US Politics

The Democrat Troy Carter won a special election for a vacant US House seat in Louisiana, defeating a state senate colleague in an acrimonious clash that divided New Orleans.Carter easily beat Karen Carter Peterson on Saturday in the race for Louisiana’s only Democrat-held seat in Congress, in a victory for the moderate side of the party after Peterson, who would have been the first Black woman elected to Congress from the state, planted herself in the progressive camp.The state senators had both made previous failed bids for the seat and the race centered mainly on personality.The second district – majority Black, based on New Orleans but extending up the Mississippi into Baton Rouge and covering areas with severe pollution problems – was open because Cedric Richmond left the position shortly after he won last year’s election to work as a special adviser to Joe Biden.Each candidate touted high-profile endorsements.Peterson had backing from the voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams, progressive New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and New Orleans mayor LaToya Cantrell, among others.In addition to Richmond, Carter had backing from No3 House Democratic leader James Clyburn of South Carolina, New Orleans district attorney Jason Williams and every Black member of the state senate besides Peterson.“I will wake up every day with you on my mind, on my heart, and I will work for you tirelessly,” Carter told supporters. He also said he would focus on economic recovery from Covid-19, overhauling criminal sentencing laws, protecting LGBTQ rights and fighting for clean air in the district.Peterson, a former chair of Louisiana’s Democratic party, conceded soon after polls closed and pledged to “keep swinging hard for the people”.Carter and Peterson reached Saturday’s runoff after a 15-candidate March primary. Carter raised more cash but faced attack ads from out-of-state groups.In one debate, Peterson described herself as “bold and progressive”. Carter is known more for his ability to work across party lines. Peterson suggested Carter cozied up to Republicans. He said Peterson’s dogmatic approach damaged her ability to pass legislation.“In order to get things done, they need to send someone to Washington who can build bridges, not walls, that can establish relationships that mean something, not kick rocks because you don’t get your way, not spew lies because you’re losing,” Carter said.The two candidates backed an increase in the minimum wage, the legalization of recreational marijuana and abortion rights. They supported changes in how police are funded, though Peterson went further, saying she backed a “complete restructuring”.Both Carter and Peterson said they support Medicare for All. But while Peterson fully embraced shifting to a government-run, single-payer plan, Carter said he’d like people to have the option of retaining employer-financed coverage. More

It was an abrupt end to two decades as a partner at legal giant Foley & Lardner for the influential and conservative election lawyer Cleta Mitchell.Days after Mitchell participated in Donald Trump’s controversial 2 January phone call with Georgia’s secretary of state where the then president pressured him to “find” him more votes to reverse Joe Biden’s win, Mitchell resigned her post in the midst of an internal firm review and mounting criticism.But Mitchell, a combative and top lawyer in the right’s drive to promote unproven charges of sizable voting fraud in 2020 and tighten future voting laws, was not idle for long. She has now emerged in a series of roles that have put her at the heart of what many see as a ferocious Republican push on limiting voting rights that now reaches across America.Last month, Mitchell was tapped by the libertarian FreedomWorks to spearhead a $10m drive in seven key states including Georgia, Arizona and Michigan to change voting laws to curb potential but unproven election fraud, which many Democrats and legal experts view as aimed at limiting minority votes.According to a FreedomWorks spokesman, another key part of Mitchell’s mission leading its “National Election Protection Initiative”, is to rally opposition to a House-passed bill that in part would expand voting rights nationally which its sponsors see as necessary to counter the conservative assaults on voting rights in many states.Georgia last month enacted a law that makes voting tougher with new curbs on absentee ballots and on voters in heavily Democratic urban and suburban areas, sparking lawsuits from civil rights and liberal groups, plus a sharp attack from Biden.FreedomWorks’ president, Adam Brandon, has hailed Mitchell as “an outspoken advocate and voice of reason for improved election laws, especially during the chaotic 2020 election cycle”, and dubbed her “our guide”, chairing its election initiative, which will also include training and deploying activists in the states to monitor election procedures.Likewise, the Trump-allied Conservative Partnership Institute last month recruited Mitchell as a “senior fellow” with a similar mission. Mitchell told the AP she is working to “coordinate” conservative views on voting to bolster opposition to the House passed voting rights legislation that is pending in the Senate.Mitchell’s FreedomWorks and CPI projects come even as a Georgia DA in Fulton county is looking into whether Trump and others broke laws in pressuring Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to find enough votes to block Biden’s win. On that call, Mitchell claimed she had evidence of voting fraud, but officials with Raffensperger’s office disagreed and faulted her data.Some voting rights lawyers say Mitchell could face scrutiny over her role in the call.Gerry Hebert, who spent over two decades as a senior attorney at the Justice Department’s voting rights section, said in an interview Trump’s actions and words constituted “election interference [and] violated both state law and federal law, and he should be held accountable”.Mitchell “reportedly interjected multiple times during the call in which she tried to support Trump’s allegations of fraud”, he said. “Her role in that call may well be part of the investigation” by the Georgia DA. Hebert added the state bar to which Mitchell belongs “has a responsibility to determine if she committed any violation of the legal ethics rules in that state.Reached by phone, Mitchell declined to comment on her work for the two conservative outfits, or the Georgia inquiry into Trump’s call and whether she might face scrutiny.Historically, the 70-year-old Mitchell has done legal work for many key players on the right including the National Rifle Association where she previously was on the board. A former Democrat and member of the Oklahoma legislature, Mitchell in the 1990s switched parties and moved to DC, where she has given legal counsel to many GOP candidates, campaign committees and non-profits.Mitchell’s new roles with FreedomWorks and CPI underscore the right’s goal of swaying future election results with more voting curbs. The conservative blitz to tighten voting laws in which Heritage Action for America is a key player too, is being fueled by tens of millions of dollars, coupled with allegations that Trump as well as Mitchell and conservative allies have spread about unproven widespread voter fraud in the last elections.In post-election radio interviews, Mitchell has escalated her rhetoric charging that Raffensperger is a “pathological liar” and attacking some GOP leaders in Georgia as “morally bankrupt”, according to the watchdog group Documented.In another radio segment, Mitchell said that last September she told Trump and his chief of staff, Mark Meadows, there was a “massive effort to steal the election”.More recently, Mitchell told the AP that she and Trump have been in contact “fairly frequently”, but declined to provide details.Meanwhile, other right leaning groups with which Mitchell has had good ties are engaged in campaigns that seem to overlap those of FreedomWorks and CPI to limit voting rights.For example, Mitchell told the AP: “I’ve been working with state legislatures for several years to get them to pay attention to what I call the political process.”To be sure, Mitchell prior to the election served as outside counsel and helped coordinate a major voting law initiative for the American Legislative Exchange Council (Alec), an influential group of conservative state legislators which promotes model bills for states. Alec has reportedly been increasingly active this year in pushing its ideas for changing voting laws.Known as well connected in conservative big money circles, Mitchell also serves on the board of the deep pocketed Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation, a top donor to many rightwing groups including Alec to which it gave $750,000 dollars in 2020, records show.Further, Mitchell has attended meetings of the famously secretive Council for National Policy, an influential rightwing group that boasts top donors, evangelical leaders and prominent conservatives like FreedomWorks’ Brandon.At a CNP national meeting in mid November one panel featured Mitchell, Christian Adams the president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation (Pilf), and other lawyers discussing “Election results and legal battles: What now?”Mitchell, who also chairs Pilf, which received $300,000 in 2020 from the Bradley foundation, has indicated it could get active in the legal battles over the new Georgia law.To be sure, some conservatives voice doubts about Mitchell’s legal acumen. An ex senior NRA official who knows Mitchell quipped her views are on the “fringe of the fringe”.And one prominent GOP voting rights lawyer said Mitchell “tells clients what they want to hear regardless of law or reality”. The lawyer predicted Mitchell “will get scrutiny, but probably won’t be charged” in the Georgia DA’s inquiry. More

Republicans in Florida have stepped up their assault on what they call “Marxist professors and students” in the state’s public universities and colleges with a bill that encourages the reporting of lecturers perceived to be stifling “viewpoint diversity” on campus.The bill, currently awaiting the signature of the Florida governor and Donald Trump ally Ron DeSantis, will allow students to make recordings of lectures without their professors’ consent, and present them as evidence of political bias.It requires all 40 of Florida’s state-funded institutions of postsecondary education to conduct an annual survey of faculty and students to establish how well intellectual freedoms are protected on campus; and to “shield” students from efforts to limit their “access to, or observation of, ideas and opinions that they may find uncomfortable, unwelcome, disagreeable, or offensive.”Any institution that blocks a student’s access to such “expressive activities”, the definition of which includes the content of lectures as well as “all forms of peaceful assembly, protests and speeches,” exposes itself to legal action, the new bill states.Opponents say the shield clause, a late addition to the bill’s text as it worked its way through Florida’s Republican-dominated legislature, opens the door for white supremacist or other rightwing hate groups.“As we saw in Charlottesville, if you give them an opening like that they will come,” Dr Karen Morian, the president of the united faculty of Florida (UFF) union of more than 20,000 educators, said. “And if it’s at FAMU [the historically black Florida agricultural and mechanical university] and they think they’re going to be able to intimidate black college students, they will come. That’s actually pretty scary.”Morian said the clause allowing the clandestine recording of lectures is also problematic, despite the insistence by the bill’s defenders that educators have no right of privacy in a publicly-funded institution.“It carves out our classrooms as a public space, whereas in actuality the general public cannot walk through it during class,” she said. “They can walk across the campus, or from the parking lot to the office, that’s public space. But my classroom has never been read as a public space.”The Florida bill appears to align with the position of rightwing student activist groups such as Turning Point USA, which has long railed against what it sees as the left’s domination of campuses nationwide and maintains an online watchlist of radical professors who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom”.The politicians who shaped the Florida law acknowledge there is no evidence that political bias is a problem in the state’s 12 public universities and 28 publicly-funded colleges, but argue that legislation is needed to find out if it exists.“We have a lot of anecdotal evidence of largely conservative students feeling very uncomfortable sharing their viewpoints in university classrooms, they’re getting shut down,” said the state congressman Alex Andrade, a co-sponsor of the bill.“It’s a common joke [among] conservative students that they have to tailor some of their essays to make them more progressive or left-leaning to get a better grade. When there’s at least anecdotal evidence that people are concerned about action against them for their political viewpoints it’s an issue we’d like to collect some data on.”Opponents say there is no need for the law and state that mechanisms already exist for students to report offensive or egregious behavior by lecturers. “It’s based on national news reports and not related to any incidents in Florida,” Yale Olenik, an attorney and legislative specialist at the Florida Education Association, told lawmakers at a February hearing. “Florida’s colleges and universities are not reporting issues, students are not complaining.”Andrade rejected the criticism. “Anytime a university professor is afraid of information that potentially makes them look bad, they translate ‘the solution in search of a problem’ because university professors have a pretty bad habit of always being right,” he said.“This is just a strict collection of data related to people’s concerns about their viewpoints, whether progressive or conservative, being held against them on college campuses.”The law’s architect, the state congressman Spencer Roach, did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment but in a tweet when the bill passed the Florida senate earlier this month he framed the bill as a “protection of intellectual diversity”.“Freedom of speech is an unalienable right, despite what Marxist professors and students think,” he wrote.Democrats who voted against the bill pointed to a series of aggressive educational manoeuvres that Republican lawmakers have attempted during Florida’s current legislative session, which ends next week.Politicians backed down on a proposal to withhold scholarships from students pursuing degree courses they perceived as liberal, but are still advancing plans to end guaranteed funding for certain scholarships and tie their availability instead to the vagaries of state budgets.This week, the Florida house voted to expand a school choice program that critics say strips money and resources from public schools and sends taxpayer money to private institutions with discriminatory practices.“I’m not surprised that Republicans are hobbling public education from kindergarten to college because they are afraid of educated voters,” the state representative Omari Hardy said.“Republicans have done poorly in recent years with college-educated voters, which has fed their belief and fear that colleges have become indoctrination camps. They believe college students are these frail and fragile intellectual creatures but there’s no data showing that professors are indoctrinating their students.” More

Elon Musk’s SpaceX just won a $2.9bn Nasa contract to land astronauts on the moon, beating out Jeff Bezos.The money isn’t a big deal for either of them. Musk is worth $179.7bn. Bezos, $197.8bn. Together, that’s almost as much as the bottom 40% of Americans combined.And the moon is only their stepping stone.Musk says SpaceX will land humans on Mars by 2026 and wants to establish a colony by 2050. Its purpose, he says, will be to ensure the survival of our species.“If we make life multi-planetary, there may come a day when some plants and animals die out on Earth but are still alive on Mars,” he tweeted.Bezos is also aiming to build extraterrestrial colonies, but in space rather than on Mars. He envisions “very large structures, miles on end” that will “hold a million people or more each”.Back on our home planet, Musk is building electric cars, which will help the environment. And Bezos is allowing us to shop from home, which might save a bit on gas and thereby also help the environment.But Musk and Bezos are treating their workers like, well, dirt.Most workers won’t be able to escape into outer space. A few billionaires are already lining upLast spring, after calling government stay-at-home orders “fascist” and tweeting “FREE AMERICA NOW”, Musk reopened his Tesla factory in Fremont, California before health officials said it was safe to do so. Almost immediately, 10 workers came down with the virus. As cases mounted, Musk fired workers who took unpaid leave. Seven months later, at least 450 Tesla workers had been infected.Musk’s production assistants, as they’re called, earn $19 an hour – hardly enough to afford rent and other costs of living in northern California. Musk is virulently anti-union. A few weeks ago, the National Labor Relations Board found that Tesla illegally interrogated workers over suspected efforts to form a union, fired one and disciplined another for union-related activities, threatened workers if they unionized and barred employees from communicating with the media.Bezos isn’t treating his earthling employees much better. His warehouses impose strict production quotas and subject workers to seemingly arbitrary firings, total surveillance and 10-hour workdays with only two half-hour breaks – often not enough time to get to a bathroom and back. Bezos boasts that his workers get $15 an hour but that comes to about $31,000 a year for a full-time worker, less than half the US median family income. And no paid sick leave.Bezos has fired at least two employees who publicly complained about lack of protective equipment during the pandemic. To thwart the recent union drive in Bessemer, Alabama, Amazon required workers to attend anti-union meetings, warned they’d have to pay union dues (untrue – Alabama is a “right-to-work” state), and threatened them with lost pay and benefits.Musk and Bezos are the richest people in America and their companies are among the country’s fastest growing. They thereby exert huge influence on how other chief executives understand their obligations to employees.The gap between the compensation of CEOs and average workers is already at a record high. They inhabit different worlds.If Musk and Bezos achieve their extraterrestrial aims, these worlds could be literally different. Most workers won’t be able to escape into outer space. A few billionaires are already lining up.The super-rich have always found means of escaping the perils of everyday life. During the plagues of the 17th century, European aristocrats decamped to their country estates. During the 2020 pandemic, wealthy Americans headed to the Hamptons, their ranches in Wyoming or their yachts.The rich have also found ways to protect themselves from the rest of humanity – in fortified castles, on hillsides safely above smoke and sewage, in grand mansions far from the madding crowds. Some of today’s super rich have created doomsday bunkers in case of nuclear war or social strife.But as earthly hazards grow – not just environmental menaces but also social instability related to growing inequality – escape will become more difficult. Bunkers won’t suffice. Not even space colonies can be counted on.I’m grateful to Musk for making electric cars and to Bezos for making it easy to order stuff online. But I wish they’d set better examples for protecting and lifting the people who do the work.It’s understandable that the super wealthy might wish to escape the gravitational pull of the rest of us. But there’s really no escape. If they’re serious about survival of the species, they need to act more responsibly toward working people here on terra firma. More

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saluted the Biden administration on Friday, saying the new president had exceeded progressives’ expectations in his first 100 days in the White House.“The Biden administration and President Biden have definitely exceeded expectations that progressives had,” the New York congresswoman, a star on the left of the Democratic party, told a virtual town hall meeting. “I think a lot of us expected a much more conservative administration.”In March, Joe Biden scored a major victory when his $1.9tn Covid stimulus and rescue package passed into law without a single Republican vote.Progressives were disappointed, though, when a move to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour was dropped from the package after a ruling by the Senate parliamentarian.Moderates in the upper chamber also opposed the move. The Senate is split 50-50 and controlled through the casting vote of the vice-president, Kamala Harris. Centrist Democrats such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona are thus placed in powerful positions.Ocasio-Cortez, an ally of progressive senators such as Bernie Sanders of Vermont, said that “the majority of the tension within the Democratic party lies in the Senate”.Biden is looking to pass another large legislative package, the $2.25tn, infrastructure-focused American Jobs Plan. Republicans remain ranged against him, opposing progressive priorities featured in the package.Not all progressives are satisfied either. Ocasio-Cortez said: “I think the infrastructure bill is too small. I have real concerns that the actual dollars and cents, and programmatic allocations of the bill, don’t meet the ambition of that vision, of what’s being sold.”She also said that she would not be able to attend Biden’s first address to Congress next week, thanks to Covid capacity restrictions.But Ocasio-Cortez also said Biden – who was a senator for 36 years and vice-president for eight under Barack Obama – had been “very impressive” in his approach to negotiating with Congress, resulting in the passage of “progressive legislation”.“It’s been good so far,” she said. More

Gen Z is the most online generation in history. They also have increasingly radical political views that aren’t always reflected in traditional media. It’s no surprise that online influencers – who run highly popular social media channels – are dominating political discourse in Gen Z’s online spaces.Young people’s politics are being shaped by popular YouTubers, livestreamers, podcasters and other influencer personalities, who debate political positions and educate viewers on what political engagement looks like. As audiences grow and watch times increase, the question inevitably arises: will the influencers of the burgeoning alt-media sphere become a new type of political organizer?At first glance, this might seem comically absurd. But in the past year, most universities, institutions and political organizations have transformed into Zoom meetings. Today, the gap between a college education and a Twitch stream has significantly narrowed. If you don’t speak during an online chapter meeting of the Democratic Socialists of America, can you really be sure you’re not listening to a podcast?There have been a number of recent events which further blur these distinctions. In January of 2021, Riley Grace Roshong, a Baltimore-based law student and YouTuber, livestreamed her testimony before the Maryland congress in support of House Bill 231, which would eliminate the “panic defense” laws, a legal strategy that allows defendants who attack or murder LGBTQ people to claim that the gender identity or sexual orientation of their victim caused them to enter into a gay or trans “panic”. Roshong researched and drafted her testimony in collaboration with key contributors from her community of followers during a Twitch stream. Roshong’s testimony was one in a chorus of local activists and organizations including FreeState Justice and the ACLU.Another high-water mark for influencers flexing their political muscle was the Georgia Senate runoff – a key race which would determine the outcome of the 2020 election, in particular whether Democrats would enjoy a majority in both houses of Congress. In December and January, Destiny, a professional gamer turned political commentator on Twitch, led one of the larger door-knocking campaigns of the election. Using his enormous fanbase and platform, the gamer managed to mobilize his followers to knock on an estimated 17,500-20,000 doors in Columbus, Georgia, with approximately 140 volunteers. By comparison, local groups like the Mijente Pac had 200 paid canvassers and the New Georgia Project was seeking 200-300 volunteers.These recent events seem to indicate something larger on the horizon. In each of these instances, influencers took a tiny bit of time out of their usual entertainment programming to make a few political asks before switching back to their regular content (influencers are in the business of making videos, after all). However, as online media encroach further into real-world politics, there is a mounting competitive pressure for content producers to get more politically involved. If you’re going to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk. It’s not enough to sit home and criticize.It’s worth mentioning that the Proud Boys were founded by the Vice co-founder, comedian and former YouTuber Gavin McInnes in 2016. The broadcasters Cenk Uygur, of The Young Turks, and Kyle Kulinski, of Secular Talk, are among the co-founders of Justice Democrats in 2017. Just a few years before, it was difficult to imagine that online personalities could help to shape offline organizations.Most troublingly, the terrain of social media seems to definitively advantage rightwing politics. While conspiracy and disinformation circulates across the whole of the political spectrum, the far right is uniquely able to manifest offline in the form of gangs or stochastic violence. On the extreme end of this trajectory we find Tim Gionet (AKA Baked Alaska) livestreaming and taking selfies from inside the Capitol riot on 6 January 6. The attention economy incentivizes new and dangerous levels of violent spectacle.It’s worth theorizing how these forces could be harnessed for something other than conspicuous political stunts. What we know for sure, is that large online audiences, numbered in the hundreds of thousands, do not translate to the ballot box. In 2016, the civil rights activist and Twitter influencer DeRay Mckesson finished a Baltimore mayoral run with only 2.6% of the vote. In 2019, the rightwing YouTubers Carl Benjamin (AKA Sarkon of Akkad) and Mark Meechan (AKA Count Dankula), both ran for MEP, winning just 3.2% in England’s south-west and 1.9% in Scotland, respectively. In 2020, the Gen Z trucker turned TikTok star Joshua Collins earned less than 1% of the vote in Washington’s 10th district. If election outcomes were purely a product of follower counts then political parties would just recruit Kendall Jenner.The key difference between mainstream celebrities and niche influencers, is the potential for social media to form hyper-specific and hyper-dedicated communities. Viewers feel a strong connection to the content creators they follow and to the communities they participate in. These audiences yield higher than average conversion rates when called upon to take action. Today there are no casual fans – everything is a cult following. In most cases, these political influencer channels are unearthed over the course of months (or years) of exploring. Social media are forming accidental “pipelines” to political education and it’s time to start thinking about what these pipelines lead to.Fandoms are beginning to resemble political affiliations. Crowdfunding approximates membership dues. At their core, organizations are a list of names and addresses. Swap out newsletters for episodic content but the actionable items remain largely the same: voting endorsements and invitations to canvas. On an annual basis, it costs more to support a podcast than to join the DSA.Social atomization and economic precarity are sending increasing numbers of people out on to the web in search of answersClearly, magazines did not replace political parties and social media channels won’t either. But it does create room for something like an Upton Sinclair of the digital age. In an era defined by elite corruption and institutional failure, listener-funded counter-hegemonic narrators are thriving. Young viewers trust alt-media figures like Contrapoints because she doesn’t seem to work for the elites. Critical voices can only be trusted when they aren’t attached to big donors. Bloomberg couldn’t buy a successful meme while Bernie supporters made thousands for free.Social atomization and economic precarity are sending increasing numbers of people out on to the web in search of answers. But in the post-political era, most organizations have withered or dissolved. Perhaps members of generation Z are flocking to online fandoms because of the lack of real-world organizations. Further compounding this, is the repellent quality of activist culture which is largely out of touch with the needs of most people. Meanwhile, online communities are fun and cool. Until organization becomes a normal aspect of everyday life, we should expect for online communities to grow at comparatively faster rates.So what might these new influencer communities be good for? One indication could be novelty fundraising. In November of 2020, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the Twitch streamer Hasan Piker, along with a team of other players, including the Canadian politician Jagmeet Singh, political streamers the Serfs and video game streamers including xQcOw, DisguisedToast and others, raised a combined $200,000 for eviction defense and food pantries while playing the popular online multiplayer game Among Us. But this particular model seems reminiscent of celebrity fundraisers in the cable TV era and could easily be repeated by the political establishment.On the nationalist right, political influencers have taken to forming their own parallel events to compete with establishment parties. Inaugurated in 2020, and now in its second year, Afpac, America First Political Action Conference, is an annual event, intended as an off-site alternative to the Conservative Political Action Conference, a Republican stronghold. Throughout 2019, this same group of young American nationalists coordinated to heckle and undermine public events including those which featured Donald Trump Jr and congressman Dan Crenshaw. Small hyper-dedicated groups are ideally suited for specific and targeted interventions.Influencers are not organizers. But they might be soon. Perhaps they require their own distinct category. Online communities might become a new type of crowdfunded special interest group or thinktank with a built-in spokesperson (like People’s Policy Project, founded by Matt Breunig in 2017). At the least, these overlapping fields are becoming more structurally similar. The key difference seems to be what the community members are asked to do. Soon, content producers might ask for much more.If fierce online competition is driving these channels to become politically active, this can be harnessed as effective advertising and recruitment into organized political life. It’s worth thinking about these emergent pipelines now, so that in 2028, we find ourselves surrounded by a new rank and file rather than sensationalist livestreaming from the barricades. More

Joe Biden has closed out a two-day climate summit of more than 40 world leaders by warning that the planet risks reaching the “point of no return” if more isn’t done to escalate efforts to constrain the climate crisis.Biden, along with several other national leaders, made a number of new promises in the summit. Here’s what it all means.What has Joe Biden promised at the summit?As its centerpiece announcement, the Biden administration has said planet-heating emissions will be cut by 50%-52% by 2030. The target was officially submitted to the United Nations as part of an overarching global system where countries submit voluntary emissions reduction goals in order to collectively avoid dangerous global heating.On top of this, the summit saw an American promise to double financial aid for developing countries struggling with the escalating droughts, floods, heatwaves and other impacts of the climate crisis, as well as a new US push to work with other countries on clean energy innovation.The White House hopes the new commitments will spur other countries to do more, as well as signal the return of the US to the top table to climate leadership after a ruinous self-imposed exile under Donald Trump.Is that enough to deal with the threat of climate change?No. But then very little at this stage is sufficient. Despite decades of warnings from scientists, global greenhouse gas emissions have continued to soar, only dipping last year due to pandemic-related shutdowns. The cuts required to stave off truly disastrous global heating are now precipitously steep – reduce by around half this decade and then to zero by 2050.Some activists feel the US could be doing more, with a group of protesters dumping wheelbarrows of manure outside the White House on Thursday. The climate aid pledge has also been criticized as “very low” by ActionAid USA.Conversely, the US goal is one of the most ambitious for a developed country, will make a significant dent in overall emissions and has generally been received as striking the right balance between ambitious and feasible by governments desperate to see the world’s largest economy rejoin the climate battle.“Is it enough? No,” said John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy. “But it’s the best we can do today and prove we can begin to move.”How will big reductions in emissions change Americans’ lives?Emissions have been gradually declining in the US for several years, largely due to the collapse of the ailing coal industry. Cutting emissions in half within a decade will require far more aggressive, and noticeable, changes – an explosion in solar and wind jobs, a rapid shift to electric cars, the refitting of energy inefficient buildings, the demise of coal country, a revamp of farming practices.Biden has framed this unprecedented transition as a glorious economic opportunity – “when I think of climate change, I think of jobs” has become a presidential slogan – and while experts agree that millions of new jobs can flow from a shift to clean energy the change will be jarring to some, particularly those working in fossil fuels.Regulations to force oil, coal and gas out of the energy system, along with mandates for electric cars, will have to materialize. But the climate problem is manifest – if the US is to get to net zero emissions by 2050 the focus at some point will shift to everything from airline and shipping emissions to gas stovetops in homes to whether a switch away from meat eating could help lower the sizable methane pollution from cattle.Biden’s task is to help accelerate a shift already under way to renewables while cushioning the blow to those left by the wayside, all while avoiding a backlash from an American public wary of personal sacrifice.How likely is it Biden will be able to deliver this?There are record levels of alarm among the American public over the climate crisis, with majorities of Democratic and Republican voters supporting action to bring down emissions. Big business, unions and city leaders have also swung strongly behind the push for a federal response.Imposing barriers remain in Congress, however, where Republicans have clung on to Trump-era rhetoric that acting on the climate crisis will harm the economy. The Biden climate target will put “good-paying American jobs into the shredder,” warned Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate leader.Biden will be able to unilaterally shut off new oil and gas drilling on public lands and set new pollution standards for cars and power plants, but further legislation will be required. Given the paper-thin Democratic control of Congress, the fate of even broadly popular measures such as Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan – which would greatly expand electric vehicle charging stations, boost public transit and push forward renewable energy deployment – appear uncertain.At some point Biden will have to bring in “sticks” as well as “carrots”, such as a tax on carbon emissions and a directive to utilities to phase out fossil fuels. Again, such measures face huge hurdles in Congress.If he does get all of that done, is it problem solved?As the administration is keen to point out, the rest of the world is responsible for about 85% of all emissions and only through a coordinated, determined international effort will humanity avoid the punishing ravages of the climate crisis.Canada and Japan announced upgraded emissions reduction targets at the climate summit but China, the world’s leading carbon polluter, didn’t bring anything new and some countries, such as Brazil and Australia, have deeply recalcitrant leaders. Ahead of key UN climate talks in Scotland later this year, Biden will not only have to corral an unusually divided domestic polity to achieve his goals but also prod other countries to do more. It’s an unenviable task. More

John Boehner, a Republican predecessor, concedes that Nancy Pelosi may be the most powerful House speaker in history. Pelosi provided George W Bush with the votes he needed to prevent a depression, as Republicans balked. She helped make Obamacare the law of the land.Pelosi repeatedly humbled Donald Trump. Already this year, she has outlasted his acolytes’ invasion of the Capitol and helped jam Joe Biden’s Covid relief through Congress. Hers is an “iron fist” wrapped in a “Gucci glove”, in the words of Susan Page and John Bresnahan of Politico.This latest Pelosi biography traces her trajectory from Baltimore to DC. Geographically circuitous, Pelosi’s ascent was neither plodding nor meteoric.Page delivers a worthwhile and documented read, a running interview with her subject together with quotes from friends and foes. Andy Card, chief of staff to Bush, and Newt Gingrich, a disgraced House speaker, both pay grudging tribute to the congresswoman from San Francisco.In the same spirit, Steve Bannon, Trump’s pardoned White House counselor, is caught calling Pelosi an “assassin”. He meant it as a compliment.Page is Washington bureau chief for USA Today. She has covered seven presidencies and moderated last fall’s vice-presidential debate. She also wrote Matriarch, a biography of Barbara Bush.Trump made the personal political and vice versa. Pelosi had a long memory and kept grudgesMadam Speaker makes clear that the speakership was not a job Pelosi spent a lifetime craving but it is definitely a role she wanted and, more importantly, mastered. She understood that no one relinquishes power for the asking. Rather, it must be taken.Pelosi took on the boys club and won. Ask Steny Hoyer, the No2 House Democrat. Her tire tracks cover his back. As fate would have it, their younger selves worked together in the same office for the same boss.Catholicism and the New Deal were foundational and formational. Thomas D’Alesandro Jr, Pelosi’s father, served in Congress and as mayor of Baltimore, a position later held by her brother. Pelosi is a liberal, albeit one with an eye toward the practical. Utopia can wait. AOC is not her cup of tea.As a novice congressional candidate, Pelosi was not built for the stump. She chaired the California Democratic party and the finance committee of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Her specialty was the inside game. No matter. In a spring of 1987 special election, Pelosi reached out to Bay area Republicans. They provided her margin of victory.Once in Congress, Pelosi became the ranking Democrat on the House intelligence committee and climbed to join the party leadership. Fundraising skills and attention to detail helped.Pelosi also made common cause with unusual suspects. Page records her friendship with the late John Murtha, a gruff ex-marine and congressman from western Pennsylvania – God and Guns country.Murtha furnished Pelosi with ammo and cover in opposing the Iraq war. He also managed her quest for the speakership. After Murtha lost to Hoyer in an intra-party contest in 2006, the Pennsylvanian announced his retirement.Among Murtha’s notes found by Page was one that read: “More liberal than I but she has ability to get things done and she’s given a tremendous service to our Congress and country.” Another one: “Able to come to a practical solution.”Page’s book chronicles Pelosi’s capacity to judge talent. She took an early shine to a young Adam Schiff, another east coast transplant, but held a dimmer view of Jerrold Nadler, a long-in-the-tooth congressman from Manhattan’s Upper West Side and chair of the judiciary committee.A former federal prosecutor, Schiff wrested his California seat from James Rogan, a Republican. Nadler could not control his own committee. After a raucous hearing in September 2019, the die was set. Schiff, not Nadler, would be riding herd in Trump’s first impeachment. Seniority and tradition took a back seat to competence.Context mattered as well. Pelosi’s relationship with Bush was fraught, yet she squashed Democratic moves to impeach him over Iraq – a move Trump actually advocated. She had witnessed Bill Clinton’s impeachment and concluded that harsh political judgments were generally best left to the electorate. Impeachment was not politics as usual. Or another tool in the kit.Trump was different. Practically speaking, draining the swamp translated into trampling norms and the law. Bill Barr, his second attorney general, had an expansive view of executive power and a disdain for truth and Democrats. His presence emboldened Trump.For more than two years, Pelosi resisted impeachment efforts by firebrands in her party. She acceded when Trump’s Ukraine gambit became public. He had frozen military aid to Russia’s embattled neighbor, seeking to prod the country into investigating Joe and Hunter Biden.Trump made the personal political and vice versa. Pelosi had a long memory and kept grudges. But this was different. After Biden’s election victory, Pelosi called Trump a “psychopathic nut”. A mother of five and grandmother to nine, she knew something about unruly children.Pelosi is not clairvoyant. She predicted a Hillary Clinton win in 2016 and Democratic triumphs down-ballot four years later. Instead, Clinton watches the Biden presidency from the sidelines, the Senate is split 50-50 and Pelosi’s margin in the House is down to a handful of votes.To her credit, Pelosi quickly internalized that Trump was a would-be authoritarian whose respect for electoral outcomes was purely situational: heads I win, tails I still win. Populism was only for the part of the populace that embraced him.Hours after the Capitol insurrection, at 3.42am on 7 January 2021, the rioters were spent, the challenges done, the election certified.“To those who strove to deter us from our responsibility,” Pelosi declared: “You have failed.”Biden sits behind the Resolute desk. Pelosi wields her gavel. More