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We're being told Biden won't be able to achieve much. We must reject that idea | Astra Taylor
One thing we have learned from this election is just how crazy our democratic system is. Many crucial victories came down to slim margins in swing states and the idiosyncrasies of the electoral college.
Moving forward, progressives need to rally around serious democracy reform. Every issue we care about, from heathcare to climate justice, flows from that. Without a major intervention – and even with radical candidates winning office here and there – our political system is becoming less and less representative and responsive.
We need to start thinking about voting rights as operating on multiple levels. One is access to the ballot box: are you able to vote? Two: is your vote counted? Then there’s a third – does your vote have consequences? In other words, is your vote impactful politically? Does it lead to the ability for your chosen candidate to govern? That is where we are now. Even after our votes are counted and Joe Biden has sealed the deal to become president-elect, we’re being told that it will be impossible for him to accomplish anything given that the Republicans will likely control the Senate.
We have to challenge that logic as much as we can. The fact that the Democrats didn’t sweep Congress – that Biden may be dealing with a divided government – is extremely disappointing. But there’s actually a lot that a president can do with a divided or weak Congress if they have a spine. For example, Biden can use the same tactics that Trump used to fill various high-power positions without having them confirmed, by using the Vacancies Act and making recess appointments. Biden can also use executive power in bold ways, including to cancel all federal student loan debt using a legal authority called “compromise and settlement”. We must remind the incoming administration of the power it possesses, even if the circumstances are less than ideal. More - in US Politics
'Heal the damage': Activists urge Joe Biden to move beyond ‘border security’
As Joe Biden prepares to take office, activists say the president-elect must not only take meaningful action to stabilize the US-Mexico border, but also reckon with his own history of militarizing the border landscape and communities.
Biden has promised to end many of the Trump administration’s border policies, but has yet to unveil the kind of bold immigration plan that would suggest a true departure from Obama-era priorities. Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s top immigration adviser who memorably defended the administration’s decision to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants, was recently added to Biden’s transition team.
Biden has stated that he will cease construction of the border wall, telling National Public Radio in August that there will be “not another foot of wall”, and that his administration will close lawsuits aimed at confiscating land to make way for construction. His immigration plan will also rescind Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” on the southern border, which the Trump administration has used to siphon funds from the Department of Defense to finance construction, circumventing Congress in an action recently declared illegal by an appeals court.
Some lawmakers along the border find these developments heartening, after Trump’s border wall construction has devastated sensitive ecosystems, tribal spaces, and communities, and has been continuously challenged in court.
“I very much expect a Biden administration to cancel construction contracts and instruct DoJ to close eminent domain lawsuits,” says the congressman Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who represents the south Texas district of Laredo, where plans for construction have been met with stiff resistance from locals who say it is unnecessary and would damage their community. “My constituents feel hopeful, because they know a Biden administration is not going to waste money on a useless, destructive wall.”
Since January 2017, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) say they have spent $15bn on “400 miles of new primary and secondary border wall system”, the vast majority of it financed by funds from the Department of Defense. Most of this consists of replacing or building on older barriers, not building on land where none existed before.
But while weary border activists see a potential ally in the Biden administration, many say that, while his electoral victory brought them a sense of relief, they are hoping for more than a return to the status quo.
“Stopping construction isn’t enough,” says Dror Ladin, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “There has to be planning to dismantle particularly harmful sections of this wall in a responsible way and help heal the damage that has been done, both to communities and natural spaces.”
Donald Trump is not unique in his goal of militarizing the border, but his administration has tested the limits of executive authority in ways his predecessors did not. On 25 to 30 occasions, the Trump administration has invoked an obscure provision of the 2005 Real ID Act, which allows the secretary of homeland security to continue barrier construction without paying heed to any law that would stand in the way of expeditious construction efforts. The Trump administration has used it to bypass protections like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act. By comparison, the George Bush administration invoked the provision to waive laws five times. More - in US Politics
A youth group helped Biden win. Now they want him to fix climate crisis
Joe Biden will have to navigate a path for the most ambitious climate agenda ever adopted by a US president through not only stubborn Republican obstruction but also an emergent youth climate movement that is already formulating plans to hold him to account.
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A record turnout of young voters, a cohort riven by anxiety over the climate crisis, helped Biden beat Donald Trump on the 3 November election. The Sunrise Movement, the youth-led progressive climate group, reached 3.5 million young voters in swing states and now wants to see a return on these efforts.
“We will have to see if Joe Biden is true to his word when he says that climate change is his number one issue but rest assured the movement will be there to remind him every moment of the way,” said Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the group, which surged to fame last year after a viral video showed a fractious encounter between the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein and young climate activists who had occupied her office. “We delivered for Biden, now it’s his time to deliver for us.”
Biden has called the climate crisis an “existential threat” to the US and has outlined a $2tn plan to decarbonize the electricity sector and create millions of jobs in clean energy. This package is far more ambitious than the Democrat’s original climate plan, which groups, including Sunrise, successfully pushed to go further.
“His ratings among young people were abysmal six months ago but, to his credit, he came back with a much better climate plan,” said Prakash. “It’s clear we don’t have time to wait. Young people are terrified of what is to come and they will push Joe Biden to do everything in his power to ensure climate action.”
An animating fear for climate activists is a repeat of Barack Obama’s failure to enact climate legislation, after the collapse of a grand bipartisan attempt to institute a price on carbon emissions. Biden will be pressured to push ahead without Republicans, with activists holding talks with the incoming administration to create an office of climate mobilization, in the vein of the war mobilization office set up by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1943, to coordinate efforts.
Protests are also brewing over Biden’s cabinet appointments, with disquiet over the rumored return of Ernest Moniz, a former secretary of energy who is in favor of using gas rather than solely renewable energy. “I have the fear that the cabinet that makes it through the nomination process won’t be considered full of climate champions,” said Prakash.
That nomination process, like much of Biden’s agenda, will hinge upon a Senate that appears likely to remain in Republican hands. Sweeping climate legislation would almost certainly be blocked in this scenario, testing Biden’s ability to force down emissions through executive actions or brokered deals with Republicans.
“Biden will attempt to legislate first while retaining the prerogative to regulate and I think there is still an opportunity to do that – he spent 30 years in the Senate and knows how to cut a deal,” said Paul Bledsoe, a strategic adviser at the Progressive Policy Institute and a Biden ally. Republicans could be swayed by an economic stimulus package that includes green elements such as new electric vehicle recharge stations, retrofitting buildings to make them more energy efficient and support for solar and wind power, Bledsoe said.
“I expect him to be very aggressive,” Bledsoe added. “If he had Congress it would be easier, Sunrise understands that. But I don’t think he intends to disappoint this new generation of climate activists.”
Public opinion will, at least, be broadly in Biden’s favor. Polling shows there is a record level of concern among Americans over the climate crisis, with a clear majority demanding a response from government.
“The electorate has clearly said it wants action on climate change,” said Heather McTeer Toney, a former regional administrator at the Environmental Protection Agency and now senior director of the Moms Clean Air Force. “It’s exciting that climate is a top line priority. I know it’s not going to be easy but it now feels possible. We should be energized.” More - in Elections
Barack Obama rules out role in Biden cabinet – 'Michelle would leave me'
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Barack Obama would not take a position in Joe Biden’s cabinet if the president-elect offered it – because if he did, he fears, Michelle Obama would leave him.
The 44th president made the remark in an interview with CBS Sunday Morning, two days ahead of publication of his memoir, A Promised Land. He was due to speak to CBS again, for 60 Minutes, on Sunday night.
Biden, Obama’s vice-president from 2009 to 2017, is preparing to become the 46th president in January, having defeated Donald Trump at the polls.
Asked how he will help Biden, Obama said: “He doesn’t need my advice, and I will help him in any ways that I can. Now, I’m not planning to suddenly work on the White House staff or something.”
Susan Rice and Michelle Flournoy are among Obama administration veterans reportedly being considered for key posts under Biden.
Asked if he would consider a cabinet position, Obama said: “There are some things I would not be doing because Michelle would leave me. She’d be like, what? You’re doing what?”
The Obamas have enough to occupy their time as it is, not least through establishing a charitable foundation and fulfilling a production deal with Netflix.
In his book, Obama considers what his meteoric rise to the US Senate and then the White House meant for his marriage to Michelle and family life with their daughters, Sasha and Malia.
“My career in politics, with its prolonged absences, had made it even tougher” for his wife to pursue her own law career, he writes. “More than once Michelle had decided not to pursue an opportunity that excited her but would have demanded too much time away from the girls.
“… With my election [as president] she’d been forced to give up a job with real impact for a role [as first lady] that – in its original design, at least – was far too small for her gifts.”
The Obamas’ literary gifts have at least paid off. A Promised Land is part of a reported $65m deal with Penguin Random House that also covered Becoming, Michelle Obama’s memoir, released in 2018, and which has sold more than 10m copies. The former president is expected to produce a second volume.
He also discussed the first with Oprah Winfrey, for Apple TV in an interview scheduled to broadcast in full on Tuesday.
In a released clip, Obama told Winfrey he and Michelle “went through our rough patches in the White House, as she’s written about, she’s talked about. But I tell you that the thing that I think we were good about was talking stuff through, never losing fundamental love and respect for each other, and prioritising our kids.”
Though Trump shows no sign of willingly giving up power, his memoirs are already the subject of speculation – and a rumoured $100m price tag.
Another passage of Obama’s CBS interview might have had resonance for the current president, had he been watching.
Obama discussed what it is like to have the luxurious trappings of office, in this instance the presidential motorcade, inevitably taken away.
“I’m driving along,” Obama said, laughing. “I’m still not driving, but [I’m] in the car. I’m in the car in the backseat and I’m looking at my iPad or something. And suddenly, we stop and I’m like, ‘What’s going on?’ There’s a red light. There’s a car right next to us. Some kids are eating a burrito or something in the backseat.
“Back to life.” More - in US Politics
Trump faces growing pressure to start transition as Covid surges across US
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The White House is coming under growing pressure from President-elect Joe Biden, as well as senior Republicans and health experts, to allow transition talks to begin amid a terrifying surge in coronavirus cases that is pushing hospital systems across the US to the brink of collapse.
As Donald Trump insisted he would not concede defeat – despite tweeting that Biden “won” last week’s election – Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, said on Sunday it was essential that a “seamless transition” begins quickly, given the severity of the pandemic.
He told NBC’s Meet the Press Biden’s Covid advisory panel remains hamstrung from talking to US government health officials including the White House taskforce led by Vice-President Mike Pence.
Under transition rules routinely followed for the past 60 years, a letter of “ascertainment” declaring Biden the winner of the 3 November election should by now have been issued by the General Services Administration (GSA), authorising communication between the outgoing and incoming administrations.
But with Trump still refusing to concede, as he lies repeatedly on Twitter about a “stolen election”, no such letter has been produced.
“Unfortunately until we get that GSA ascertainment that authorises us to contact government officials we can’t have any contacts,” Klain said.
Klain, whose approach to coronavirus carries weight given his successful marshalling of the federal response as “Ebola tsar” in 2014, said the block on communications was especially damaging around preparations for a vaccine. Hopes soared this week when Pfizer/BioNTech announced its candidate was 90% effective in protecting people from the infection.
The White House has said some 20m doses of the vaccine could be ready for distribution to vulnerable populations such as older people in nursing homes by the end of December.
Biden’s transition team will meet Pfizer and other producers this week, Klain said. But he added: “The bigger issue is the mechanism of manufacture and distribution – getting this vaccine out. Vaccines don’t save lives, vaccinations save lives – it’s a giant logistical problem.
“Trump’s Twitter feed doesn’t make Joe Biden president or not president, the American people did that. What we want to see is the GSA issue that ascertainment so we can meet vaccine officials.”
The note of urgency and frustration evident from Biden’s chief of staff reflected the intensity of a coronavirus crisis that is surging in all parts of the US. Friday saw records shattered with 184,000 new cases. Deaths are increasing in 31 states, the toll fast approaching a quarter of a million.
The lack of transition talks is not only hampering preparations for a vaccine. It is also preventing Biden’s administration-in-waiting from gaining up-to-the-minute information on stockpiles of essential protective equipment for health workers, including gloves and masks.
A Guardian/Kaiser Health News investigation, Lost on the Frontline, has identified at least 1,375 health workers who have died in the US from Covid-19.
The chorus of demands on the Trump administration to begin cooperating with Biden, despite the president’s increasingly perverse refusal to admit defeat, has been joined by a number of senior Republicans. Among them on Sunday was John Bolton, Trump’s former US national security adviser.
Bolton told ABC’s This Week that by making it as difficult as possible for the incoming administration, Trump was acting “ultimately to the country’s disadvantage, certainly in the national security space and I think given the coronavirus pandemic and the effective distribution of the vaccine. We need a transition and we should proceed with it as quickly as we can.”
Mike DeWine, the Republican governor of Ohio, which is struggling with a devastating rise in infections, told CNN’s State of the Union: “We know now that Joe Biden is president-elect and that transition for the country’s sake is important. We need to begin that process.”
Dr Anthony Fauci, the country’s top infectious diseases official and a member of the White House taskforce, joined the calls for the transition blockage to be lifted.
Asked by CNN’s Jake Tapper if a normal transition would be to the benefit of public health, were he and other experts allowed to work with the Biden team, he replied: “Of course, that’s obvious. Of course it would be better if we could starting working with them.”
As the calls mount for Trump to get out of the way, the president himself has been virtually silent on the public health disaster swirling around him. According to Fauci, Trump has not attended a meeting of the coronavirus taskforce for “several months”.
The last time Trump physically sat in on the discussions was at least five months ago, the Washington Post reported.
Apart from spreading falsehoods about the election, Trump spent the weekend playing golf at his course in Sterling, Virginia.
Though the death rate from Covid-19 remains lower than its April peak, there are fears that fatalities will also rise when hospitals become overrun. That point is getting close in several states throughout the midwest, including Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin.
Michael Osterholm, a member of Biden’s Covid-19 advisory board, gave NBC a chilling vision of what could lie ahead.
“My worst fear,” he said, “is what we saw in other countries, where people were literally dying in the waiting room of emergency rooms after spending 10 hours waiting to be seen.
“That will start to happen, the media will start reporting it, and we will see the breadth and depth of this tragedy.” More - in US Politics
Trump supporters gather in Washington as president refuses to concede to Biden
Donald Trump continues to rage against the dying light of his US presidency, falsely claiming to be the victim of mass voter fraud and praising rightwingers and conspiracy theorists who gathered in Washington on Saturday to echo his fabrication.
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Trump has still not conceded that he lost the 3 November election to Joe Biden, despite a protracted count showing the Democrat has comfortably secured the electoral college votes needed for victory, seizing formerly safe Republican states in Arizona and possibly Georgia, where a hand recount is under way.
Across the US, Biden has more than 5m more votes.
The president has refused to cooperate with a transition of power to Biden, who will enter the White House on 20 January, or even provide his successor with national security briefings. Trump continued on Saturday to claim, without evidence, that the election was “rigged” and that he is the rightful winner.
On Friday, federal and state officials said the election was the “most secure in American history”, with no evidence votes were compromised or altered.
Plenty of Trump supporters accept the president’s assertions, however, with several hundred rallying in Washington in demonstrations organised under titles including “Million MAGA March” and “Stop the Steal”. Fringe extremist figures such as Infowars founder and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Enrique Tarrio, chairman of the far-right Proud Boys group and Jack Posobiec, who promoted the infamous “Pizzagate” conspiracy that led to a 2016 shooting at a Washington restaurant, spearheaded rallies that Trump called “heartwarming”.
Trump emerged from the White House on Saturday morning to applause, cheers, waving and whistles from hundreds of supporters lining both sides of the street. They punched the air, took pictures with phones and held signs that included “Best prez ever” and “Stop the steal”.
The crowd also waved flags including “Trump 2020: Keep America great”, “Trump 2020: No more bullshit”, “All aboard the Trump train!” and “Trump 2020: Pro life, pro God, pro gun”. A stand had been set up to sell merchandise, as if at a Trump rally. Some ran excitedly after the motorcade. There were chants of “USA! USA!”, “We want Trump! We want Trump!” and “Four more years! Four more years!”
One attendee, Mike Sembert, from Fort Meyers in Florida, told the Guardian he had traveled to the rally because “we need our president back and we need four more years”. He said the election was fraudulent and votes were cast by “illegals and dead people”.
Anti-Trump protesters have also continued to congregate in Washington since street celebrations erupted when Biden’s win was confirmed a week ago. Signs, some reading “Loser” and “Failure”, have plastered a non-scalable fence erected around the entire White House perimeter.
There has been an “outrageous and illegitimate attempt to overturn the election which must be stopped in its tracks by people in the streets making clear: the election is over,” said Sunsara Taylor, a counter-protester. “Biden won. Trump lost.”
The courts, as well as the major news organisations that typically project election winners, appear in no mood to indulge Trump. The president’s campaign has suffered a slew of legal losses in Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania after arguing that ballots were illegally counted.
“The Trump campaign keeps hoping it will find a judge that treats lawsuits like tweets,” Justin Levitt, a Loyola Law School professor and elections law expert, told CNN. “Repeatedly, every person with a robe they’ve encountered has said, ‘I’m sorry, we do law here.’”The bulk of senior Republicans have either sided with Trump or refused to condemn his refusal to acknowledge his loss, a stance that will lead America down a “dangerous path”, former president Barack Obama has warned. There are some notable Republican exceptions. George W Bush, another former president, has congratulated Biden on his win.
The tumultuous transition comes as the US is ravaged by a surge in coronavirus cases. On Friday, a new daily record of 184,514 infections was recorded by Johns Hopkins University, with Americans now dying at a rate of around 1,000 a day. Nearly 250,000 people in the US have died due to the pandemic, by far the worst death toll in the world.
Biden has urged people to take basic precautions, such as wearing masks, while attacking the “woefully lacking” Trump administration response to the crisis.
“I will not be president until next year,” the president-elect said. “This crisis does not respect dates on the calendar, it is accelerating right now. Urgent action is needed today, now, by the current administration – starting with an acknowledgement of how serious the current situation is.” More - in Elections
Joe Biden ignores Trump obstruction to press ahead with cabinet selection
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Joe Biden’s team is pressing forward with preparations to take over the federal government when his term starts despite virtually no help from Donald Trump’s outgoing administration.
The president-elect faces choices that will either please or anger the bickering wings of his party as leftists and centrists vie to set the direction of the incoming Democratic administration. The process also sends a clear message to the Republican party and Trump: Biden won and will be sitting in the White House come January.
“The truth is the Trump administration can file whatever it wants to the federal register, can do whatever executive orders it wants until noon on January 20th, and at that moment they can no longer do it and the Biden people get to stop whatever they had in the pipeline and put whatever they want in their own pipeline,” said Tevi Troy, who helped run the transition to the second Bush-Cheney term in 2004. Troy also authored Fight House: Rivalries in the White House from Truman to Trump.
The Biden team, Troy added, “know the things they want to stop from happening and they’re just going to go do it”.On Wednesday night Biden took his most significant step yet, naming Ron Klain, a longtime aide, as his chief of staff. The move underscored that even as Biden vows to fill out his administration with figures spanning all wings of the Democratic party, he also plans to include hands familiar with the conventional levers of Washington DC.
“He wants people who are super capable … part of what you want to do is restore faith in government, in public service and the way that career folks are treated,” said Lisa Brown, a former staff secretary for Barack Obama’s administration who worked on the 2008 presidential transition.
Brown noted that Biden’s team was focused on diversity. “A lot of what he wants to do if we don’t get the Senate back is going to be harder and so one of the things he’s got control over is the people that he wants to appoint. So you can show people you’re representing America even if you’re not able to get through Congress some of the initiatives.”
Klain’s appointment comes at a moment of high political tension in Washington. Despite losing the popular vote and electoral college, Trump has not conceded the race, and the General Services Administration, the federal agency in charge of supporting other agencies, has not yet given the Biden team the normal designation a victorious presidential campaign gets.
A sign-off from the administrator of the GSA is required for an incoming administration to get some essential transition resources – such as access to classified briefings – and take steps for background checks on cabinet appointees. In past elections, the GSA has recognized the results much faster. More
