Biden administration

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares179 Views

      in US Politics

      'Morale has been gutted': can Biden restore the DoJ's battered reputation?

      by

      When Bill Barr was invited to speak at the conservative-leaning Hillsdale College, Michigan, in September, he leapt at the chance to respond to criticism that he had politicized the justice department that he led in order to benefit his political master, Donald Trump.The then US attorney general, who stepped down from the post last month , began his speech by arguing that there had to be political input at the top of the Department of Justice (DoJ) in order for it to be publicly accountable. Then he turned to his own staff and, in response to recent complaints that he had improperly overruled the decisions of career prosecutors, gave them a good tongue-lashing.“Name one successful organization where the lowest-level employees’ decisions are deemed sacrosanct,” he said. “Letting the most junior members set the agenda might be a good philosophy for a Montessori preschool, but it’s no way to run a federal agency.”Comparing hard-working, highly trained public servants to kindergartners might pass as motivational leadership in the Bill Barr school of management. But to many DoJ attorneys, it summed up life in the Trump era.For four years, they have watched the president trash the historic norm of the agency’s independence from White House interference. Trump has referred to the DoJ as “the Trump justice department”, and made repeated vicious attacks on top officials, including the attorney generals whom he himself appointed.Senior officials have resigned in unprecedented numbers after Trump attempted on multiple occasions to use the justice department as his own personal weapon in battles with his political enemies.The morale and the reputation of the department has been gutted because of undue political influenceBarr, who was Trump’s longest-serving attorney general, behaved in similar fashion, leaving the impression with many observers that the department under his leadership was in the pocket of the president. He sought a more lenient sentence for Trump’s buddy Roger Stone, and moved to drop the criminal case against the former national security adviser Michael Flynn.“The morale and the reputation of the department has been gutted because of undue political influence on the decisions of career staff,” Vanita Gupta, a former head of the DoJ’s civil rights division, told the Guardian. “Barr literally compared career prosecutors to toddlers.”Barr’s derisive comment is symbolic of the challenge now facing President-elect Joe Biden as he seeks to restore confidence in this battered and bruised pillar of American democracy.“The department needs to be rebuilt by new leadership committed at every turn to decisions made on the law and on the facts, and not on what the president wants,” said Gupta, who now heads the Leadership Conference on Civil & Human Rights.The first priority for Biden as he seeks to put the DoJ back on the rails will be to show to the American people, in both word and deed, that he intends to respect the independence of the agency with respect to specific criminal cases. Where Trump stated that he had the “absolute right to do what I want with the justice department”, Biden has pledged to take a different path.In a joint CNN interview with the vice president-elect, Kamala Harris, Biden guaranteed that he would avoid telling the justice department how to do its job. “Any decision should be based on the law, should not be influenced by politics,” was how Harris put it.Biden may well find his best intentions sorely tested early on in his presidency. The Trump administration has been busy planting legal landmines in his path.Last month, the US attorney in Delaware – a Trump appointee – opened an investigation into the tax affairs of the president-elect’s son, Hunter Biden. What happens to that inquiry once the new administration takes office may define just how much independence the 46th president is willing to grant his attorney general.In any case, merely abiding by the traditional norm of DoJ prosecutorial independence may be insufficient to repair the damage of the Trump era. Gupta said: “We came dangerously close to our democratic norms being undermined, so it won’t be enough to go back to the old ways – it’s going to be incumbent on the new administration to learn the lessons and act on them.”Bob Bauer, who was White House counsel from 2010 to 2011, also believes that special measures are now needed to shore up the independence of the agency. “You cannot expect everything to return to normal just because Donald Trump has left the scene,” he said.Bauer took a leave of absence as a law professor at New York University to advise Biden during his presidential campaign. Speaking to the Guardian in a personal capacity, he said that he was fearful that norms that just about survived the Trump onslaught could be shattered if a more efficient demagogue entered the White House in future.You cannot expect everything to return to normal just because Donald Trump has left the scene“Somebody could come along and execute on the threat to use the department to pursue political enemies more effectively than Trump did. Rather than wait for a more shrewd, deft, competent Trump to appear, it makes sense to deal with this as an institutional crisis that needs addressing.”In his new book, After Trump: Reconstructing the Presidency, Bauer and his co-author Jack Goldsmith set out reforms they would like to see put in place to protect the DoJ from any future authoritarian president. They include introducing a new executive rule that would overtly instruct all 115,000 employees of the justice department to “answer in all their actions not to partisan politics but to principles of fairness and justice”.The authors also propose that Congress put in writing that any prospective attorney general must satisfy the Senate confirmation process that they are a “person of integrity”. Changes would be made to the special counsel system to clarify in what circumstances presidents can be investigated, and to shield the investigators from White House efforts to remove them.Any move by the Biden administration to introduce new rules on DoJ independence is likely to face opposition. Michael Mukasey, a former federal judge who served as US attorney general under George W Bush, told the Guardian that in his view any such measures would be unnecessary and unfounded.Mukasey said that criticism that the DoJ had been politicised in its decision making within the Trump administration was inaccurate. “There have been many actions by the justice department that were directly contrary to the president’s wishes.”He pointed to the decision of Trump’s first attorney general, Jeff Sessions, to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian collusion – an action which mightily displeased the president. He also cited Barr’s lament to ABC News in February that Trump’s tweets were making it “impossible for me to do my job”. “That was hardly consistent with the White House view,” Mukasey said.In Mukasey’s analysis, attempts by the incoming administration to try to change the department either through internal procedures or legislation would be misplaced. “I think we in this country sometimes have a fascination with mechanical solutions to problems – if we tinker with this or that, we can fix things.”Instead, the focus should be on finding the right caliber of personnel to fill top jobs. “The principal lesson of the past four years is that we need good, sound people in all positions from the White House on down. If you have them you are fine, if you don’t have them, then you can have all the mechanical bells and whistles you like” but they won’t make a difference.The Biden administration will also be under pressure to restore the central role played by the DoJ in combatting police brutality and discrimination in the wake of the George Floyd protests. Under Trump, the department’s engagement in policing reform has withered on the vine.On his final day in office as attorney general, Sessions issued a memo that scrapped consent decrees – court-backed agreements that allowed the DoJ to drive through essential reforms within police forces found to be engaging in racial profiling, excessive use of force, or unjustified killing of unarmed black men.Under Barack Obama, 14 consent decrees were imposed on wayward police agencies; under Trump, there have been none.Gupta said that the Biden administration needed to withdraw the Sessions memo on day one. “The gutting of civil rights enforcement across the board has been such a setback for communities around the country, and restoring it has to be a priority,” she said.Similarly, Gupta urged the incoming Biden team to move swiftly to rebuild the civil rights division as a key defender of the right to vote. In the Trump era, that feature of the justice department’s work faded too, with Barr accommodating the president’s baseless claims of massive voter fraud in the election by allowing federal prosecutors to investigate the matter – prompting another high-profile resignation. Barr waited until well after the 3 November election to announce publicly that there was no evidence of widespread voter irregularities.“It’s high time in this country that we stopped politicizing voting rights and treat it like it is – a core value,” Gupta said. More

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden seeks term-defining wins in Georgia runoffs Trump called 'illegal'

      by

      Campaigning continued in Georgia on Saturday in two Senate runoff elections which will define much of Joe Biden’s first term in office.Regardless of Donald Trump’s bizarre New Year’s Day decision to call the runoffs “illegal and invalid”, the contests on Tuesday will decide control of the Senate and therefore how far Biden can reach on issues such as the pandemic, healthcare, taxation, energy and the environment.Democrats Jon Ossoff and the Rev Raphael Warnock must win to split the chamber 50/50. Kamala Harris, the vice-president-elect, would then act as tiebreaker as president of the Senate. Responding to that threat, Republican incumbents Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue have placed themselves squarely behind Trump, making hugely exaggerated claims about the dangers their opponents supposedly pose.In Perdue’s and Loeffler’s telling, a Democratic Senate would “rubber stamp” a “socialist agenda”, from “ending private insurance” and “expanding the supreme court” to adopting a Green New Deal that would raise taxes by thousands each year.Besides misrepresenting the policy preferences of Biden and most Democratic senators, that characterization ignores the reality of a Senate in which centrist Democrats and Republicans are set for a key role.At one campaign stop this week, Ossoff said Perdue’s “ridiculous” attacks “blow my mind”. He also scoffed at the claim that his ideas, aligned closely with Biden, amount to a leftist lunge. But he agreed with his opponent on how much Georgia matters.“We have too much good work to do,” Ossoff said, “to be mired in gridlock and obstruction for the next few years.”Ossoff also made headlines this week with his response to a Fox News reporter about Loeffler’s claims that her opponent, Warnock – pastor of a church formerly led by Martin Luther King Jr – is “dangerous” and “radical”.“Here’s the bottom line,” Ossoff said. “Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman. Kelly Loeffler has been campaigning with a klansman and so she is stooping to these vicious personal attacks to distract from the fact that she’s been campaigning with a former member of the Ku Klux Klan.”The claim was misleading: Loeffler was pictured with a former member of the Klan but did not campaign with him. Loeffler responded by calling Ossoff “a pathological liar” and “a trust-fund socialist whose only job has been working for the Chinese Communist party in recent years”, a reference to payments to Ossoff’s media company from a Hong Kong conglomerate.Perdue entered quarantine this week after exposure to Covid-19. He and Loeffler must also contend with a deepening Republican split over Trump’s refusal to concede defeat in the presidential election.Trump has spread unfounded assertions of voter fraud and blasted Georgia Republicans including the governor, Brian Kemp, who have defended the elections process, attacks which led to his Friday night tweet about the legality of the runoffs. As Perdue and Loeffler have backed up Trump’s claims, some Republicans have expressed concern it could discourage loyalists from voting. Others are worried the GOP candidates have turned off moderates repelled by Trump.“No Republican is really happy with the situation we find ourselves in,” said Chip Lake, a longtime Georgia Republican consultant. “But sometimes when you play poker, you have to play the hand you’re dealt, and for us that starts with the president.”Trump will visit Georgia for a final rally with Loeffler on Monday evening, hours before polls open. It is unclear whether Perdue will attend.Democrats are fine with their opponents’ decision to run as Trump Republicans and use exaggerated attacks.“We talk about something like expanding Medicaid. We talk about expanding Pell grants” for low-income college students, Ossoff said at a recent stop in Marietta, north of Atlanta. “David Perdue denounces those things as socialism?”Ossoff noted Perdue’s claims that a Democratic Senate would abolish private health insurance. Ossoff and Warnock in fact back Biden’s proposal to add a federal insurance plan to private insurance exchanges.“I just want people to have the choice,” Ossoff said.Biden beat Trump by about 12,000 votes out of 5m in Georgia, making him the first Democrat to carry the state since 1992. His record vote total for a Democrat in the state was fueled by racially and ethnically diversifying metropolitan areas but also shifts in key Atlanta suburbs where white voters have historically leaned Republican.Yet Perdue landed within a few thousand votes of Trump’s total and led Ossoff by about 88,000. Republican turnout also surged in small towns and rural areas and Democrats disappointed down-ballot, failing to make expected gains.“We’ve won this race once already,” Perdue has said. His advisers think they can corral the narrow slice of swing voters by warning against handing Democrats control of the House, Senate and White House.Biden sold himself as a uniter and a seasoned legislative broker. But even a Democratic-held Senate would not give him everything he wants, as rules still require 60 votes to advance most major legislation. Biden must win over Republicans.A Democratic Senate would, however, clear a path for nominees to key posts, especially on the federal judiciary, and bring control of committees and floor action. A Senate led by current majority leader Mitch McConnell almost certainly would deny major legislative victories, as it did in Barack Obama’s tenure.Biden will travel to Atlanta on Monday to campaign with Ossoff and Warnock. Harris will campaign on Sunday in Savannah. In his last visit, Biden called Perdue and Loeffler “roadblocks” and urged Georgians “to vote for two United States senators who know how to say the word ‘yes’ and not just ‘no’.” More

    • 163 Shares139 Views

      in US Politics

      'Family detention still exists': immigration groups warn the fight is far from over

      by

      Few people have been as closely involved with family separation and reunification as attorney Erika Pinheiro, one of the leaders of the immigration advocacy group Al Otro Lado.And though Joe Biden’s win in the presidential election puts an end to Donald Trump’s laser focus on restricting all forms of immigration, Pinheiro wants people to understand that the fight for immigrant rights in the country is far from over.“There’s still a lot of work to do,” Pinheiro, Al Otro Lado’s litigation and policy director, said. “It’s not a given that everyone will be reunified, or families, babies are going to be let out of cages – family detention still exists.”Al Otro Lado has offices on both sides of the border, where it assists immigrants with family reunification, detention, access to healthcare, asylum, deportation and other issues.It was founded in 2011 and was volunteer run until Trump won the 2016 election on an anti-immigrant platform. The group’s leaders then committed to the work as a full-time, paying job.It has been a grueling four years. Pinheiro said the Trump administration caused her to question how she could be an attorney when laws were changing each week and the government did not seem interested in following the ones which remained. “Just the baseline of being able to do our jobs as attorneys was thrown into chaos,” Pinheiro said.There was the added factor of responding to atrocities a tired, exhausted world didn’t want to, or couldn’t, process.“It felt in many instances that it was screaming into the ether about people dying at the border, people suffering all these horrific human rights violations,” she said. “And some of it got through to the public, like family separation, but a lot of it didn’t.”With Covid, the group’s work has expanded even more.“We also have had to do emergency food assistance, quarantine housing for medically vulnerable families,” Pinheiro said. “We’ve supported a dozen shelters in getting clean water and food and PPE, we have helped raise the capacity of several medical organizations here on the border to make sure our clients would have access to any care.”The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) bars asylum seekers and refugees from the US under an order called Title 42. People who attempt to cross the border are returned, or expelled, back to Mexico, without an opportunity to test their asylum claims. More than 250,000 migrants processed at the US-Mexico border between March and October were expelled, according to US Customs and Border Protection data.The situation is dire. Thousands of asylum-seekers are stuck at the border, uncertain when they will be able to file their claims. The camps they wait in are an even greater public health risk that before.Outside the border, Al Otro Lado has fought for detained migrants to get PPE and medical releases. Prisons are one of the worst possible places to be when there is a contagious disease and deaths in the custody of US immigration authorities have increased dramatically this year. They have also provided supplies to homeless migrants in southern California who have been shut out of public hygiene facilities.Pinheiro said there will be improvements with Trump out of office, but some of the Biden campaign promises to address asylum issues at the border will be toothless until the CDC order is revoked. It’s a point she plans to make in conversations with the transition team.A prime concern for advocates about the Biden administration is that it will include some of the same people from Barack Obama’s administration, which had more deportations than any other president and laid the groundwork for some controversial Trump policies.While it is a worry for Pinheiro, she has hope that the new administration will build something better. “I would hope a lot of those people, and I know for some of them, have been able to reflect on how the systems they built were weaponized by Trump to do things like family separation or detaining children,” she said.Family separation, which has left 545 children still waiting to be reunited with their parents, was a crucial issue for many voters and Pinheiro hopes that energy translates to other immigration policies.“How did you feel when your government committed the atrocity of family separation in your name?” Pinheiro said. “The next step is really understanding that similar and sometimes worse atrocities are still being committed in the name of border security and limiting migration.” More

    • 138 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      What to expect from US politics in 2021: Politics Weekly Extra

      by

      Jonathan Freedland, Kenya Evelyn, Lauren Gambino and Richard Wolffe look ahead to what we can expect from the first year of Joe Biden’s presidency

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Jonathan Freedland, Kenya Evelyn, Lauren Gambino and Richard Wolffe say goodbye to 2020 and tee up what is likely to be an incredibly interesting 12 months ahead. What will Joe Biden be able to do in his first year? Who will control the Senate? Who will enter the race to take over from Nancy Pelosi? And what will Donald Trump and his family do when they leave the White House on 20 January? Send us your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Biden says Trump aides are obstructing his transition team – video

      by

      President-elect Joe Biden accused the outgoing Trump administration of failing to provide sufficient information to his transition team. ‘Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,’ said US president-elect Joe Biden. ‘It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.’ Biden also said that the Trump administration had caused serious damage to many government agencies. ‘Many of them have been hollowed out in personnel, capacity and in morale,’ he said. ‘In the policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined. In the despair of our alliances and the disrepair of those alliances.’
      America’s democracy is in crisis – how can Joe Biden fix voting rights? More

    • 125 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden accuses Trump administration of obstructing his national security team

      by

      Joe Biden, the US president-elect, complained on Monday that his national security team has run into “obstruction” and “roadblocks” from political leadership at the Pentagon.
      The criticism came after the defence department earlier this month suddenly suspended briefings with the Biden transition team, and with Donald Trump still seeking to overturn his election defeat.
      “From some agencies, our team received exemplary cooperation,” Biden said in Wilmington, Delaware, after a briefing by his foreign policy advisers. “From others, most notably the Department of Defense, we encountered obstruction from the political leadership of that department.”
      Both the defence department and Office of Management and Budget erected “roadblocks”, he added. “Right now we just aren’t getting all of the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas. It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.”
      The president-elect, who takes office on 20 January, warned that his team needs “full visibility” into the budget process at the Pentagon “in order to avoid any window of confusion or catch-up that our adversaries may try to exploit”.
      The remarks were the latest sign of Biden’s increased willingness to take off the gloves in condemning Trump’s reluctance to take part in a swift and orderly transition. The current president has still not invited his successor to the White House or confirmed his attendance at the inauguration, as is traditional.
      Trump fired his defence secretary Mark Esper after the 3 November election, replacing him with Christopher Miller in an acting capacity.
      Earlier this month, Biden’s team complained about an abrupt halt in cooperation from the Pentagon. The defence department claimed that meetings had been postponed until January because of a “mutually agreed upon” pause but the transition team insisted that there is no such agreement.
      The team also said they had met resistance to requests for information from some Pentagon officials. But a senior defence official told the Reuters news agency that the Pentagon had conducted 163 interviews and 181 requests for information and that it would continue to provide information and meetings.
      Trump has refused to acknowledge Biden’s victory, claiming widespread voter fraud for which there is no evidence and suffering dozens of court defeats. His administration only authorised cooperation with Biden on 23 November.
      Trump has vowed to make a last stand on 6 January when Congress convenes to certify the electoral college results. Jenna Ellis, a member of his legal team, tweeted on Monday: “President Trump should never concede the election.”
      Biden was briefed on Monday by his nominees for secretary of state, defence and homeland security, as well as his incoming national security adviser. He said his team found that agencies “critical to our security have incurred enormous damage” during Trump’s tenure.
      “Many of them have been hollowed out in personnel, capacity and in morale. There’s policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined to the disrepair of our alliances. It makes it harder for our government to protect the American people.”
      Biden’s foreign policy team has been described as a return to experience, expertise and the Barack Obama era, with Tony Blinken nominated for secretary of state, Jake Sullivan for national security adviser and John Kerry in a new role as special presidential envoy for climate. Lloyd Austin is facing a confirmation battle as defence secretary because he is a retired general, potentially undermining the principle of civilian control of the military. More

    • 175 Shares109 Views

      in Elections

      As the White House changes hands, so will Fox News’ support of the presidency

      by

      When Joe Biden is sworn in as president on 20 January, cable news viewers may witness one of the most dramatic 180-degree turns in history.
      After four years of slavishly promoting the president, Fox News is expected to pump on the brakes within seconds of the inauguration ceremony.
      All of a sudden, the person in the White House is not a Republican. More than that, the network can no longer rely on the willingness of the president or his aides to call into Fox News any time of the day or night.
      The rightwing TV channel, and its big name hosts Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, will spend the next four years as the party of the opposition. The network has done this before, of course – the eight years of Barack Obama’s presidency weren’t that long ago – but Biden presents a different challenge.
      “Of course we can expect it to be relentlessly negative, but it’s a challenge on some levels, because he’s a 78-year-old white man, fairly moderate history,” said Heather Hendershot, a professor of film and media at MIT who studies conservative and rightwing media.
      “In the past they attacked Hillary Clinton very hard not only because she was liberal, but obviously there was some underlying sexism and misogyny there – and obviously the fact that Barack Obama was African American was central to rightwing attacks on him, either implicitly or explicitly, including on Fox News.”
      That’s not to say Biden’s government will escape attack, even if he dodges the worst.
      Kamala Harris will be the first Black vice-president, and could become a target for Fox News’ hosts. If Democrats win the two Senate runoff elections in Georgia, the Senate will be split 50-50, and Harris will cast the deciding vote.
      “[If that happens] she’s going to be out there front and center as a tie-breaker in Congress over and over again,” Hendershot said.
      “And every time that happens that is a way to tangentially attack Biden – it gives [Fox News and other rightwing outlets] a kind of ‘red meat’ to attack Kamala Harris, because she is both a woman and a person of color.”
      Biden claims he has nominated “the most diverse cabinet anyone in American history has ever announced”, with Janet Yellen set to be the first woman to be secretary of the Treasury, while Lloyd Austin, if confirmed, poised to become the first Black defence secretary.
      Pete Buttigieg, an occasional Fox News guest, is set to be the first openly gay cabinet secretary as head of transport.
      Fox News has already been attacking another diverse set of Democrats: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, and other female, non-white members of Congress.
      Matthew Gertz, senior fellow at Media Matters for America, a media watchdog, said that’s a theme that has continued to dominate, even since Biden became the president-elect.
      “A lot of what we’re seeing right now is less of a focus on Joe Biden himself and more of this idea that he will somehow be a puppet for other figures that they find easier to attack – whether that is Kamala Harris, or Bernie Sanders, or Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Gertz said.
      “That is an angle they pursued quite a bit during the campaign, and it’s something they’ve focused on during the transition as well.” More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Environmental groups hail Covid relief bill – but more needs to be done

      by

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