US Politics

I have a friend who’s the stepmother to a young boy and this boy’s birth mother has gotten deeply into QAnon. How deep? She recently told him that the world is flat, and anyone who tells him otherwise is a paedophile. She is determined to take him out of school in order to shield him from cannibals, satanists and Democrats. Every time my friend updates me on the project of raising a child in joint custody with this person, I experience a kind of vertigo. How would you even do it?Now imagine that, instead of raising a child, you and this person had to set emissions standards and develop a sustainable healthcare system. This is not far from the condition of US democracy in 2020: two centre-right corporate parties, one socially progressive and the other socially reactionary; a left divided between the internet and the academy; and an indeterminate number of maniacs.The maniacs are QAnon. It’s complicated, but QAnon is essentially an online conspiracy theory based on interpreting the gnomic posts of an unidentified person (or group of people) known as Q, who purports to be a high-ranking official in the US government. Q’s message to the faithful is that this government is secretly controlled by a cabal of satanic paedophiles whom Donald Trump will one day round up and execute, in a mass cleansing called the Storm.This Storm is not going to happen, of course. If it ever does, I will freely admit that I was wrong from whatever gibbet I am on while Facebook groups remake society – but it will also never be cancelled, because anticipating this Storm is what makes QAnon a compelling fantasy. It’s impossible to know how many people actually believe in QAnon as an accurate description of how the world works, relative to how many just enjoy talking about it as a kind of online game. For both groups, though, the appeal is world building. Q is a collaborative work of speculative fiction that replaces this world with one that it both more exciting and more legible. The essence of that world is the Storm: the fantasy that those who disagree with your politics are not just wrong but evil, in a way that justifies finally smashing them.In this central fantasy, QAnon resembles another form of fantasy politics from 2020 – one that gained traction not among the desperate underclass of disenfranchised internet addicts, but among the broad professional centre of US politics. I am referring to the speculation that President Trump would refuse to leave office if he lost the election.People seem to have politely forgotten this theory, but in September and October, it was trafficked by several of the most respectable news and commentary outlets in the US. The Washington Post published an article by the co-founder of the Transition Integrity Project that gamed out scenarios in which “players”, including former Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele and Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, took on the roles of factions determined to install their candidate by any means necessary. In October, the New Yorker published a piece headlined “What can you do if Trump stages a coup?” These grandes dames of political analysis were joined by less impressive imitators in what became, during the months before the election, a micro-genre of news speculation.The coup scenario has not come to pass, unless you count the series of unsuccessful lawsuits Trump’s campaign has filed in an attempt to overturn various state election results – which I do not. The president’s motives remain inscrutable, but if you are going to risk it all on a bid to overthrow US democracy, you do not put Rudolph Giuliani in charge.The Trump coup theory attracted a more sophisticated audience than QAnon, and from an epistemological standpoint it was far stronger. I would never say the two scenarios were similar in their premises or their reasoning. But they had one thing in common: they were both animated by the fantasy of being done with democracy. The Storm and the Trump coup both imagined worlds in which their audiences would have to stop trying to win over their political opponents.If we understand fantasy not as worlds we want to come to pass but rather worlds that offer outlets for feelings we have to repress in this one, the popularity of QAnon and the Trump coup scenarios makes sense. They are symptomatic of a democracy that has become frustrated with democratic means. Like QAnon, a Trump putsch held out the possibility of a righteous cleansing of Republican extremists that would reduce the hard problems of representative governance to the comparatively simple logistics of civil war. Civil war is bad, obviously, but it rewards the winners with one-party rule. Both QAnon and the Trump coup were dark fantasies that came with the same happy ending: a situation in which decent Americans no longer had to argue with the ignorant and evil, because we were finally justified in simply overpowering them. That we cannot do so under ordinary conditions is what makes US democracy such a pain in the ass.At this point, the possibility of a coup seems consigned to the realm of past fantasy, fading as we move on from the zeitgeist that made it compelling. I don’t know what will happen to QAnon once Trump leaves office. Probably, my friend’s stepson’s mother will keep coming up with reasons why the various antagonists in her life are evil. The hard work of democracy will return to bringing people like her back in. It would probably be easier to round them up. A lot of things would be easier, if more of us were monsters. More

After four years of norm-shattering rule, Donald Trump appears close to doing the one thing observers have long predicted but that has not yet come to pass: splitting the Republican party.With Trump staring at the prospect of only a few more weeks in the White House, significant segments of the party are finally breaking with a president to whom they have hitherto displayed almost unwavering loyalty. Furthermore, Trump’s stoking of division in his own party has even succeeded in uniting warring factions among his opponents.Responding on Wednesday night to the president’s bombshell threat to veto the $900bn Covid relief and stimulus bill, Democratic leaders and members of the progressive House “Squad” – otherwise at each other’s throats – welcomed Trump’s demand for increased direct payments to individual Americans.“Let’s do it!” said Speaker Nancy Pelosi.“We can pass $2k checks this week,” wrote Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.Somewhere on Capitol Hill, presumably, Republican Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell buried his head in his hands.‘Send me a suitable bill, or else’Predictions that Trump will wreck and split the Republican party have been rife since 2015, when he wrecked and split – and won – the race for the presidential nomination. While the party remains whole, and an official split will be a surprise, it has now descended into internecine strife, Trump loyalists fighting for the lost cause of a second term while others seek to adjust to life back in opposition.Trump maintains a strong hold on the hard-right Republican base, on a large part of the House delegation who owe their seats to that base and on influential senators. The penalty for apostasy is clear: a primary from the right or, as rumour has it in the case of the Florida senator Marco Rubio, a challenge from Trump’s own daughter.But in contrast to the zeal of the Maga-fuelled legions, in the Senate the party establishment has now rejected Trump’s increasingly wild attempts to hold on to power while negotiating the Covid deal which stoked Tuesday night’s extraordinary display of presidential petulance from the White House podium.In his video message, Trump bemoaned spending commitments in the relief deal and demanded Congress “send me a suitable bill, or else the next administration will have to deliver a Covid relief package. And maybe that administration will be me.”It won’t, even if Trump’s allies in the House and Senate go through with planned challenges to the electoral college result in Congress on 6 January. Democrats who control the House will ensure the result is certified there, while McConnell and his deputies assure passage in the Senate.But if such challenges can only be performative, they will be politically beneficial for everyone except the Republican establishment which will help to beat them down. Trump’s refusal to accept defeat, not to mention the vicious fire he and his allies have directed at McConnell since the senator recognised Joe Biden’s win, is damaging the president’s own party.A day before the electoral college result is certified, two run-off elections in Georgia will decide control of the Senate. Early voting has started. Seeking to hold on to the party’s best hope of thwarting Biden’s agenda, McConnell needs a united front. Such is Trump’s refusal to accept party discipline or political reality, that has become impossible.Georgia’s two sitting senators, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, have thrown in their lots with Trump. That means supporting his claim the presidential election was rigged, which the party establishment fears could suppress Republican turnout.‘A different course’On CNN last weekend, the Utah senator and 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, a frequent Trump critic, was asked if he “still recognised the Republican party”.“The party has taken a different course than obviously the one that I knew as a younger person,” Romney said, adding that his Republican party stood for leading abroad while “balancing the budget” at home.“And we believed that character was essential in the leaders that we chose. We’ve strayed from that. I don’t see us returning to that for a long time.”The remark about character was pointed. Romney went on to describe a battle to succeed Trump at the top of the party that promises to be as life was to Thomas Hobbes: nasty and brutish, if long-term rather than short.“As I look at the 2024 contenders,” Romney said, “most of them are trying to become as much like Donald Trump as they can be. Although I must admit that his style and schtick, if you will, is difficult to duplicate.”Of necessity, ambitious senators such as Josh Hawley of Missouri, Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Ted Cruz of Texas would have taken that as a compliment – but also a warning. Trump is reportedly likely to announce his own candidacy for 2024 not long after removal from office.“I represent a very small slice of the Republican party today,” Romney continued, “but you know everybody has to stand up for what they believe. And I believe my colleagues are doing what they think is right.”For some Republicans, Trump has already proven too much.The party remains in one piece. Whether it stays so remains to be seenOutside Congress, the Never Trumpers of the Lincoln Project, the Bulwark and other groups fought for Biden while former Republican voters helped turn Georgia and Arizona blue. Inside Congress, a few have taken a stand. The common way out is to retire but two House members from Michigan, Justin Amash last year and Paul Mitchell this, found the courage to publicly leave their party.Such numbers are small. The party remains in one piece. Whether it stays so remains to be seen. In the brewing fight, those ranged against Trump are not ready to quit.Writing for the Washington Post in November, long before Trump’s refusal to concede defeat mutated into considerations of martial law, the conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin said the US effectively has “three parties now: the Democratic party, the Anti-Democracy Trump party and the Pro-Democracy Republican party.”Rubin advocated a bipartisan effort to restore balance, writing: “Once the Anti-Democracy Trump party is marginalised we might have functional government again. The Democratic party and the Pro-Democracy Republican party should put their heads together and devise a strategy to bring that about – quickly, and certainly before 2024.”Romney has disappointed Democrats before, not least over the appointment of supreme court justice Amy Coney Barrett. But he seems to be up for the fight.“I think I’m more effective in the Republican party, continuing to battle for the things I believe in,” he said, when asked if he would leave. “I think ultimately the Republican party will return to the roots that have been formed over the last century.“Hopefully people will recognise we need to take a different course than the one we’re on right now.” More

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Donald Trump is expected to grant further waves of audacious pardons for allies and supporters – possibly even for himself – in a frenzied final month as US president.
Trump caused revulsion at home and abroad with dozens of pardons that included on Tuesday four former government contractors convicted in a 2007 massacre in Baghdad that left more than a dozen Iraqi civilians dead. On Wednesday the slew of pardons included close political allies such as Roger Stone and Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort as well as Charles Kushner, the father of his own son-in-law and top adviser, Jared Kushner.
The pardons of Manafort and Stone rewarded two of the most notorious of Trump’s former advisers, both of whom were convicted of crimes after being indicted by the special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian meddling in the 2016 campaign.
Critics warned that the flood of pardons is still likely only the beginning. In the waning weeks of his presidency, Trump is said to be considering further interventions on behalf of aides, friends and family members he believes have been unfairly jailed, indicted or put in legal jeopardy.
The pardons on Tuesday also included two men convicted as a result of a special counsel investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia, three corrupt former Republican congressmen and, perhaps most controversially, four security guards employed by a private security company in Iraq.
Nicholas Slatten, Paul Slough, Evan Liberty and Dustin Heard were all serving lengthy prison sentences. Prosecutors alleged the men launched an unprovoked attack in a busy traffic circle using sniper fire, machine guns and grenade launchers in September 2007 in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square.
Iraqis condemned the act of clemency as a betrayal by western allies. Ali Bayati of Iraq’s Human Rights Commission told the AFP news agency: “The latest decision confirms these countries’ violations of human rights and international law. They grant immunity to their soldiers even as they claim to protect human rights.”
Critics in the US pointed out that the four men worked for Blackwater, which was founded by Erik Prince, one of Trump’s longtime supporters and allies. Prince is the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary.
Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s national security project, said the shootings caused “devastation in Iraq, shame and horror in the United States, and a worldwide scandal. President Trump insults the memory of the Iraqi victims and further degrades his office with this action”.
There were also pardons for three Republican congressmen, including the first two to endorse Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. Duncan Hunter pleaded guilty last year to misusing campaign funds and was sentenced to 11 months’ imprisonment. Chris Collins pleaded guilty last year to conspiring to commit securities fraud and making false statements to the FBI and is serving his 26-month sentence.
The president also granted clemency to George Papadopoulos, a former campaign aide who pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to FBI agents about the timing and significance of his contacts with people who claimed to have ties to top Russian officials. More

Joe Biden’s pledge to make the climate emergency a top priority of his administration from day one has received a major boost from the $900bn Covid-19 relief bill that cleared Congress this week and now awaits Donald Trump’s signature.
The president has demanded changes but nonetheless the package has been hailed by environmental groups as an important move towards re-engaging the US with international efforts to tackle the climate crisis and move towards a clean energy future.
“The bill contains some truly historic provisions that represent the most significant climate legislation passed by Congress in over a decade,” said Sam Ricketts, co-founder of Evergreen Action.
The Sierra Club, an environmental group which operates in all 50 states, expressed a sigh of relief that Republican intransigence, led by the president and Mitch McConnell in the Senate, had finally been overcome. Kirin Kennedy, the group’s deputy legislative director, expressed confidence that the bill would contribute towards “addressing major sources of pollution, growing clean energy, and making progress across government agencies to advance climate action”.
But she added that the Biden administration had a lot of work still to do to, in the president-elect’s phrase, “build back better”. Kennedy said that meant “investing in clean, renewable energy that can power communities, not saddling them with false solutions or pollution for decades to come”.
Set against the time-critical nature of the climate crisis and the need for immediate action to curb pollution and switch to renewable energies, the relief bill falls short both in the scale and ambition of its commitments.
“Is this enough to meet the urgency of the moment? The short answer is plainly no – the package is smaller than we’ve called for and certainly smaller than the science demands,” Ricketts said.
But contained in the bill are a number of provisions that represent a clear advance in the US stance on the climate crisis, at the end of four years of Trump administration attacks on environmental protections.
By the far the most significant of those advances is the commitment to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, HFCs, which are widely used as coolants in air conditioners, fridges and cars.
Under the terms of the relief bill, most HFC use would end by 2035. The overall global impact of such a firm gesture by the US could lead to 0.5C of avoided warming this century.
Ricketts said that the move was not only important in its own right in the climate fight, but it also made a statement that the US was prepared to work with world partners. That was all the more poignant coming just a month after Trump took the US formally out of the Paris climate agreement.
“This is a timely way of showing that we can still play on the international stage and meet our commitments,” he said.
Among other measures in the bill that have received praise from environmental groups are extensions to tax credits for renewable energy technologies. Offshore wind could enjoy a particular boost with the incentives lasting five years.
“This is an industry that is just starting to drive down the runway for take-off in the US,” Ricketts said. “There’s an enormous potential, especially in the north east, and the five-year tax incentive is critical.”
A further area of significant reform is the pot of $35bn provided for research and development in a range of innovations designed to confront the climate crisis. They include the creation of more efficient batteries, carbon capture, and advanced nuclear reactor technology.
Katherine Egland, environment and climate justice chair for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People national board of directors, said that for African American and other low-income communities the relief bill would impact lives. She lives in Gulfport, Mississippi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, and this year has experienced firsthand the confluence of the coronavirus pandemic, the climate crisis and racial injustice.
“We have been confronted by a syndemic in 2020,” she told the Guardian. “We have had to cope with the disproportionate impacts of Covid and climate, during an unprecedented storm season and a year rife with racial unrest.”
Egland said congressional action was welcome “after four years of climate denial. It is a positive step in the right direction”.
But she said that the country would need to do much more to meet the scale of the crisis: “There is no vaccine to inoculate us against climate change.” More

Donald Trump has pardoned another 26 people in his second big wave of clemency actions since Tuesday, marking yet another audacious application of presidential power to reward loyalists.The US president pardoned his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, his longtime adviser Roger Stone, and Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner.Stone, a longtime friend and associate, had his sentence for a series of charges related to the Russia investigation commuted by the president in July.In total, Trump pardoned or issued commutations to 29 people on Wednesday, including Margaret Hunter, the wife of Duncan Hunter, the former Republican representative of California, who was pardoned yesterday.Trump’s latest set of pre-Christmas pardons follows a brazen round of pardons and commutations granted on Tuesday. The president issued 15 pardons and five commutations to allies, including two figures who plead guilty in special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry on Russian interference in the 2016 US elections.On Tuesday, the president pardoned George Papadopoulos, a former adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to federal officials during the Russia investigation, and Alex van der Zwaan, a Dutch lawyer and son-in-law of the Russian billionaire German Khan. Van der Zwaan had pleaded guilty to similar charges.Papadopoulos and Van der Zwaan were the third and fourth people pardoned for charges in connection to the Russia inquiry. In November, Trump pardoned his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with a Russian official. The president, who has long derided the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election as a “hoax”, has been expected to dole out pardons to those implicated in the inquiry.Tuesday’s rash of pardons was also bestowed upon four former Blackwater contractors who were convicted on charges related to a 2007 massacre in Iraq. The four men, part of a security convoy, fired indiscriminately at civilians, killing 14 people – including a nine-year-old child. The move drew harsh criticism, including from the families of those who were killed. Adil al-Khazali, whose father Ali was killed in the attack, said in response: “Justice doesn’t exist.”Under the US constitution, the president has broad, unilateral pardon powers, but pardons are traditionally reviewed by the justice department. Many of Trump’s pardons, however, seem to clash with department standards – and are instead bestowed as a means to reward allies or act on grudges. Only five of 65 pardons and commutations Trump issued before Wednesday were recommended by the justice department pardon attorney, according to a tally by the Harvard law professor Jack Goldsmith.Manafort, 71, was sentenced for convictions including unregistered lobbying, tax fraud, bank fraud and money laundering. Stone, 68, was convicted of lying to Congress and obstructing a congressional investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 election. “Mr President, my family & I humbly thank you for the Presidential Pardon you bestowed on me. Words cannot fully convey how grateful we are,” Manafort tweeted on Wednesday night.A presidential pardon does not shield someone from state charges, and the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, is still looking to prosecute Manafort for state crimes. Trump’s pardon “underscores the urgent need to hold Mr Manafort accountable for his crimes against the People of New York as alleged in our indictment, and we will continue to pursue our appellate remedies”, Danny Frost, a spokesman for Vance, told CNBC. A judge had previously blocked Vance from advancing his case, to protect Manafort from being prosecuted twice for the same crimes.A Trump lawyer reportedly offered pardons to Manafort and Flynn as they were approached by federal investigators – raising suspicions that the pardons were proffered in exchange for loyalty to Trump. The New York Times first reported the news in 2018. In his report following the investigation, Mueller wrote: “Many of the president’s acts directed at witnesses, including discouragement of cooperation with the government and suggestions of possible future pardons, occurred in public view.”Adam Schiff, the Democratic representative of California who prosecuted the impeachment trial of Trump, said: “During the Mueller investigation, Trump’s lawyer floated a pardon to Manafort. Manafort withdrew his cooperation with prosecutors, lied, was convicted, and then Trump praised him for not ‘ratting’. Trump’s pardon now completes the corrupt scheme.”“Lawless until the bitter end,” Schiff tweeted.The congressman also noted that many serving time in federal prisons had been convicted of non-violent crimes and deserved a reprieve. “But who does Trump pardon? Those who lie, cheat or steal for him and his family,” Schiff said.Charles Kushner, 66, pleaded guilty to tax evasion and lying to the Federal Election Commission. He also pleaded guilty to witness tampering, after he retaliated against his brother-in-law William Schulder, who was cooperating with federal investigators. Kushner was accused of hiring a sex worker to seduce Schulder, videotaping the encounter and sending the tape to Schulder’s wife – Kushner’s sister.Another twist: Kushner was prosecuted by Chris Christie, a former US attorney and New Jersey governor who has been a Trump loyalist.The executive director of the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, said: “In pardoning Paul Manafort, Roger Stone and Charles Kushner, President Trump has made it clear that he believes the purpose of the pardon is to bail out rich white men connected to him. Trump has turned an instrument of mercy and justice into just another way for him to be corrupt.”Ben Sasse, a Republican senator of Nebraska, issued a more succinct statement in reaction to the pardons: “This is rotten to the core.”It is unclear whether the president will issue more pardons, which the White House has discussed handing out “like Christmas gifts”, Axios has reported. The White House, which daily shares the president’s public schedule with media, said that on Christmas Eve Trump will be in Florida and “as the Holiday season approaches, President Trump will continue to work tirelessly for the American People. His schedule includes many meetings and calls.” More

Donald Trump vetoed a $740bn bill setting policy for the Department of Defense on Wednesday, despite its strong support in Congress, raising the possibility that the measure will fail to become law for the first time in 60 years.Although Trump’s previous eight vetoes were all upheld thanks to support from Republicans in Congress, advisers said this one looked likely to be overridden, just weeks before Trump leaves office on 20 January.Trump said he vetoed the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA, because it “fails to include critical national security measures, includes provisions that fail to respect our veterans and our military’s history, and contradicts efforts by my administration to put America first in our national security and foreign policy actions”.A key measure in the NDAA to which Trump objects is the move to rename US military bases currently named for leaders of the Confederacy, which seceded from the union over slavery, leading to the civil war of 1861 to 1865.Pressure to rename the bases grew this year amid nationwide protests over the killing by Minneapolis police of George Floyd, an African American man on whose neck an officer knelt for almost nine minutes.Trump also threatened a veto if the bill did not repeal part of a 1996 telecoms law which prevents online companies from being sued in relation to third-party content.If Section 230 is not “completely terminated”, Trump tweeted earlier this month, “I will be forced to unequivocally VETO the Bill when sent to the very beautiful Resolute desk.”In a message to the House of Representatives, on Wednesday, Trump also called the bill “a ‘gift’ to China and Russia”.Both the Republican Senate and Democratic House passed the 2021 NDAA with margins larger than the two-thirds majorities needed to override a veto. That means that Trump would have to persuade dozens of Republicans to throw out nearly a year’s work on the 4,500-page bill and start over.Top advisers urged Trump not to carry out his veto threat, citing the slim chance of stopping the bill. Many of Trump’s staunchest supporters, including Senate armed services committee chairman Jim Inhofe, said they would vote to override.“It’s simple, what this bill does,” Inhofe said when the measure passed the Senate. “It makes our country more secure, and it supports our troops who defend it.”Advisers said Trump had little to gain from a veto and it could hurt his party’s ability to hang on to two US Senate seats in Georgia in 5 January runoff votes.The Senate backed the bill 84-13, with the no votes coming from some of the most conservative Republicans and most liberal Democrats. The Democratic-led House backed the NDAA by 335-78, with some “no” votes also coming from liberal Democrats less likely to back a Trump veto.The NDAA determines everything from how many ships are bought to soldiers’ pay to how to address geopolitical threats. The measure vetoed by Trump was a compromise, combining separate measures already passed in the House and Senate.Lawmakers take pride in the bill having become law every year since 1961, saying it reflects their support for the military. Trump’s veto, if upheld, would delay a 3% pay raise for active-duty troops. More

Pfizer and BioNTech will provide the US with an additional 100m doses of coronavirus vaccine by mid-summer under a new $2bn deal with the American government.This addition means that Pfizer and BioNTech will deliver a total of 200m doses to the US and enable some 100 million people to be inoculated against the deadly virus.The pharmaceutical companies announced their plan on Wednesday morning in a press release. They plan to deliver all these doses by mid-summer, with a minimum of 70m delivered by 30 June and the remainder “no later than” 31 July. Under this agreement, the US will also have the option to obtain another 400m doses.There have been 18,238,233 Covid-19 cases in the US, with 322,849 recorded deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University data. The US will see its deadliest year in history largely due to Covid-19. Experts believe that overall US life expectancy could drop by as much as three years.“Securing more doses from Pfizer and BioNTech for delivery in the second quarter of 2021 further expands our supply of doses across the Operation Warp Speed portfolio,” said Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services. “This new federal purchase can give Americans even more confidence that we will have enough supply to vaccinate every American who wants it by June 2021.”Pfizer and BioNTech’s vaccine was the first to receive emergency use authorization by the Food and Drug Administration. The first shipments were sent to states last week.The FDA has also granted emergency use authorization to Moderna’s Covid-19 vaccine. While both vaccines require two doses, Moderna does not have to be stored in ultra-cold freezers.News of these additional doses came several weeks after reports revealed that the Trump Administration had passed on the opportunity to purchase millions of additional doses of Pfizer’s vaccine. The administration’s contract with Pfizer was for 100m doses, and provided an opportunity to buy up to 500m additional doses.Trump’s administration decided not to secure an additional 100m doses of Pfizer-BioNTech’s vaccine for the second quarter of 2021, however.While more vaccines are expected to come on line, US officials are also contending with apparent vaccine hesitancy. New data indicated that approximately 50% of Americans would take the vaccine, but 25%of adults said they weren’t certain and another 25% said they would not.Experts have maintained that “herd immunity” – when the overall population has mostly become immune because a significant proportion is – will be achieved when 60% to 70% acquire some level of immunity.The news comes as the devastating current surge has wreaked havoc across the US and especially in California, where officials are warning that the state’s healthcare system may fracture in weeks if people ignore holiday social distancing.Top executives from the state’s largest hospital systems Kaiser Permanente, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, which together cover 15 million Californians, said on Tuesday that increasingly exhausted staff, many pressed into service outside their normal duties, are now attending to Covid-19 patients in hallways and conference rooms.The chief executive of the Martin Luther King community hospital in Los Angeles, Dr Elaine Batchlor, separately said patients there have spilled over into the gift shop and five tents outside the emergency department.“We don’t have space for anybody. We’ve been holding patients for days because we can’t get them transferred, can’t get beds for them,” said Dr Alexis Lenz, an emergency room physician at El Centro regional medical center in Imperial county, in the south-east corner of the state.California is closing in on 2m confirmed cases of Covid-19. The state on Tuesday reported nearly 32,700 newly confirmed cases. Another 653 patients were admitted to hospitals, one of the biggest one-day hospitalization jumps for a total approaching 18,000.State data models have predicted the hospitalizations could top 100,000 in a month if current rates continue.More worrying than lack of beds is a lack of personnel. The pool of available travel nurses is drying up as demand for them jumped 44% over the last month, with California, Texas, Florida, New York and Minnesota requesting the most extra staff, according to San Diego-based health care staffing firm Aya Healthcare.“We’re now in a situation where we have surges all across the country, so nobody has many nurses to spare,” said Dr Janet Coffman, a professor of public policy at the University of California in San Francisco.California is contacting places like Australia and Taiwan to fill the need for 3,000 temporary medical workers, particularly nurses trained in critical care. More

As we prepare to turn the page on 2020, and inaugurate Joe Biden as president on 20 January 2021, the incoming administration has a climate mandate to listen to people across America – and keep fossil fuels in the ground. This means stopping the Keystone XL, Dakota Access and Line 3 pipelines on day one.While Trump props up failing fossil fuel companies, including through government handouts from Covid-19 stimulus packages to the tune of $15bn, Biden has already committed to transitioning the United States off oil, holding polluters accountable, honoring treaty rights and stopping the Keystone XL pipeline.In August, Joe Biden laid out his $2tn climate plan, which has the support of Indigenous peoples and their allies, Black communities and environmental voters. Biden’s climate plan is the most ambitious plan of a major party presidential nominee ever. To be the most ambitious climate president ever, Biden must implement a climate test on all federal permitting and projects, to ensure any project not aligned with tackling the climate crisis and keeping warming under 1.5 degrees does not move forward. A meaningful climate test must keep fossil fuels in the ground.Just last week, Biden announced the New Mexico congresswoman Deb Haaland as his nominee for US secretary of the interior. Haaland is a member of the Pueblo Laguna tribe; if confirmed she will be the first Native person to serve in the role. We hope her leadership will help protect our public lands and Indigenous sovereignty as we phase out fossil fuels.As we write, communities across Minnesota are rising up to protect land, water and treaty rights as Line 3 pipeline construction begins and lawsuits are filed in opposition. Meanwhile, communities in South Dakota are mobilizing to pressure Biden to rescind the permit for Keystone XL and end the project once and for all.If built, Line 3 would release as much greenhouse gas pollution as 50 new coal-fired power plants, violate Ojibwe treaty rights, and put Minnesota’s water, ecosystems and communities in harm’s way. Keystone XL would have a similarly devastating impact on water, land, people and the Oceti Sakowin tribes’ treaty and inherent rights.Both pipeline projects have blatantly refused meaningful consultation with the tribes impacted. This is glaringly disrespectful to grassroots dedication in territories that have stood up to this invasion for years, as well as a denial of the irreversible impact these pipelines will have on cultural and spiritual sites.Projects like Line 3 and Keystone XL are also directly linked to violence against and trafficking of Native women and girls, due to the installation of temporary housing for mostly male pipeline workers, known as “man camps”. These man camps are also a hotbed for Covid-19, drawing thousands of out-of-state workers. South Dakota is at a crisis point with Covid-19 cases, yet the threat of Keystone XL construction looms.There is increasing anticipation of violence from militarized police partnered with Enbridge, the Canadian pipeline company backing Line 3, triggering memories of violence against water protectors and allies in the fight to halt the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).In the shadow of centuries of genocide and erasure of Indigenous peoples, Barack Obama halted DAPL and rejected Keystone XL. Now, Biden has a chance to build upon this legacy and stop Line 3, Keystone XL and DAPL.Stopping these pipelines is completely within Joe Biden’s purview and responsibility. Through executive action, Biden can order an immediate pause on oil pipeline construction, and a moratorium on any new projects or expansions, as he reviews Trump-era approvals for conflict or undue influence from the fossil fuel industry. Biden must also reverse over 100 environmental and climate protection rollbacks brought on by the Trump administration.But to be a true climate president, Biden must go further. Just as pipelines will inevitably spill, any new or existing fossil fuel project would inevitably fail a climate test. There is no safe or clean way to extract, transport, or refine coal, oil or gas without poisoning our communities and driving us past 1.5C of warming. In addition, the construction, transport and burning of fossil fuels have grave impacts on public health and safety, including premature death, lung cancer and increased rates of Covid-19.From the Keystone XL Promise to Protect to the Line 3 Pledge of Resistance, tens of thousands of people are prepared to wield our sacred and patriotic duty to stop these toxic and unnecessary fossil fuel projects. In addition, thousands of people have already sent petitions to Joe Biden urging him to halt these projects.It’s time to make polluters pay for the damages done to our communities’ health, land and wellbeing. This starts with stopping fossil fuel projects and returning land to Indigenous peoples. Ultimately, we must dismantle existing projects and fund a just and equitable transition to a regenerative 100% renewable economy.The stakes are higher than ever – economically, socially and politically. Biden must show guts in holding coal, oil and gas executives accountable for knowingly bringing climate disasters, pollution, sickness and death to our doorsteps.It’s our time to leap toward a renewable energy revolution that centers Indigenous sovereignty, community health, and a safe, livable future for all.Faith Spotted Eagle is a Yankton Sioux Tribe member, an opponent of pipeline projects including Keystone XL and the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the first Indigenous person to win an electoral vote for president
Kendall Mackey is 350.org regional campaign manager More