US Politics

Dozens of Senate Republicans have called on the Biden administration to withdraw what they say is a “divisive” proposal that would place greater emphasis on slavery and the contributions of Black Americans in history and civics lessons in US schools.The lawmakers zeroed in on the proposal’s mention of the New York Times’ Pulitzer prize-winning 1619 Project.The project, which traces US history from the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in colonial Virginia, was a frequent target for the Republican right in Congress and Donald Trump, who sought instead to promote “patriotic” education.In the latest salvo of a burgeoning culture war over race, 39 Republicans, led by the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, said proposed education department policy would divert established school curricula toward a “politicized and divisive agenda” fixated on the country’s flaws.“Young Americans deserve a rigorous understanding of civics and American history,” the Republican senators wrote in a letter to the education secretary, Miguel Cardona, released on Friday.“They need to understand both our successes and our failures. Americans do not need or want their tax dollars diverted from promoting the principles that unite our nation toward promoting radical ideologies meant to divide us.”The proposed policy would support teaching that “reflects the breadth and depth of our nation’s diverse history and the vital role of diversity in our nation’s democracy”, according to a notice posted on a government regulation website.It would encourage schools to adopt projects that incorporate “the systemic marginalization, biases, inequities and discriminatory policy and practice in American history”.A spokesman for the US education department said institutions were acknowledging America’s “legacy of systemic inequities” and noted that the department welcomes comments on the proposal until 19 May.The Republicans’ letter came two days after Senator Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, declared that “America is not a racist country” in his response to Joe Biden’s address to Congress. Scott also defended a Republican voting law in Georgia Democrats have denounced as a return to Jim Crow segregation.The Republican party, which remains fractured after Trump’s false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, has sought to brand Biden as a divisive leader controlled by leftists. More

The US Department of Defense said on Friday it was cancelling the construction of parts of former president Donald Trump’s border wall with Mexico that were being built using military funds.All unobligated money was being returned to military, the Pentagon said.Trump declared a national emergency in 2019, in an effort to redirect funding to build a wall along the southern border.Joe Biden issued a proclamation on 20 January, his first day in office, ordering a freeze on border wall projects and directing a review of the legality of funding and contracting methods.“The Department of Defense is proceeding with canceling all border barrier construction projects paid for with funds originally intended for other military missions and functions such as schools for military children, overseas military construction projects in partner nations, and the national guard and reserve equipment account,” said a Pentagon spokesperson, Jamal Brown.Brown said the returned funds would be used for deferred military construction projects.It was not immediately clear how much would be returned to the military, but it was likely to be several billion dollars.Trump’s diversion of funds from the Pentagon was heavily criticized by lawmakers, who said it put national security at risk and circumvented Congress.In 2019, the military said more than 120 construction projects would be adversely affected by Trump’s move.The Department of Homeland Security also announced on Friday that it would take steps to address “physical dangers resulting from the previous administration’s approach to border wall construction”.It said it would repair the Rio Grande Valley flood barrier system, into which it said wall construction under the Trump administration had blown large holes. The department also said it work to remediate soil erosion along a wall segment in San Diego. More

Efforts to erase the Trump family legacy have reached the White House potting sheds and nurseries with Jill Biden being urged to restore the mansion’s garden to a state that predates ex-First Lady Melania Trump’s 2019 makeover.An online petition calling on the first lady to return the Rose Garden to its “former glory” has been signed by more than 54,000 people. The petition says Biden’s predecessor “had the cherry trees, a gift from Japan, removed as well as the rest of the foliage and replaced with a boring tribute to herself”.Restorationists urge that the garden be returned to a state that was created in the early 1960s by Jacqueline Kennedy with the help of famed designer Bunny Mellon.“Jackie’s legacy was ripped away from Americans who remembered all that the Kennedys meant to us,” the petition reads, and notes that her husband, the president, had said that “the White House had no garden equal in quality or attractiveness to the gardens that he had seen and in which he had been entertained in Europe.”In July 2020, as her husband fought for re-election and the coronavirus pandemic raged, Trump announced that her renovation project, which included electrical upgrades for television appearances, a new walkway and new flowers and shrubs, would be an “act of expressing hope and optimism for the future”.The changes to the garden were the first since Michelle Obama initiated a project in 2009 to dig up an 1,100 square foot plot on the South Lawn adjacent to the tennis courts for a vegetable garden.The plan included replacing crab apple trees, introducing a new assortment of white “JFK” and pale pink “peace” roses, and a new drainage system. “In a way, the metaphor of openness and improved access became our overall plan concept,” wrote Perry Guillot, the landscape architect overseeing the project.But the renovation met with criticism focused on Trump’s decision to go ahead with her project during the Covid-19 pandemic. There is no indication, as yet, that Jill Biden plans to act on the petition’s recommendations.On Thursday, her husband was spotted by the White House press corps picking a dandelion for his wife from the White House lawn before they boarded a helicopter.A day later, on Friday, the first lady commemorated Arbor Day by planting a linden tree on the north lawn of the White House. Her press office said it was to replace one removed last month that was deemed a risk and had not been planted by a historical figure.“Who doesn’t plant trees in high heels?” she said. More

Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office signalled that the future does not have to be a rerun of the past. The US president’s speech to Congress this week made it clear that Trumpism was a warning from history, a reminder that no republic is guaranteed to last. The US remains in danger – its decline accelerated by an iniquitous economic model, and by leaders unable or unwilling to remedy it. It is a relief to find in the White House a president who wants to bridge divisions rather than widen them. Mr Biden should be praised for saying he will stop the rot and recognising the challenge to democracy posed by autocracy. But his response risks being undone by an obsession with containing non-existent fiscal risks.The Biden White House proposes spending $4trn, with about half the money used to rewrite the social contract. The rest will create jobs, with infrastructure investments to repurpose the post-Covid economy for a zero-carbon world. The problem is not that money is being spent to fix a broken society. Neither is it wrong to ask the rich to pay their fair share of tax. The problem is that Mr Biden says spending must be balanced by tax rises or savings from other government programmes.This is a self-imposed and self-defeating constraint. It seems bad economics to pay for every dollar invested in early childhood education when each greenback yields $7.30 in benefits. A number of centrist Democrats have already signalled their opposition to the proposed tax hikes. If Mr Biden wanted cash, he could back the Internal Revenue Service to go after the $1tn in unpaid taxes every year. With a razor-thin Democratic majority in the US Senate, there is a risk that privileging arbitrary fiscal limits will lead to laws not being enacted or spending being pared back to match reduced revenues.Mr Biden’s intention to bust a failed economic paradigm is a good one. It would be a scandal if it were sacrificed on the altar of budget neutrality. The threat to liberal democracy is not from fiscal incontinence but political polarisation. America has spent decades running up large deficits with no adverse macroeconomic consequences. In Washington, a debt crisis always seems to be coming. Yet it never arrives. The nation is increasingly endangered by growing levels of inequality, financial instability and ecological calamity. The Gilded Age looks egalitarian compared with the emerging concentration of riches. Either democracy must be renewed by freeing the state from ideological restrictions or wealth is likely to cement a less democratic regime.It makes little sense for Mr Biden to elevate balanced budgets when the country faces existential choices, a point recently made by two Obama-era White House economic advisers. No one doubts the sincerity of the Biden team. The question is whether they have subordinated the scale of the crises to congressional politicking. Columbia University’s Adam Tooze pointed out that the president’s climate spending amounts to about 0.5% of US GDP, an amount 10 times smaller than that required to decarbonise the economy. The economist Stephanie Kelton wrote that to accommodate such large expenditures, the Biden administration “would have to develop a robust plan with a focus on containing inflationary pressures”. These are the arguments that Mr Biden should be having with his party, not whether the wealthiest ought to pay for anti-poverty programmes.It is better to let the government’s fiscal balance settle to whatever level is required to deal with the multiple emergencies the US faces, given the spending and portfolio decisions of the private sector. It is not the case that the government’s ability to spend is constrained by budgetary accounting or temporary while interest rates remain low. The US Federal Reserve’s bond-purchasing programmes can control yields. Mr Biden’s economic team understands that a strong economy benefits the bottom half of America most. However, his spending plans threaten to centre the debate on reducing the deficit rather than rescuing the country. More

Liz Cheney, the embattled No 3 ranking Republican in the House of Representatives, has been forced to defend herself for having fist-bumped Joe Biden during his address to Congress this week.Cheney, who has come under sustained attack from within her own party for having been one of very few Republicans to criticize Donald Trump for inciting the 6 January Capitol insurrection, posted on Twitter that she strongly disagreed with the Democratic president’s policies.“But when the President reaches out to greet me in the chamber of the US House of Representatives, I will always respond in a civil, respectful & dignified way. We’re different political parties. We’re not sworn enemies. We’re Americans.”The by now notorious fist bump, that lasted less than two seconds, came as the president was making his way to the podium before his first speech to a joint chamber of Congress on Wednesday. Despite the fact that Biden made similar gestures to many around him, his contact with such a high-ranking and controversial Republican sent sparks flying.“The video of Biden fist-bumping Cheney is going to be used by every Trumpist who wants Cheney to lose her seat next year as evidence that she is a Republican In Name Only (Rino) and a sellout of conservative principles,” remarked CNN’s Chris Cillizza.Sure enough, the moment was gleefully seized by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr. “So glad she’s in the GOP leadership,” he snarked. “I guess they wanted to be more inclusive and put Democrats in there too?!?”The elder Donald Trump has relentlessly baited Cheney after she became one of only 10 Republicans to vote for his impeachment for inciting violent insurrection on the US Capitol on 6 January. This week he slammed her as a “warmongering fool”.With Trump keeping up the pressure, Cheney is reported to be facing grumbles from inside the congressional Republican group about her leadership position. Relations with the top House Republican, Kevin McCarthy, are stressed, with McCarthy remaining a Trump acolyte while Cheney continues to criticize the former president.In her home state of Wyoming, Cheney is also facing a primary challenge from several local Republicans seeking to oust her in fealty to Trump. Cheney told Punchbowl News that she was confident she would survive the contest and that she was standing firm.“Anybody who wants to get in that race and who wants to do it on the basis of debating me about whether or not President Trump should have been impeached, I’ll have that debate every day of the week,” she said. More

The Florida legislature has passed tight new voting restrictions, placing the crucial swing state at the forefront of a nationwide wave of Republican efforts to suppress turnout on the back of Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him.The bill, which closely mirrors similar Republican ploys in Georgia and Michigan, is likely to make it more difficult for millions of voters to have their democratic say. The new barriers to voting are expected to particularly impact minority communities.The legislation introduces a plethora of new hurdles to voting by mail in the wake of the surge in mail-in voting by Democrats in the 2020 election. It also imposes restrictions on providing water to citizens standing in line to cast their ballot.Black lawmakers expressed dismay when the bill passed on Thursday night. The Democratic representative Angela Nixon said she was “distraught and disheartened”, the Washington Post reported.“You are making policies that are detrimental to our communities,” she told her Republican peers.Fellow Democratic lawmaker Anna Eskamani told the Miami Herald: “We had, as the Republican governor said, one of the best operated elections in the country, and yet today, the majority party through last minute maneuvers passed a voter suppression bill.”As Eskamani highlighted, the move by Florida Republicans to clamp down on voting is especially awkward, even by the contorted logic that the Republican party has deployed in states across the country. The restrictions were passed in the name of “voter integrity”, following the former president’s false claim that there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election.Yet in Florida, Republicans boasted – and continue to boast – about how well the presidential race was conducted. Trump won the traditional battleground state, which commands a critical 29 electoral college votes, by about 3%.Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, was caught by his own contradictory rationale when he told Fox News on Thursday night that he would now sign the bill into law. “So we think we led the nation,” he said, referring to how the 2020 ballot went in his state, “but we’re trying to stay ahead of the curve to make sure that these elections are run well.”Florida’s attack on voting rights forms part of a staggering assault by Republicans on the heart of American democracy. According to the Brennan Center, which monitors voting rights, about 361 bills containing restrictive provisions have been introduced in what its analysts call “a backlash to 2020’s historic voter turnout, under the pretense of responding to baseless and racist allegations of voter fraud”.The Florida bill focuses especially on voting by mail. It targets the use of drop boxes in which mail ballots can be deposited, and forces voters to reapply for mail ballots every two years rather than four – a move which critics fear will sow confusion and suppress turnout.The attack on mail-in voting is ironic given that the state has a long track-record of using that electoral method without any notable challenges. In several previous cycles, mail-in voting was used predominantly by Republican voters with no objections raised.But in 2020 there was a steep increase in Democratic voters who turned to casting their ballots by mail as a safety measure in the pandemic. Out of a total of more than 11m Floridians who voted in the presidential race, almost 5m did so by mail – about 44%.Suddenly, the practice of voting by mail has become a threat to voter integrity, according to the Republican party. More

Kate Aronoff: Biden can play nice, or he can tackle the climate crisis – not bothThe bar for climate leadership set by the Trump administration was low enough to trip over. Joe Biden hasn’t tripped in its first hundred days. He’s cleared the bar decisively with a new emissions target and a pledge to spend roughly $1 trillion on climate priorities over the next eight years, and by a bigger margin than just about anyone would have expected from a career centrist. But with a world “on the verge of the abyss,” as UN Secretary-General António Guterres summarized recently, that bar is the wrong one to be watching. That Biden has consistently framed climate action as an engine of job creation and a massive investment opportunity is a welcome corrective to rhetoric about shrinking personal carbon footprints and technocratic tweaks. Yet spending just 0.5% of GDP each year to reduce emissions, as the American Jobs Plan intends, is nowhere near enough to take on an existential threat. It’s also worth remembering that, for now, even those modest commitments are just rhetoric: nothing has passed. Neither will the climate crisis be solved by simply throwing money at the industries of tomorrow. For a decent shot of capping warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius, the 2020 Production Gap Report finds that global fossil fuel production will have to decline 6% each year through 2030. It’s currently on track to increase by 2% annually. US natural gas production – which pours prolific amounts of heat-trapping methane into the atmosphere – could grow to record levels in 2022 as fuel demand surges back. Biden can play nice with deficit hawks and the fossil fuel industry, or he can tackle the climate crisis at the speed and scale required. Not both.Simon Balto: Biden’s efforts are laudable but insufficientInheriting the US presidency from the most incapable person to ever hold the office was never going to make for an easy job. That would be true under any circumstances, let alone under circumstances defined by the overlapping crises of a global pandemic, entrenched racism and a climate on the brink.Joe Biden’s administration deserves credit for its work in inching the country toward managing the Covid-19 crisis. While much remains to be done – particularly in ensuring equitable vaccine access – the US is inarguably in a better position on the pandemic front than it was on 19 January.The results of Biden’s presidency elsewhere are, so far, significantly more mixed. Rolling back some Trump-era immigration restrictions is a good thing, but maintaining Trump’s catastrophically inhumane limits on the entry-access to the US of refugees and asylum – seekers isn’t magically more humane just because Biden isn’t Trump. On matters of racial justice, in particular surrounding the policing crisis, Biden seems more or less satisfied to return to the timidly liberal approach of former president Barack Obama, offering justice department investigations and further investments into policing when the only solution to epidemic and racist police violence is to reimagine public safety entirely. Finally, Biden’s approach to the climate crisis is the most significant presidentially supported climate plan in US history, but, as supporters of the Green New Deal have made clear, it’s still insufficient to meet the magnitude of that crisis.Biden’s successes in steering the country toward a post-pandemic reality are laudable. His embrace of some aspects of the Green New Deal demonstrates the ability of progressives to reframe policy debates in important ways and see them adopted into the mainstream discourse. And yet, his refusal to be more ambitious in tackling many of our other shared crises demonstrates the work still to be done.Moira Donegan: We need to raise our expectationsExpectations were low. When Joe Biden entered the White House in January, the nation was still reeling from the 6 January insurrection. For a moment, it was unclear whether the transition of power could be carried through without more violence. Just getting him sworn in seemed like a success.Once he was in office, Biden offered Americans, weary from the Trump years, some much-longed-for stability. His Covid stimulus bill was of a size appropriate to meet the scale of need. Vaccine distribution and administration, a logistical nightmare under Trump, ramped up rapidly once adults were in charge. Shots went into arms, and the end of the pandemic has become thinkable, at least in the US. Meanwhile, Biden spoke to the nation in calm, coherent sentences, and didn’t seem to hold Americans in contempt. This was an improvement.But for all the talk during the transition of Biden’s hope to be a transformative president, his policy agenda still faces substantial obstacles. His ambitious American Jobs Act was laughed at, even by members of his own party, for classifying traditionally feminized labor as “infrastructure”; his American Families Act, geared toward helping women in the workforce, has sparked backlash from cultural conservatives, even as it falls far short of the universal childcare proposals that were put forth during the primary season. He has made nice comments about climate change and gender justice, but it remains unclear how much force he is willing to put behind those sentiments. Fortunately, the administration has shown itself amenable to pressure from the left and public shaming: they backed off a decision to maintain a Trump-era cap on refugees after public outcry from the Democratic rank and file.Understandably, Americans have so far been grading Biden on a curve. Now it’s time to raise our standards.Jill Filipovic: A return to Clintonism isn’t progressJoe Biden’s first 100 days in office illustrate the sharp distinctions between the president and his predecessor, and why politics is so dangerous when played as a game of personality and not a competition of competence. Since taking office, Biden has secured a $2tn Covid-19 relief package; recommitted the US to the Paris climate accords; planned a tax hike on the wealthiest Americans; announced a withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan; revealed an ambitious infrastructure package; and rolled out a startlingly successful mass vaccination program. Trump, by contrast, spent nearly one in every five of his first 100 days on the golf course.But the issues Biden has prioritized also hint at who he is trying to keep (or get) on his side: the white working-class voters who defected from Obama to Trump, some of whom then came back to Biden. Left out are many of the issues most important to the Democratic base, including immigration and reproductive rights. With the stroke of a pen, Biden could allow many more refugees to be resettled in the US; instead, his administration initially said they would stick with the Trump numbers, before quickly walking that back and saying they’d raise numbers by May. In the meantime, though, the world’s most vulnerable people have spent unnecessary months languishing in wait, often after years or even decades of waiting. And while Biden swiftly overturned some of Trump’s worst policies on US funding of reproductive healthcare overseas, that puts his administration in the same position as Bill Clinton in the 1990s – it’s better than under Trump, but could hardly be called progress.Biden deserves much praise for all the good he has done. But he’s also made clear where he’s willing to spend his political capital – and so far, it’s not on women’s rights, immigration or racial justice.Geoffrey Kabaservice: Consensus still eludes BidenIn more normal political times, Biden’s record during his first 100 days in office wouldn’t have inspired comparisons to FDR. But in the wake of Trump’s malignant incompetence, Biden’s success in returning government to something like functionality seems, to his supporters at least, almost worthy of Mount Rushmore.In fact, Biden has kept his administration focused on his principal goals of overcoming the pandemic and reviving the economy, while also issuing a slew of executive orders reversing his predecessor’s policies. The acceleration in vaccine distribution under his watch has been the envy of other nations, and congressional passage of the $1.9tn Covid-19 relief package has helped to supercharge the economy by flooding it with cash.But Biden’s early days have also emphasized the intractability of most of the country’s problems. Covid relief passed without a single Republican vote, and the upcoming infrastructure bill seems likely to do the same. Biden’s professed love of bipartisanship hasn’t changed the underlying reality of hyper-partisanship and culture war. He can hardly claim to have restored public faith in government when a sizable fraction of that public persists in believing Trump the true winner of the 2020 election (and refusing vaccination). Friendly media coverage can’t hide the growing crisis at the border, and there’s no widespread agreement on an approach to the forces driving mass immigration (including global heating). Nor has the administration even begun to rally mass opinion behind a systemic approach to the interlinked problems of guns, crime and police violence.Biden’s first 100 days will merit comparison with FDR’s only if he can forge an FDR-like consensus. So far there is little sign of that happening.
Geoffrey Kabaservice is the director of political studies at the Niskanen Center in Washington, as well as the author of Rule and Ruin: The Downfall of Moderation and the Destruction of the Republican Party
Bhaskar Sunkara: Biden repudiated neoliberalism. But more is neededGovernment can change lives for the better. For years the American public was told that the economy stood alone and state intervention in it would only backfire. Now the Biden administration has repudiated that key tenet of neoliberalism in its first 100 days.The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 provided $1.9tn in stimulus for the US economy. More than half those funds were allocated for direct aid, including housing, unemployment and nutrition assistance, as well as childcare allowances for families.Biden also harnessed the Defense Production Act of 1950 to help with vaccine and protective equipment production. As commentator James Medlock said: “The era of ‘the era of big government is over’ is over.”But while Biden has shown a surprising willingness to partner with leftwing politicians like Bernie Sanders and respond to the demands of the moment, despite his previous deficit hawk positions, we shouldn’t overstate the transformation. The world economy is in deep crisis due to coronavirus and measures to slow its spread; there is consensus from most actors about the use of the state to revive demand and keep businesses and workers afloat. Even Trump and congressional Republicans were willing to pump money into the economy.What will happen, however, when things return to normal?Biden has not shown a willingness to prioritize the measures that could more permanently alter the unequal US economy – a $15 minimum wage failed to win support among 50 Democratic senators, and the Pro Act, which would make it easier for workers to form unions, has dim prospects of passage.We might look back at the first 100 days of the Biden administration as featuring a brief moment of budgetary liberalism only to be followed the old, failed policies. That won’t only be bad for working families, it could pave the way for future demagogues of the populist right. More