Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      America is broken – can Biden and Harris put it back together?

      by

      In another age, Joe Biden’s promise to heal the nation might have been regarded as the kind of blandishment expected from any new leader taking power after the divisive cut and thrust of an American election.But the next president will repeat the oath of office on Wednesday sealed off from those he governs by a global pandemic and the threat of violence from his predecessor’s supporters. Biden steps into the White House facing the unprecedented challenge not only of healing a country grappling with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world but a nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.Surging Covid infections would have discouraged the crowds who usually turn out on the National Mall to welcome a new president. But the storming of Congress by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in support of Trump has prompted an almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.“The country is in a dangerous place,” he said during the election campaign. “Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end”.•••The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president. Five people died, including a member of the Capitol police.Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president. What will it take to even begin to heal the country, as Trump is likely to maintain his role as agitator in chief? The incoming president also faces a moment of racial reckoning in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that have given new urgency of demands for America to reconcile with a bitter past and present.Polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short termCan Bideneven hold together the Democratic party, as its more liberal wing advocates for police reform, a green new deal and public healthcare – not policy positions which all moderates support.“We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short term,” said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.“The question is whether over a little bit longer term, let’s say over the course of the year, whether Biden can win over a segment of the population to create a majority that is both willing to give him a chance and is not unhappy with his performance. That’s up in the air but I don’t think it’s inconceivable.”The clamour for change that elected Barack Obama and then Trump has not gone away, and large numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them. For many Democrats, the key to addressing that is to think big and deliver while the party controls both houses of Congress, which may be for no more than two years.The incoming president faces the immediate challenge of intertwined health and economic crises caused by a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000. Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus has left testing and vaccination rates woefully short of his promises, and unemployment claims are rising sharply again as the economy struggles with the latest wave of shutdowns, infections and deaths.Biden is likely to be judged swiftly on his ability to accelerate the pace of inoculations, presenting the opportunity to create early goodwill and momentum.In an early sign that he wants to be seen to act decisively, Biden on Thursday outlined $1.9tn in emergency relief, called the American Rescue Plan, including $400bn to deliver 100m vaccines in his first 100 days. The plan also directs more than $1tn to Americans through individual economic stimulus payments of $1,400 and increased unemployment benefits. It proposes more than doubling the national minimum wage to $15 an hour alongside other measure to alleviate child poverty.Biden has said the plan is only an interim measure and that more money will come. But even the present proposal will be too much for most Republicans in Congress and the bill will provide an early test of how far they are prepared to cooperate or if they will pursue the same obstructionist strategy deployed against Obama.Biden has the advantage of control but only by a slim margin in the House of Representatives and by relying on Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote in the Senate. A lack of votes for the full package may force Biden to scale back his proposals but with them the incoming president put down a marker.David Paul Kuhn, author of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution, about the Democrats’ loss of their traditional blue collar base, said the incoming president has spoken more clearly about the struggle of working class communities than any since Bill Clinton in the 1990s.“Biden’s done a good job in sounding measured in a hyper-polarised environment, and that’s really important,” he said. “He gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgotten and that he sees them now. Those were comments that we haven’t heard from any Democrat, like on the dignity of work, since Clinton. It was a significant step in the right direction.”Biden’s ability to deliver across a range of issues is something that preoccupies his supporters. Some Democrats are haunted by what they regard as a central lesson from the Obama years – the failure to seize the opportunities offered by the Great Recession when he took office in 2009, to reform an economic system that has worked against most Americans for at least four decades. To a part of America, Obama lookedto have rescued the banks while abandoning millions of ordinary people who lost their homes to foreclosure – helping drive some of the shift to Trump in 2016.Biden gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgottenKuhn said Biden would do well to heed the lesson: “Barack Obama was talking about a new New Deal leading into December 2008 but there was no new New Deal. When Joe Biden was vice-president, there are the voters who lost the most jobs during the Great Recession while they saw stimulus payments going to the fat cats on Wall Street.”The pandemic has helped lay the ground for bold policies by once again exposing deep economic inequalities and the precarious financial position of large numbers of Americans. But Biden will have to tread carefully over key legislation pushed by the left of his party, particularly the green new deal which is hugely popular among some Democrats but reviled in parts of the country. Some Democrats think a relatively easy path would be a major spending bill to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, such as dangerously old bridges and dams, as well as new projects like high-speed rail. It would not only offer a vehicle to address some environmental issues but provide jobs and investment in some of the most neglected parts of the country.“An infrastructure bill might include a lot of clean energy but it would not be mistaken for the green new deal. It’s a good compromise that’s actually conceivably possible,” said Franklin.“I think infrastructure, of all the issues we deal with, it’s one that most easily resonates with working people, whether it’s construction work or highways, or water mains or electrical utilities. The irony is Trump talked a lot about infrastructure but never put forward a bill, when his own party probably would have thought it was pretty good.”•••Another challenge for Biden is to develop policies to address a sense of abandonment felt in mostly white rust belt and midwestern rural communities that were once solidly Democratwhile also addressing racial inequality and discrimination.“Biden talked about blue collar workers in his background, the people he grew up with,” said Franklin. “I thought that was an attempt to reach that disaffected blue collar, but not theneo-nazi Klan racist segment of the population. He tried to speak directly to those folks in a way that many see the Democratic party more generally is failing to do.”Kuhn said Biden should go further: “If he’s talking about common cause, he can push back against this fashionable notion in the United States that these families living pay cheque to pay cheque, that their struggle through life is actually a ‘privilege’ because they are white. Clearly, some portion of the American right feel that their frustrations don’t matter, because they happen also be white. ”Lilliana Mason, a professor of politics and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity disagrees. She sees communities that provided bedrock support for Trump’s white nationalism and questions whether Biden will find backing even for programmes that help them.“There’s this increasing inequality which has created this kind of rural white Republican identity that’s based on white rural people feeling condescended to and that no one really listens to their needs,” she said. “But there’s also this resentment that their tax dollars go to the cities and to black people. They don’t want their tax dollars to help other people, meaning black people, even while it helps them.”The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressedThose resentments may run even deeper if Biden follows through on promises to confront the challenge of building racial reconciliation in the age of resurgent white nationalism.Any incoming Democratic president faces pressure to address the legacy of centuries of systematic racism. The killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that followed and Trump’s feeding of hate has given an added urgency to demands for action.In his victory speech after beating Trump, Biden said he would “battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country”. His choice of Kamala Harris as vice-president was read as a statement that he will take racial equality seriously and he has nominated the most diverse cabinet in US history.But Biden failed to heed a call from the National Association for the Advancement Colored People to go further and create a new cabinet post “for racial justice, equity and advancement”. The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, called the move a “bold action” that would demonstrate the incoming president’s commitment to elevating racial justice as a priority.“The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressed, and after four years of regression on social, civil, and political matters that profoundly impact the American people, specifically, black people, we must prioritise the transformation of our nation into a more just, equal society in which all Americans can succeed and thrive,” he said.Biden has promised a raft of investments in creating in creating business opportunities, promoting homeownership and giving more education and training opportunities to underserved communities.But the new president remains cautious about how police reform will be read in the rest of the country. He told civil rights leaders that the cry to “defund the police” after Floyd’s death was misunderstood and damaging to the Democratic party, particularly candidates for Congress and in state races. Organisers in the rural midwest said the slogan, and the violence around some protests, was a major reason Trump’s vote went up in November, even in swing counties twice won by Obama.“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Biden said last month according to an audio recording of a meeting published by the Intercept.He promised that there will be significant changes to the police but said how they are framed is important in winning broader public support. Franklin said there is a path that could unite not divide Americans.“When you ask about defund the police, it’s about 20% that favour of that. But when you talk about reform the police and hold police accountable, it’s like 70% or 80% in favour. Policing is very high on everybody’s list.”Biden will remain under pressure from black voters who were instrumental in his defeat of Trump, turning out in large numbers in midwestern cities to offset the white rural vote. They will want to know that their concerns are not just being heard but addressed, and that police reforms run deep as a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to racial reconciliation.Biden will also be under pressure from African American members of Congress, not least the majority whip, James Clyburn, who rescued the new president’s primary campaign a year ago.At the time Clyburn spoke of his own fears a year ago as he urged primary voters in South Carolina to back Biden who was on the back foot after a humiliating defeat in Iowa. “We are at an inflection point. I’m fearful for my daughters and their future and their children and their children’s future,” he saidThat speech helped Biden win South Carolina. A year later, it gives Clyburn leverage and the new president’s ear in ensuring the promise of racial reconciliation is not compromised by the desire to win over discontented whites.Biden’s criminal justice plan includes scrapping disparate sentencing for drug crimes that frequently results in longer sentences for African Americans for similar offences to those committed by whites, and for decriminalising marijuana.Biden also has a political incentive to confront voting rights for minorities given the escalation in Republican-controlled states of voter suppression which disproportionately keeps black people away from the polls.•••There are other policies likely to win support among large numbers of Americans, including some Trump voters, that would benefit underserved communities in particular.Biden has promised to write off up to $10,000 in student debt owed to the federal government. Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the issue was a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to helping the working poor.“There are a lot of people who came out to vote in this election who frankly did it as their last shot at seeing whether the government can really work for them,” she told the New York Times. “If we don’t deliver quick relief, it’s going to be very difficult to get them back.”Biden will be attempting to heal the divide in the face of what is expected to be a drumbeat of hostility from Trump who shows every intention of continuing to whip up anger and hate. At the core will be the claim that Biden stole the election, a powerful mantra among a section of voters that will keep the pressure on Republican legislators not to cooperate with the new president.Mason said whatever Biden does, the divisions in the country will remain stark.“It’s not just that those Trump supporters don’t like it that Biden’s president,” she said, “it’s that they fully believe that the election was stolen and he’s an illegitimate president. And as long as there are Republican leaders who are going to keep telling them that lie, they’re going to keep believing it. So to that extent, I don’t see any way to get away from a whole bunch of domestic terrorism happening during Biden’s term.” More

    • 213 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Abraham Lincoln is America's better angel – Joe Biden must draw on his spirit | Ted Widmer

      by

      When the President-elect Joe Biden gives his inaugural address on Wednesday, one former president will tower above all others, and not merely because of his celebrated stovepipe hat.Abraham Lincoln is always famous, but he turns into something more than that when Americans are bitterly divided. In moments of crisis, he becomes a kind of guardian angel, not unlike the phrase he was looking for when he closed out his own inaugural address in 1861. Given “guardian angel” by his adviser, the New York senator William Seward, he improved it to “better angel”.So surely did he find the moment that politicians are still laboring to come up with anything new. After the Capitol putsch of 6 January, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, lamely called on Republicans to find their “better angels”, after they sought to garotte the vice-president.Centuries from now, archeologists may have trouble piecing together the values that drove the US between 2017 and 2021. There may be a few signs – a golf cart here … a My Pillow there … and all of the phones, by the millions, rusting in the shallow waters that cover Washington, with just the statue of Armed Freedom pointing above the waves.But the actual ethics of this complex society may be elusive, as remains the case with other four-year realms.That is why Lincoln still speaks to us, unlike so many presidents. His moral compass worked. He was elected at a time when no one in their right mind would have wanted the job. Despite constant hatred from his enemies, he fought to unite Americans and in doing so he restored a measure of racial justice. He reminded them that their own words were important, and the truth mattered. That helped the country live up to its ideals, as expressed in the declaration of independence. He did all of these things while writing in a kind of prose poetry that still sounds musical.Lincoln delivered two inaugural addresses, each clairvoyant about problems the nation would face. In 1861, he asked Americans not to go to war; in 1865, he asked them to come back together, “with malice toward none; with charity for all.” Those two speeches, standing like bookends at the beginning and end of the civil war, feel especially relevant in the dark winter of 2020-21, when charity is in such short supply.Lincoln appeared briefly on 6 January, the night of the Capitol putsch, as Biden quoted from the 1862 annual message, in an attempt to calm the waters.It would not be surprising if Lincoln returned during the inaugural address at the Capitol on 20 January. In 1861, the Capitol was already a battleground, filled with treasonous southern politicians who had stayed in Washington while their colleagues were leading an effort to launch a new country, founded upon slavery. Lincoln deftly walked through those landmines, delivering an effective speech that pleaded for Americans to remain a single country. It was a lawyer’s speech, rejecting the argument for secession, but it included a poet’s peroration, the final paragraph in which Lincoln asked the south to pause before separating.“We are not enemies, but friends,” he wrote, in language that would sound just as resonant in 2021. “We must not be enemies.”Four years later, Lincoln returned for another inaugural. This time he was more preacher than lawyer, seeking to explain the shocking sacrifice of 750,000, a number we continue to revise upward. Americans badly needed a message of redemption.Lincoln found it, using his gift for language and some stagecraft too. Behind him, the same Capitol that had looked so forlorn four years earlier was now completed, with a sparkling new dome and that curious statue on top – cast by an African American liberated by Lincoln. As the president spoke, he stood next to a table constructed from materials used to complete the dome.But Lincoln was too honest to simply say good had prevailed over evil. With a deceptive simplicity – there were only 703 words, 505 with one-syllable – he delivered a kind of theological self-assessment unlike any other presidential speech. It acknowledged blame for “American slavery” – notably, he did not say “southern slavery”. But it also accused slavery’s defenders of a gaudy and insincere patriotism, fortified by violence rather than truth, as evidenced by their willingness to “make war rather than let the nation survive”. In the end, resorting to violence was a shabby way to promote democracy.Lincoln quoted the Bible liberally, to explore the ways in which Americans might atone for their sins. That was new territory for a president, especially one with unconventional views of his own. But Lincoln’s faith had intensified, perhaps in some measure because of his own severe trauma as the parent of a beloved child who died. After proposing that God might have wanted the civil war to come, to atone for the crime of slavery, Lincoln softened again, as he did at the end of the first inaugural.He concluded by asking Americans to be gentle with each other, to take care of the widows and orphans dotting the landscape, and the amputees attending the ceremony. African American soldiers were out in force as well, as seen in one striking photograph from that day.That was another improvement: African Americans were not allowed on the grounds of the Capitol at previous inaugurations.In 1865, as recounted by a fine book, Edward Achorn’s Every Drop of Blood, many distinguished Americans attended. Among them were a well-known actor, John Wilkes Booth, and a leading African American author, Frederick Douglass, each feeling quite differently as Lincoln summoned a kind of Old Testament anger against the sin of racial injustice. Lincoln and Booth both loved Shakespeare. Booth may have felt he was on another stage, contemplating the murder of a Caesar, likewise killed in a Capitol.That tragedy played out six weeks later. But Booth could not extinguish Lincoln’s words. Instead of giving Americans a simplistic message of self-congratulation, Lincoln had delivered a sterner measure, one that offered the tools for self-salvation. In a country still struggling to live up to its ideals, that remains a potent message. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      Kamala’s Way review: Harris as symbol of hope – and hard politics

      by

      The president of the United States spent weeks recruiting then inciting a mob to invade Congress and prevent the certification of his opponent’s victory. The intruders killed one police officer and injured more than a dozen, pummeling them with everything from flagstaffs to fire extinguishers.Democratic House members talked openly about feeling threatened in the presence of newly-elected white supremacist, QAnon-friendly colleagues across the aisle, as evidence grew that several such gun-toting Republicans may have directly collaborated with the lovely people who tried to destroy their workspace.All this after the president issued waves of pardons for war criminals and stock manipulators – and, perhaps, just before a new wave of pardons for himself, his family and everyone he incited to destroy the Capitol.After being assaulted for four long years with so much evidence of American venality, now more than ever we need to remind ourselves that a new and hopeful era will begin just three days from now – thanks to the extraordinary hard work of a majority of decent, voting Americans.Yes, 74 million inexplicably voted to re-elect the most corrupt and incompetent president in American history. But surely this is the more important fact: 81 million chose Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, thereby giving us the first woman, the first African American and the first Indian American ever to serve as vice-president.She’s prepared, she’s focused, she’s smart, she’s effective, she does her homework. And that’s the coin of the realmThe good news from the author of this new biography of Harris is that even a former editorial writer who endorsed Harris’ opponent when she ran for California attorney general now recognizes she is supremely qualified to be Biden’s governing partner.“Kamala Harris comes to play … every single day,” said her Senate colleague Ron Wyden, from Oregon. “She’s prepared, she’s focused, she’s smart, she’s effective, she does her homework. And that’s really the coin of the realm of the Senate: who’s doing their homework and who’s just throwing press releases out for a 10-second sizzle.”In this case, heritage is almost as important as talent. The daughter of a Jamaican-born economist and Indian-born cancer researcher, Harris embodies the American immigrant dream – and everything Donald Trump and his disgusting minions have spent four years seeking to destroy.Dan Morain is a former state political reporter for the Los Angeles Times and former editorial page editor of the Sacramento Bee but he doesn’t have any scoops in Kamala’s Way. He has done a workmanlike job of assessing her passions and her accomplishments. But often his best details are lifted directly from her own autobiography, including this description of her life as an undergraduate at Howard University, America’s premier black college in Washington DC:
      “You could stand in the middle of the Yard and see, on your right, young dancers practicing their steps or musicians playing instruments. Look to your left and there were briefcase-toting students strolling out of the business school, and medical students in their white coats … That was the beauty of Howard. Every signal told students that we could be anything – that we were young, gifted and black, and we shouldn’t let anything get in the way of our success.”
      One thing Harris doesn’t describe in her autobiography is the jump start her career got from a romance with Willie Brown, the grand old man of California politics, a long-time speaker of the state assembly who became mayor of San Francisco. Harris was just 30 when she was outed as Brown’s girlfriend at his 60th birthday party. The legendary San Francisco columnist, Herb Caen, reported that Clint Eastwood spilled champagne “on the Speaker’s new steady, Kamala Harris”.The political education she received from Brown undoubtedly contributed to her rapid rise, from San Francisco district attorney to California attorney general to United States senator. But even as she enjoyed the usual perks of a California politician, crossing paths with everyone from Elton John to George Lucas and Sharon Stone, Harris was always impressing colleagues with her seriousness – from early advocacy for marriage equality to determination to get $20bn out of the nation’s largest banks as punishment for their abuses of the foreclosure process after the collapse of the housing bubble.She was also an enthusiastic enforcer of a California law that takes guns out of the hands of convicted felons.By the time she ran her first campaign for DA, eight years after her romance with Brown was over, she didn’t hesitate to call him her “albatross”. In a clever bit of political jiujitsu, she told SF Weekly: “I refuse to design my campaign around criticizing Willie Brown for the sake of appearing to be independent when I have no doubt that I am independent of him – and that he would probably right now express some fright about the fact that he cannot control me. His career is over; I will be alive and kicking for the next 40 years.”From the beginning she was a superb networker, becoming one of Barack Obama’s earliest supporters when he ran for president, befriending Joe Biden’s son Beau when both were state attorneys general. In the Senate, she was appropriately abrasive when she interrogated Trump’s cabinet nominees. But she was also careful to be much more respectful of Senate staffers than many other senators.All her life, Harris has made a habit of exceeding expectations. This book suggests she will do that again as vice-president – and that one day she might also excel as America’s first woman, first Indian and second Black president. More

    • 200 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden cannot govern from the center – quashing Trumpism demands radical action | Robert Reich

      by

      I keep hearing that Joe Biden will govern from the “center”. He has no choice, they say, because he will have razor-thin majorities in Congress and the Republican party has moved to the right.Rubbish. I’ve served several Democratic presidents who have needed Republican votes. But the Republicans now in Congress are nothing like those I’ve dealt with. Most of today’s GOP live in a parallel universe. There’s no “center” between the reality-based world and theirs.Last Wednesday, fully 93% of House Republicans voted against impeaching Trump for inciting insurrection, even after his attempted coup threatened their very lives.The week before, immediately following the raid on the Capitol, two-thirds of House Republicans and eight Republican senators refused to certify election results on the basis of Trump’s lies about widespread fraud – lies rejected by 60 federal judges as well as Trump’s own departments of justice and homeland security.Prior to the raid, several Republican members of Congress repeated those lies on television and Twitter and at “Stop the Steal” events – encouraging Trump followers to “fight for America” and start “kicking ass”.This is the culmination of the growing insanity of the GOP over the last four years. Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiracies.More than half of Republican voters – almost 40 million people – believe Trump won the 2020 race; 45% support the storming of the Capitol; 57% say he should be the Republican candidate in 2024.Trump has remade the Republican party into a white supremacist cult living within a counter-factual wonderland of lies and conspiraciesIn this hermetically sealed cosmos, most Republicans believe Black Lives Matter protesters are violent, immigrants are dangerous and the climate crisis doesn’t pose a threat. A growing fringe openly talks of redressing grievances through violence, including QAnon conspiracy theorists, of whom two are newly elected to Congress, who think Democrats are running a global child sex-trafficking operation.How can Biden possibly be a “centrist” in this new political world?There is no middle ground between lies and facts. There is no halfway point between civil discourse and violence. There is no midrange between democracy and fascism.Biden must boldly and unreservedly speak truth, refuse to compromise with violent Trumpism and ceaselessly fight for democracy and inclusion.Speaking truth means responding to the world as it is and denouncing the poisonous deceptions engulfing the right. It means repudiating false equivalences and “both sidesism” that gives equal weight to trumpery and truth. It means protecting and advancing science, standing on the side of logic, calling out deceit and impugning baseless conspiracy theories and those who abet them.Refusing to compromise with violent Trumpism means renouncing the lawlessness of Trump and his enablers and punishing all who looted the public trust. It means convicting Trump of impeachable offenses and ensuring he can never again hold public office – not as a “distraction” from Biden’s agenda but as a central means of re-establishing civility, which must be a cornerstone of that agenda.Strengthening democracy means getting big money out of politics, strengthening voting rights and fighting voter suppression in all its forms.It means boldly advancing the needs of average people over the plutocrats and oligarchs, of the white working class as well as Black and Latino people. It means embracing the ongoing struggle for racial justice and the struggle of blue-collar workers whose fortunes have been declining for decades.The moment calls for public investment on a scale far greater than necessary for Covid relief or “stimulus” – large enough to begin the restructuring of the economy. America needs to create a vast number of new jobs leading to higher wages, reversing racial exclusion as well as the downward trajectory of Americans whose anger and resentment Trump cynically exploited.This would include universal early childhood education, universal access to the internet, world-class schools and public universities accessible to all. Converting to solar and wind energy and making America’s entire stock of housing and commercial buildings carbon neutral. Investing in basic research – the gateway to the technologies of the future as well as national security – along with public health and universal healthcare.It is not a question of affordability. Such an agenda won’t burden future generations. It will reduce the burden on future generations.It is a question of political will. It requires a recognition that there is no longer a “center” but a future based either on lies, violence and authoritarianism or on unyielding truth, unshakeable civility and radical inclusion. And it requires a passionate, uncompromising commitment to the latter. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Washington: man arrested with fake inaugural ID and loaded gun – report

      by

      Officers in Washington DC arrested a Virginia man who tried to pass through a Capitol police checkpoint carrying fake inaugural credentials, a loaded handgun and more than 500 rounds of ammunition, CNN reported, citing a police report and a law enforcement source.Capitol police officials could not immediately be reached for comment.Responding to news of the arrest, the Democratic US representative Don Beyer of Virginia said the danger was real and the city was on edge as Joe Biden’s inauguration approaches.“Anyone who can avoid the area around the Capitol and Mall this week should do so,” Beyer wrote on Twitter.US law enforcement officials are gearing up for pro-Trump marches in Washington and all 50 state capitals this weekend, erecting barriers and deploying thousands of national guard troops to try to prevent the kind of violent attack that rattled the nation when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January.The FBI warned police agencies of possible armed protests outside all 50 state capitol buildings starting on Saturday and through Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, fueled by supporters of Donald Trump who believe his false claims of electoral fraud.Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Washington were among states that activated their national guards to strengthen security. Texas closed its capitol through inauguration day.Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a statement late Friday that intelligence indicated “violent extremists” could seek to exploit planned armed protests in Austin to “conduct criminal acts”.The attack on the US Capitol in Washington was carried out by Trump supporters, some of whom planned to kidnap members of Congress and called for the death of the vice-president Mike Pence as he presided over the certification of Biden’s victory.The Democratic leaders of four congressional committees said on Saturday they had opened a review of the events and had written to the FBI and other intelligence and security agencies to find out what was known about threats, whether the information was shared and whether foreign influence played any role.“This still-emerging story is one of astounding bravery by some US Capitol police and other officers; of staggering treachery by violent criminals; and of apparent and high-level failures – in particular, with respect to intelligence and security preparedness,” the letter said.It was signed by the House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, the homeland security chair, Bennie Thompson, the oversight chair, Carolyn Maloney, and the judiciary chair, Jerrold Nadler.Officials have trained much of their focus on Sunday, when the anti-government “boogaloo” movement flagged plans to hold rallies in all 50 states.In Michigan, a fence was erected around the capitol in Lansing and troopers were mobilized. The legislature canceled meetings next week, citing credible threats.“We are prepared for the worst but we remain hopeful that those who choose to demonstrate at our Capitol do so peacefully,” the Michigan state police director, Joe Gasper, said.The perception that the 6 January insurrection was a success could embolden domestic extremists motivated by anti-government, racial and partisan grievances, spurring them to further violence, according to a government intelligence bulletin dated Wednesday first reported by Yahoo News.The Joint Intelligence Bulletin, produced by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center, further warned that “false narratives” about electoral fraud would serve as an ongoing catalyst for extremists.Thousands of armed national guard troops were in the streets in Washington in an unprecedented show of force after the assault on the Capitol. Bridges into the city were to be closed along with dozens of roads. The National Mall and other landmarks were blocked off.Experts say the capitals of battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona are at most risk of violence. But even states not seen as likely flashpoints are taking precautions.The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said on Friday that while his state had not received any specific threats he was beefing up security around the capitol in Springfield, including adding about 250 state national guard troops.The alarm extended beyond legislatures. The United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination of more than 4,900 churches, warned its 800,000 members of reports “liberal” churches could be attacked.Suzanne Spaulding, a former undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said disclosing enhanced security measures can be an effective deterrent.“One of the ways you can potentially de-escalate a problem is with a strong security posture,” said Spaulding, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You try to deter people from trying anything.“ More

    • 163 Shares109 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden names scientific advisers and seeks to bring Eric Lander into cabinet

      by

      Joe Biden has named the geneticist Eric Lander as his top scientific adviser and will elevate the position to the cabinet for the first time, a move meant to indicate a decisive break from Donald Trump’s treatment of science.The US president-elect vowed that “science will always be at the forefront of my administration” as he unveiled a science team headed by Lander as the director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. If confirmed by the Senate, he will sit in Biden’s cabinet.A mathematician turned molecular biologist, Lander will be the first biologist in the role and would be the first in the cabinet.A high-profile figure, he co-led the Human Genome Project and, since 2003, has headed the Broad Institute, which works on genome sequencing. He is a former adviser to former president Barack Obama, whose former top science official John Holdren said the “science polymath” was a “fabulous choice” to advise Biden.Speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, on Saturday, Biden said Lander was “one of the most brilliant persons I know” and is someone who has “changed the course of human history” through his work to map the human genome.The president-elect said he hoped his science team would lead the way in everything from renewable energy to cancer research, something he said was “deeply personal” to him given the loss of his son Beau.“Science is about discovery but also hope and that’s what in the DNA of America – hope,” Biden said. “I believe we can make more progress in the next 10 years than we’ve done in the last 50 years. We are going to lead with science and with truth and, God willing, this is how we are going to get over this pandemic and build back better than before.”Science advocates who have long pushed for a scientific voice within the cabinet also welcomed Biden’s choice.“Elevating this role to membership in the president’s cabinet clearly signals the administration’s intent to involve scientific expertise in every policy discussion,” said Sudip Parikh, the chief executive of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.“Lander has the requisite skills for this critically important role that works across disciplines and federal agencies.”Trump has caused despair among scientists, repeatedly dismissing basic understanding of the climate crisis, falsely claiming the Covid-19 pandemic would “just disappear” and sidelining or rejecting politically inconvenient evidence in governmental decision-making.In a letter to Lander, Biden asked him and his team to help combat public health threats, address the impacts of the climate crisis and help the US be a leader in innovation.Biden also said he wants Lander to go about his role by “working broadly and transparently with the diverse scientific leadership of American society and engaging the broader American public”.The president-elect has also put forward the sociologist Alondra Nelson to be the deputy director for science and society, a new position. Frances Arnold, the first American woman to win the Nobel prize in chemistry, and Maria Zuber, a planetary scientist, will be co-chairs of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, has been asked to continue in the role. More

    • 188 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      'My neighbourhood is being destroyed to pacify his supporters': the race to complete Trump's wall

      by

      At Sierra Vista Ranch in Arizona near the Mexican border, Troy McDaniel is warming up his helicopter. McDaniel, tall and slim in a tan jumpsuit, began taking flying lessons in the 80s, and has since logged 2,000 miles in the air. The helicopter, a cosy, two-seater Robinson R22 Alpha is considered a work vehicle and used to monitor the 640-acre ranch, but it’s clear he relishes any opportunity to fly. “We will have no fun at all,” he deadpans.McDaniel and his wife, Melissa Owen, bought their ranch and the 100-year-old adobe house that came with it in 2003. Years before, Owen began volunteering at the nearby Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge, and fell in love with the beauty and natural diversity of the area, as well as the quiet of their tiny town. That all changed last July when construction vehicles and large machinery started “barrelling down the two-lane state road”, says Owen.Once work on President Donald Trump’s border wall began, construction was rapid. Sasabe, a sleepy border town, located over an hour from the nearest city of Tucson, was transformed into a construction site. “I don’t think you could find a single person in Sasabe who is in favour of this wall,” Owen says.The purpose of our helicopter trip today is to see the rushed construction work occurring just south of the couple’s house, as contractors race to finish sections of the border wall before Trump leaves office. Viewed from high above the Arizona desert, in the windless bubble of the cockpit, this new section of wall stretches across the landscape like a rust-coloured scar. McDaniel guides us smoothly over hills and drops into canyons, surveying the beauty of the landscape. Here, as on much of the border, the 30ft barrier does not go around; it goes over – stubbornly ploughing through cliffs, up steep mountainsides, and between once-connected communities.“That was already a pretty good barrier,” McDaniel says of the steep, unscalable cliff in front of us. The bulldozed path of Trump’s wall creeps up over the mountain’s west side, but on the other side of the cliff there is no wall, just a large gap. As with many areas on the border, the wall here is being built in a piecemeal fashion. According to the US Army Corps of Engineers, there are 37 ongoing projects, of which only three are set to be completed this month; others have completion dates as far away as June 2022.In August, at a virtual press conference with the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Joe Biden told reporters that “there will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration”. The 37 existing construction sites, in various stages of completion, are likely to be shut down.Yet he will have to formulate a more complex policy than simple suspension. Many of the private contractors building the wall have clauses in their contracts that will trigger large payouts if the government simply stops construction. There are also ongoing legal cases brought by private landowners from whom the government seized land. The exact nature of these obligations may only be clear to Biden once he takes office.In the meantime, Trump has accelerated building in the wake of the election, with crews working flat out, late into the night. Throughout December and into January, mountainsides were exploded with dynamite and large portions of desert bulldozed, to make way for a wall that may not be finished in time.For the past four years, I have been living in New Mexico, travelling in the borderlands and documenting the ongoing impact of the wall on communities and the environment.“They started working nights six weeks ago,” says photographer John Kurc, who has been documenting construction in the remote Guadalupe Canyon in Arizona since October last year. “It’s been nonstop ever since.”This is not about protecting America. It’s about protecting President Trump’s own interestsVerlon Jose, former vice-chair of the Native American Tohono O’odham Nation, tells me he has seen the wall plough through his ancestral homeland. “We are caretakers of this land. We are responsible for these things. Has anyone ever asked for permission from the local folks to do the construction? This is about President Donald Trump. It’s not about protecting America. It’s about protecting his own interests.”When construction stops, there will be large gaps in the new wall. In some places it will join up with older barriers that the Trump administration deemed inadequate; in others it will finish abruptly. “They work as fast as they can to build walls that will just end,” says McDaniel, as his helicopter circles back toward their property over saguaro-studded hillsides just north of the Mexican border. We drop altitude and approach the landing strip – a patch of dirt just off the road – whipping up a small dust storm as we touch the ground.***After four years of daily scandals, and the shocking scenes in Washington DC last week, it’s easy to forget that Donald Trump was elected in 2016 with one signature policy: to build a wall. That was the call echoed at his rallies, the embodiment of Trump’s hardline approach to immigration and his purported “America First” ideology. Trump claimed the wall would address an invasion of undesirable migrants, “bad hombres”, a nationalist rhetoric that resonated with his base. During his first week in office, Trump signed an executive order that included a policy for “the immediate construction of a physical wall on the southern border”.Construction began in 2019, mostly replacing existing fences, vehicle barriers, and other border structures, as well as unwalled sections of the border. The bollard wall, Trump’s barrier of choice, consists of a series of vertical steel posts set in concrete, with small gaps in between. While in some places it reaches a height of 30ft, it is less of a wall and more of an imposing metal fence.According to Kenneth Madsen, an associate professor in the department of geography at Ohio State University, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has waived 84 laws and statutes – many enacted specifically to protect the nation’s most treasured cultural and ecological sites – in order to expedite construction.Dozens of environmental and public health laws were brushed aside to build walls through parks and wildlife areas, including Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge, San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge and Coronado National Memorial. “It has brought devastation to the environment and the communities of the borderlands,” says Scott Nicol, author of a 2018 report for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) about the impact of the wall, and a resident of the Rio Grande valley in Texas.Nicol believes the wall’s charted course has been determined by ease rather than efficacy. Construction has been much busier on federally owned land, not because that’s where there are likely to be more border crossings, but because building on private property is a lengthy process. “Texas has the most border but the least wall mileage to date because the Texas borderlands are mostly in private hands,” says Nicol.According to the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agency, 452 miles of border wall have been constructed under the Trump administration, at an estimated cost of $15bn, one of the most expensive infrastructure projects in US history. In September 2019, Trump promised to build between 450 and 500 miles of wall, so he has reached this goal – even if the vast majority of it is replacing existing barriers.On Tuesday, days after the violent insurrection at the White House, Trump made a final visit to the border in Texas to celebrate reaching this target. During a short speech, he skirted any responsibility for the capital siege, and instead remarked on his successes in halting illegal immigration and securing the border.“When I took office, we inherited a broken, dysfunctional and open border,” he said. “We reformed our immigration system and achieved the most secure southern border in US history.”Has it had any impact on immigration? According to attorney David Donatti, from the ACLU of Texas, the answer is no. In recent months, according to CBP data, the number of people trying to cross has increased. “The wall as a whole is unlikely to have any discernible impact,” says Donatti. “In a race to construct, the administration is building where it’s easier as opposed to where most people cross.”And while the wall may be an impressive barrier, it is far from impregnable. Just after Christmas, Nicol visited a new section in the Rio Grande valley between Texas and Mexico and found numerous ladders scattered on the ground. “You can always go over,” he says.You can also go through. John Kurc started using drones to photograph and video the construction of the wall. The last time he was in the border town of Sonoyta, Mexico, he saw two young men with “yellow, handheld angle grinders” cutting through the wall while a lookout with a radio watched for Border Patrol. “They would put the section back with a special bonding agent and then use paint that oxidizes the same colour as the bollards,” says Kurc. “Then they just go in and out.”Gil Kerlikowske, the Obama-appointed former commissioner of the CBP, says there is not a one-size-fits-all solution for border security: “There are places where the environment is difficult and so remote you don’t need any barrier at all.” In these areas, surveillance and detection technologies would be more useful and cost-efficient, he argues. “It is such an unbelievably complex problem. When someone proposes a simple solution to a complex problem, you can be sure that’s the wrong solution.”***That’s not to say Trump’s wall has had no impact. Back on the ranch, cameras set up by Melissa Owen have captured passing wildlife – mountain lions and javelina, pig-like mammals, the skulls of which can also be found around the house. “There were no environmental surveys, no groundwater surveys, none of that,” says Owen. Once contractors arrived in town last summer, they began “pumping enormous amounts of water out of the ground” in order to mix concrete for the border wall’s foundations.Residents in Sasabe began complaining of reduced water pressure. At San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge, groundwater pumping for concrete began draining a crucial wetland and endangering four threatened species of fish. Similar concerns were raised when the Quitobaquito Springs at Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, home to the endangered desert pupfish began to dry out as contractors pumped water from the ancient aquifer that fed it. “That’s our water – that’s what we depend on,” says Owen, looking out towards arid ranchland that is suffering from a long drought.We had three different jaguars in 2016 – we haven’t seen signs of any since construction beganMyles Traphagen, borderlands coordinator of the Wildlands Network conservation group, has called Trump’s wall the “single most damaging project” to the ecology of the mountainous Sky Islands region and the animals that call it home – especially the jaguar, which has made a remarkable comeback in the US after being hunted to extinction by the late 1960s.“We had three different jaguars in 2015 and 2016, which hadn’t happened since the 1930s,” says Chris Bugbee, a senior researcher at Conservation CATalyst, an organisation dedicated to the world’s 38 wild cat species.“If this border wall hadn’t started, we expected a female to eventually arrive and have breeding jaguars again,” adds Aletris Neils, Conservation CATalyst’s executive director.The jaguar is one of numerous species – such as the endangered ocelot and the Mexican gray wolf – found in a region that extends from south-western New Mexico into western Arizona and far down into Mexico. If current border wall construction is completed, says Traphagen, “93% of jaguar habitat will have been walled off”.Only males have been seen in the US since the 60s. They have huge ranges and some travel north where there is plenty to eat, before returning south to find a mate. There is currently one jaguar (whose location cannot be shared due to poaching concerns) on the US side, cut off from Mexico because of the wall.Bugbee has spent years tracking the famous “El Jefe” jaguar, one of the few sighted recently in the US, with his dog Mayke. “We haven’t seen signs of any jaguars since construction began,” he tells me when we meet at the Coronado National Forest, where he previously tracked the cat. A mile or so away, construction workers have been blasting and bulldozing over the steep Montezuma Pass, where another jaguar, known as Yo’oko, once roamed.Owen and McDaniel are far from open-border liberals. The entrance to their ranch has a sign that reads: “Border Patrol always welcome”. Owen’s two horses, Rocker and Kiowa, are retired Border Patrol horses – “the best”, she says of their temperament. In her early years on the ranch, Owen says, undocumented migrants and smugglers were coming across the border in large numbers. She would frequently encounter migrants on her property. One morning someone broke into her house. “I don’t want it to go back to then,” she says, but adds that the economic downturn of 2008 has slowed immigration considerably. “No one wants a secure border more than I,” she says. “But a 30ft-tall, poorly constructed barrier is not the answer. It’s a campaign gimmick. My neighbourhood is being destroyed because a megalomaniac wants to pacify his supporters.”During his election campaign, Trump claimed that Mexico would pay for the wall. Once he was in office, Congress provided some $1.37bn a year for construction, but each year the president demanded more, ultimately declaring a national emergency in order to divert military funds to pay for the wall. It’s estimated by the US Army Corps of Engineers that Biden will save about $2.6bn if he stops construction on the border wall in his first day in office.Trump, and some within CBP, have maintained that the wall is a crucial means of halting smuggling. “Illegal drug and human smuggling activities have decreased in those areas where barriers are deployed. Illegal cross-border traffic has also shifted to areas with inferior legacy barriers or no barriers at all,” said a DHS spokesperson in a recent email to the Guardian.Kerlikowske, who also served as director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy between 2009 and 2014, admits that drug trafficking is a problem. However, he points out that the vast majority of illicit substances, such as fentanyl, cocaine and heroin, are smuggled through legal ports of entry where elaborate walls and security systems already exist. “During my time as commissioner, I met with hundreds of border patrol agents. No one in the border patrol says we really need a wall,” he says.As you keep building, you keep pushing people into more remote and dangerous areasDonatti from the ACLU of Texas says there is little evidence that walls deter either drugs or undocumented immigration, which is being driven primarily by so-called push factors (war, poverty, desperation) in other countries. “The US federal government has tried to study this several times and has never found support that a border wall stops the flow of undocumented immigration,” he says.One thing border walls are effective at is increasing the number of migrant deaths. As the US has walled off more of its border, the risk to migrants crossing illegally has increased. Since 1998, around 7,000 people have died along the US-Mexico border, the majority in Arizona’s rural deserts and, in recent years, the Rio Grande valley. “As you keep building, you keep pushing people into more remote and dangerous areas,” says Donatti.“It’s a humanitarian disaster,” agrees Eddie Canales, of the South Texas Human Rights Center, who has spent the past decade operating hundreds of water stations in the Rio Grande valley in Texas to save migrants. “We do what we can,” Canales told the Guardian in early 2020. “But people keep dying.” The wall funnels people into more dangerous crossing points, where physical barriers do not yet exist. Summer temperatures in the Arizona desert are brutal; 2020 became the deadliest year since 2010 for those who crossed the border there.***“It’s hard for people to understand what this means to us, as O’odham and Native Americans. What it means to us as the original indigenous peoples of this land,” says Verlon Jose.When I visit Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, a pristine tract of Sonoran desert, earlier this year, contractors are busy dynamiting Monument Hill, a sacred mountain and burial site for the Tohono O’odham people. Uprooted saguaros, the huge, tree-like cacti sacred to the tribe, dot the path of the wall. “It was like, ‘Tell me where your grandparents live, and I’ll put a wall through there,’” says Jose.“In certain areas, we won’t be able to continue our traditional practices,” says Jose, whose tribal members span both sides of the border. “We spent billions of dollars on the wall. Why don’t we invest it in our border cities and towns?”According to Norma Herrera, a border resident from McAllen, Texas, the wall’s $15bn price tag is an insult to one of the county’s most impoverished regions, where critical infrastructure is often lacking. This issue was laid bare during the pandemic, when places such as the Rio Grande valley in Texas, a centre of border wall construction, was devastated by Covid. Hospitals reached capacity, deaths mounted, and all the while, the wall continued to rise.“We had more deaths in the region than the entire state,” says Herrera, community organiser at the Rio Grande Valley Equal Voice Network, which advocates for marginalised groups in the area. “To see the wall going up, to see resources used on useless steel and concrete, it’s senseless.”According to Donatti, whose parents originally emigrated from Argentina to the US, the wall should be seen in the context of broader exclusion policies – such as the Remain in Mexico programme enacted by Trump, under which asylum seekers arriving at ports of entry are returned to Mexico to wait for their US immigration proceedings. “It’s this idea that there is a fundamental Americanness, and either you’re inside, or you’re out,” he says.That idea was evident in late 2019, when I visited a shelter in Tijuana. The two-storey building in the neighbourhood of Benito Juárez was packed with families, with mattresses sprawled over every inch of open floor. At that time in Tijuana, nearly 10,000 asylum seekers were waiting for their immigration hearings after being turned back at the border and sent to one of the most dangerous cities in Mexico.Many are hopeful that under the Biden administration the approach to migrants and the borderlands will change; that policies such as Remain in Mexico will be undone; and even that sections of the border wall will be removed. A week after inauguration day, a coalition of groups across the borderlands will begin a monitoring project in order to assess the damage, and to see what needs to be done. Some hope certain sections can be removed in order to reconnect critical habitats and communities.Verlon Jose of the Tohono O’odham has a “sliver of hope” that some of the walls will come down. “I believe Biden will not build another inch,” he adds.Others are not so sure. “Optimism? No,” says Donatti of the prospect of the wall coming down. “He hasn’t committed to as much. But there is a strong coalition along the border that will be fighting for it.”John Kurc, who has spent thousands of hours watching the destruction of Guadalupe Canyon, sees the scale of the challenge. “The Trump administration has caused so much damage to these environments,” he says, peering through a set of binoculars as a crane hoists up an isolated section of wall, with huge gaps on each side. “We have a lot of work to do.” More

    • 113 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      History-maker Kamala Harris will wield real power as vice-president

      by

      When Kamala Harris raises her right hand and takes the oath of office on Wednesday she will realize a multitude of historic firsts – becoming America’s first female, first Black and first south Asian American vice-president.Exactly two weeks after a deadly attack on the Capitol by Donald Trump supporters, and a week after the president’s second impeachment, it will be a barrier-breaking moment for millions of women across the US and the world that it is hoped will signal a distinct shift away from the chaos and racist rhetoric of the previous administration.But for Harris, it will also be deeply personal. The California senator has said she will be thinking of her late mother Shyamala Gopalan Harris, an activist and breast cancer researcher who immigrated to the US from India in 1958, and children who were told by their parents: “You can do anything.”“I feel a very big sense of responsibility … I will be the first, but I will not be the last,” she told ABC, echoing her mother’s words and those of her powerful victory speech.Bakari Sellers, a friend and supporter, said it will be an “amazing moment” for Harris and her sister Maya, with whom she is very close and was the chairwoman of her presidential campaign, and that their mother “is going to be looking down on them both”.“Personally it’s going to be an awesome feeling, and then she’ll have a sense of history because from a historical perspective there’s so many women who chipped away at that glass ceiling and now she has broken it. And I think that she will feel the weight of that history on her shoulders,” added Sellers, an attorney, commentator and author of My Vanishing Country.But with the coronavirus pandemic still raging across the US, and amid heightened security fears following the attack on 6 January and the threat of unrest from far-right extremist groups, the inaugurationwill look very different from previous years.There will be minimal in-person spectators at the inauguration, themed “America United”, and a virtual parade. Guests will include Vice-President Mike Pence (but not the president, who has said he won’t attend) and former presidents and first ladies Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton and George W and Laura Bush.Harris, 56, is expected to be sworn in just before Biden, 78, at around midday in a televised ceremony in front of the US Capitol that will include performances by Lady Gaga and Jennifer Lopez.Together with her husband Doug Emhoff, who will become America’s first “second gentleman”, she will then take part in a pass in review, a tradition with members of the military, and attend a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington national cemetery with the new president and first lady, Dr Jill Biden.She will also feature in an evening prime-time television special called Celebrating America.It signals to the world that we are an interracial democracyManisha Sinha, history professor at the University of Connecticut and author of The Slave’s Cause: A History of Abolition, said Harris’s vice-presidency has galvanised huge enthusiasm among Black women and the Indian American and Asian American communities and signifies “a new direction in American democracy”.She added: “It’s also a symbol to the rest of the world that has been watching the United States in horror, just to have her and Biden take over is really important. It signals to the world that we are an interracial democracy and that certainly her election is a rejection of the kind of white supremacist politics that Trump brought back into vogue.”But, she warned, the whole country is not behind America’s increasingly diverse political landscape, demonstrated by a “tremendous racist backlash”.“There is a strong unregenerate minority in this country that is willing to overthrow democracy in the United States rather than accept the election of people like Barack Obama and Kamala Harris to the presidency and vice-presidency of the United States.”Harris’s role will be far more than symbolic. Unusually for a vice-president whose official role is largely ceremonial, she will wield considerable power.Biden has vowed that Harris will be the “last person in the room” making important decisions, modelled on his relationship as vice-president with Obama, and has asked the vice-president-elect to bring her “lived experience” to every issue. Harris has said she wants to be a “full partner”.But in addition to her White House duties, following the Democrats’ two recent Senate victories in Georgia, Harris will also play a high-profile role in passing legislation on Capitol Hill.Despite their constitutional duty as president of the Senate, vice-presidents are only allowed to vote to break a tie. But with the balance of power evenly split 50-50 with Republicans, it is likely that Harris will be required to spend more time than perhaps she imagined with her former Senate colleagues.The last two times that the Senate had a 50-50 split was for six months in 2001, under the vice-presidency of Dick Cheney, and in 1954. Harris is likely to be in this position for at least two years.Jennifer Lawless, a politics professor at the University of Virginia, said Harris’s pivotal role in the Senate will mean she “is going to be cast in a very different light than previous vice-presidents” and will make her crucial in terms of putting forward a legislative agenda.“Now that doesn’t mean that she’s not going to weigh in on important policy decisions or try to be a broad adviser to Joe Biden, [but] at least for that first 100 days, she’s pivotal to ensuring that any piece of tied legislation gets passed because that’s how Joe Biden’s going to build a legislative record.”In a lot of ways, she’s basically just taking on an additional job – she’s going to be a senator plus vice-presidentShe added: “I can’t remember another time, and in contemporary history there isn’t one, where the vice-president is basically the person determining whether legislation gets to the president’s desk.”The extent to which her Senate responsibilities will shape her vice-presidency will depend on what happens in the 2022 midterms, said Lawless. But she believes it could constrain her ability to work across party lines as well as other responsibilities and potential to travel.“In a lot of ways, she’s basically just taking on an additional job – she’s going to be a senator plus vice-president … that’s sort of poetic in that women have been doing three times as much work as men forever,” said Lawless.Harris allies insist nothing has changed in her approach to the vice-presidency in which she will be a “governing partner” to Biden.A source familiar with the situation said: “If she needs to be there [the Senate] for anything, she will, but the president-elect won because people want the gridlock in Washington to end. Our goal is to work across the aisle to get things done.”Despite an impeachment trial, expected to take place in the Senate in the early days of the new administration, Harris has said they will be “hitting the ground running” on their first day of office, starting with a $1.9tn rescue package to address the pandemic and the economic crisis. Their other top priorities, the source said, will be racial justice and climate change. “She is approaching this as a partner to him and they have to address those together.”The pair are said to have a “wonderful dynamic” and are in constant contact. Their spouses are also said to have a good relationship and are well acquainted after travelling extensively together on the campaign trail.She’s thoughtful, she is deliberate, she is strategic, she thinks more than one step aheadDan Morain, a California-based journalist and author of biography Kamala’s Way: An American Life, said she is an “incredibly talented politician”.“She’s thoughtful, she is deliberate, she is strategic, she thinks more than one step ahead, she thinks many steps ahead.”In California, where Harris was district attorney and attorney general before being elected to the Senate in 2016, Morain said she was known for being “tough and demanding” but also “incredibly charming and charismatic”. He believes there is little doubt that Harris, who ran against Biden in the 2020 presidential election, will run again for president in the future.Lateefah Simon, a civil rights activist who worked for Harris in San Francisco and considers her a mentor, cannot wait to see the vice-president-elect – who she refers to as the MVP (Madam Vice-President) – in the White House.“Kamala shifts that conversation, not only for little Black girls, but for all women who believe that they have to wait their turn,” she said. “Kamala showed us that there’s no turns – if you’re right for the job, you work hard, and you take it.”Additional reporting by Lauren Gambino More