There are more than 41,000 homeless people in the city, according to last year’s count, and more than a thousand unhoused people die on the street each year in LA county.The pastor said Garcetti had been too focused on forcing people into shelters and relying on law enforcement instead of providing long-term housing solutions. He pointed to the 2015 LAPD fatal shooting of an unhoused Skid Row resident, Charly Africa Keunang, amid a Safer Cities initiative, which funded officer patrols in the neighborhood. Most recently, city leaders faced intense scrutiny for the eviction of a homeless community from a popular park, aided by police.Garcetti has recently touted his proposed $1bn budget for homelessness, which would go to new housing projects, homelessness prevention and eviction defense programs and the expansion of services and cleanup teams. He also made national headlines with his announcement of a basic income program that could be the largest in the nation.But racial justice groups have been pressing the mayor to redirect funds away from LAPD and into services and programs, and while there has been some reallocation, Garcetti, in what could be his final days, has pushed a police budget increase.Garcetti was co-opting BLM’s words by calling his proposal a “justice budget” and claiming to “reimagine” public safety while expanding police funds, said Dr Melina Abdullah, the BLMLA co-founder: “He appropriates our language and then does the exact opposite … This is really a rightwing strategy. It’s like advancing corporate interests and allowing them to pollute the environment, and then calling it the ‘clean skies act’.”The mayor’s office has pointed to ongoing efforts to send mental health specialists to certain 911 calls. But for his harshest critics, an early exit before his term ends in 2022 would serve as confirmation that he was not dedicated to the hard work of running a city struggling with a major humanitarian crisis. He would be the first LA mayor to step down mid-term since 1916 when the mayor resigned due to a cheating scandal, according to the LA Times.Garcetti is also leaving during an ongoing lawsuit alleging that the mayor ignored or laughed off sexual harassment by his former top aide. Attorneys for the plaintiff, who have deposed the mayor’s wife, have raised concerns that she and the mayor could be in another country and “out of this court’s subpoena power” before a scheduled deposition in July. The LA Times reported that the city’s attorneys have responded that she would be available.“It is the perfect end note for a legacy of really ineffectual leadership that at its best was just self-serving, but at its worst was very deadly,” said Ina Morton, an organizer with the activist group, People’s City Council LA.“It’s not surprising. He has this reputation of being a mayor who likes to show up for a photoshoot … who is not really concerned with making the political sacrifices that are necessary to lead a city and help people.”A spokesperson for the mayor did not respond to an inquiry. More

It’s become a familiar process in the Joe Biden era.Biden and Democrats say they will work with Republicans. Republicans say they want a seat at the negotiating table. Then the prospect of Democrats going alone begins to hover over the negotiations.As Biden tries to pass an ambitious and transformative agenda as part of America’s recovery from the pandemic, he has repeatedly said he wants to bring Republicans over to his side. Yet at the same time he has tried to draw a line in the sand beyond which compromise is impossible.It has been like that on how the Biden administration has approached tackling a coronavirus relief package. It’s been like that on confirming some of Biden’s cabinet secretaries. And it’s how Biden has approached his next set of major initiatives, which range from upgrading roads and bridges to helping Americans with childcare.The jury on whether the White House’s political strategy will work is still out. Biden and his team have not yet walked away from talks with Republicans on major legislative proposals. But they have also actively kept the go-it-alone option alive.Case in point: on Thursday the Republican group charged with negotiating an infrastructure deal with the Biden administration rolled out its latest counter offer, a $928bn plan with about $257bn in new spending.When those Republican senators unveiled their latest proposal the divide between the White House’s new infrastructure spending and Republicans’ was about $1.4tn. It’s a gap that would seem like the last straw.Less than a week before this latest proposal, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, the lead Republican negotiator, left a meeting at the White House and released a statement from her team saying “the groups seem further apart after two meetings with White House staff than they were after one meeting with President Biden.”But on the day Capito’s team revealed the newest offer, the senator was optimistic. She briefly spoke with Biden later on Thursday. She described the call as “very positive”.But if there was any agreement on Thursday it was that these discussions would not last endlessly.“He’s said this consistently and I think I feel this way too – you don’t want to drag this on for ever,” Capito added.Biden himself said as much the same day.“We’re going to have to close this down soon,” he said.At stake is hundreds of billions of dollars for not just the common types of improvements an infrastructure bill would cover – like roads and bridges – but also incentives for setting up a national grid for electric vehicles, significant investments in the education system, updating research and development and improving the US supply chain.But the sense of urgency is not unique to infrastructure negotiations. Even with Democrats controlling the presidency, Senate and the House of Representatives they have to grapple with the filibuster legislative mechanism in the Senate and slim majorities in both chambers.As a result, there’s always a threat. With infrastructure, Democrats have allowed the possibility of passing some kind of package through a budgetary maneuver called reconciliation. And with other priorities, like a voting rights overhaul or setting up a bipartisan commission to investigate the 6 January attack on the Capitol, Democrats have increasingly shaken their fists and said something must be done if Republicans won’t compromise.On Thursday Republicans showed just how far their interest in compromising went. The Senate failed to move forward on the 6 January commission after the bipartisan panel fell short of the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold, with just six Republican senators joining Democrats in a 54-35 vote.Some Republicans had argued that a commission was unnecessary. Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, said on Thursday that while he supported investigations into the 6 January mob attack, he saw no reason for the type of committee Democrats have been pushing.Democrats have argued that congressional gridlock on the commission and a voting rights bill could lead even the final filibuster reform holdouts to throw up their hands.Democrats have argued that the filibuster’s 60-vote threshold is too often impossible to achieve and effectively stalls almost all legislating in the Senate.“There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything they’ve asked for,” the Democratic senator Joe Manchin said on Thursday. “Mitch McConnell has made this his political position, thinking it will help his 2022 elections. They do not believe the truth will set you free, so they continue to live in fear.”On infrastructure, Biden and his advisers have signaled a willingness to keep negotiating with Republicans for a few more weeks, longer than they had previously said. But Democrats’ patience is dwindling.On Wednesday Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia stressed the importance of passing some kind of voting rights bill soon.“I think we’ve got to get something done in time to do something about voter suppression bills that have already passed,” Warnock said. More

This Memorial Day weekend, several prominent conservative allies of Donald Trump, who have promoted almost nonstop his false narratives about the 2020 election results, are slated to hold rallies in Florida and Texas endorsed by the wealthy libertarian Patrick Byrne.Billed as featuring the Trump confidant Roger Stone, the retired general Michael Flynn, Byrne and other pro-Trump stalwarts, the dual events underscore that Byrne – who has been leading private fundraising for the politically driven vote audit now under way in Arizona’s largest county – seems intent on funding and pushing conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections.Byrne’s influence and activities reveal him to be a rising figure on the Trumpist right and also show how fake narratives around the 2020 election – far from receding – are in fact still a powerful motivating force among Trump supporters.Just last month Byrne created a non-profit, dubbed the America Project, which has been instrumental in funding the Arizona audit, and is promoting the two weekend rallies on its website. The Byrne non-profit quickly launched fundtheaudit.com in Arizona that has indicated it wants to raise $2.8m. As of mid May, it had reportedly pulled in $1.7m.Byrne, whose net worth has been pegged at about $75m, has said he personally donated $1m to the America Project and $500,000 to fundtheaudit.com.Byrne’s America Project seems to aspire to play a key role in tandem with other conservative pro-Trump bastions in spreading election disinformation: the America Project’s website says it wants to “lead a new American renaissance by arming citizens with the tools to fight for their freedoms, building like minded pro-freedom networks and uniting pro-America organizations who want to fight together in support of our nation”.Byrne’s high-profile backing of pro-Trump conspiracies follows some bizarre contacts he had with Trump, post-election. In December, Byrne attended a White House meeting that also drew Flynn, who had publicly suggested Trump might invoke martial law to stay in power, and the rightwing lawyer Sidney Powell, who was helping Trump’s legal team.Byrne is the founder and ex-chief of the company Overstock, and says he didn’t vote for Trump, but this year wrote The Deep Rig, a self-published conspiracy-ridden look at the 2020 elections. Byrne’s growing role on the far right comes after he publicly revealed he had an affair with Maria Butina, the convicted unregistered foreign agent for Russia, which prompted his resignation from Overstock in 2019.The upcoming Florida rally on Sunday is set to feature Byrne, along with Flynn and Stone – both of whom Trump pardoned after they had been convicted as part of the inquiries into Russian influence in the 2016 elections. Advertised as a Patriots Day rally, it is slated to take place at a private ranch in Jupiter.The three-day Texas event is billed as a rally for “God and country” that started on Friday and is scheduled to include talks by various pro-Trump stalwarts including Flynn and lawyers Powell and Lin Wood.But Byrne’s central role in funding the Arizona audit and how it is being run is attracting growing scrutiny. Byrne has acknowledged that he had some brief contacts last December with Doug Logan, the head of the little-known Florida-based cybersecurity firm Cyber Ninjas, which was selected by Arizona officials to lead the audit, even though it had no experience in doing one previously.“This is an audit like none that has ever been performed,” Byrne boasted to the AP. “This audit is an audit check for all forms of mischief.”Byrne’s non-profit outfits, which won’t have to disclose how the funds are spent or who is writing the checks, also have reportedly played a role in recruiting volunteers for the audit.In an email to local Arizona Republicans last week, a state official requested more volunteers and referred them to Byrne’s website to apply, the Arizona Republic reported. Byrne told the AP his operation merely sends volunteers to Cyber Ninjas for “vetting”.The private funding Byrne is spearheading comes on top of $150,000 that the Arizona senate allocated to do the latest audit, a project which many Republican figures in Arizona and nationally have attacked as a waste of resources and dangerous since Biden’s victory in Maricopa county has already been certified as accurate.Voting rights specialists are dismayed at the haphazard and private drive in Arizona that Byrne and his cohorts are mounting.“This is yet another piece of evidence that the whole effort in Arizona is more of a disinformation campaign than anything else,” said Larry Norden, the director of the electoral reform program at the Brennan Center for Justice. “A good rule of thumb is that you should not take election’s work out of the hands of the professionals who run them and outsource it to people with a clear political agenda. It’s profoundly dangerous for our democracy.”Some former Republican members of Congress say the privately run crusade by Byrne and his allies is hurting democracy in America as a whole.Jeff Flake, a Republican former Arizona senator, said in an interview that Byrne’s “involvement in all this does not add credibility. It’s damaging to the Republican party and our system of government.”Byrne did not respond to requests for comment left with the America Project.But judging by his media appearances, Byrne isn’t fazed by critics of the growing role he has been playing.Last month, Byrne in an interview with the New Tang Dynasty, an obscure television outlet whose website claims it was launched by Chinese-Americans who fled communism, flatly claimed: “It was a fraudulent election. It didn’t end for us on January 20.’’Likewise, Byrne’s fundraising to promote false information about the elections may not end in Arizona.The America Project website says if fundraising exceeds the $2.8m goal, it will use the monies “for other election integrity activities’’ including audits in other states and related expenses. More

The head of the 9/11 Commission has told the Guardian senators’ failure to launch a similar investigation into the 6 January insurrection at the US Capitol is “democracy’s loss”.Thomas Kean led a bipartisan team that held public hearings, studied classified intelligence, interviewed two presidents and chased down conspiracy theories in producing a 567-page report on the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington.The former Republican governor of New Jersey argued for an equivalent commission to study the Capitol riot but that effort was thwarted on Friday when Senate Republicans used their first legislative filibuster of Joe Biden’s presidency, stopping Democrats obtaining the 60-vote majority needed to set up the panel.“It saddens me because there was no real public reason for turning it down,” Kean, 86, said by phone from Far Hills, New Jersey. “I guess some people were scared of what they’d find out. That’s not a good reason for turning it down.“I think if it’s done right, the methodology of the 9/11 Commission works and could have worked to find out all about this particular event. Why these people invaded the Capitol, who they were, who they were allied with. Was it a big conspiracy? Was there any plan to do anything in the future? Why wasn’t the Capitol better defended?”Kean added: “These are all questions we may never have the answer to. It’s time we found out about it and I’m sorry we’re not going to. It’s a mistake and it’s a country’s loss and a democracy’s loss.”Kean was appointed chairman of the 9/11 Commission by George W Bush. Most of its recommendations were implemented by Congress, including the need for greater intelligence sharing between agencies, under a single national director.Kean believes the commission’s work, including cooperation between Democrats and Republicans, offered a valuable blueprint.“I think when you find something that works,” he said, “it’s not a bad thing to replicate it. There are lots of things that don’t work and haven’t worked – they shouldn’t be replicated – but this is one that did work.“We told the history of the 9/11 attacks, which is now used as a college textbook, and nobody’s really contradicted any of the major facts in it.“We made 41 recommendations, most of which were enacted by the Congress. We had the largest reorganisation of government in years and the bottom line is there hasn’t been anything like that attack since. The structure we set up seems to work.”Kean also supports efforts to create a Covid-19 commission to learn lessons from America’s mishandling of the pandemic. But he suspects it might eventually be done by the private sector rather than government.Some commentators have described 6 January 2021 as America’s darkest day since 11 September 2001. The nation was stunned when a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to disrupt the certification of Biden as winner of the presidential election. Five people died.Democrats pushed for a commission that would scrutinise law enforcement decisions on the day, intelligence and security planning failures and the response of the Pentagon, along with Trump’s role before and during the chaos.In a speech near the White House on 6 January, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” in support of his lie that his defeat was the result of electoral fraud. He was impeached on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted when only seven Republican senators voted for his guilt.Legislation to create the commission passed the House with 35 Republican supporters but on Friday only six Republican senators voted in favour. Five of the six also voted to convict Trump in his impeachment trial. The outcome of the attempt to establish the 6 January commission immediately fuelled criticism that the Republican party has put fealty to Trump ahead of healing democracy. More

At times, the US Secret Service has resembled a bunch of pistol-toting frat boys on a taxpayer-funded spring break. In the words of a drunken supervisor speaking to his men in the run-up to a 2012 summit in Cartagena, Colombia: “You don’t know how lucky you are … You are going to fuck your way across the globe.”Disturbingly, the debacle in Colombia was not a one-off, as Carol Leonnig makes clear. Rather, it was the most glaring episode in an accumulation of horribles. Six agents were dismissed, another six disciplined.Leonnig knows of what she writes. She won a Pulitzer for her reporting on security lapses at the Secret Service, including the “Vegas bachelor party” in South America, and was part of the Washington Post team that scored a Pulitzer for its work on Edward Snowden’s war on the National Security Agency.She also worked with Philip Rucker on A Very Stable Genius, one of the better and more informative books on Donald Trump’s time in the White House. Now she delivers her first solo work, Zero Fail. It paints an alarming portrait of those dedicated to protecting the president and offers a comprehensive look at an agency that has seen better days.In 2009, Michaele and Tareq Salahi slipped through White House security, attended a state dinner and met Barack Obama. In 2015, a pair of soused senior agents crashed an official car into the White House complex.There are incidents of shots being fired into the White House, an intruder making it into the building and an agent on Mike Pence’s detail hooking up with a hooker.The Secret Service’s motto? “Worthy of Trust and Confidence.”Leonnig tells of agents taking selfies with Donald Trump’s sleeping grandson. Trump asked their supervisor, “These guys weren’t being pervs, right?”The response: “They were just being idiots.”Zero Fail convincingly argues that the men and women who guard the president, the vice-president and their families are overworked. Leonnig also contends the Secret Service is a victim of mission creep, a buddy system saddled with out-of-date technology, a culture wedded to doing things because that is how they have always been done.When one young agent brought a pair of fresh eyes to the situation, he was dropped. His critique is now the stuff of in-house legend.Once part of the US Treasury, the Secret Service is presently housed within the Department of Homeland Security – a change that ultimately made little difference. Being swallowed by a bureaucratic Frankenstein did not help morale. The Secret Service became another body-part stitched to a cabinet ministry cobbled together in the aftermath of 9/11.A boost to the budget was not sustained. Trump’s persistent travels to Mar-a-Lago left the Secret Service operating on a shoestring.“Trump has set back this agency 10 years,” one former agent who departed during Trump’s tenure confides to Leonnig. “The overall culture and way of doing things took a big step back.”Time has dulled the images of selflessness displayed in Dallas in November 1963 and outside the Capitol Hilton in 1981. Clint Hill threw himself on to President Kennedy’s limousine. Rufus Youngblood Jr used his body to shield Lyndon Johnson. Tim McCarthy took a bullet meant for Ronald Reagan. Jerry Parr bundled the president away.Unwelcome occurrences are not always gamed out. As former agent Jonathan Wackrow puts it: “The policies and procedures of the Secret Service are born out of blood.”When the planes slammed into the World Trade Center, agents removed Dick Cheney from his office but were delayed in delivering the vice-president to a secure location. Chains of command stymied his immediate entry into a designated shelter. That and the lack of a key.In chronicling the heroics, failures and foibles of the Secret Service, Leonnig also opens a window on the families the agents served. Not surprisingly, some fare better than others. The Clintons and Carters trail the Bushes and Reagans.The agents respected and admired George and Barbara Bush. The feeling was mutual. The Bushes “treated the Secret Service agents who protected them and their large brood like part of the extended family – not like ‘the help’.” At Christmas, the Bushes delayed their celebration so agents could be home with their families. The former head of the Bush detail told Leonnig: “That’s why people would do anything for the President and Mrs Bush.”The Clintons stood on the other end of the spectrum. Bill’s priapic adventures were a headache and Hillary came to be loathed. As for Chelsea, Leonnig tells of her cutting short a telephone conversation with a friend as agents arrived.“I’ve got to go,” the youngest Clinton is remembered saying. “The pigs are here.”Reminded that the agents’ job was to “stand between you, your family and a bullet”, Chelsea reportedly responded: “Well, that’s what my mother and father call you.”The story spread. Suffice to say, Hillary’s “foul mouth” didn’t help her standing with those who protected her. Nor for that matter did the Secret Service’s personnel and culture, which leaned conservative and Republican. Bill and Hillary were children of the 60s. Military service and baking cookies were not for them.Whether and how the Secret Service rebounds remains to be seen. In the aftermath of the insurrection of 6 January, “one Secret Service officer called the armed protesters ‘patriots’ seeking to undo an illegitimate election”, according to Zero Fail. The agent also “falsely claimed to her friends that disguised antifa members had started the violence”, a view still held by the former president’s minions. Members of the Trump detail have been reassigned.To rejuvenate the Secret Service, work needs to be done. At a minimum, Leonnig’s book will get people talking and thinking. More

Do you remember how, just a few short months ago, supporters of Donald Trump staged a violent insurrection? How they stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the results of last November’s presidential election, looting and vandalizing the seat of American democracy? The fact that they carried firearms, explosives and handcuffs, some wanting to kill Vice-President Mike Pence, and others to run the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, over with a car? And how the whole thing was incited by the former president, Donald Trump, who told the mob beforehand to “fight like hell”?If you are willing to admit that you remember these things, you’re in a smaller minority than you might think. In recent months, Republicans haven’t been content to just block the creation of a congressional committee to uncover new facts about the insurrection. They’ve also moved to rewrite the history of the facts we already know. Republican legislators and rightwing media have suggested either that nothing of particular note happened that day, or that if it did, it was the fault of leftwing agitators like “antifa” and Black Lives Matter. Completely unmoored from reality as they may be, Republican voters seem about split between the two explanations, with 48% saying that the people at the Capitol were “mostly peaceful, law-abiding Americans” and 54% saying they were a leftwing mob.Often lies like this are designed to obscure what the party itself does. As Republicans have moved more and more overtly towards rejecting the democratic process, they have to try all the more furiously to cover up their tracks. If the party were forced to admit that the man who they twice put forward to be president – and may yet put forward again – had instigated a violent insurrection, it would be hard for them to continue to function as a democratic political party. Rather than admit what they really are, they prefer to deny what they did.But the attempt by Republicans to rewrite history extends beyond lying about their own behavior. Like pathological liars everywhere, Republicans spin vast, conspiratorial stories in which they always emerge as either the hero or the victim. Ridiculous claims that the election was stolen or that coronavirus was a minor event which the media overhyped to harm Trump are intended to recast the story of America’s recent history in a way which legitimizes the party’s ceaseless war against expertise, fact-based media and political opposition.The inability to reach a shared understanding of recent history poses a grave dangerWhat makes Republican lies so insidious is that they have many purposes beyond being literally believed. As Russel Muirhead and Nancy L Rosenblum have argued, they are often “conspiracy without the theory”. No evidence or explanation in support of them is offered because factual belief is not the point. Instead, they serve to have believers demonstrate their loyalty. To repeat something clearly untrue is a sign of debasement but also dedication, one that reaffirms one’s identity as a loyal member of the movement. The lies also draw a clear line between believers on the inside and those on the outside who react furiously to the blatant falsehoods. This only intensifies the perception among Republicans that they are under relentless siege from hostile forces, making the lies even easier to repeat.The inability to reach a shared understanding of recent history poses a grave danger. While political parties and factions will always disagree over how to interpret the world and its history, the give-and-take and trust which are vital to the functioning of democratic politics depend on a common baseline understanding of reality. Decades ago, the political theorist Hannah Arendt wrote that factual truth is “the ground on which we stand and the sky that stretches above us”, by which she meant that it sets the parameters and limits of political struggle. If one side refuses to accept those limits, it is signaling that it is capable of doing almost anything to gain the power necessary remake the world in the shadow of their lies.Another of Arendt’s observations was that once a common understanding of the world has been lost, it is incredibly difficult to reconstruct. The sheer scale of the apparatus which works to rewrite history – from TV and radio to social media posts to online propaganda outlets – creates a snug cocoon of validation which is hard to penetrate, especially when it is shared with others. Psychologists have demonstrated that human beings are hard-wired to dismiss information that contradicts their worldview and threatens their social relationships. If everyone else in your circle – at home, at the bar, on social media – is accepting the historical rewrite, the easiest thing to do is go along with it. Failing to do so could mean losing friends, falling out with family and questioning the fundamentals of your own identity.All of these forces create powerful incentives which will remain in place for as long as the party remains committed to its assault on American democracy. It has been said that truth is the first casualty of war, but it is also the first victim of would-be autocrats and revolutionaries. Today’s Republican party has plenty of both. For as long as it and its supporters continue to travel down their current path, they will remain dependent on the constant rewriting of history. There’s no other way for them to keep going. As for where exactly they’re going – that’s a question which ought to worry us all. More

For the first time in nearly 30 years, a US president has released a budget that doesn’t ban federal funding for abortion.On Friday Joe Biden released his full budget proposal for fiscal year 2022, and in keeping with his campaign promise on abortion access, Biden did not include the Hyde amendment, an annual budget rider that bans federal Medicaid money from being used for almost all abortions. (There are exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest or that would threaten the pregnant person’s life.)Hyde dramatically limits abortion coverage for millions of people with low incomes enrolled in the federal health insurance program, creating a two-tiered system of access. Advocates and lawmakers have called Hyde discriminatory, harmful and racist. But for years, Democratic and Republican administrations upheld the ban because of voter support and anti-abortion stigma.“We are thrilled that President Biden kept his campaign promise and submitted a budget without the Hyde amendment,” said Destiny Lopez, the co-president of All* Above All, a reproductive justice organization that has led the effort to repeal abortion coverage bans. “The Hyde amendment has, for more than 40 years, denied insurance coverage of abortion for people working to make ends meet and today will mark the first time in literal decades that our president has submitted a budget without the Hyde amendment.”Reproductive rights and justice advocates have long noted that a right to abortion without access is a right in name only, and restrictions like Hyde can place often insurmountable barriers to access abortion, while perpetuating racial and economic inequality – two issues Biden campaigned on. Black, Latino and LGBTQ people are disproportionately likely to have low incomes and get insurance through Medicaid, thereby facing the coverage ban.Abortion at 10 weeks of pregnancy costs an average of $550, and costs increase as the pregnancy progresses. People face other costs including taking unpaid time off work, childcare as most people seeking abortions are already parents, and travel costs. People with low incomes may need time to gather funds because their insurance doesn’t cover abortion and they can get caught in a cruel cycle as the procedure just gets more expensive, or even approach the gestational limit in their state.Taken together, Hyde functions as a de facto abortion ban for many. A 2009 literature review estimated that one in four women with restricted Medicaid would have an abortion if their insurance covered it but instead are forced to carry the pregnancy to term. A 2019 study in Louisiana came to a similar conclusion. Women denied a wanted abortion are more likely to experience poverty both six months and four years later than are those who receive an abortion, per a 2018 study.A 2019 poll commissioned by All* Above All found that six in 10 registered voters believe Medicaid should cover abortion services just like it covers other pregnancy-related care. And Lopez said ending Hyde fits squarely within Biden’s stated priorities of racial equity and economic security. “The president and the administration understand that the same folks who are bearing the brunt of this pandemic, and the brunt of this national reckoning on racial justice, are the ones who have been harmed by Hyde,” she said.Friday’s budget is historic, said Yamani Hernandez, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, a membership organization for mutual aid groups that help people pay for abortion expenses and coordinate travel. “For years, Black, Indigenous and people of color have organized to highlight abortion injustices that have disproportionately weighed on their shoulders, and today they have finally been heard,” Hernandez.While 16 states use their own funds to cover abortion for Medicaid enrollees, in 2019, 7.7 million reproductive-age women with Medicaid lived in the 34 states and Washington DC that ban abortion coverage. Of the women subject to the bans, 51% are women of color. The move will have less effect in the 12 states that still have not expanded Medicaid because without higher income thresholds, it’s harder for low-income adults without children to qualify for the program.Biden’s budget also removes a ban on abortion coverage for low-income residents of Washington DC. It was not clear at press time if the budget included other restrictions similar to Hyde that limit coverage for people with disabilities insured through Medicare, as well as for federal employees, military personnel, Native Americans using the Indian Health Service (IHS), Peace Corps volunteers, people incarcerated in federal prisons, and. In fiscal year 2015, federal funds covered just 160 abortions.Hyde has been passed every year since 1976 and not since 1993 has a president released a budget without Hyde, though that effort from President Bill Clinton failed in the House. Repealing Hyde was in the Democratic party platform for the first time in 2016 and in the 2020 cycle, Biden was the last Democratic presidential candidate to support its repeal. Following criticism in June 2019, Biden reversed his long-held support and said, “I can’t justify leaving millions of women without access to the care they need and the ability to … exercise their constitutionally protected right.”Proponents of repealing Hyde were worried that Biden might not follow through with his campaign promise, especially since he has yet to even say the word “abortion”. Advocates say it is an important show of support at a critical time: Last week, the supreme court agreed to hear a case regarding a Mississippi 15-week ban that directly challenges Roe v Wade, the 1973 case that legalized abortion.Biden’s move may be largely symbolic, though an important act to advocates. The president’s budget proposal is non-binding, and it’s up to Congress to write and pass the final version that gets sent to his desk. The House appropriations committee chair, Rosa DeLauro, has vowed not to include Hyde in future House spending bills, a move that the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, supports. If the budget passes the House, it will face a 50-50 Senate, with several centrist Democratic senators who support Hyde. Senators Joe Manchin of West Virginia, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Tim Kaine of Virginia all voted to include Hyde in the Covid-19 relief bill passed in March, but the effort ultimately failed.“As with many progressive issues, the Senate is more challenging,” Lopez said, adding: “We will get there. It’s important to put down these markers of support, for the leader of our party to put down a marker that he supports abortion justice, that he supports lifting of abortion coverage bans.”Separately, the House has introduced legislation known as the Each Act that would permanently repeal the Hyde amendment, removing it from the annual budget process. Vice-President Kamala Harris co-sponsored the bill when it was first introduced in 2019. More