US Politics

Juan Williams, an author and analyst, calls James Clyburn the politician of the year. Jon Meacham, a presidential historian, says he was the most important person of 2020. “Without Jim Clyburn endorsing Joe Biden, Donald Trump would be president for real – not just in his own mind,” Meacham told Real Time with Bill Maher on the HBO channel.The Black congressman’s vote of confidence for Biden during the Democratic primary set the stage for a comeback worthy of Lazarus. It was a transformative moment in a transformative year in which the flame of American democracy looked as fragile as a candle at the altar of St John Baptist Church in Hopkins, South Carolina, which is where the story begins.It was around 11.30am on 21 February and Clyburn, a political giant in the Palmetto state, had arrived early at a funeral service for his longtime accountant, James White. “I went down the aisle of the church to pay my respects and, when I turned to walk away from the coffin, my eyes met the eyes of this lady sitting on the front row at the church and she beckoned me over to her,” the 80-year-old recalls by phone in an interview with the Guardian.“I went over and she said, ‘I need to ask you a question and, if you don’t want anybody to hear the answer, lean down and whisper it in my ear.’ Then she asked me, ‘Who are you going to vote for in this primary?’ I leaned down and told her I was going to vote for Joe Biden. She snapped her head back and looked at me and said, ‘I needed to hear that. And this community needs to hear from you.’”Biden’s going to have his detractors but I think he can do what the country needs doneThe woman concerned was Jannie Jones, a 76-year-old church usher who, like Clyburn, is African American. Her question made him realise that he could not stay silent. He says: “I continued my trip down to Charleston and I could not get her out of my head and what she was saying to me.”Another woman’s words were also whispering to him. Clyburn’s wife of 58 years, Emily, had died just five months earlier. “My wife had said to me before she passed away that she thought our best bet to defeat Donald Trump was Joe Biden.”Two days later, Clyburn met Biden and told him he intended to make a public endorsement that would “create a surge”. He did so a few days later and followed up with video ads, robocalls and messaging on Black radio stations. It worked. Written off by pundits after defeats in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada, Biden won South Carolina with 48.6% of the vote, well ahead of Bernie Sanders on 19.8%.It was the first state where African American voters had a significant voice and they spoke clearly. Three days later Biden went on to win 10 out of 14 states on Super Tuesday, becoming an unlikely “comeback kid” and effectively clinching the nomination.When the histories of 2020 are written, they may judge that he was the safe, wise, albeit unspectacular choice. Biden met the moment as a general election candidate, not only as a steady hand and empathetic figure during the coronavirus pandemic, but as a moderate immune to the kind of sexist and racist attacks and socialist scaremongering that his Democratic rivals would have suffered.The former vice-president proved his doubters wrong and beat Trump by more than 7m votes, a margin of almost 4.5% – bigger than all but one presidential election in the past 20 years. But none of this had seemed obvious back in February. “I felt vindicated after so many people on social media gave me such a hard time for having endorsed him,” Clyburn says.“There were people who thought I’d committed heresy or something and so, when he won, I felt good about the victory but when I started seeing all the pundits saying, looking back, Joe Biden was the only Democrat who could have defeated Donald Trump, that made me feel doubly good. Twenty-twenty hindsight.”After four tantalising days of vote tallying, Biden was declared the winner and, along with Vice-President-elect Kamala Harris, delivered a victory speech in his home city of Wilmington, Delaware. He said: “Especially in those moments when this campaign was at its lowest ebb, the African American community stood up again for me. They always have my back, and I’ll have yours.”Clyburn, the number three Democrat in the House of Representatives, takes him at his word. “I think he will. I’m certainly going to work hard to make sure that he remembers that he said it.”The election result was also hailed as a near death experience for democracy, with many commentators suggesting that America’s institutions could not have survived a second term of Trump. Clyburn did more than most to sound the alarm.“He’s an autocrat. I’ve said before that I do not think he’s planning to give up the office. Two years ago I compared him to Mussolini and caught hell for it. However, when he came out of that hospital [following treatment for coronavirus] and walked up on the Truman balcony at the White House and stood, pulled off his mask and looked out, the next morning I saw people on television referring to that as a ‘Mussolini stance’.”Democracy prevailed, Clyburn believes, but Trump has done “tremendous damage” to America’s standing around the world. Can Biden repair it? “I think he can and I think he will.”But the election was bittersweet for Democrats. The party suffered disappointing losses in the House, prompting bitter recriminations between moderates and progressives, and now holds only a slender majority. Clyburn, the majority whip, suggests the setback had more to do with campaign strategy than ideology.“I think we did not invest enough again in what I call door to door canvassing. The Republicans had a very good ground operation. We did not have the ground operation that we should have had. We turn folks out now – Trump won Michigan by 10,000 votes four years ago but this time Biden won it by 150,000 votes – but there are areas where we would have done better in down ballot races if we had invested in those communities with canvassing.”Democrats suffered defeats in New York state, Clyburn argues, because the state was so safe for Biden in the presidential contest that too little investment was made for down ballot candidates. A similar problem may have occurred in California, a Biden stronghold where Republicans picked up seats. Conversely, investments in Georgia helped Democrats flip a district.Clyburn also believes that the phrase “defund the police”, popularised during this summer’s uprising against racial injustice, hurt candidates such as Jaime Harrison, who lost his bid to unseat Trump loyalist Lindsey Graham in a Senate election in Clyburn’s home state.The congressman, a prominent figure in the civil rights movement, shares Barack Obama’s view that, though it does not mean abolishing police departments, the phrase risks scaring away voters that the party needs. “People have weaponised ‘defund the police’ against us,” he says.Does he believe the momentum of the protests can be sustained? “Yes, I think it can be and I think it will be. There is a tremendous amount of support all across the board for Black Lives Matter and it’s kind of interesting when I see articles written that tell me that all of the agenda of Black Lives Matter is being supported broadly, and then see in the next breath a case can’t be made for the dangers of a phrase like ‘Defund the police’.”Biden’s halo as the savior of democracy is likely to vanish within a few minutes of his inauguration as he faces multiple crises and becomes a target for both Republicans and the progressive left. “It won’t take long,” Clyburn admits, before adding some historical perspective that includes his late colleague John Lewis, whom he first met 60 years ago.“We’re lionising John Lewis today but he was not appreciated by everybody before. We have a whole holiday for Martin Luther King Jr but he was assassinated because everybody didn’t lionise him before. Joe Biden’s going to have his detractors but I think he can do what the country needs done.” More

Donald Trump not only changed much about campaigning, governing and the ways of Washington, even the language of American politics has altered during the Republican’s tenure. Trump’s rollicking rally speeches and manic Twitter feed conjured new slogans and insults or revived incendiary words with long histories; his allies, opponents and chroniclers searched for new phrases to describe the indescribable. Here is a glossary of some of them from the past five years:alternative factsCoined by Kellyanne Conway, the White House counselor, during a Meet the Press interview in January 2017 to defend press secretary Sean Spicer’s the false assertion that Trump drew the biggest inauguration crowd ever. Together these formed the original sin of the Trump presidency, culminating in his coronavirus and election denialism.alt-rightA far-right movement based on white nationalism and antisemitism. One of its leaders, Richard Spencer, described it as “identity politics for white people”. When Steve Bannon was running Breitbart News, he called it “the platform for the alt-right”. Bannon went on to become Trump’s chief strategist during his first race for the White House.American carnageIn his inaugural address, Trump painted a dark picture of poverty in inner cities, rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones and crime and gangs and drugs, promising: “This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.” But the phrase came back to haunt him, especially when the coronavirus pandemic killed hundreds of thousands of people.America firstTrump’s central promise of self-interest galvanised his base and dismayed critics. He followed through on withdrawing from the Paris climate accords, renegotiating trade deals and leaving the US isolated on the global stage. The phrase also had jarring associations with a 1940s movement to keep the US out of the second world war that came to be accused of antisemitism.AntifaAn amorphous and leftwing anti-fascist movement demonised by Trump and fellow Republicans. Its followers have used aggressive tactics including physical confrontations to intimidate groups they regard as authoritarian or racist. Joe Biden remarked during a presidential debate: “Antifa is an idea, not an organization.”biglyLegend has it that Trump first deployed this word during the first presidential debate against Hillary Clinton in 2016. “I’m going to cut taxes bigly, and you’re going to raise taxes bigly,” he said, or at least that was how some people heard it. Others reckoned he must have said “big league”. But the word “bigly” does appear in the Merriam-Webster dictionary.China virusTrump complained that Covid-19 had multiple names but more often than not settled on the racist terms “China virus” and “kung flu”, putting Asian Americans at risk of hostility and persecution. He insisted: “Asian Americans are VERY angry at what China has done to our Country, and the World.” But even Conway rejected the term “China virus” as “wrong” and “highly offensive”.collusionThe first half of Trump’s presidency was dominated by special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into his campaign’s alleged collusion with Russia. In the end, Mueller stopped short of asserting that collusion took place – prompting Trump’s defenders to cry “collusion delusion” – but did make a persuasive case that the president obstructed justice.deep stateTrump pushed the conspiracy theory that bureaucrats within the political system effectively run a secret government that plots against democratically elected officials. Others came to see civil servants, judges and national security personnel as a bulwark of democracy. “Thank God for the deep state,” John McLaughlin, a former deputy and acting director of the CIA, remarked last year.disinformationTypically defined as the dissemination of deliberately false information, it took flight with Russia’s social media attack during the 2016 election. Trump pushed disinformation about the economy, coronavirus, election and countless other topics. The willingness of Republicans and conservative media to do likewise raised fears of a fundamental breakdown in trust in government institutions and the media.enemy of the peopleIn a characteristic shock tactic, Trump used this historically loaded phrase regularly to attack the media. Its lineage dates back to 1789 when French revolutionaries threw it at those who opposed them. In the 20th century it was embraced by autocrats from Stalin to Mao to justify their bloody purges. The danger of such rhetoric was evident in Trump supporter T-shirts that said: “Rope. Tree. Journalist.”fake newsThe term was popularised by BuzzFeed News media editor Craig Silverman to describe unverified claims and online rumours. But in January 2017, Trump, then president-elect, told CNN’s Jim Acosta at a press conference: “You are fake news.” From that moment on, he coopted and weaponised the phrase to dismiss media reports he did not like.failingOne of Trump’s favourites on Twitter and elsewhere, particularly when referring to the New York Times. In fact the Times thrived during his presidency and now has more than 7 million paid subscribers. He remained obsessed with the coverage of him in his home town paper.false and misleadingThis became frequent media shorthand for Trump’s distortions. The Washington Post’s fact checkers even kept count: by 11 September, it noted, he had “made 23,035 false or misleading claims”. But from January 2017 onwards, when the New York Times ran the headline, Meeting With Top Lawmakers, Trump Repeats an Election Lie, media outlets became bolder about calling a lie a lie.globalistThis was the dark side of “America first”. Trump’s defenders claimed he was using the term to condemn globalisation and its devastating effects on American workers. But critics heard a dog whistle for racist, antisemitic and antigovernment conspiracy theorists including the alt-right. George Soros, a billionaire philanthropist, was among the targets of anti-globalist bigotry.hoaxTrump described climate change, the Russia investigation and his impeachment as a hoax. Brian Stelter, host of CNN’s Reliable Sources programme, noted in August that the president had already used the word more than 250 times this year. When Stelter published a book, he naturally called it Hoax: Donald Trump, Fox News, and the Dangerous Distortion of Truth.JavankaA conflation of Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump, both senior advisers to the president, both lightning rods for scorn and ridicule. Hopes that, as supposed New York liberals, they would restrain Trump’s worst impulses were dashed over and over. “They are the Faustian poster couple of the Trump presidency,” wrote Frank Bruni in the New York Times.lock her up!Along with “build that wall”, this became the classic chant at Trump’s rallies in 2016, when he ran against Hillary Clinton and, more unexpectedly, persisted through to 2020, when Joe Biden proved harder to categorise. The phrase was condemned for normalising the idea of a president seeking to jail his opponent.loserThis is one of Trump’s go to insults, slung at everyone from the media to the Lincoln Project to former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg. But it rebounded on him last September when the Atlantic magazine reported that he had referred to America’s war dead as “losers” and “suckers”. Two months later, Trump, who was all about “winning”, became a loser himself in November’s election.MagaShort for “Make America great again”, a slogan borrowed from Ronald Reagan that Trump made his own at rallies, on hats and on endless other merchandise. The “Maga nation” became a way to describe a country within a country, one that was seething with anger, nativist populism and contempt for liberals and fact-based reality.Never TrumperThe Never Trump movement was a failed attempt among Republicans and other conservatives to deny Trump the party’s nomination in 2016. But it marched on through his presidency and found expression in groups such as the Lincoln Project and Republican Voters Against Trump that opposed him in 2020.normsTrump bent, broke, shattered, shredded and trampled on norms from start to finish, prompting the lament: “This is not normal.” It was another way of saying that he crossed every line, pushed every envelope and violated every unwritten rule. It led some commentators to suggest that at least some of those rules should now be written down.owning the libsA symptom of negative partisanship, this political performance art is all about goading, shocking and outraging liberals, especially on social media. Its patron saint was Trump’s son Don Jr. “He is there only to engage in that performative dickery that is lib owning in the Trump world,” said Rick Wilson, a co-founder of the Lincoln Project.quid pro quoThe Latin phrase, which means “something given or received for something else”, was uttered frequently during Trump’s impeachment hearings. He denied promising to unfreeze military aid to Ukraine in return for that country announcing an investigation into Biden.resistanceThe resistance to Trump’s presidency made a stunning debut with the women’s march in January 2017 and just kept going, energising grassroots groups such as Indivisible, diverse political newcomers such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and protests over Trump’s supreme court picks. The Resistance also happened to be the name of the good guys in the new Star Wars trilogy.sad!Another familiar Trump refrain, as in “Governor Cuomo has completely lost control. Sad!”, “Biden will also raise your taxes like never before. Sad!” and “These are “Organized Groups” that have nothing to do with George Floyd. Sad!” History will surely judge he did more for exclamation marks that any other president.seriously not literally“[T]he press takes him literally, but not seriously,” wrote Salena Zito in the Atlantic magazine in September 2016, “his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” This phrase hovered over much early debate about the meaning of Trump, although critics came to argue that his malign conduct should be taken both literally and seriously.soulIn 2018 historian Jon Meacham wrote the book The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels. Biden, an admirer of the book, characterised his presidential campaign as a “battle for the soul of America” (Meacham reportedly had a hand in his speeches) and tweeted on 16 December: “In this battle for the soul of America, democracy prevailed.” Right on cue, the latest Pixar animated film is called, simply, Soul.split screenA well-worn phrase that captured the division, partisanship and polarisation of the Trump years, especially the notion of two distinct media bubbles. There were moments when CNN and Fox News seemed to occupy different universes. Carl Bernstein, whose reporting on the Watergate scandal with Bob Woodward helped bring down Richard Nixon, said America had entered a “a cold civil war”.triggeredThis word became a football in the Trump-fuelled culture wars. People have legitimate reasons to feel “triggered” by examples of racism or other abuses. But rightwing trolls seized on terms like “triggered” and “woke” to mock liberals as “snowflakes”. Donald Trump Jr penned a book called Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us.unprecedentedArguably the most overused word of the past five years. A CNN book chronicling the 2016 campaign was entitled Unprecedented: The Election That Changed Everything; just last week, on 15 December, Biden accused Trump of an “unprecedented assault on democracy”. Weary journalists were left scrambling for synonyms.witch-huntThe phrase, which conjures images of women being put on trial and thrown into water amid hysteria reminiscent of Arthur Miller’s play The Crucible, became a staple of Trump’s defence against the Russia investigation and Ukraine-related impeachment. Casting himself as a perpetual victim, more than one tweet simply yelled: “Witch-hunt!” More

Millions of Americans battling the financial hardships of the coronavirus pandemic lost their unemployment benefits on Sunday as Donald Trump continued to refuse to sign a relief package agreed in Congress and headed instead to the golf course.The president’s belligerence over the bipartisan Covid relief and spending bill, that would have extended the benefits and given direct cash payments to most American families, drew the ire of senior Republicans, who accused Trump of inflicting more misery on citizens.“He should have weighed in eight months ago,” Larry Hogan, the governor of Maryland, said on CNN’s State of the Union in response to Trump’s claim that he would only sign if the relief package included $2,000 in direct payments instead of the $600 agreed.“The paycheck protection plan ran out in July. Tomorrow, unemployment benefits run out. So sign the bill, get it done. And then, if the president wants to push for more, let’s get that done too.”In a later appearance on ABC’s This Week, Hogan asserted: “Millions of Americans are going to suffer.”Trump, who is spending the Christmas and New Year holiday at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, raised objections to the $900bn relief bill only after it was passed by Congress last week, having been negotiated by his own treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin.The bill has lain unsigned on his desk since Christmas Day as the president, who was mostly silent through weeks of intense negotiations, spent the weekend at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach.In a tweet criticizing the bill, Trump claimed, without clarification, that it was stuffed with “billions of dollars in pork”.Meanwhile Joe Biden, who won November’s presidential election and who will be sworn in as Trump’s successor on 20 January, accused him of an “abdication of responsibility” in a statement on Saturday.Democrats in the House of Representatives will try again on Monday to break the impasse by voting to increase the amount of the direct payments, a move thwarted once already by House Republicans on Christmas Eve.“On Monday we will hold a recorded vote on our stand-alone bill to increase economic impact payments to $2,000,” Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic House speaker, said in a statement after the first attempt failed.“To vote against this bill is to deny the financial hardship that families face and to deny them the relief they need.”As well as denying help to long suffering Americans, Trump’s refusal to sign the package also holds up a connected $1.4tn funding bill, which could result in a US government shutdown as early as Tuesday, in the midst of a deadly pandemic that has killed more than 332,000 in the US.Financial experts say the burden on American families will worsen. Lauren Bauer, a fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, has calculated that 11 million people will lose aid immediately from the expiration of two unemployment programs, and millions more will exhaust other unemployment benefits within weeks.Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank, said the number may be closer to 14 million because joblessness has spiked since late November.“All these folks and their families will suffer if Trump doesn’t sign the damn bill,” Heidi Shierholz, director of policy at the liberal Economic Policy Institute, said in a tweet.About 9.5 million people have been relying on the pandemic unemployment assistance program that expired Sunday. That program made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, gig workers and others who were normally not eligible.Even if Trump relents, the expiration of the programs will cause delays in processing retrospective payments, adding to the financial burden for many.Hogan, on ABC’s This Week, predicted that more Republicans were willing to stand up to Trump over the relief bill, aware that the end of his administration and Biden’s inauguration was only 24 days away.“I think more and more are, and will,” he said. “It’s going to be a lot different after 20 January when he’s not in the position to exert such influence as he does now.”The relief bill wrangles come as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen in the US, with medical experts joining Biden in predicting that the darkest days lay ahead.“We very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year, surge,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the US head of infectious diseases, told CNN on Sunday.“When you’re dealing with a baseline of 200,000 new cases a day and about 2,000 deaths per day, with the hospitalizations over 120,000, we’re really at a very critical point. You see people at airports crowded in lines, trying to stay physically separated, but it’s so difficult to do that.“And that generally is followed, when people get to the destination they want to be, that you’re going to have mixing of household people at a dinner or at a social function. As much as we advise against it, nonetheless it happens.”Associated Press contributed to this report More

Democrats Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, both running for crucial US Senate seats in Georgia that will decide the fate of Joe Biden’s new administration, have raised over $100m each in just two months.The announcement of the recent record-breaking hauls – which considerably exceed that of their Republican opponents – comes with less than two weeks to go until the runoff races are decided in special elections on 5 January.Ossoff, who runs a media production company and is running against the incumbent Republican senator David Perdue, raised over $106m from 15 October to 16 December, according to his campaign’s latest finance report.Meanwhile, Warnock, who is pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta and is running against incumbent Kelly Loeffler, raised just over $103m.The Georgia races are the focus of intense national political interest as they will decide which party controls the Senate – currently held by the Republicans – and in turn the legislative power of President-elect Biden.If the Republicans win one race, they will narrowly maintain power and be a huge break on a wide range of Biden’s actions, including being able to appoint who he wants to his cabinet.But if the Democrats win both races, the Senate will be split 50-50, meaning Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris would decide tie-breaking votes, enabling the Democrats to deliver a more ambitious agenda.The two seats went to runoffs after Perdue and Loeffler, one of the Senate’s wealthiest members, got less than 50% of the vote on election day in November.The previous fundraising record was held by Democrat Jamie Harrison who raised $57m in a quarter in his unsuccessful bid to unseat Senator Lindsey Graham in South Carolina in November.Warnock’s campaign manager Jerid Kurtz said: “We’re humbled by the grassroots support and generosity that continues to power Reverend Warnock’s campaign to represent all Georgians in the US Senate.”Early voting in the state began on 14 December. As of Thursday, over 2m people – over a quarter of the state’s registered voters – had already cast ballots in the election, suggesting that overall turnout will be high.In November, when President-elect Biden became the first Democrat to win the state since 1992, about 4m Georgians voted early.FiveThirtyEight currently has Perdue and Warnock very narrowly ahead.For the Democrats, both President-elect Biden and Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris have campaigned in the state. While for the Republicans, President Donald Trump and his daughter Ivanka have both made campaign stops.The Democrats have tried to highlight the stock trades of their Republican opponents and their support of Trump, while the Republicans have focused on Warnock, repeatedly referring to him as a “radical liberal”.A group of Black pastors wrote an open letter to Loeffler in which they said her rhetoric against Warnock was “a broader attack against the Black church and faith traditions for which we stand”.Meanwhile, Trump has attacked Republicans in the state, calling Governor Brian Kemp a “clown” and a “fool” and branding Kemp and other prominent Georgia Republicans “Republicans in name only”.Campaigning in Columbus, Georgia on Monday, Harris told supporters at a drive-in rally, “2020 ain’t over til January 5”. She added: “That’s when 2020 will be over. That’s when we’ll get this thing done.”Michelle Obama is due to campaign virtually in the state in a drive-in concert put on by her organisation When We All Vote to mobilise voters. Celebrate Georgia! on 3 January will also feature performances by Rick Ross, Jack Harlow, Pastor Troy and Monica. More

It’s not Proust, Nietzsche or even Toni Morrison when it comes to difficult reading, but some are sure to find Seyward Darby’s book even more arduous to wade through.It’s not that it is inscrutable. Indeed, as engaging as it is adroit, Sisters in Hate offers an excellent explanation for the ascent of Donald Trump amid a triumphal resurgence of white supremacy, sexism and xenophobia. A journalist, Darby focuses on Trump’s success through the experience of three individual and distinct women. Apart from gender and reactionary politics, there’s only the year of their birth, 1979, to link them. Each took a divergent path to arrive at what she saw as a battle to save white identity, deemed by all three to be America’s “true identity”.Oregon native Corinna Olsen, a former porn star and bodybuilder, has mostly survived as an undertaker, specializing in embalming. She is Darby’s sole repentant sister. Admirably, all along her erratic odyssey she sought to shield her young daughters from a hatred of difference she was first reluctant to admit but gradually came to accept. Her search to fit in, leading to an embrace of white nationalism, was sparked by the death of her skinhead-adherent brother. Today, swastika tattoos obscured, she’s a Muslim convert, teaching martial arts to black girls as wistful as she once was.The savviest white nationalists are aware of the blind spot that observers often have when it comes to womenAyla Stewart hails from Las Vegas. Between looking after six children as a Mormon “tradwife”, she has become a minor celebrity in her malevolent milieu with blogged and broadcast racist rants. How did she evolve thus, from being a vegan feminist who worshiped a pagan goddess and supported liberal Democrats like Dennis Kucinich? Only by slow degrees. Eventually, suspecting a plot to discredit her, Stewart stopped confiding in Darby. But she was plenty happy to tell her story at first, and it is riveting.The third sister in hate, Lana Lokteff, was born to Russian immigrants in the Pacific north-west but is now a resident of quaint and gracious Charleston, South Carolina. Like her Swedish husband Henrik Palmgren, the pale and slender blonde is perfectly Aryan-looking. Together the neo-Nazi pair operate Red Ice TV. Produced abroad since being banned on YouTube, it is widely considered the CNN of the alt-right. Espousing apocalyptic antisemitic conspiracy theories, the pair have generated notoriety as well as wealth.The particular appeal of women as spokespersons for a movement so blatantly misogynistic, Darby tells us, is what makes female recruits such valued members. It’s akin to the prominent placement of black people behind the podium at Trump rallies or front-and-center among the ranks of the Proud Boys. Both offer plausible deniability of bigotry.“Today,” Darby writes, “the savviest white nationalists are aware of the blind spot that observers often have when it comes to women, discounting their contributions to abhorrent causes because they prefer to think of them as humanity’s better angels.“One of this book’s subjects,” she continues, “put it this way: ‘A soft woman saying hard things can create repercussions throughout society.’” In same the vein, Lokteff noted at a conference: “Since we aren’t physically intimidating, we can get away with saying big things. And let me tell you, the women in this movement can be lionesses and shield maidens and Valkyries.”Startling as this is, it is not much different from Sarah Palin’s memorable characterization of gun-toting Alaskan soccer moms as “pit bulls in lipstick”. How perverse is the desire of some women to show fidelity and worth by matching the contempt for others held by men? What does this growing ruthlessness mean?In 2016, some 6 to 9 million citizens who had supported Barack Obama, voted for Trump. Nearly 50% of white women did. This November, in even greater numbers, one-time Obama voters sought to re-elect Trump. As hard as it is to imagine, he gained still more adherents among women.All three “sisters” who spoke to Darby do not like being thought of as racist haters. Yet their disdain, their race- and class-based derision, born of envy, ignorance and fear, is real enough. Lyndon Johnson posited that if someone can make the worst white feel they are superior to the best black, their subject’s pocket can be easily picked. Of late, more than 600 billionaires have gained double the wealth held by 331 million Americans. One might imagine that the time was ripe for the masses to join ranks.The total indifference displayed towards the humanity and contributions of people of color and more is what makes Sisters in Hate so painful to read. Considering the genocide and theft to which Native Americans were subjected, African enslavement or the Holocaust, one might regard each tragic episode as holding the promise of a happy ending. These struggles were a testament of our common resolve. We can all say, “We shall overcome!”But can America’s resurgent white nationalism and antisemitism be surmounted? The prospect is pessimistic, Darby concedes, writing of the how the dismantling of hegemony and patriarchy feel like discrimination to many entitled whites.“Black people are the magical faces at the bottom of society’s well,” wrote Derrick Bell. “Even the poorest whites, those who must live their lives only a few levels above, gain their self-esteem by gazing down on us.”Perhaps America’s happy ending will come from heeding the lessons of history. In the turbulent 1960s, willing to be brutalized, black and white demonstrators protested successfully for change. This year, in the wake of enduring police violence, diverse masked protesters marched anew worldwide.In the same spirit, risking all, more voted than ever before. But, overwhelmingly, those who made the difference on election day were women of color. Our sisters in hope? More

Most of the 74,222,957 Americans who voted to re-elect Donald Trump – 46.8%of the votes cast in the 2020 presidential election – don’t hold Trump accountable for what he’s done to America.Their acceptance of Trump’s behavior will be his vilest legacy.Nearly forty years ago, political scientist James Q Wilson and criminologist George Kelling observed that a broken window left unattended in a community signals that no one cares if windows are broken there. The broken window is thereby an invitation to throw more stones and break more windows.The message: do whatever you want here because others have done it and got away with it.The broken window theory has led to picayune and arbitrary law enforcement in poor communities. But America’s most privileged and powerful have been breaking big windows with impunity.In 2008, Wall Street nearly destroyed the economy. The Street got bailed out while millions of Americans lost their jobs, savings, and homes. Yet not no major Wall Street executive ever went to jail.In more recent years, top executives of Purdue Pharmaceuticals, along with the Sackler family, knew the dangers of OxyContin but did nothing. Executives at Wells Fargo Bank pushed bank employees to defraud customers. Executives at Boeing hid the results of tests showing its 737 Max Jetliner was unsafe. Police chiefs across America looked the other way as police under their command repeatedly killed innocent Black Americans.Here, too, they’ve got away with it. These windows remain broken.Trump has brought impunity to the highest office in the land, wielding a wrecking ball to the most precious windowpane of all – American democracy.Trump has brought impunity to the highest office in the land, wielding a wrecking ball to the most precious windowpane of all – American democracy.The message? A president can obstruct special counsels’ investigations of his wrongdoing, push foreign officials to dig up dirt on political rivals, fire inspectors general who find corruption, order the entire executive branch to refuse congressional subpoenas, flood the Internet with fake information about his opponents, refuse to release his tax returns, accuse the press of being “fake media” and “enemies of the people”, and make money off his presidency.And he can get away with it. Almost half of the electorate will even vote for his reelection.A president can also lie about the results of an election without a shred of evidence – and yet, according to polls, be believed by the vast majority of those who voted for him.Trump’s recent pardons have broken double-pane windows.Not only has he shattered the norm for presidential pardons – usually granted because of a petitioner’s good conduct after conviction and service of sentence – but he’s pardoned people who themselves shattered windows. By pardoning them, he has rendered them unaccountable for their acts.They include aides convicted of lying to the FBI and threatening potential witnesses in order to protect him; his son-in-law’s father, who pleaded guilty to tax evasion, witness tampering, illegal campaign contributions, and lying to the Federal Election Commission; Blackwater security guards convicted of murdering Iraqi civilians, including women and children; Border Patrol agents convicted of assaulting or shooting unarmed suspects; and Republican lawmakers and their aides found guilty of fraud, obstruction of justice and campaign finance violations.It’s not simply the size of the broken window that undermines standards, according to Wilson and Kelling. It’s the willingness of society to look the other way. If no one is held accountable, norms collapse.Trump may face a barrage of lawsuits when he leaves office, possibly including criminal charges. But it’s unlikely he’ll go to jail. Presidential immunity or a self-pardon will protect him. Prosecutorial discretion would almost certainly argue against indictment, in any event. No former president has ever been convicted of a crime. The mere possibility of a criminal trial for Trump would ignite a partisan brawl across the nation.Congress may try to limit the power of future presidents – strengthening congressional oversight, fortifying the independence of inspectors general, demanding more financial disclosure, increasing penalties on presidential aides who break laws, restricting the pardon process, and so on.But Congress – a co-equal branch of government under the Constitution – cannot rein in rogue presidents. And the courts don’t want to weigh in on political questions.The appalling reality is that Trump may get away with it. And in getting away with it he will have changed and degraded the norms governing American presidents. The giant windows he’s broken are invitations to a future president to break even more.Nothing will correct this unless or until an overwhelming majority of Americans recognize and condemn what has occurred. More

The president indicated he may veto the 5,000-page bill that he calls a ‘disgrace’ which would extend benefits to AmericansAs unemployment benefits were due to expire for millions of Americans on Saturday, Donald Trump, who spent Christmas playing golf in Florida, continued to block a $900bn pandemic relief bill that would extend them.The package, which Congress passed with bipartisan support on Monday after months of negotiations, would keep unemployment benefits in place until March and expand state benefits by $300 a week – as well as extending an evictions moratorium, providing federal loans to small businesses and $600 direct payments to many Americans. Continue reading… More

Former DoJ officials say they are worried Trump will lean on acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen for potentially risky favorsWilliam Barr’s abrupt move to leave his post as attorney general this week has spurred fears among Department of Justice veterans that Donald Trump will put new pressures on Barr’s successor to do him big and potentially risky political and legal favors.Former justice department officials say they are worried Trump will lean on Barr’s less experienced successor, the acting attorney general, Jeffrey Rosen, to push policies which Trump has suggested he backs, including naming special counsels to investigate President-elect Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, and using the DoJ to investigate Trump’s baseless charges of widespread election fraud. Continue reading… More