US Politics

Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe Club for Growth, an anti-tax group funded by billionaires, has been the primary financial backer of Andy Harris, the Republican lawmaker who sought to bring a gun to the floor of the House of Representatives.Harris, a medical doctor who represents the eastern shore of Maryland, has received about $345,000 from individuals associated with the Club for Growth since the rightwing campaigners helped to get him elected in 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.The latest revelation about the Club for Growth’s support for Harris comes after the Guardian revealed last week that the group, which is headed by the former Republican congressman David McIntosh, was a major financial support of 42 of the Republicans who sought to invalidate Joseph Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.It has also supported another lawmaker, Lauren Boebert, who has argued for the need for firearms to be carried inside the US Capitol. Members may only carry firearms in their own offices.CNN reported on Friday that the US Capitol police were investigating an incident that occurred on Thursday, when Harris was stopped from bringing a concealed weapon on to the floor of the House. The Republican, who is an anaesthesiologist, had set off the newly installed metal detectors outside the chamber, prompting him to ask another lawmaker, Republican John Katko, to hold the weapon for him.Katko refused, according to a press pool, and Harris then left and returned later, without setting off the metal detector.Bryan Shuy, Harris’s chief of staff, said in a statement released to the Guardian: “Because his and his family’s lives have been threatened by someone who has been released awaiting trial, for security reasons, the congressman never confirms whether he nor anyone else he’s with are carrying a firearm for self-defense.”Shuy added: “As a matter of public record, he has a Maryland handgun permit. And the congressman always complies with the House metal detectors and wanding. The congressman has never carried a firearm on the House floor.”The Club for Growth did not respond to a request for comment.The Club for Growth became a significant backer of Harris in 2007, when it helped to defeat a longtime – and more moderate – Republican congressman who had served in Maryland’s first district. Harris lost that race in the general election but then won in 2009 in a heavily Republican district.In a CNN interview on Thursday, the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has said she feared for her life on the day of the Capitol insurrection, said “a lot” of members of the House did not yet feel safe around other members.“The moment you bring a gun on to the House floor in violation of rules, you put everyone around you in danger. It is irresponsible, it is reckless, but beyond that it is the violation of rules,” she said.She added that Harris’s actions, whatever his intentions, had endangered the lives of fellow members of Congress and were a violation of House rules.The Club for Growth has recently received the vast majority of its funding from Richard Uihlein, the anti-choice rightwing billionaire founder of Uline packaging supply company, and Jeffrey Yass, a billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group, a Philadelphia-based options trading company.Last year, the group spent millions of dollars helping to elect Lauren Boebert, a far-right pro-gun activist and QAnon conspiracy theorist, who this week was reported to have challenged Capitol police officers who sought to check her purse after she set off metal detectors.Harris voted on 6 January to overturn the 2020 election results, hours after rioters stormed the US Capitol. In a a radio broadcast a few days later, he criticized a decision by Twitter to ban the president from using the online platform, calling it the result of collusion between socialists and big corporations.In fact, some of the richest Republican donors have backed Harris, including the billionaire Stephen Schwarzman and other executives from Blackstone, the Wall Street firm whose executives donated more than $10,000 to Harris in the last election cycle. More

Democratic leaders announced on Friday that the article of impeachment against Donald Trump for incitement of insurrection would be transferred from the House to the Senate on Monday, setting up a trial of the former president.“The Senate will conduct a trial on the impeachment of Donald Trump,” the majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said. “It will be a fair trial. But make no mistake, there will be a trial.”The move was a stunning rebuke of a proposal a day earlier by the Republican Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to delay transfer of the article and push the trial into February, to make “additional time for both sides to assemble their arguments”.Trump is the only president in history to be impeached twice. Conviction in the Senate, which would require a two-thirds majority vote, could prevent him from ever again holding public office.But in rejecting McConnell’s offer, Democrats did more than press the case against Trump. They also staked out a tough stance in an internal Senate power struggle, as the newly installed Joe Biden administration prepares to ask Republicans for support on initiatives including pandemic policy, economic relief and immigration reform.McConnell and Republicans lost control of the Senate with a double loss in runoff elections in Georgia earlier this month. But McConnell has been fighting for advantage, refusing to approve a basic power-sharing agreement in a body now split 50-50, unless Schumer promised to retain a Senate filibuster rule that enables the minority party to block legislation with only 41 votes.Schumer rejected that pitch by McConnell on Friday, too, demanding that Republicans approve the organizing agreement, which would for example grant the parties an equal number of members on each committee, with no strings attached.“Leader McConnell’s proposal is unacceptable – and it won’t be accepted,” Schumer said.The pair of forceful moves by the Democratic leadership signaled an intention to deliver on a mandate they feel they won last November and displayed an unaccustomed assertiveness after four years of Trump and McConnell.But the power plays also called more deeply into question whether Biden would benefit from any measure of Republican support as he attempts to answer multiple national crises.The most fierce Trump supporters in the Senate have threatened to hold hostage every ounce of Biden’s agenda, including cabinet appointments, unless Democrats called off the impeachment trial.“Democrats can’t have it both ways: an unconstitutional impeachment trial & Senate confirmation of the Biden administration’s national security team,” tweeted the Republican senator Ron Johnson, who until this week was chair of the homeland security committee. “They need to choose between being vindictive or staffing the administration to keep the nation safe. What will it be: revenge or security?”Johnson’s explicit threat to hold national security hostage to a political agenda was not echoed by most colleagues, and the Senate proceeded with key Biden confirmations on Friday. The body overwhelmingly confirmed Lloyd Austin as the first African American defense secretary in history by a bipartisan vote of 93-2, and the Senate finance committee unanimously advanced the nomination of Janet Yellen to be treasury secretary.While McConnell and others have expressed an openness to the charges facing Trump in his second impeachment trial, expectations are low that Democrats will find the 17 Republican votes they probably need to convict him.While the transmission of the article triggers the launching of trial proceedings, the schedule ahead remains uncertain, and is subject to negotiations. After the article of impeachment is transmitted, lawyers for Trump would be called on to submit a response from the president, and prosecutors from the House, known as impeachment managers, would submit pre-trial briefs.“I’ve been speaking to the Republican leader about the time and the duration of the trial,” Schumer said.Lawyers defending Trump will include Butch Bowers, a former justice department official recommended by Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina senator announced on Thursday. No lawyers from Trump’s impeachment trial last year were expected to return to his defense team.When Trump was first impeached in December 2019, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, delayed the transfer of the case to the Senate in an effort to prolong Trump’s political pain and to win concessions on how Trump’s trial would be conducted.But this time Pelosi moved quickly, her decision linked to an unusual number of moving parts with deep significance for the Biden administration and the future of the country.Democrats might have concluded that it would be a mistake to bargain for Republican support for Biden’s agenda, the top item of which is a $1.9tn Covid relief and economic recovery package.The Republican senator Susan Collins of Maine, a potential swing vote for Democrats, told reporters on Thursday that Biden’s plan was “premature”.The government watchdog group Fix Our Senate on Friday blasted McConnell for linking support for an organizing agreement in the Senate to the filibuster.“By threatening to filibuster a routine resolution that simply affirms that Democrats won the majority and can now lead committees,” said group spokesman Eli Zupnick, “Senator McConnell has made it crystal clear, to anyone with any remaining doubts, that his only goal is to undermine, delay and block the Biden agenda that the American people just voted for.” More

Joe Biden on Friday will sign a pair of executive orders aimed at providing immediate relief to millions of American families grappling with the economic toll of the Covid-19 pandemic and expanding safety protections for federal workers.Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterPressing ahead with an ambitious set of executive actions, the new administration is seeking to marshal an “all-of-government” effort to combat hunger as tens of millions of Americans face food insecurity amid historically high unemployment rates.“The American people can’t afford to wait,” said Brian Deese, the national economic council director, on a call with reporters. “So many are hanging by a thread.”The measures, he said, were a “critical lifeline” for American families, but were “not a substitute” for the nearly $2tn relief package Biden has called on Congress to pass.Biden will direct the Department of Agriculture increase a Covid-19 food program that helps families with children who would normally receive free or reduced-price meals at school, as well as expand the emergency increases approved by Congress to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for low-income Americans.He will also ask the Department of Treasury to update its process for delivering stimulus checks to millions of eligible Americans who reported issues or delays with the first rounds payments. And Biden will the Department of Labor to make clear that out-of-work Americans who refuse employment that could jeopardize their health would still qualify for unemployment benefits. Until now, workers who refused offers to return to their jobs out of concern for their safety no longer qualified for unemployment aid.The second order is aimed at expanding protections for federal workers by restoring collective bargaining powers and lay the groundwork for the federal government to implement a $15 federal minimum wage. As a first step, Biden will direct federal agencies to conduct a review of federal workers earning less than $15 an hour and develop recommendations for raising their wages.The latest executive actions come one day after a labor department report showed that unemployment claims remained at historically high levels, with 900,000 Americans filing for unemployment benefits last week. The figures reflected the magnitude of the economic challenges Biden inherited, amid a resurgence of the coronavirus this winter.Friday’s actions are part of a blitz of executive orders and directives Biden has taken since assuming the presidency.Hours after his inauguration, Biden signed an executive order extending a federal pause on evictions through the end of March, a move that will shield millions of Americans struggling to pay rent amid the pandemic. He also directed federal agencies to extend their moratorium on foreclosures of federally guaranteed mortgages and asked the education department to prolong its freeze on federal student loan payments through the end of September.On Thursday, he unveiled a “full-scale wartime” national Covid-19 strategy aimed at growing the production of vaccines, creating guidelines to reopen schools and businesses and imposing new requirements on mask-wearing.Biden has long argued that economic recovery is tied to combatting the coronavirus, a starkly different approach to his predecessor who urged states to lift restrictions even as infections rose.The centerpiece of Biden’s plan to address fallout from the pandemic is a $1.9tn relief package called the American Rescue Plan, which includes $1,400 direct payments to Americans, more generous unemployment benefits and billions of dollars for a national vaccination program.Already Republicans are objecting to the cost of the legislation, raising doubts about whether Biden will be able to attract bipartisan support as he had hoped. Several Republicans have questioned the need for an additional relief package weeks after they passed a $900bn coronavirus relief bill.Stressing that urgent action was needed, Deese declined to say how long the White House planned to court Republican support before potentially moving to a process that would allow Democrats to move the legislation forward without them.His team plans to hold a conference call with a bipartisan group of senators on Sunday to make the case for another round of stimulus, without which he said the nation’s economy would plummet further into “a very serious economic hole”.“When you’re at a moment that is as precarious as the one we find ourselves in,” he said at a White House press briefing on Friday, “the risk of doing too little the risk of undershooting far outweighs the risk of doing too much.” More

If this were a horror flick – and, Lord knows, these past four years have felt like one – we know what would come next. We’d be at that stage of the movie where the monster has apparently been slain, when the hero stands amid the rubble and the ruin consoling those who have survived, calm seemingly restored – only for the audience to gasp as the demon stirs back to life, rising from the dead to inflict one last blow.Joe Biden is certainly well cast as the steadying presence come to clean up the mess. But the fear persists that the villain who created it will return. Donald Trump threatened as much in his last public statement as president, uttering the chilling words: “We will be back in some form.”Given that Trump left the White House with his support among Republicans still at 82%, there is only one surefire way to ensure that never happens. Sixty-seven US senators – including 17 Republicans – will have to vote to convict Trump in his upcoming impeachment trial for inciting an insurrection on Capitol Hill on 6 January. If they do that, then Senate Democrats can vote by simple majority to ban Trump from ever holding public office again. (Think of it as Anne Archer shooting a resurrected Glenn Close at the end of Fatal Attraction.)That remains a possible denouement of the Trump saga, especially given the hints from Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, that he might vote to rid his party once and for all of Trump: this week he said that the former president – and what a pleasure it is to use those words – “provoked” the Capitol Hill mob. And yet, you wouldn’t bank on it. McConnell is now calling for the trial to be delayed, to allow Trump time to prepare. Given McConnell’s willingness to bend the Senate rulebook to his purposes, it’d be wise to start counting the spoons.Still, this might be to take the threat too narrowly, too literally even. What were Trump’s words? “In some form.” The monster might resurface in a new guise in 2024. In traditional Hollywood style, that would mean a sequel starring Son of Trump – or even Daughter – or it could mean someone from outside that desperate clan. This is, surely, the greater fear. That US nativist populism will find a new messenger, one free of the personal defects and grossness of Trump, one who has the quality that Trump lacked: the self-discipline to be a competent authoritarian. So often Trump’s autocratic impulses were thwarted not by the system but by his own ineptitude and the ineffectiveness of his fifth-rate team. What if next time the US – and the world – is not so lucky?To repel that as-yet-faceless threat will require deeper work than a simple vote in the Senate. And it will demand more than a mere return to the relative tranquillity of the Obama era. It will mean turning over the soil in which Trumpism grew, making it inhospitable to a new variety of that same, poisonous plant. This is the central challenge that now confronts President Biden.A first task is to dispel the question of legitimacy that hangs over his presidency in the minds of the one in three Americans who believe Trump’s big lie that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election. After the deadlocked election of 2000, a quarter of Americans did not accept George W Bush as the legitimate president, but that question mark faded in the smoke and dust of 9/11. In the absence of external attack, how can Biden persuade at least some of those recalcitrant voters to accept him as the country’s leader?Happily, the answer coincides with what is the most urgent problem facing him and the US. If Biden can make good on his promise to vaccinate 100 million Americans in 100 days, that in itself will be transformative. People’s lives will have changed in a direct and profound way, thanks in part to having Biden at the helm. In the process, he would have gone a long way to restoring Americans’ faith in the ability of government to do good. That is critical given that Trumpism was predicated on an insistence that democratic government is always feeble and useless, that it takes a strongman to get things done.The debate has been long and acrimonious over whether Trump supporters were drawn to him by “economic anxiety” or plain old racism, spiced with misogyny. But what if the answer contains elements of both? What if bigotry flourishes in unwatered earth? Biden’s $1.9tn rescue plan and an agenda of economic renewal may not win back the left-behind and eradicate Trumpism at a stroke – but it can’t hurt.Time, though, is desperately short. There is a curious cycle in US politics. In 1992, 2008 and 2020, Democratic presidents were elected alongside Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, granting them the muscle to implement their programmes. But for Bill Clinton and Barack Obama landslide reverses came within two years, depriving them of either one or both chambers of Congress thereafter. In other words, over a 12- or 16-year period Democrats usually get a squeezed two years to get things done. Biden’s majorities are much thinner than his predecessors’, and the clock is already ticking.The new president cannot allow himself to get bogged down in delay, tripped up by McConnell’s familiar tricks in the Senate. But that will take more than guile. The system that gives a rural, white Republican minority de facto veto power over the rest of the country – and note that the Democrats’ 50 senators represent a total of 41 million more voters than the Republican 50 – itself has to change. The wish list is long, from tackling voter suppression and gerrymandered districts to campaign-finance reform and abolition of a filibuster rule that demands 60 votes to get something through a 100-member body.Tackling all that will go against Joe Biden’s instincts. He is a creature of the Senate, faithful to its traditions. But as the columnist Ezra Klein puts it, for too long Democrats have “preferred the false peace of decorum to the true progress of democracy”. History suggests Biden will only get one shot. He must not throw it away – lest he revive the very spectre that gave him his chance. More

The US Senate majority leader said the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, would transmit the article of impeachment on Monday. ‘Make no mistake, there will be a trial, Schumer said. ‘And when that trial ends, senators will have to decide whether they believe Donald John Trump incited the insurrection’
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Throughout Donald Trump’s presidency, the singer and actor Randy Rainbow has been posting ingenious, funny videos on YouTube, satirical versions of familiar songs featuring elaborate costumes and snappy electronic effects, on political subjects including Trump’s retreat during the Black Lives Matter protests (Bunker Boy) and the possibility of his eventual incarceration (The Trump Cell Block Tango.)On the day before Joe Biden’s inauguration, a friend texted me Randy Rainbow’s newest, Seasons of Trump. In a chorus line, wearing a range of bright comical outfits, Randy and his video avatars count the 2,102,400 minutes that Donald Trump was in office, the 1,460 days, the 11, 780 votes he said he needed. Randy rhymes the nonstop offenses: the lies, the tweets, the fake news, the Hollywood Access tape, the porn stars, the racism, Covid, the Russians. The insurrection. “In Muellers, in red hats, in words he can’t spell?/ How will you remember four years stuck in hell?”I’ve always enjoyed these little films. But this was the first time that Randy Rainbow made me burst into tears. Hearing him, I was painfully aware of all those minutes, those days, of how frightening it had been, how long it had lasted, how much I had steeled myself to endure, to accept – and how relieved I was that it was over.I’m not someone who cries easily, nor am I a big fan of waving flags and patriotic ceremonies. But tears welled again during the twilight memorial service honoring the 400,00 Americans who have died of Covid-19, and again the next day when I watched Joe Biden’s grandkids walk down the same steps that the rioters swarmed up, intent on murder, two weeks before. The last time I felt this way was right after 9/11, wandering around my downtown Manhattan neighborhood, weeping. But the 9/11 attack took a few terrifying hours, the story emerged over the next few days. Donald Trump’s presidency lasted four years, or as Randy Rainbow notes, for more than two million unrecoverable minutes.Whatever one thinks of Joe Biden, there’s no doubt that the mood, the tone, and the content of the January 20 ceremony was very unlike the 2016 Inauguration. Our new president isn’t obsessed with the size of his adoring crowd; there was no crowd. The faces on the podium were notably more diverse than in years before. It would have been impossible not to be moved by Kamala Harris’s choice, for her security escort, of Eugene Goodman, the brave, quick-thinking Capitol policeman who essentially saved the US Senate. That fact we have a half-Black, half-Asian woman vice president made me hope that our country might become a more welcoming place for my biracial grandchildren. The vibrant, regal young poet Amanda Gorman and the eloquent Rev Silvester Beaman reminded us of the beauty of oratory, and Lady Gaga achieved the impossible, making us listen closely to (and appreciate the relevance of) an anthem we’d mostly stopped hearing.The speeches stressing unity, conciliation, community and compassion were heartfelt and reassuring, but they wouldn’t have seemed so startling if it hadn’t been so long since we’d heard anything like that from our leaders. And the ceremony might have been less powerful if we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, if we hadn’t spent months knowing that we were suffering and dying and no one was taking charge or even admitting what was happening.For now, just for now, it feels great. It feels like someone is in charge, someone in touch with realityI remember the night Obama was elected; it was like a huge party blowing through the streets of New York City. The fact that his term was followed by Donald Trump’s has made me wary of long-term optimism. I know there were people watching the Inauguration who won’t readily trade their rage for open-heartedness just because Joe Biden think it’s a good idea, and others who weren’t as thrilled as I was when J-Lo broke into Spanish, acknowledging a simple truth: we live in a multilingual country. I’m still worried about the things that alarmed me before: the environment, racism, health care, misogyny, gender discrimination, income inequality, mass incarceration, the likelihood that the pandemic will get worse before it gets better … the list goes on.But for now, just for now, it feels great. It feels like someone is in charge, someone in touch with reality. Someone who cares about the rest of the world, who wants things to get better, who thinks of something – anything – other than himself. Someone who speaks, as Joe Biden did, about leading “not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example.” Someone who hugs his wife. Someone who isn’t heartless: I would have settled for that.That might seem like setting the bar awfully low, but it’s the difference between life and death, between the survival of our nation and the death spiral into which our democracy was headed. During the inauguration, I kept recalling the comforting jingle that Spanish-speaking families say when children hurt themselves: sana, sana, colita de rana/ Si no sanas hoy, sanaras manana. Heal, heal little frog’s tail/If you don’t heal today, you’ll heal tomorrow. It’s meant to be reassuring, and it is: if our country doesn’t get better today, let’s hope it will tomorrow.It’s almost as if the last four years have been a mad science experiment to see if we could still function as our supply of oxygen was steadily reduced. And now it’s as if a clean wind is blowing through our nation. We can’t take off our masks yet, but now, just for now, we can breathe. More

Following Joe Biden’s presidential win in November, the governor of California quickly learned he had some big job vacancies to fill. With so many top officials in the state being recruited to help Biden build his new administration, Gavin Newsom joked that he might have to start trying to convince staff members to stick around.It was already a given that Californian interests would be well represented in Congress, with Nancy Pelosi of San Francisco serving as speaker of the House and Vice-President Kamala Harris, born and raised in the Bay Area, holding the tie-breaking vote in the Senate. But Biden has also tapped several Californians for key cabinet positions.Biden called on the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra, to run the US health department. He nominated the former Federal Reserve chair and University of California, Berkeley, professor Janet Yellen to serve as treasury secretary. Yellen’s colleague Jennifer Granholm was nominated as the next energy secretary.Six others slated for top spots in the new government either teach at or graduated from Berkeley. Alejandro Mayorkas of Los Angeles is expected to become the first Latino to head the Department of Homeland Security and Isabel Guzman, current director of California’s office of the small business advocate, is likely to run the US Small Business Administration – to name a few.Now, instead of having to fight a federal government to enact policy priorities, California will have friendly faces in top spots. “It goes from headwinds to tailwinds, and that’s pretty obvious,” Newsom said at a press conference in November. “On early childcare … health and education, issues related to the environment and environmental stewardship and low-carbon, green growth,” he added, ”broadly, that’s a California agenda.”The Biden administration’s agenda is also expected to be modeled on some policies enacted or planned in California, and the new administration is likely to use the state’s successes and failures as a guide.“There is a wealth of ideas on the policy side that can come out of California,” said Manuel Pastor, a professor of sociology and American studies and ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Pastor pointed at the state’s stances on immigrants’ rights and the minimum wage and its investments in climate mitigation.California has served as a living laboratory for progressive ideas, Pastor said, and there’s enough evidence that will help the federal government embrace the California approach. “California is America, only sooner,” Pastor added. “It’s no surprise that now we have an administration trying to reach into a place that’s always been on the edge of the future.”On his first day alone, Biden signed 17 new executive orders to undo some of the measures of the Trump administration, and the new president has promised to swiftly shift direction in the country.The new administration is looking into some of California’s signature policies – and even taking some a step further. Biden has proposed raising the national minimum wage to $15 an hour (almost double what it is now), promised to bring “peaceful protesters, police chiefs, police unions, as well as civil rights groups” to the table to talk police reform, and made moves on new legislation for immigration reform.Biden is especially likely to follow California’s lead on the environment. “Where California will have its most influence is on climate change-related policies,” said Bruce Cain, a professor of political science at Stanford University and the director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. “While Trump was shutting down a lot of the climate change mitigation and adaptation policies, California continued to chug along.”Even after Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Paris climate agreement, California remained committed to keeping pace and brought 23 states on board with it. Now that Biden is preparing to re-enter the accord, the Democratic party’s environmental taskforce, co-chaired by the former secretary of state John Kerry, has told Biden to look to California for help, according to the Los Angeles Times. “Immediately convene California, due to its unique authority, and other states with labor, auto industry, and environmental leaders to inform ambitious actions,” the taskforce’s report read.While California officials are happy to help, it’s clear they hope the offer goes both ways. Calling their new partnership a “game-changer for Californians” in a letter to Biden, Newsom championed the new administration’s goals and acknowledged the role he expects his state will play shaping national policy.“Congratulations on your historic victory and for setting America on a path to build back better,” Newsom wrote. “California is eager to support your bold agenda by sharing our experiences implementing progressive policy on everything from workers’ rights to climate change.”Newsom included several requests, including reinstated funding for the high-speed rail that’s far behind schedule and badly over budget, help with financing programs to house the homeless, and additional emergency aid beyond what was already promised to the state in the December stimulus.Newsom also hopes the federal government will push back to 2023 the date when California’s unemployment debts – expected to reach close to $50bn this year – come due.Eric Schickler, a political scientist and co-director of the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies, said he didn’t expect Californians to get everything they want out of the new administration. After all, even among Democrats, residents of the state – and their representatives – are highly diverse. “In terms of shaping the Democratic agenda, California Democrats are certainly in an advantageous place,” he said. Still, with the state facing significant challenges, including on housing, inequality, and the devastating impact from the Covid crisis, it will be helpful to have more allies than adversaries controlling the purse strings. “The state is facing some daunting challenges and will be looking to the federal government for help,” Schickler said. “The Biden administration is much more likely to be sympathetic to that.”At the very least, California won’t have to continue big battles against the federal government. Pastor sees this as the biggest opportunity for the state to push forward. “Not being in a war of resistance with the Trump administration will give California a chance – a needed chance – to reflect on its own shortcomings,” Pastor said. “The weight of hate has been lifted. And once it is lifted, you can look around and ask, well, how are we screwing up? California still has a lot of things it needs to fix.” More