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      'Tired of getting slapped in the face': older Black farmers see little hope in Biden's agriculture pick

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      James “Bill” McGill has been a farmer for 40 of his 76 years. He can’t remember the year his 320-acre farm was put up for sale by the same man from the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) he’d gone to for a loan to help him keep it. He can sum up the loss succinctly: “The government took it away. It has always been that way for us.”His treatment by the USDA over the years, it turns out, has conditioned him to have an easier time raising 60 or so pigs for slaughter on property in Bakersfield, California, he inherited from his parents. “I don’t get attached to hardly nothing any more,” he said. “So much hard luck over the years as a farmer, you learn.”Most older Black farmers like McGill have stories of being disregarded by the USDA, regardless of the administration, or who holds the title of agriculture secretary. They’re disillusioned to the point that it seems wise not to get too invested in USDA affairs, smart not to hold out hope for change. McGill didn’t even know that Biden had nominated Tom Vilsack, who was confirmed by the Senate on Tuesday. “It doesn’t really mean a whole lot,” he said.A change of some sort would have come if Ohio congresswoman Marcia Fudge, a senior member of the House agriculture committee, was selected, as had been anticipated – she would have been the first Black woman to serve as agriculture secretary (she was instead selected to be secretary of housing and urban development). Vilsack, who has spent the time between his two stints as agriculture secretary in a high-paying job in big ag, is more of the “same ol’, same ol’”, as McGill put it. He served two terms in the same role in the Obama administration. Many of Biden’s cabinet picks have been praised by progressives; Vilsack’s nomination was met with confusion at best, disappointment and anger at worst.In what could be seen as a response to the backlash, Biden nominated Jewel Bronaugh, currently Virginia agriculture commissioner, as Vilsack’s second-in-command. If confirmed, she would be the first woman of color to serve as deputy secretary of the department.Black farmers peaked in number in 1920 when there were 949,889; today there are only 48,697; they account for only 1.4% of the country’s 3.4 million farmers (95% of US farmers are white) and own 0.52% of America’s farmland. The acreage they have managed to hold on to is a quarter the size of white farmers’ acreage, on average. All of this is the result of egregious discrimination from the USDA that Black farmers faced for decades.Vilsack’s first term should have offered some hope – he was appointed by the first Black president, who also oversaw the 2010 $1.25bn settlement of Pigford II, the second part of a 1999 class-action lawsuit that alleged that from 1981 to 1997, USDA officials ignored complaints brought to them by Black farmers, and that they were denied loans and other support because of rampant discrimination. Instead, a two-year investigation by reporters at the Counter found that during Vilsack’s eight-year tenure under Obama, fewer loans were given to Black farmers than during the Bush administration, and the USDA foreclosed on Black farmers who had discrimination complaints outstanding, despite a 2008 farm bill moratorium on this practice.Many of those complaints were left unresolved. The report states that from 2006 to 2016, Black farmers were six times as likely to be foreclosed on as white farmers.This disappointment is compounded by Vilsack’s kneejerk firing in 2010 of Shirley Sherrod, a longtime Black farmer advocate and civil rights activist who was serving as the Georgia state director of rural development for the USDA, when a deceptively edited clip that made her appear racist towards a white farmer was circulated by the rightwing propagandist Andrew Breitbart. Vilsack later apologized and offered her a different high-level USDA role, which she declined.About an hour east of Oklahoma City in Wewoka, George Roberts farms 500 acres with his two brothers. A third-generation farmer, he was pulling for Fudge. “She could have understood what we were up against, she’s walked in our shoes. Pretty sure Vilsack never has,” he said.Roberts is familiar with why many Black farmers call the USDA the “last plantation”.“Because we are still answering to ‘boss’. Can we do this, can we do that? They still have their hand over us, saying: no, you can’t.”His father tried a few times for USDA loans, but “he didn’t have much luck,” Roberts said. “You get tired of getting slapped in the face. Hate beggin’. The more you beg the worse they treat you.”Roberts got a USDA loan of about $80,000 in 1982 – “That was rare especially back then. I was one of very few,” he said, referring to the chances of a Black farmer getting a loan. Today, instead of “going through all that red tape” and facing disappointment, he has set up a GoFundMe to hire labor for work he and his brothers, now each in their 60s, can no longer do. Meanwhile, they’ll keep farming one way or another, “because land is something they don’t make any more”, he said.Older Black farmers who mentored Thelonius Cook when he was just starting to farm in 2015 cautioned him against expecting any government help.“They told me don’t waste your time. And I get it,” he said of the older generation’s disillusionment. Still, Cook utilized USDA grant programs to help him purchase high tunnels and hoop houses, among other essentials, for his 7.5-acre plot of land in Virginia.“The younger generation is more willing to seek out what is available. I’ll take my reparations any way I can,” he said. “It’s never going to be enough. Aside from giving us land after so much was taken. That’s the ultimate goal. That’s how we can balance that deficit.”Karen Washington, who co-founded Rise & Root Farm in Chester, New York, six years ago, also understands the disappointment experienced by previous generations. “Older Black farmers have been hurt,” she said. “They’re throwing their hands up and saying, they’ve never done anything for us in the past, why would the Biden administration change anything?”But she said it was important to hold Vilsack accountable; she suggested he start by making amends with Sherrod, whose firing Washington said she felt personally betrayed by. “He needs to offer her a position,” she said. “Then, sit down with Black leaders to hammer what they want, not just what they need – which is capital for machinery, land, money to expand their operations,” she said. “Then put the resources and money – I mean millions – behind that.”In a prepared statement to the Senate agriculture committee, Vilsack wrote he would “take bold action” to address discrimination across USDA agencies and root out systemic racism, but failed to say how, nor was he pressed on it by any member of the committee during his hearing on Tuesday.Vilsack said in his opening remarks: “It’s a different time, and I’m a different person.” A new set of eyes will be watching for proof.“The younger generation of Black and brown farmers may have to carry the elders here,” Washington said. “Our numbers may be small, but our voices can be huge.” More

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      Deb Haaland faces hostile Republican questioning in confirmation hearing

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      Deb Haaland, seeking to make history as the first Native American to hold a cabinet secretary position in the US, has weathered a torrent of hostile questioning from Republicans during her confirmation hearing as secretary of the interior.In a striking opening statement, Haaland, a member of Congress for New Mexico, said: “The historic nature of my confirmation is not lost on me, but I will say that it is not about me,” adding that she hoped her elevation would “be an inspiration for Americans, moving forward together as one nation and creating opportunities for all of us”.A Laguna Pueblo member, Haaland, 60, said she had learned about her culture from her grandmother’s cooking and participating in traditional ceremonies, and had learned about the importance of protecting the environment from her grandfather. Haaland said “our climate challenge must be addressed” but conceded that fossil fuels would play a role in the US for “years to come”.Haaland is considered a progressive on the climate crisis and has spoken out on the impact of fossil fuel development upon the environment and Native American tribes, positions that Senate Republicans were keen to attack during a sometimes contentious confirmation hearing.John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican, criticized Haaland for a tweet from October 2020 in which she stated that “Republicans don’t believe in science”. Barrasso, who has incorrectly said the role of human activity in climate change is “not known” and that ambitious climate action in the form of the Green New Deal would mean “cheeseburgers and milkshakes would become a thing of the past”, said the tweet was “concerning to those of us who have gone through training, believe in science, and yet with a broad brush, we’re all disbelievers”.Haaland responded to Barrasso, a surgeon, saying: “If you’re a doctor, I would assume that you believe in science”. Scientists have repeatedly said that the US, and the rest of the world, needs to rapidly reduce planet-heating emissions from fossil fuels in order to prevent disastrous heatwaves, flooding and societal unrest associated with runaway climate change.The early exchange set the tone for more than two hours of questioning where Republicans repeatedly assailed Joe Biden’s decision to pause oil and gas drilling on federal lands as calamitous for jobs. As interior secretary, Haaland would oversee the management of lands that make up nearly a third of America’s landmass, including tribal lands.At times the questions were extremely pointed, with Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican, asking Haaland: “Will your administration be guided by a prejudice against fossil fuel, or will it be guided by science?” Importantly for the chances for Haaland’s nomination, Joe Manchin, a Democrat who represents the coal heartland of West Virginia, said that he wanted to see the “evolution, not elimination” of coal mining.Haaland said: “We want to move forward with clean energy, we want to get to net zero carbon” but also struck a conciliatory note with her questioners. The nominee said that changes to energy use “are not going to happen overnight” and that she looked forward to working with the senators. At one point when Steve Daines, a Montana Republican, asked why she supported a bill protecting grizzly bears, Haaland responded: “Senator, I believe I was caring about the bears.”Haaland had to repeatedly correct Republicans who said Biden had scrapped, rather than paused, oil and gas leases but acknowledged her role as a progressive champion would have to change somewhat if she were confirmed. “If I’m confirmed as secretary, that is far different role than a congresswoman representing one small district in my state,” she said. “So I understand that role, it’s to serve all Americans, not just my one district in New Mexico. I realize being cabinet is very different; I recognize there is a difference in those two roles.”During later questioning, Haaland raised the disproportionate impact of the Covid-19 pandemic upon Native Americans and raised concerns over tribes such as the Navajo being subjected to polluted water. In a response to a question from the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders about the opening up of an area sacred to native Americans in Arizona to mining, Haaland said she would “make sure that the voice of the tribal nation is heard on the issue”.Haaland’s nomination has been vigorously supported by environmental and Native American groups as a landmark moment to confront the climate crisis while addressing widespread inequities experienced by tribes.Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the steering committee for the Gwich’in people in Alaska, called Haaland a “visionary leader who knows we must protect places sacred to the American people like the Arctic national wildlife refuge.“Our way of life, our survival is interconnected to the land, water and animals. Today we honor the woman set to be the first Native American in history to fill a presidential cabinet position, and look forward to working with her to ensure that indigenous voices are heard and our human rights respected.”Nick Tilsen, president and CEO of the NDN Collective, a grassroots indigenous organization, said: “Today we watched Senator Daines mansplain and whitesplain to the Honorable Deb Haaland about public lands and the impacts of poverty – issues he knows nothing about and that Haaland has actual lived and professional experience addressing. These microaggressions and racism on full display only further solidified the need for strong Indigenous Women’s leadership in the highest places of government.” More

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      AOC criticizes Manchin over apparent targeting of Biden’s nominees of color

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has stepped into the intensifying dispute around the treatment of women and people of color nominated to top jobs in the Biden administration, as the confirmation process in the US Senate begins to sour.The leftwing Democratic congresswoman waded into the debate amid growing concerns in progressive circles that Joe Biden’s nominees from minority backgrounds are being singled out for especially harsh scrutiny.Several women of color are facing daunting hurdles to confirmation with Republicans withholding backing and the Democratic majority in the Senate imperiled by the opposition of the conservative Democrat, Joe Manchin.The senator from West Virginia announced on Friday he would oppose the candidacy of Neera Tanden to become the first Asian American woman to fill the post of budget director. On Monday he also indicated that he was having doubts about Deb Haaland, who would become the first Native woman to take a cabinet seat.With the Senate evenly divided at 50-50 seats, Manchin’s no vote can only be overturned if moderate Republicans can be found willing to back the nominees. So far, however, such cross-aisle support has been hard to find, with Susan Collins of Maine, Mitt Romney of Utah and Rob Portman of Ohio all expressing likely opposition to Tanden.In a tweet on Monday, Ocasio-Cortez turned the spotlight onto the record of Manchin himself. She pointed out that the Democratic senator had voted to confirm Jeff Sessions as Donald Trump’s first attorney general despite the fact that the former senator from Alabama was dogged with accusations of racism throughout his career.“Jeff Sessions was so openly racist that even Reagan couldn’t appoint him,” Ocasio-Cortez said, adding that as attorney general, Sessions went on to preside over the brutal family separation policy at the US border with Mexico.“Yet the first Native woman to be Cabinet Sec is where Manchin finds unease?” she posted.The apparent targeting of Biden’s nominees of color has started to generate mounting frustration and anger. Judy Chu, a Democratic congresswoman who leads the Congressional Asian Pacific American caucus, told Politico that “there’s a double standard going on” in the treatment of Tanden whose prospects of leading the Office of Management and Budget are now dwindling.The president of the NAACP, Derrick Johnson, told Politico that the outcome of the confirmation votes would make clear “whether or not those individuals who are women or people of color are receiving a different level of scrutiny. I hope we will course-correct, quickly, and not allow that to be a legacy of the Senate”.The sense of unequal treatment has been heightened by the heavy focus by Manchin and others on Tanden’s Twitter feed. In her current role as president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, she frequently posted spiky and direct tweets without mincing her words, more than 1,000 of which she has since deleted.Tanden notably called Collins, one of the Republican senators who has declined to come to her rescue, “the worst”.Yet Manchin was content to confirm some of Trump’s nominees with highly controversial social media histories, while Trump himself made many racist and sexist tweets and is now permanently suspended from Twitter.“We can disagree with her tweets, but in the past, Trump nominees that they’ve confirmed and supported had much more serious issues and conflicts than just something that was written on Twitter,” the Democratic congresswoman Grace Meng told Politico. More

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      Neera Tanden confirmation seems unlikely after moderate Republicans oppose her

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      Neera Tanden, president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, seemed unlikely to be confirmed as budget director in the Biden administration after Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, two moderate Republican senators, said they would not vote in her favour.In a statement on Monday, Collins said Tanden was unfit to run the Office of Management and Budget, which plays a powerful role in overseeing federal finances and regulation.“Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,” the Maine senator said.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, backed Tanden, who she said was “an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent budget director”.“We look forward to the committee votes this week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties,” Psaki said.But then a spokesperson for Romney said the Utah senator would not back Tanden. Romney had been “critical of extreme rhetoric from prior nominees”, the spokesperson said, “and this is consistent with that position. He believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”Such a position might seem paradoxical for a party that just endured four years of Donald Trump’s offensive and intemperate tweets. But much of the Republican attack on Tanden, who has strong links to Hillary Clinton, has focused on her social media record.Collins noted Tanden’s decision quietly to delete more than 1,000 tweets in the days after the election. Several of the tweets attacked Republican members of Congress, including Collins, whom Tanden described as “the worst”. Collins said the deletion of the tweets “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency”.Collins and Romney’s opposition delivered a blow to Joe Biden as he struggles to fill his cabinet. Several other key nominations are lining up for confirmation in the Senate but Collins made her move just three days after the Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, said he would vote against Tanden.With the Senate split 50-50, Manchin’s defection meant the administration already needed to persuade at least one moderate Republican to come on board. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a possible vote for Tanden, has not yet indicated her intention.The White House is on tenterhooks with its efforts to fill cabinet posts. On Monday one of the most critical positions – that of attorney general, the country’s top prosecutor – went before the Senate judiciary committee.It was an especially poignant moment for the nominee, Merrick Garland, who five years ago was denied a confirmation hearing for a seat on the supreme court by the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.Beyond Garland, Deb Haaland is up for confirmation hearings as interior secretary and Xavier Becerra as health and human services secretary. More

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      Texas Republican hypocrisy over federal aid is nothing new – ask Flyin' Ted Cruz | Lloyd Green

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      Texas has been hit by a disaster of its own making and its Republican office holders expect the rest of the US to pay to clean up the mess. To quote Dana Bash of CNN questioning Michael McCaul, a veteran GOP congressman, on Sunday: “That’s kind of rich, don’t you think?”
      For all of their bravado and anti-government rhetoric, in the aftermath of calamities like last week’s deep freeze Lone Star Republicans make a habit of passing the plate. Their suffering is ours too.
      But when the shoe is on the other foot, they begrudge kindness to others. Said differently, Ted Cruz is merely a grotesque illustration, not an exception.
      Take a walk down memory lane. In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hammered New York and New Jersey. As the north-east reeled, Texas Republicans stood back, treating the region as if it were another country. As if the civil war had not ended.
      After the turn of the year, Cruz, his fellow senator John Cornyn and 23 of two-dozen Texas Republicans in the House gave a thumbs down to Sandy aid. Less reflexively hostile heads prevailed. The relief bill cleared Congress. But the GOP’s Texans had left their mark.
      Peter King, then a Republican representative from Long Island, understood malice and stupidity when he saw it. He called for a halt to donations to Republicans who opposed rescuing sister states.
      “These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they’re out raising millions of dollars,” King said. “What they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.”
      But Cruz in particular is nothing if not performative, ever Janus-faced. After Hurricane Harvey slammed Houston in 2017, he offered this explanation for his vote four years earlier: Sandy relief had become “a $50bn bill that was filled with unrelated pork”.
      Cruz also intoned: “What I said then and still believe now is that it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster when people are hurting to pay for their own political wish list.”
      Other than possibly Cruz’s long-suffering wife, it is unclear whether anyone believed Flyin’ Ted even then.
      Cruz may have flown home alone, leaving his family in Cancun, but he is not alone among Texas Republicans in hating Blue America. He is just the most notorious. Unlike congressman Louie Gohmert, Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard. He should and likely does know better.
      In 2019, as part of Donald Trump’s overhaul of the tax laws, Kevin Brady, a Texan then chair of the House ways and means committee, virtually eliminated the deductibility of state and local taxes from federal tax returns, in order to pay for an upper-bracket and corporate giveaway. New York and New Jersey are still feeling the bite.
      Under Trump, the economy failed to pass 3% growth annually and a much-touted manufacturing renaissance failed to appear. Covid made a bad situation worse.
      And now, lo and behold, Texas is forced, cap in hand, to pucker up to a Democratic House, Senate and White House. Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader and a native of Brooklyn, must be suppressing a smile.
      To be sure, the federal government and Congress must help Texas. No ifs, ands or buts. Joe Biden is treating the state a whole better than Trump did Puerto Rico. That’s a good thing.
      Innocent lives have been lost and upended in the name of retrograde ideology masked as policy. Real people, families and business have been destroyed. Climate change denial comes with a high human cost. Standing apart from the national electric grid isn’t independence. It is a death wish by another name.
      Confederacy 2.0.
      Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the breakaway states, summed up this attitude in 1861: “If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah River has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden.”
      Sounds familiar?
      Other than when it came to repelling Abraham Lincoln, the Confederacy was not a mutual assistance pact. Before this latest man-made debacle, Republicans were dreaming of drowning government in a bathtub. Hopefully, in Texas that may change. More

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      Fauci laments 'historic' Covid toll as US nears 500,000 deaths

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      As the US approached half a million Covid-19 deaths, the country’s top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, struggled for words to convey the grim magnitude of the death toll from the pandemic.“It’s terrible,” he told CNN’s State of the Union on Sunday. “It’s really horrible. It is something that is historic. It’s nothing like we’ve ever been through in the last 102 years, since the 1918 influenza pandemic.”Fauci added that “decades from now” people would be “talking about this a terribly historic milestone in the history of this country. To have these many people to have died from a respiratory born infection, it really is a terrible situation that we’ve been through and that we’re still going through.”The US death toll stood at 497,957, according to Johns Hopkins University. The US has long had the highest Covid-19 death toll of any country. According to the World Health Organization it has one of the worst per capita death rates, at 148.61 per 100,000. Countries including the UK, Italy and Portugal have higher per capita rates.Although infection rates have been steadily declining since record highs in early January, the US still recorded 13,347 deaths and more than 500,000 new cases in the past week, according to Johns Hopkins.Last week an average of 1.32m vaccines were administered each day, according to a tracker by Bloomberg News. The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said more than 61m doses had been administered in the US, with about 5.47% of the population now fully vaccinated.Fauci, who is President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, acknowledged in an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press that cold weather across the US south had set back vaccine rollout, but projected the deficit would be made up by the middle of next week.“It’s a temporary setback,” he said. “And when you just, you know, put your foot to the accelerator and really push, we’ll get it up to where we need to be by the middle of the week.”The Biden administration has pledged to administer 150m vaccinations by 29 April.On CNN, Fauci acknowledged that despite the rollout of vaccines, Americans could still be asked to wear masks into 2022.“I think it is possible that that’s the case,” Fauci said. “It depends on what you mean by normality … if normality means exactly the way things were before we had this happen to us … I can’t predict that. Obviously I think we’ll have a significant degree of normality beyond the terrible burden that all of us have been through over the last year.”Fauci added that only when transmission rates fell significantly and vaccines had been rolled out to the point of “minimal, minimal threat” of transmission would mask requirements begin to be dropped.“When it [transmission] goes way down and the overwhelming majority of the people in the population are vaccinated, then I would feel comfortable in saying, you know, ‘We need to pull back on the masks’,” he said.Elsewhere on Sunday, former deputy national security adviser Matt Pottinger told CBS the Trump administration “misjudged” the need to advocate for mask-wearing a year ago, in the early stages of the pandemic.“We misjudged the nature of this thing to think that it was like flu,” he told Face the Nation. “One of the mistakes that followed on from that was the misjudgment by public health officials in this country to not advocate for the widespread generalised use of face coverings, cloth masks, surgical masks and what have you.”Pottinger continued: “The mask misstep cost us dearly. It was the one tool that was widely available, at least homemade, you know, cotton masks were widely available. It was the one effective, widely available tool that we had in the arsenal to deal with this. But public health officials were stuck in this sort of flu mentality. It was a grave misstep.” More

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      Merrick Garland vows to target white supremacists as attorney general

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      At his Senate hearing on Monday, attorney general nominee Merrick Garland will pledge to prosecute “white supremacists and others” who attacked the US Capitol on 6 January, in support of Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn his election defeat.The pledge was contained in Garland’s opening testimony for the session before the Senate judiciary committee, released on Saturday night.“If confirmed,” Garland said, ‘I will supervise the prosecution of white supremacists and others who stormed the Capitol on 6 January – a heinous attack that sought to disrupt a cornerstone of our democracy: the peaceful transfer of power to a newly elected government.”Five people including a police officer died as a direct result of the attack on the Capitol, before which Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” against the result of the presidential election. Trump lost to Joe Biden by 306-232 in the electoral college and by more than 7m ballots in the popular vote. More than 250 participants in the Capitol riot have been charged. As NPR reported, “the defendants are predominantly white and male, though there were exceptions. “Federal prosecutors say a former member of the Latin Kings gang joined the mob, as did two Virginia police officers. A man in a ‘Camp Auschwitz’ sweatshirt took part, as did a Messianic Rabbi. Far-right militia members decked out in tactical gear rioted next to a county commissioner, a New York City sanitation worker, and a two-time Olympic gold medalist.”In his testimony, Garland made reference to his role from 1995 to 1997 in supervising the prosecution of the perpetrators of the Oklahoma City Bombing, a white supremacist atrocity in which 168 people including 19 children were killed.Trump was impeached for a second time on a charge of inciting an insurrection but was acquitted after only seven Republicans joined Democrats in the Senate in voting to convict, 10 short of the majority needed.“It is a fitting time,” Garland said, “to reaffirm that the role of the attorney general is to serve the rule of law and to ensure equal justice under the law.”The 68-year-old federal appeals judge was famously denied even a hearing in 2016 when Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell blocked him as Barack Obama’s third pick for the supreme court.Biden’s selection of Garland for attorney general is seen as a conciliatory move in a capital controlled by Democrats but only by slim margins, the Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris the tie-breaking vote.In his testimony, Garland said he would be independent from Biden, being sure to “strictly regulate communication with the White House” and working as “the lawyer … for the people of the United States”.Trump pressured his first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to do his bidding, then saw his second, William Barr, largely do so, running interference on the investigation of Russian election interference and ties between Trump and Moscow. If confirmed, Garland will face sensitive decisions over matters including Trump, now exposed to criminal and civil investigation, and Hunter Biden, the new president’s son whose tax affairs are in question as he remains a target for much of the right.Some on the left have expressed concern that Garland might be too politically moderate. Black Lives Matter founder LaTosha Brown, for example, told the Guardian: “My concern is that he does not have a strong civil rights history … even when Obama nominated him, one of the critiques was that he was making a compromise with what he thought was a ‘clean’ candidate to get through.”In his testimony, Garland said justice department civil rights work must be improved.“Communities of colour and other minorities still face discrimination in housing, education, employment, and the criminal justice system,” he said, “and bear the brunt of the harm caused by pandemic, pollution, and climate change.”Garland is expected to be confirmed. More