US Politics

When sifting through the wreckage to try to make sense of this epoch, future anthropologists should dust off whatever records will be preserved about Neera Tanden’s star-crossed nomination to an obscure-but-powerful White House office.The whole episode is a museum-ready diorama in miniature illustrating so many things that died in the transition from democracy to oligarchy. And in this affair, all the politicians, pundits, news outlets and Democratic party apparatchiks involved are very blatantly telling on themselves.Tanden is being nominated to run the Office of Management and Budget, which oversees the federal budget. As a political operative and head of a corporate-funded thinktank, she does not have especially relevant experience for the appointment – in fact, whether in gubernatorial administrations, mayoral offices or Capitol Hill budget committees, there are far more qualified experts for this gig.Moreover, her particular record would raise significant red flags as a job applicant for even a mid-level management position in any organization, much less the White House: during her tenure running the Center for American Progress, she reportedly outed a sexual harassment victim and physically assaulted an employee. While she was running the organization, CAP raked in corporate and foreign government cash and a report was revised in a way that helped a billionaire donor avoid scrutiny of his bigoted policing policy. Critics allege that Tanden busted a union of journalists. And she floated social security cuts when Democrats in Congress were trying to stop them.Even if you discount Tanden’s infamous statement about Libya and oil, as well as her vicious crusade against Senator Bernie Sanders and the progressive base of the Democratic party, all of these other items would seem to disqualify Tanden for a job atop a Democratic administration that claims to respect expertise and want to protect women, workers’ rights, social programs and government ethics.From the beginning, every single Democratic senator could have simply cited Biden’s promise to be the “most pro-union president” and stated that they would not vote to confirm anyone accused of undermining a union. Or they could have said that they are not going to allow someone who runs a corporate-funded thinktank – and whose nomination is being boosted by one of the most diabolical corporate lobbying groups in Washington – to be in charge of the White House office that can grant government ethics waivers. At the absolute barest minimum, these issues should have been major topics of discussion in her confirmation hearings and in the news media.But the opposite has happened. This record is almost nowhere to be found in the discourse. Instead, the central topic of discussion is Tanden’s late-night, out-of-control rage-tweeting.On the right, the Republican party of troll-in-chief Donald Trump is pretending that Tanden’s online rhetoric – rather than her record – is disqualifying.On the left, the Democratic noise machine is calling out the Republican party’s hypocrisy, while wrongly pretending that Tanden is a victim. These self-righteous Tanden defenders have gone completely silent about her actual record.Meanwhile, save for a few bits of solid policy-focused reporting, journalists are mostly hounding senators to get their reactions to Tanden’s tweets rather than asking them about her past behavior. Some media folk are even promoting the Neera-As-Victim mythology, somehow disregarding and distracting attention from Tanden’s alleged attack on a union of journalists.As evidenced by her record, Tanden is a victim in the same way war is peace, which is to say that she is not a victim, she is a perpetrator. But the Republican party, the Democratic party and the Washington media machine will not allow the record documenting that basic, verifiable, indisputable reality to be reviewed, litigated or considered. The debate is being deliberately ramrodded into a conversation about her online etiquette, which has absolutely no relevance to the actual appointment (and I say that as an occasional target of Tanden’s Twitter vitriol).All of this is a grotesque form of erasure. Democratic politicians, Beltway Liberals, and media voices are not merely swatting away, rationalizing or justifying Tanden’s record on the merits, they are doing something worse: they are trying to memory-hole Tanden’s record and pretend it doesn’t exist, even though she laid waste to the same liberal causes these defenders purport to care about.Moreover, the Tanden brigade – and their online army now bullying reporters with racist vitriol – are cynically relying on a political and media environment that will allow such memory-holing to take place. They are banking on the brute force of their own denialist propaganda and a miasma of distracting misinformation to make sure that nobody recognizes that they are exposing themselves. They are making clear that their hope for career advancement, their desire for White House access, and their personal connections to a thinktank powerbroker are more important to them than any social cause.Taken together, such behaviors represent more than the death of expertise. They signify the premeditated murder of the most basic facts that are supposed to inform democratic decision-making.The motives here are unstated but obvious: nobody in either party or in the Washington media wants to center Tanden’s nomination on her actual record, because if that record becomes disqualifying for career advancement in Washington, it could set a precedent jeopardizing the personal career prospects of every creature slithering through the Washington swamp.Indeed, if corruption, mismanagement, bullying, union busting and let-them-eat-cake-style austerity ideology are suddenly perceived negatively, then all the real-life Veep characters in Washington – the politicians, operatives and media elites who’ve spent their whole lives angling for fancy White House titles – could be out of luck.Appreciating the power of this tribal motivation is crucial, because it accounts for why Democrats seem to be spending as much or more political capital on trying to rescue Tanden’s nomination than on enacting policies to rescue Americans from an economic disaster. That’s no overstatement: the White House has signaled it is working the phones and pulling out all the stops for the OMB nominee at the very same time the administration is signaling a potential pre-emptive retreat on the minimum wage and a willingness to limit promised survival checks.Such skewed priorities and misguided decisions might seem inexplicable to those future anthropologists looking back at this moment. However, it will all make perfect sense to them if they understand that the Tanden affair exemplifies how in this era of end-stage democracy, the first and foremost priority of the effete political elite wasn’t helping millions of people, it wasn’t defending the progressive agenda, and it wasn’t even ensuring electoral success.It was something deeper, more tribal, and more corrupt: swamp self-preservation.David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter More

There’s one important aspect of the fight for a $15 minimum wage that is little understood: the fight isn’t so much about raising pay for a few million workers. Rather it’s about the far more ambitious goal of putting the US economy on a higher road, on a different track from being a low-wage economy. In Europe, many people scoff at the US as a country of low-wage McJobs with paltry benefits – often no paid sick days, no paid vacation and no health insurance. In Denmark, a McDonald’s hamburger flipper averages $22 an hour (with six weeks’ paid vacation), while in the US, fast-food jobs pay half that on average.You might wonder: how can the United States, the world’s wealthiest nation, be a low-wage economy? Of the 37 nations in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the unofficial club of rich and near-rich nations, the US has the third-highest percentage of low-wage workers, with nearly one in four workers defined as low-wage. Only Latvia and Romania are worse. (That study defines low-wage as earning less than two-thirds of a nation’s median wage.) In another study, Brookings found that 53 million Americans hold low-wage jobs, with a median pay of $10.22 an hour and median annual earnings of $17,950.The US also has the lowest minimum wage among the G7 industrial nations in terms of purchasing power. America’s $7.25-an-hour federal minimum is 38% lower than Germany’s and 30% lower than Britain’s, Canada’s and France’s. This helps explain why the US has among the worst income inequality of the 37 OECD nations – only Mexico, Chile, Costa Rica and Bulgaria have greater inequality. And the US has the third highest poverty rate; only Hungary and Costa Rica are worse.The US didn’t always have a low-road economy. In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, it had a high-road economy: labor unions were at their strongest, American businesses were booming (for the most part), and corporations shared their profits and prosperity with their workers as never before, helping build the world’s largest and richest middle class. But beginning in the 1980s, many corporations pushed the US economy and American workers on to a lower road, as corporate America felt the sting of global competition, as Wall Street pushed companies ever harder to maximize profits, as labor unions grew weaker and as President Reagan and other Republicans weakened worker protections and did little to raise the minimum wage.The US also has the lowest minimum wage among the G7 industrial nations in terms of purchasing powerBecause of persistent Republican opposition, the federal minimum wage hasn’t increased since July 2009 – the longest stretch without an increase since Congress first enacted a minimum wage in 1938. Franklin Roosevelt signed the minimum wage into law during the Great Depression because he thought workers had far too little bargaining power and consumers far too little purchasing power. Roosevelt urged companies to pay fair wages, saying, “No business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country.”Today’s federal minimum wage is just $7.25 an hour –  try maintaining a decent living at that pay level. The minimum wage is down 18% since it was last raised in 2009, after factoring in inflation, and down over 30%, after inflation, since 1968, during Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society years.America’s business community has staunchly opposed any minimum wage increases, warning that they would push up prices and force some companies out of business. Those leading the charge against a higher minimum – corporate executives and well-paid lobbyists and thinktank fellows – repeatedly say that raising the wage floor would be a job killer. They note that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) recently estimated that increasing the minimum to $15 by 2025 would reduce employment by 1.4 million, although the treasury secretary, Janet Yellen, echoing many economic studies, said a $15 minimum’s effect on jobs would be “very minimal, if anything”. The CBO also predicted that increasing the minimum to $15 would raise the pay of 27 million workers nationwide and increase worker pay overall by $333bn – a step that would stimulate the struggling economy.Corporations, along with their Republican allies, overwhelmingly oppose a $15 minimum; in doing so, however, they ignore the will of the vast majority of Americans. According to a Pew poll, Americans favor a $15 minimum by 67% to 33%. While low-wage workers would be most vulnerable to any job losses caused by a higher minimum, lower-income Americans shows even greater support for a $15 minimum. Pew found that 74% of Americans making under $40,000 a year support a $15 minimum wage, as do 56% of Republicans making under $40,000. Last November, Floridians – even as their state went for Trump – voted 61% to 39% in favor of raising their state’s minimum to $15, joining eight other states that have approved a $15 minimum.Despite such strong public backing for a $15 minimum, it looks doubtful that even one Republican senator – even though the Republican party now describes itself as the party of workers – will vote for a $15 minimum. President Biden has championed a $15 minimum: “No matter where you work in America, if you work full time or 40 hours a week, you should not live in poverty,” he has said. “A $15 minimum wage accomplishes that.” A full-time worker making $7.25 an hour earns $15,080 a year; in contrast, a full-time worker earning $15 will make $31,200. In the face of opposition from Republicans and some congressional Democrats, however, Biden has hinted he might compromise on a lower number.The Economic Policy Institute, a progressive research group, predicts that if the minimum rises to $15, nearly one-third (31%) of African Americans and one-quarter (26%) of Latinos will receive a pay increase. Those pushing for a $15 minimum are carrying on a fight that Martin Luther King Jr, championed: the fight for decent pay and dignity at work. In 1967, the year before he died while fighting for higher wages for sanitation workers in Memphis, King wrote, “There is nothing but a lack of social vision to prevent us from paying an adequate wage to every American whether he [or she] is a hospital worker, laundry worker, maid or day laborer.”Millions of low-wage workers are still waiting for America to heed King’s social vision. More

As Donald Trump prepares to address the crowds at the Conservative Political Action Conference this weekend, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Evan McMullin, who is leading the charge to create an alternative option to the current Republican party for conservatives

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At the start of February, details of a private Zoom meeting between dozens of former top Republican officials, who had become disillusioned with what the party had turned into under Donald Trump, leaked to the press. This week, Jonathan speaks to the man who ran that Zoom call, Evan McMullin. He is the executive director of Stand Up Republic, and chose to run against Donald Trump in 2016 out of sheer disgust for his type of politics. The pair discuss the direction the Republican party should take, and what disaffected conservatives should do if the GOP refuses to change Send us your questions and feedback to [email protected] Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe US House of Representatives voted to pass a landmark bill that would establish federal anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people, setting up a tough battle in the Senate to turn the proposal into law. “We shouldn’t still be having to fight for equal rights,” said Nic Talbott, a 27-year-old Ohio resident, who was forced to abandon his plans of joining the military due to Donald Trump’s ban on trans service members. “We should be able to go to work, find housing and just live our lives without having to worry about whether or not we’re going to be excluded just for being transgender or gay.”The Equality Act passed the Democratic-led House in a 224-206 vote, with three Republicans joining the Democrats. The bill amends existing civil rights laws to explicitly prohibit discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation and provides clear legal protections for transgender and queer people in employment, housing, education, public accommodations, federally funded programs and other sectors.But the proposal’s future is uncertain. Joe Biden has said signing the bill into law is one of his top priorities, but it first has to clear the Senate, where GOP lawmakers could block the legislation with a filibuster. The Equality Act builds on the landmark US supreme court ruling last year prohibiting employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ workers. Biden has already issued executive orders to defend trans rights, undoing some of Trump’s anti-LGBTQ+ policies and directing federal departments to follow the guidance of the supreme court decision. But advocates say the Equality Act is vital because it would enshrine protections into law beyond employment, and prevent future administrations from rolling back anti-discrimination rules.The act would be particularly significant for LGBTQ+ residents in the 27 states that do not have anti-discrimination laws on the books for trans and queer people, where it is legal to deny them housing based on their identities.“Legislation like this is crucial for shifting the tides for trans folks, especially in red states,” said Aria Sa’id, the executive director of the Compton’s Transgender Cultural District, a community group in San Francisco. Trans people flee to California from other states where they have fewer rights or access to services, she said: “We’re coming from other places in the US where we are not safe. We come to San Francisco for refuge … We should be protected in the law no matter where we live.”The Equality Act fight comes amid unprecedented attacks on trans rights in the US and overseas. Republican lawmakers in at least 20 states are currently pushing local bills targeting trans people, backed by rightwing groups. Many of the bills seek to block trans-affirming healthcare or ban trans youth and adults from certain spaces, including by prohibiting them from using the correct bathroom or participating in sports teams that match their gender.Some extremist GOP members of Congress have supported those efforts and have been promoting misinformation and transphobic hate speech this week as the House debated the Equality Act.David B Cruz, a constitutional law professor at University of California, Los Angeles, said federal protections would, in effect, make it illegal for states to enforce discriminatory rules meant to exclude trans people. The Equality Act would also make it harder for the supreme court, which has become more conservative since last year’s ruling, to carve out trans rights in the next LGBTQ+ discrimination case it reviews, he said.Legislation like this is crucial for shifting the tides for trans folks, especially in red states“It would be a monumental achievement,” said Cruz. “It’s not always simple or easy for people to enforce their statutory rights, but even having a federal law that expressly protects those rights on the books, by itself will deter discrimination against LGBTQ+ people.” It would help disrupt “cycles of poverty, due to anti LGBTQ+ prejudice”, he added.Some Republican legislators are vocally opposing the act by citing concerns about religious freedoms. But Cruz noted that a super-majority of Americans in every state support anti-discrimination laws for LGBTQ+ people, including a majority of Republican voters.Khloe Rios-Wyatt, the president at Alianza Translatinx, a Latinx trans rights group in Orange county, California, said she faced discrimination for being trans when she was terminated from her first job out of college: “It can be traumatizing. You lose your income and then you’re facing potential homelessness.”She said she regularly talks to trans people who were denied housing even though they qualified: “You show up in person and they tell you it’s no longer available. It breaks my heart and it has to change.”Bamby Salcedo, the president of the TransLatin@ Coalition in Los Angeles, noted that 2020 was the deadliest year on record for violence against trans and gender non-conforming people, the majority people of color. While the Equality Act could make a difference for the broader LGBTQ+ community, it would not end discrimination for trans people, she said.“The reality is that even in California and places that are super progressive, trans people continue to experience discrimination while trying to obtain employment, housing, healthcare and the basic things we need to exist … There is still a lot of work that needs to be done.”There are at least nine LGBTQ+ members in the House and two in the Senate, and supporters in Congress spoke of their trans and queer family members while championing the bill. Polling released earlier this week confirmed that more Americans than ever before now identify as LGBTQ+. More

The House has passed the landmark Equality Act, taking LGBTQ+ Americans one step closer to winning legal protection from discrimination.The Equality Act amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes in addition to race, religion, sex and national origin.The key civil rights bill passed in a vote of 224 to 216, with three Republicans breaking with their party to joining all Democrats in supporting the legislation. But the bill faces an uncertain future in the evenly divided Senate, where Democrats will need 60 votes to break a filibuster on the legislation.“Without the Equality Act, this nation will never live up to its principles of freedom and equality,” Democratic representative Marie Newman of Illinois, who has a trans daughter, said on the House floor on Wednesday.“I’m voting yes on the Equality Act for Evie Newman, my daughter and the strongest, bravest person I know.”Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people often encounter prejudice in housing, credit, jury service and public spaces, as only 22 states and the District of Columbia prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.State legislatures regularly advance laws that limit local LGBTQ+ protections. Since the start of the year, a dozen states have introduced or passed laws to bar trans girls from participating in girls’ sports leagues.President Joe Biden has already said he would sign the Equality Act if it can make it through the Senate. “Every person should be treated with dignity and respect, and this bill represents a critical step toward ensuring that America lives up to our foundational values of equality and freedom for all,” Biden said in a statement last week.Several Senate Republicans have expressed their opposition, including Mitt Romney of Utah, a former presidential candidate, who said he would oppose the bill unless it added a provision giving “strong religious liberty protections”.However, LGBTQ+ advocates say they are confident the bill will become law because of its popularity among the American public.An estimated 83% of Americans favor laws that would protect LGBTQ+ people against discrimination in jobs, public accommodation and housing, including 68% of Republicans, according to a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute.“In a period of such polarization, where else do you have over 80% of support for a piece of legislation?” said Janson Wu, executive director of advocacy group Glaad. “This should be a ‘no-brainer’ for any legislator regardless of their party.”The House first passed the Equality Act in 2019, but it stalled in the Republican-controlled Senate during the Trump administration, which opposed the bill. The Democrats won control of the Senate in November’s elections.Biden is a vocal supporter of LGBT+ rights, in a clear departure from the Trump administration, which barred trans people from joining the military and issued orders emphasizing the importance of “biological sex” rather than gender identity.Since taking office in January, Biden signed an executive order that federal agencies must not discriminate against LGBT+ people and issued a memorandum aimed at protecting LGBT+ rights worldwide, including potentially through the use of sanctions.LGBTQ+ advocates praised Biden’s use of the executive office but reiterated the need for comprehensive legislation.“We deserve more than temporary measures,” said Erin Uritus, chief executive of Out & Equal Workplace Advocates, in a statement.“Turning the Equality Act into the law of the land is absolutely necessary to cement civil rights protections for LGBTQ Americans.”Reuters contributed to this report More

New York City’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has called for an independent investigation into the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, a day after a former aide accused the governor of sexual harassment.In an essay published in Medium on Wednesday, former aide Lindsey Boylan described several problematic episodes with Cuomo, including an unsolicited kiss in his Manhattan office, an invitation to play strip poker on a government airplane, and an internal email from another aide indicating that the governor considered her a “better looking sister” of a rumored former girlfriend.The governor’s press office responded to the “strip poker” element of Boylan’s allegations on Wednesday with flight records. “Ms Boylan’s claims of inappropriate behavior are quite simply false,” a statement read.In remarks on Thursday, De Blasio, who has a contentious relationship with the governor, issued a call for an investigation into Cuomo’s behavior. “These allegations are really disturbing … This kind of behavior, if it’s true, is just unacceptable. We’ve got to get the truth about this,” he said.Boylan’s allegations come as the governor, who was for much of last year hailed as a hero for his handling of the pandemic, also faces a federal investigation into claims his administration deliberately undercounted the number Covid-related deaths in New York nursing homes.Cuomo, who is facing calls for his resignation, is also in a showdown with angry state legislators from his own Democratic party who are looking to strip him of emergency powers they granted him during the pandemic.Boylan, who is running for Manhattan borough president, went public with allegations of alleged sexual harassment in a series of remarks on Twitter in December but did not provide details.But on Wednesday, she offered details, including describing an incident in 2018 when she said that she and the governor were alone in his Manhattan office. “As I got up to leave and walk toward an open door, he stepped in front of me and kissed me on the lips. I was in shock, but I kept walking,” Boylan wrote.In an earlier incident, in 2016, Boylan wrote that she was emailed by Stephanie Benton, director of the governor’s offices, who suggested she look up images of Lisa Shields – his rumored former girlfriend – because “we could be sisters” and “I was “the better looking sister”.The governor, Boylan added, “began calling me ‘Lisa’ in front of colleagues. It was degrading.” Boylan also wrote that she had complained to friends that Cuomo “would go out of his way to touch me on my lower back, arms and legs”.In her essay, Boylan said: “Governor Andrew Cuomo has created a culture within his administration where sexual harassment and bullying is so pervasive that it is not only condoned but expected.”“His inappropriate behavior toward women,” she continued, “was an affirmation that he liked you, that you must be doing something right. He used intimidation to silence his critics. And if you dared to speak up, you would face consequences.” More

US taxpayers should not be “forced to subsidize some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America”, Bernie Sanders told a Senate hearing on Thursday.As Congress debates the first rise in the minimum wage in over a decade, the Vermont senator said he had “talked to too many workers in this country who, with tears in their eyes, tell me the struggles they have to provide for their kids on starvation wages” even as the chief executives of companies including McDonald’s, Walmart and others take home multi-million dollar pay packages.Executives from Walmart and McDonald’s were invited to the hearing, titled Should Taxpayers Subsidize Poverty Wages at Large Profitable Corporations?They declined to appear.The senators heard from low-wage workers from McDonald’s and Walmart. Terence Wise, a McDonald’s employee from Kansas City, Missouri, said his low pay had led to his family becoming homeless.“My family has been homeless despite two incomes. We’ve endured freezing temperatures in our purple minivan. I’d see my daughter’s eyes wide open, tossing and turning, in the back seat. Try waking up in the morning and getting ready for work and school in a parking lot with your family of five,” said Wise.“That’s something a parent can never forget and a memory you can never take away from your children. You should never have multiple jobs in the United States and nowhere to sleep.”Sanders cited a government accountability office (GAO) report that found nearly half of workers who make less than $15 an hour rely on public assistance programs that cost taxpayers $107bn each year.Walmart spent $8.3bn on stock buybacks in 2017, the Walton family, the chain’s founders, are worth over $200bn and have increased their wealth by $50bn since the start of the pandemic, said Sanders. And yet the company “cannot afford to pay its workers at least $15 an hour”.“If Walmart thinks they’re going to avoid answering that question because they’re not here today, they’re deeply mistaken. The American people are sick and tired of subsidizing the wealthiest family in America,” said Sanders.The hearing comes at a tense moment for minimum wage advocates. Joe Biden campaigned on a pledge to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour from its current level of $7.25. The proposal is part of his $1.9tn Covid stimulus package.But that package faces stiff opposition from in the Senate with the Republican minority set to vote against it and some Democrats opposing the wage rise.A recent Congressional Budget Office concluded 27 million Americans would be affected by an increase in the minimum wage to $15, and that 900,000 would be lifted out of poverty. But the CBO also said the increase would lead to 1.4m job losses and increase the federal budget deficit by $54bn over the next 10 years. The Economic Policy Institute, and others, have called the report “wrong, and inappropriately inflated”.Republican Senator Mike Bruin told the hearing that an increase would be unfair on states with a lower cost of living and would hurt small businesses.“We need to slow it down,” he said. “The main result is you are going to hurt Main Street,” he said. More