US Politics

The journalist and historian Godfrey Hodgson, who has died aged 86, was among the most perceptive and industrious observers of his generation, particularly in the field of American society and politics.His reputation was founded on his landmark study, America in Our Time: From World War II to Nixon (1976), acknowledged by the Cambridge historian Gary Gerstle as “one of the great works of political and social history written in the past half century”. At 600 pages long and in continuous print since its first publication, it was but one item in a prolific output that ran to more than 15 books, extensive university teaching and a lifetime of newspaper and television reporting (as well as numerous Guardian obituaries). As a journalist, Hodgson reckoned he had worked in 48 of the 50 US states.The central thesis of America in Our Time was that, from the end of the second world war until the mid-1960s, what Hodgson called a “liberal consensus” defined American politics. Conservatives accepted most of the New Deal domestic philosophy espoused by Democrats, and liberals mostly accepted the aggressive foreign policy advocated by Republicans to contain and defeat communism. In theory, the free enterprise system would create abundance at home, leaving America free to civilise the world. The term “liberal consensus” had been used before, but Hodgson was responsible for its entry into the lexicon of American history.Viewed from an age thrown into turmoil by Donald Trump, this analysis appears sadly optimistic. But it held sway as a key tenet in American academia for many years – a considerable achievement for a British writer in US scholarship. It was a measure of Hodgson’s intellectual honesty that in 2017 he could contribute to a collection of essays, The Liberal Consensus Reconsidered (edited by Robert Mason and Iwan Morgan), reflecting on the inadequacies of his earlier theory and analysing why the period had come to an end; the answers were mainly to do with race, Vietnam and the failure of US capitalism.Born in Horsham, now in West Sussex, Godfrey returned to the Yorkshire of his family roots at the age of three when his father, Arthur Hodgson, was appointed headteacher of Archbishop Holgate’s grammar school, York. Two tragedies overshadowed his childhood. At the age of two, he contracted osteomyelitis, a bone infection; when he was seven, it became clear that his mother, Jessica (nee Hill), was suffering from untreatable multiple sclerosis.The former left him with a disfigured right arm and an iron determination to succeed: one of his proudest achievements was later to bowl for the Winchester college first XI. The latter resulted in his being packed off to the Dragon school in Oxford at the age of nine, to shield him from his mother’s illness. He learned of her death in 1947 as a lonely 13-year-old far from home. Perhaps in part to compensate, he poured his considerable intellectual energies into study, winning scholarships to both Winchester and Magdalen College, Oxford, where he gained a first in history in 1954.Hodgson’s introduction to the US came in the form of a copy of John Gunther’s classic study Inside USA, a gift from his father on his 14th birthday. He first encountered the real thing in 1955, when, aged 21, he sailed on the Queen Mary to take up a postgraduate scholarship at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. There he worked in the college library, and wrote his MA thesis on the civil war – not the American one of Lincoln but the English one of Cromwell. He also discovered jazz, and the American south, a region for which he developed a special affection.Back in Britain, he learned his reporting skills on the Times before joining the Observer in 1960, initially to write the paper’s Mammon column. His great opportunity came two years later, when, aged 28, he returned to Washington as the Observer’s correspondent (1962-65), appointed by the editor, David Astor, as one of the gifted young men who would elevate his paper’s foreign coverage. This was a golden time to be a reporter in America and Hodgson loved it.He covered the push for civil rights in the south, witnessing the tense confrontations as the first black students were escorted into the universities of Mississippi and Alabama, and he was at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington to hear Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. Events just kept on coming: the Cuban missile crisis, the Kennedy assassination and the complex presidency of Lyndon Johnson, who, even then, Hodgson rated more highly than the liberal commentariat of the day.Returning to London, he developed his coverage of America as a reporter on the ITV current affairs programme This Week (1965-67) and as editor of the Sunday Times Insight team (1967-71), during which time he co-wrote An American Melodrama (1969) with Bruce Page and Lewis Chester, the story of the 1968 election that brought Richard Nixon to the White House. He anchored LWT’s The London Programme (1976-81), was one of the four founding presenters of Channel 4 News (with Peter Sissons, Trevor McDonald and Sarah Hogg) from 1982 until 1985, and for two years from 1990 was foreign editor of the Independent. He was also a stalwart of Granada’s late-night What the Papers Say.He enjoyed showing that the first Thanksgiving was not celebrated with turkey and cranberry sauce – because there wasn’t anyFriends observed in the younger Hodgson a rumbling tension between his yearning for academic recognition and his enjoyment of the more material pleasures of journalism, a trade that suited his gregarious personality well. He was fortunate in being able to reconcile these conflicting needs as director of the Reuters Foundation (1992-2001), a post that combined mentoring bright young foreign reporters with a fellowship at Green Templeton College, Oxford. The move opened up a world of graduate teaching, both in Britain and the US, which he continued into his 80s.His Oxford appointment chimed well with the generosity he showed towards aspiring young colleagues. I experienced this personally as we travelled through the American south together in the summer of 1967, researching a television documentary on the civil rights movement. Each day would begin with a reading from the appropriate state guide of the Federal Writers’ Project, an inspiration of FDR’s New Deal, and continue as a free-flowing lecture often late into the evening.The same spirit inspired his involvement in starting up, with the journalist Ben Bradlee and the literary agent Felicity Bryan, the Laurence Stern fellowship. Since 1980 it has funded a three-month summer programme on the Washington Post for a young British reporter (Guardian beneficiaries of the scheme have included David Leigh, Gary Younge, Audrey Gillan, Jonathan Freedland and Ian Black); after the Covid-19 pandemic it will return as the Stern-Bryan fellowship.Hodgson’s later books ranged from biographies of the US statesmen Henry Stimson (The Colonel, 1990) and Edward House (Woodrow Wilson’s Right Hand, 2006) to critical studies of the rise of conservatism, including The World Turned Right Side Up (1996) and More Equal Than Others (2004). Always at his best when challenging conventional wisdoms, as in The Myth of American Exceptionalism (2009), he enjoyed particularly showing in A Great and Godly Adventure (2006) that the first Thanksgiving was not celebrated with turkey and cranberry sauce – because there wasn’t any – and that the early American settlers did not see themselves as revolutionaries against the British crown.Following a serious fall in 2007, he nursed himself back to health by writing a delightful history of the local river near his West Oxfordshire home, Sweet Evenlode (2008). Above all, Hodgson could tell a good story.In 1958 he married Alice Vidal, and they had two sons, Pierre and Francis. They divorced in 1969, and the following year he married Hilary Lamb, with whom he had two daughters, Jessica and Laura. Hilary died in 2015, and he is survived by his children.• Godfrey Michael Talbot Hodgson, journalist and historian, born 1 February 1934; died 27 January 2021• John Shirley died in 2018 More

No statues were toppled at the state department after Mike Pompeo’s departure. It was a changing of the guard, rather than regime change. But in one case at least, his legacy was brought down quickly and visibly.
On the day of the inauguration, workmen brought down a giant placard about “professional ethos” that the former secretary of state had erected at the main entrance to mark his first year in office.
The Trump era was particularly tough for US diplomats, who were regularly maligned as part of the “Deep State” by Donald Trump – and the state department was hollowed out and often sidelined under Pompeo and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.
In April 2019, staff had been gathered in the foyer, and Happy by Pharrell Williams was played through the state department public address system, as the “ethos” placard was unveiled.
Foreign service officers were told they were each a “champion of American diplomacy”. It was supposed to be a morale-boosting exercise but had the opposite effect. To experienced diplomats, it felt like condescension.
“We are confident that our colleagues do not need a reminder of the values we share,” Ned Price, the incoming department spokesman, noted drily this week.
The giant sign had also become a monument to hypocrisy as Pompeo was subjected to a string of inspector general investigations about his use of departmental resources for his private ends, sending government officials out for dry cleaning or to walk the dog, and flying his wife, Susan, out on state department trips. Pompeo had the inspector general fired.
A state department spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that the “Madison Dinners” Pompeo and his wife had staged in the diplomatic reception rooms had been discontinued. His critics said that he was using the well-heeled guest list at the taxpayer-funded events to build up a donor base for a 2024 presidential run.
In Pompeo’s day, the ground floor corridor leading to the press room was lined with pictures of him in action around the world. Since his departure, it has reverted to tradition, with photographs of several former secretaries going about their work.
Another Pompeo legacy that has been quietly dropped is the Unalienable Rights Commission a panel of conservative historians and political philosophers, whose report every state department employee was instructed to read. It told them that America’s founding fathers believed that private property and religious freedom were “foremost” among human rights, and that US foreign policy should follow that example.
At his confirmation hearing, Pompeo’s replacement, Antony Blinken, said he would repudiate the commission’s findings and reaffirm US adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
In his first speech at the headquarters in Foggy Bottom, Blinken promised staff he would begin “rebuilding morale and trust”. He did not mention his predecessor, but his speech sought to salve the bruises he left. Career diplomats had largely felt ignored, and betrayed when Pompeo declined to defend them in the face of groundless attacks from the White House.
“I’ll seek out dissenting views and listen to the experts, because that’s how the best decisions are made,” he said. “And I will insist that you speak, and speak up, without fear or favor. And I will have your back.”
The new management style has not been entirely welcomed. While the nominations for the top jobs in Washington and at the United Nations have gone to highly experienced and competent people, almost all have been political appointees – most of whom had left the department and become politically active – rather than career promotions.
“The career people feel like you’re sending the message: if you want the top jobs, you’ve got to cozy up to a campaign and raise some big money. And that’s a terrible precedent,” Brett Bruen, director of global engagement in the Obama White House said. “It’s being seen by people who had high hopes for this administration as a slap in the face.”
Price, the new spokesman, responded by saying Blinken’s “first task will be to invest in the department’s greatest asset: our people”.
“Under Secretary Blinken’s leadership, career experts will always be at the center of our diplomacy, and he is committed to ensuring that they will help to lead it by serving in many of the department’s most senior positions,” Price said.
Bruen said most of the top jobs in Washington and New York have already been filled, but the next test of the new secretary of state will be the appointment of ambassadors.
“Biden said during the campaign he was going to empower and elevate career diplomats,” he said. “Pretty clearly, he hasn’t done in the senior positions so fine: with the ambassadors, appoint fewer than 10% political.” More

Bernie Sanders is widely beloved for his crotchety public demeanour, making it fitting that a crocheted doll of the 79-year-old Vermont senator – wearing chunky mittens and hunched cross-legged against the cold at Joe Biden’s inauguration last week – added no less than $20,300 to charitable efforts featuring the much-memed image.Sanders said merchandise featuring the image had raised nearly $2m for charities including Meals on Wheels, which brings food to isolated older people.Last week, the picture of the be-mittened and socially distanced senator rippled across the internet. Users were gleefully “placing” the Vermont democratic socialist everywhere from the Yalta conference in 1945 to the video for Gangnam Style, and in the pattern on Melania Trump’s resort wear-style dress when she and Donald Trump arrived in Florida instead of attending the inauguration.And in Corpus Christi, Texas, Tobey King got down to work on her own three-dimensional wooly manifestation of the senator in his earthen hues.“It’s mind-blowing because I knew Bernie was trending, because of that picture, and I already had a Bernie pattern and a Bernie doll,” she said. “So, I just went and got that and I modified that super quick.”Recreating Sanders’ mittened and masked look took about seven hours of crocheting, she said, adding: “The mittens are not that hard – it’s just some colour changing, a special stitch.”By Saturday, she had posted the doll on eBay, where its auction price soared. Funds raised would be donated to Meals on Wheels America, King said, adding: “This is my new path. This is a new way of helping people in a way that I’ve never been able to do before.”King, 46, said more than 30,000 people had bought a Sanders doll crochet pattern from her Etsy store, and said she hoped the senator approved.“I really hope that he thinks this is something cool and that I’m doing something good,” she said.It seemed likely Sanders would. Last Sunday, Jen Ellis, the Vermont elementary school teacher who made the senator’s mittens from old sweaters and recycled plastic bottles, said he had called “to tell me that the mitten frenzy has already raised an enormous amount of money for Vermont charities … Thank you!! Generosity brings joy.”She also said she could not possibly fulfill a flood of orders from mitten-smitten Sanders supporters.Sanders said he and his wife, Jane, “were amazed by all the creativity shown by so many people over the last week, and we’re glad we can use my internet fame to help Vermonters in need.“But even this amount of money is no substitute for action by Congress, and I will be doing everything I can in Washington to make sure working people in Vermont and across the country get the relief they need in the middle of the worst crisis we’ve faced since the Great Depression.”Among other actions, the new chair of the Senate budget committee is seeking to overcome Republican opposition to a $15 minimum wage. More

Happy Thursday,After an election filled with misinformation and lies about fraud, Republicans have doubled down with a surge of bills to further restrict voting access in recent months, according to a new analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice.There are currently 106 pending bills across 28 states that would restrict access to voting, according to the data. That’s a sharp increase from nearly a year ago, when there were 35 restrictive bills pending across 15 states.Among the Brennan Center’s findings:More than a third of the bills would place new restrictions on voting by mail
Pennsylvania has 14 pending proposals for new voter restrictions, the most in the country. It’s followed by New Hampshire (11), Missouri (9), and Mississippi, New Jersey and Texas (8)
There are seven bills across four states that would limit opportunities for election day registration
There are also 406 bills that would expand voting access pending across 35 states, including in New York (56), Texas (53), New Jersey (37), Mississippi (39) and Missouri (21)
The restrictions come on the heels of an election in which there was record turnout and Democrat and Republican election officials alike said there was no evidence of widespread wrongdoing or fraud. There were recounts, audits and lawsuits across many states to back up those assurances. Federal and state officials called the election “the most secure in American history”.Myrna Pérez, director of the voting rights and elections program at the Brennan Center, said the surge in anti-voting legislation was “countersensical” given that there were Republican and Democratic wins in key races across the country.“The volume of anti-voter legislation is certainly revealing that a nerve was struck,” she told me. “There are certainly people who are sensitive to the idea of more progress … It ultimately comes down to an anxiety over the browning of America and people in power are afraid of losing their position.”Attacking voting by mailMany of the restrictions have to do with placing new barriers around voting by mail, a process that a record number of Americans used in 2020 (46% of Americans cast a mail-in ballot in 2020, compared with just 19% four years ago). In Arizona, a state that Joe Biden flipped, Republicans are weighing measures that would make it easier to remove voters from a permanent mail-in voting list and to require voters to get their ballots notarized. In Pennsylvania, there are proposals in the GOP-controlled legislature to get rid of no-excuse absentee voting and to make it easier to reject a ballot based on a signature mismatch – an unreliable way to confirm a voter’s identity.And in Georgia, a state where Democrats won stunning upsets in the presidential race and two US Senate runoffs, Republicans are exploring whether to eliminate no-excuse absentee voting and to require voters to submit a copy of their ID when they vote by mail. Again, this comes after an election in which there was record vote by mail turnout, and the state’s top election official, a Republican, loudly pushed back on accusations of fraud.In Pennsylvania, Governor Tom Wolf, a Democrat, could veto GOP-restrictions. But in Georgia and Arizona, Republicans control both the legislature and the governor’s mansion.There are a host of other voting restrictions states are considering:Ten states are considering new voter ID requirements, including six states that do not currently require voters to present ID at the polls, according to the Brennan Center.
Two states, Mississippi and New Hampshire, are considering placing new limits on the kinds of IDs that can be used.
Also worth watching …Oregon lawmakers are considering a bill that would allow people convicted of a felony to vote while they are in prison, the Appeal reported. If adopted, Oregon would join Maine and Vermont as the only two states in the country that allow this, as well as the District of Columbia. More

On Tuesday, the US Senate rejected an attempt to kill the impeachment trial of Donald Trump, 55-45, but only five Republicans voted with the majority. Acquittal of the ex-president is now a foregone conclusion. The only question is when.Trump 2024 can still happen. In the short run, his dream won’t die. With another campaign looming over the horizon, the former reality show host can still rake in the bucks to the delight of his family and his creditors. The beast will continue to be fed.Naturally, there were minor casualties. Mitch McConnell, the newly minted minority leader, fell in behind his caucus. His post-Capitol Hill attack theatrics are done, his outrage is over, his hopes for a Trump-free future dashed.On the other hand, Elaine Chao – McConnell’s wife who doubled as Trump’s transportation secretary and resigned in a pique over the storming of the Capitol – has landed on her feet at a conservative thinktank along with Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state. For Team McConnell, the past can be relegated to the rearview mirror.Said differently, the former president doesn’t need a third party to enforce his will. Indeed, Rob Portman, Ohio’s lame duck senator and former Bush senior budget director and trade representative, toed the party line despite the fact that electoral politics are no longer part of his future.The lesson is clear. Even without Twitter, Trump’s angry and agitated base will do his bidding. By the numbers, while a majority of the US supports Trump’s conviction in the Senate, opposition from the Republican rank-and-file has risen.Looking ahead, a Republican who crosses Trump can expect a primary or worse. Just ask Wyoming’s Liz Cheney, Illinois’s Adam Kinzinger, or Michigan’s Peter Meijer, they can tell you. Each voted to impeach Trump. Suffice to say, that decision has devolved into a costly ordeal. The threat of violence remains part of the equation, too.For the Republican leadership, the will of the people is no longer the same thing as the will of their people, and it is the latter that countsIn the process, the Republican leadership has jettisoned its commitment to democracy and the rule of law. For them, the will of the people is no longer the same thing as the will of their people, and it is the latter that counts. Populism should not be equated with fidelity to vox populi.Rather, authoritarianism has found a political home in the US. Earlier this month, most Republicans on Capitol Hill voted to overturn an election and discount the verdict of the majority of their countrymen: Trump lost to Joe Biden by 7m votes. The fact that the US supreme court had repeatedly rebuffed his entreaties did not matter to the bulk of congressional Republicans.Indeed, Kevin McCarthy, the chief House Republican, went so far as to blame the entire nation for the insurrection led by the president and executed by his followers. Talk about assigning collective guilt and ignoring the faces in the mirror.Little over a year ago and with an eye cast toward Barack Obama, Trump and his minions opined that former presidents stood ripe for impeachment. As Trump struggled with the aftermath of his perfect phone call on Ukraine and a Senate trial, he let the world know that Obama ought to suffer instead.Specifically, the 45th president suggested the 44th’s comments on healthcare rose to the level of an impeachable offense. “We should impeach him for that,” Trump said. “Why aren’t we impeaching him?” That Obama had served two full terms in office and was thus barred by the constitution from seeking an electoral three-peat had rendered impeachment legally irrelevant. So what?To be sure, the same entreaty had also been posed by Trump groupie, Matt Gaetz. Gaetz, a member of the House judiciary committee with a record of driving under the influence, opined that “You actually can impeach a former president, FWIW.”Apparently, not any more. What’s sauce for the goose is no longer sauce for the gander, at least where Trump is concerned. What dear leader wants, dear leader must have. If it’s Reichstag fire redux, so be it.Sadly, the events of the recent weeks are a dry run for what may come next. Past really is prelude. In hindsight, the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing signaled what lurked in the recesses of the Republican party.Marjorie Taylor Greene, a first-term congresswoman from Georgia, previously indicated her support for killing prominent Democrats, including President Obama. Let that sink in.The party of Lincoln is dead. But the Republican party isn’t.The grievances that fueled Trump’s ascent remain. The country’s demographics continue to shift while the gap between coastal elites and the rest of the US widens. More ominously, nearly a fifth of those arrested for rioting on the Hill are military veterans. Talk about punching above your weight.How this morass resolves itself is unclear. But one thing is certain, Trump’s voice and those of his followers will not be silenced. Real or imagined, some wounds never heal. The unresolved questions are if and how their demands can be accommodated by a democratic republic short of wholesale capitulation. More

Republican leadership in the House of Representatives took no immediate action against Marjorie Taylor Greene after the Georgia congresswoman was revealed to have indicated support for executing Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.On Wednesday morning, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, had said only that he “planned to have a conversation” with Greene.The congresswoman’s committee assignments have not yet been announced. Greene has said she will sit on the education panel.On Tuesday, CNN reported actions by Greene on social media in 2018 and 2019. In one, she “liked” a comment on a discussion of how to remove Pelosi, the House Speaker, which said “a bullet to the head would be quicker”.Greene also liked comments about executing FBI agents for being part of the “Deep State”. That conspiracy theory holds that bureaucrats and intelligence agents worked to thwart Donald Trump. A key propagator, the former White House strategist Steve Bannon, has said the theory is for “nut cases”.CNN also reported that in 2018, in an answer to a commenter on her own post about the Iran nuclear deal who asked “now do we get to hang” Obama and Clinton, Greene wrote: “Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off.”On Wednesday, Clinton said: “This woman should be on a watch list. Not in Congress.”Greene replied: “Actually, you should be in jail.”Among other comments made by Greene before she was elected unopposed in Georgia’s 14th district last year include: the 9/11 attacks were a US government operation; the Parkland school shooting was staged; and Clinton and her aide Huma Abedin sexually assaulted and murdered a child, drank their blood, cut their face off and wore it as a mask.CNN also reported previous comments by Greene accusing Pelosi of treason and implying she should be executed for opposing Trump immigration policies.In a statement, Greene did not deny the actions or comments but said CNN was trying “to cancel me and silence my voice”.“Cancel culture” or “silencing”, the supposed negation of rightwing voices in mainstream media and academia, is a new shibboleth of post-Trump conservatism.Senior House Republicans including McCarthy condemned Greene before she won her seat. Leadership has taken action against members who expressed extreme views. Steve King of Iowa, repeatedly reprimanded for racist remarks, was stripped of committee assignments and lost a primary.King predicted McCarthy would use him as an example to keep Greene in line. But Greene has entered Congress in a party beholden to Trump, even after he stoked the 6 January attack on the Capitol in which five people died, one a police officer struck with a fire extinguisher, and lawmakers hid from rioters hoping to kidnap or kill them.In November, McCarthy said the press should give new members like Greene “an opportunity before you claim what you believe they have done and what they will do”. Greene has defended Trump over the Capitol attack, which she said she condemned, though she also falsely sought to apportion blame to Democrats and “Antifa/BLM terrorism”, referring to anti-fascist and Black Lives Matter protesters.The attack resulted in Trump’s second impeachment, though on Tuesday 45 Republican senators voted against even holding a trial.Amid fallout from the CNN report, a spokesman for McCarthy told Axios: “These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them.”On Wednesday, footage resurfaced of Greene harassing David Hogg, a Parkland survivor who campaigns for gun control reform, on a Washington DC street. Greene posted the video to YouTube on 21 January 2020.Hogg wrote: “It’s so frustrating that we have people like Greene in Congress that would rather spread conspiracies about mass shootings than confront the reality people are dying every day from gun violence.”At the White House, press secretary Jen Psaki was asked if the Biden administration had any response or thought Greene should be subject to disciplinary action.“We don’t [have comment],” Psaki said. “And I’m not gonna speak further about her, I think, in this briefing room.” More

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Joe Biden has warned the climate crisis poses an “existential threat” to the world as he unveiled a radical change in direction from the Trump era by halting fossil fuel activity on public lands and directing the US government to start a full-frontal effort to lower planet-heating emissions.
“We have already waited too long to deal with this climate crisis, we can’t wait any longer,” the US president said as he signed a battery of executive orders on Wednesday. “We see it with our own eyes, we feel it in our bones. It’s time to act.”
Biden has instructed the US government to pause and review all oil and gas drilling on federal land, eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and transform the government’s vast fleet of cars and trucks into electric vehicles, in a sweeping new set of climate executive orders.
“We desperately need unified national response to the climate crisis, because there is a climate crisis,” Biden said.
He pledged to put “environmental justice” at the center “of all we do” to help mitigate the disproportionate effects of climate change on Black and brown communities in the US, with policy and funding changes.
The president framed the actions as a remedy to pandemic-driven unemployment as well as an environmental benefit.
Biden said that millions of well-paid jobs would flow from investments in clean energy such as solar and wind, as well as energy efficiency measures for homes and the clean-up of former oil wells.
“These aren’t pie in the sky dreams, they are concrete actionable solutions,” the president said.
“This isn’t time for small measures, we need to be bold. It’s about jobs, good paying union jobs, it’s a whole of government approach to put climate change at the center of our domestic, national security and foreign policies. We can do this, we must do this and we will do this.”
The slew of executive actions direct the Department of the Interior to pause new oil and gas leases on public lands and offshore waters and launch a “rigorous review of all existing leasing”, according to a White House planning document.
The directive opens up a path to the banning of all new drilling on federal land, a campaign promise made by Biden that has been widely praised by climate groups and caused outrage within the fossil fuel industry. Biden has called the climate crisis the “existential threat of our time” and the White House has said the new executive orders will help push the US towards a goal of net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
“President Biden and his administration are taking an important step in the right direction by limiting oil and gas development on federal lands,” said Robert Howarth, professor of ecology at Cornell University, who added that the world “must rapidly transition away from fossil fuels” to avoid disastrous climate change.
Jesse Prentice-Dunn, policy director at the Center for Western Priorities, added that “Hitting pause on oil and gas leasing is a crucial first step toward reforming a rigged and broken system that for too long has put oil and gas lobbyists ahead of the American people.”
Around a quarter of the US’s planet-heating emissions comes from fossil fuel production on public lands and it is estimated a national ban on leasing would reduce carbon emissions by 280m tons a year. Donald Trump’s administration opened up almost all federally owned land to drilling, a move cheered as a job creator by industry but decried by environmentalists and Native American tribes.
“There has to be a balance point: people over money,” said Daniel Tso, a member of the Navajo Nation.”I welcome an end to federal fossil fuel leasing and the necessary transitions to more sustainable economies for the Navajo Nation.”
Kathleen Sgamma, president of the Western Energy Alliance, which represents oil and gas drillers in western states, has said her group will challenge the moratorium in court. “The environmental left is leading the agenda at the White House when it comes to energy and environment issues,” she said.
Biden’s new set of executive orders, dubbed “climate day” by environmental campaigners, adds up to one of the most wide-ranging efforts ever taken by a US president to tackle the climate crisis, building upon his decision last week to re-enter the Paris climate agreement.
Alongside the review of public lands, the Biden administration will install climate as an “essential element” of US foreign policy and national security, craft a strengthened national emissions reduction target, seek to eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and will set a new goal of conserving 30% of American land and oceans by 2030. The new emissions goal may well be presented at an international climate summit that Biden is planning for Earth Day, on 22 April.
The White House, for the first time, will have an office of domestic climate policy to coordinate Biden’s climate agenda alongside a national climate task force that will comprise of 21 government agency leaders to adopt a “whole of government” approach to reducing emissions. A review of scientific integrity practices will roll out.
The orders also establish an environmental justice interagency council to address the racial and economic inequities exacerbated by climate change and air and water pollution. Biden hopes to pass a $2tn clean energy package through Congress and he will direct that 40% of investments will be aimed at disadvantaged communities.
In all, the climate package is a strong repudiation of the Trump administration, which consistently sidelined or derided climate science, dismantled policies designed to lower emissions and withdrew from the Paris climate deal.
“This is the single biggest day for climate action in more than a decade, and what makes it all the better is that President Biden and Vice-President Harris are just getting started,” said Gene Karpinski, president of the League of Conservation Voters. More

A Chinese bot network played a key role in spreading disinformation during and after the US election, including a debunked video of “ballot burning” shared by Eric Trump, a new study reveals.The misleading video shows a man filming himself on Virginia Beach, allegedly burning votes cast for Donald Trump. The ballots were actually samples. The clip went viral after Trump’s son Eric posted it a day later on his official Twitter page, where it got more than 1.2m views.The video was believed to have originated from an account associated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. But the study by Cardiff University found two China-linked accounts had shared the video before this. Twitter has since suspended one of them.The same Chinese network has spread anti-US propaganda, including calls for violence in the run-up to the 6 January storming of the US Capitol building by a pro-Trump mob. Afterwards. It compared the west’s response to the DC riot to political protests in Hong Kong.The accounts previously posted hostile messages about Trump and Joe Biden, made allegations of election fraud and promoted “negative narratives” about the US response to the coronavirus pandemic.Professor Martin Innes, director of Cardiff University’s crime and security institute, said open-source analysis strongly suggested “multiple links” to Beijing.Researchers initially thought the hidden network was not especially complex, he said. Further evidence, however, revealed what he called a “sophisticated and disciplined” online operation. Accounts did not use certain hashtags in an apparent attempt to avoid Twitter’s counter-measures. They posted during regular Chinese working hours, with gaps on a national holiday, and used machine tools to translate into English.“The network appears designed to run as a series of almost autonomous ‘cells’, with minimal links connecting them,” Innes said. “This structure is designed to protect the network as a whole if one ‘cell’ is discovered, which suggests a degree of planning and forethought.“Therefore, this marks the network as a significant attempt to influence the trajectory of US politics by foreign actors.”Efforts by Russian-linked social media actors to influence US elections are well known. The special counsel Robert Mueller detailed an extensive troll operation run out of building in St Petersburg. Its goal was to “disparage” Hillary Clinton and to promulgate “divisive” content, Mueller found.The Chinese accounts cannot be definitely linked to the state. But ordinary Chinese citizens do not have access to Twitter and it appears that Beijing may be seeking to emulate Kremlin practices by setting up its own US-facing political influence operation.Last year the university’s research team uncovered more than 400 accounts engaging in suspicious activities. These were forwarded to Twitter, which suspended them within a few days. The latest analysis suggests further accounts are still working, with the network more resilient than previously thought.There is compelling evidence of links to China. Posts feature the Chinese language and a focus upon topics reflecting Chinese geopolitical interests. Some 221 accounts spread content in favour of the Chinese Communist party, encompassing some 42,618 tweets, the study found.The accounts also attacked Trump for referring to Covid-19 as the China virus. One claimed the virus originated outside China and had actually come from the US laboratory at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland. The network’s main goal was “encouragement of discord” in the US, the study concluded. Most tweets about Trump were negative. The handful that were positive urged Americans to “fetch their guns”, to “fight for democracy” and to “call gunmen together” in order to win a second Trump term.The bots complained of “double standards” after the Capitol building riot, saying US politicians had hypocritically backed protesters who entered the Hong Kong legislative building. “The riots in Congress are a disgrace to the United States today, and will soon become the fuse of the American order,” one remarked. More