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      in US Politics

      Biden condemns US gun violence as an ‘international embarrassment’ as he announces new actions – live

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      Key events

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      5.39pm EDT
      17:39

      White House expresses concern over Northern Ireland violence

      5.16pm EDT
      17:16

      Amazon challenges hundreds of ballots in Alabama workers’ union drive

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

      3.29pm EDT
      15:29

      Fauci thanks US health workers for sacrifices but admits PPE shortages drove up death toll

      3.11pm EDT
      15:11

      Gaetz associate may cooperate with prosecutors – report

      1.52pm EDT
      13:52

      Today so far

      12.07pm EDT
      12:07

      Biden condemns gun violence as ‘an epidemic’ and ‘an international embarrassment’

      Live feed

      Show

      5.39pm EDT
      17:39

      White House expresses concern over Northern Ireland violence

      Lisa O’Carroll, Rory Carroll and Rajeev Syal report:
      The White House has expressed concern over a week of riots in Northern Ireland, with Joe Biden joining Boris Johnson and the Irish prime minister in calling for calm after what police described as the worst violence in Belfast for years.
      It came as police used water cannon against nationalist youths in west Belfast, as unrest stirred again on the streets on Thursday evening.
      In a statement, the US president’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, said: “We are concerned by the violence in Northern Ireland” and that Biden remained “steadfast” in his support for a “secure and prosperous Northern Ireland in which all communities have a voice and enjoy the gains of the hard-won peace”.
      She spoke as the Northern Ireland secretary, Brandon Lewis, called on political leaders across the spectrum to tone down their language to ease tensions.
      Biden, who has Irish roots, has repeatedly expressed support for the peace process and last year waded into a row over UK plans to override parts of the Brexit deal, warning Boris Johnson that any trade deal was “contingent upon respect for the [peace] agreement and preventing the return of a hard border”.
      Police said as many as 600 people had been involved in disturbances in Belfast on Wednesday, when a bus was petrol-bombed, rubber bullets were fired and missiles were hurled over a “peace wall”.
      Read more:

      5.16pm EDT
      17:16

      Amazon challenges hundreds of ballots in Alabama workers’ union drive

      Michael Sainato

      Amazon has challenged hundreds of ballots in a vote to form a union at one of its warehouses in Alabama in a unionization drive seen as one of the most important labor fights in recent American history.
      Some 3,215 votes were cast in the election out of more than 5,800 eligible employees. The election will determine if workers in Bessemer will form the first labor union at an Amazon warehouse in the US.
      According to the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, hundreds of ballots were challenged, mostly by Amazon. In the early vote the number of votes against forming a union moved into a lead of 439 versus 200 for shortly before 5pm EST. on Thursday. But many observers expect the huge amount of challenged ballots to lead to a delay in any formal announcement of a result.
      “There remain hundreds of challenged ballots mostly by the employer that will need to be addressed after the public count. As the ballot envelopes are opened and the ballots are counted there’s a possibility that more issues could impact the final results,” the RWDSU said.
      The unionization drive has sparked huge political interest and a roster of leftwing politicians – and even some Republicans – have spoken out in support of it or visited the state. The US labor movement sees it as a bellwether case for hopes of expanding its power, especially in areas of the economy – such as online retail – that are increasingly dominant.
      Ballots in the vote can be challenged based on several factors, such as the eligibility of the voter in regards to job classification or dates of employment. The NLRB will probably hold a later hearing on the validity of the challenged ballots, after unchallenged ballots are tallied, if the number of challenged ballots could affect the outcome of the election.
      Read more:

      5.00pm EDT
      17:00

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      Joe Biden formally announced a series of executive orders aimed at ending gun violence in America. The president has called on the justice department to crack down on “ghost guns,” unregistered firearms assembled from kits, and gun accessories that can functionally transform pistols into rifles. Biden said in the Rose Garden today, “Gun violence in this country is an epidemic, and it’s an international embarrassment.”
      George Floyd died from a “low level of oxygen” caused by “shallow breathing,” an expert testified at Derek Chauvin’s murder trial. The expert’s analysis could undermine arguments from Chauvin’s defense team that Floyd died because of drug use and preexisting health conditions.
      Joe Manchin said there was “no circumstance” where he would support ending the filibuster. In a Washington Post op-ed published last night, the Democratic senator wrote, “The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation.” Manchin’s stance could hinder much of Biden’s legislative agenda, given the filibuster allows the Republican minority to block bills unless they have the support of 60 senators.
      An associate of Matt Gaetz may cooperate with federal prosecutors, a potentially ominous sign for the Republican congressman as he faces allegations of sex-trafficking. According to the Washington Post, prosecutors have indicated the case against Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector for Seminole County, may end in a plea deal. That could mean Greenberg has agreed to cooperate with federal officials in exchange for a lesser sentence.
      Dr Anthony Fauci acknowledged shortages of personal protective equipment likely contributed to coronavirus deaths among health workers in the US. “During the critical times when there were shortages was when people had to use whatever was available to them,” the president’s chief medical adviser said in an interview with the Guardian. “I’m sure that increased the risk of getting infected among healthcare providers.” According to the Guardian and Kaiser Health News’ Lost on the Frontline database, more than 3,600 US health workers have died of coronavirus since the start of the pandemic.

      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.43pm EDT
      16:43

      Amudalat Ajasa reports for the Guardian from Minneapolis:
      Behind the Hennepin county courthouse in downtown Minneapolis, which is heavily fortified for the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, a small but determined core of seven protesters gathers every day.
      Sometimes there are many more protesters, sometimes not so many. But always this group, there hoping to witness justice for George Floyd, who died under the knee of Chauvin in south Minneapolis last May.
      Outside, the core group hold signs, amplify chants with a bullhorn and circle the courthouse with the aim of encouraging peaceful protest.
      “I get up at 5am and I’m usually out here a little after 7am every day,” John Stewart Jr, 57, said, as his Black Lives Matter flag fluttered in the wind.
      Stewart, an ordained pastor in the city, and the “core of seven” generally stay put in their chosen spot behind the courthouse for the entire length of an average work day: 9-5, or longer.

      4.24pm EDT
      16:24

      Donald Trump has endorsed two sitting Republican senators, Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Rand Paul of Kentucky, in new statements today.
      “Rand Paul has done a fantastic job for our Country, and for the incredible people of Kentucky,” the former president said in a statement released by his political action committee, the Save America Pac. “He has my Complete and Total Endorsement for another term in the U.S. Senate. The Commonwealth of Kentucky has a true champion in Rand Paul.”
      Trump praised Johnson as “brave” and “bold” and offered him his “complete and total endorsement” — even though the Wisconsin senator has not yet announced whether he will run again.
      Johnson and Paul are both up for reelection next year, when Republicans hope to flip the Senate after Democrats took control with two wins in Georgia earlier this year.

      4.04pm EDT
      16:04

      David Smith

      Joe Biden, under pressure to act after a slew of mass shootings, has announced his first steps to curb the “epidemic” and “international embarrassment” of gun violence in America.
      The president has prioritised the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery during the first two and half months of his presidency. But a series of recent shooting tragedies in Georgia, Colorado and California led to renewed calls for urgent action on guns.

      About 316 people are shot every day in America and 106 of them die, he noted, “hitting Black and brown communities the hardest”. Gun violence is estimated to cost the nation $280bn a year, according to the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. “This is an epidemic, for God’s sake, and it has to stop,” an emotional Biden said.
      The White House event included parents family members who have lost loved ones to the scourge. “They know what it’s like to bury a piece of their soul deep in the earth,” remarked Biden, who has endured his own measure of loss. “They understand that.”
      Seeking to break a Washington paralysis that confounded former president Barack Obama, even after horrific mass shootings, Biden said he was announcing immediate concrete actions that he can take now without Congress. Republicans have long resisted fundamental reform, citing the second amendment to the constitution that protects the right to bear arms.
      “Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the second amendment,” Biden insisted. “They’re phony arguments, suggesting that these are second amendment rights at stake, what we’re talking about. But no amendment to the constitution is absolute. You can’t shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theatre and call it freedom of speech.”

      3.47pm EDT
      15:47

      Congresswoman Lucy McBath reflected on the loss of her son Jordan, who died in a 2012 shooting, as she celebrated Joe Biden’s new actions to address gun violence.
      McBath, who was at the Rose Garden for Biden’s formal announcement of the executive orders earlier today, said on Twitter, “To my Jordan, This day. At the White House. In the Rose Garden. The President announced actions that will help keep families safe. Actions that will protect children across America. Children like you. My dear Jordan, this day is your day.”

      Rep. Lucy McBath
      (@RepLucyMcBath)
      To my Jordan,This day.At the White House. In the Rose Garden.The President announced actions that will help keep families safe. Actions that will protect children across America.Children like you.My dear Jordan, this day is your day. pic.twitter.com/6tmYmsciX8

      April 8, 2021

      In 2012, Jordan Davis was shot and killed by a man who confronted the 17-year-old about his music being too loud. The shooter tried to use Florida’s controversial Stand Your Ground law to defend his actions, but he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
      After Davis’ death, McBath became a prominent advocate for gun control laws, eventually running for Congress in 2018 and flipping a Republican seat in Georgia.

      3.29pm EDT
      15:29

      Fauci thanks US health workers for sacrifices but admits PPE shortages drove up death toll

      Jessica Glenza

      Dr Anthony Fauci thanked America’s healthcare workers who “every single day put themselves at risk” during the pandemic, even as he acknowledged that PPE shortages had contributed to the deaths of more than 3,600 of them.
      “We rightfully refer to these people without hyperbole – that they are true heroes and heroines,” he said in an exclusive interview with the Guardian. The deaths of so many health workers from Covid-19 are “a reflection of what healthcare workers have done historically, but putting themselves in harm’s way, by living up to the oath they take when they become physicians and nurses,” said Fauci.
      The Guardian and Kaiser Health News have tracked healthcare workers deaths throughout the pandemic in the Lost on the Frontline database. More than 3,600 health worker deaths have been tallied in the database, which is considered the most authoritative accounting in the country.
      Personal protective equipment – including gloves, gowns and critical masks – have been in short supply since the pandemic began and heightened the toll. The US is the world’s largest importer of PPE, which made it especially vulnerable to the demand shock and export restrictions that hit the global market last spring.
      “During the critical times when there were shortages was when people had to use whatever was available to them,” said Fauci. “I’m sure that increased the risk of getting infected among healthcare providers.”

      3.11pm EDT
      15:11

      Gaetz associate may cooperate with prosecutors – report

      An associate of Matt Gaetz is expected to strike a plea deal with federal prosecutors, which could be an ominous sign for the Republican congressman as he faces allegations of sex-trafficking.
      The Washington Post has the details:

      Joel Greenberg, the former tax collector for Seminole County, Fla., had first been charged last summer in a bare-bones indictment that prosecutors repeatedly superseded to add charges of sex trafficking of a minor, stealing from the tax office and even trying to use fraud to get covid-19 relief money while out on bond. In the course of the investigation into his conduct, people familiar with the matter have said, federal authorities came across evidence that Gaetz might have committed a crime and launched a separate investigation into him.
      At a status conference in the case Thursday, federal prosecutor Roger Handberg told a judge he expected the case to end in a plea, though negotiations are ongoing. Fritz Scheller, an attorney for Greenberg, asked the judge to set a deadline of May 15 for the two sides to either reach a deal, or move toward a trial in the summer.
      It was not immediately clear how far the negotiations had gotten, or to what extent a plea agreement would require Greenberg to cooperate with investigators. If prosecutors were to get Greenberg on their side as a cooperator, it is possible he could help bolster the case against Gaetz, a higher-profile target. A person who pleads guilty in a criminal case can often lessen their potential penalty by providing information that might be helpful to investigators in other matters.

      Reports emerged late last month that Gaetz was under investigation for allegedly having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl and paying for her to travel with him.
      Gaetz has denied the allegations and claimed he’s the victim of an extortion plot by a former by a former justice department official. That official has dismissed those claims as “completely false”.

      2.52pm EDT
      14:52

      Joanna Walters

      Gun violence prevention advocate and former Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords has also tweeted out her own version of the pic where she elbow-bumps Joe Biden at the White House after the president announced executive actions.
      “I’m with you, Joe. Together, we will protect our country from gun violence,” she tweeted.

      Gabrielle Giffords
      (@GabbyGiffords)
      I’m with you, Joe. Together, we will protect our country from gun violence. @POTUS pic.twitter.com/rLFVabhpI9

      April 8, 2021

      And Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Murphy hobnobbed with Giffords in the Oval.

      Chris Murphy
      (@ChrisMurphyCT)
      In the Oval Office today w my friend Gabby. Thanks to @POTUS for bringing us all together to take action on gun violence. pic.twitter.com/BGood4iyR6

      April 8, 2021

      2.38pm EDT
      14:38

      Joanna Walters

      The trial of the white former Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, charged with murdering George Floyd, a 46-year-old Black man, is underway in the Minnesota city and we’re running a dedicated live blog to bring you events from inside and outside court. More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Joe Biden announces first steps to curb ‘epidemic’ of US gun violence

      by

      Joe Biden, under pressure to act after a slew of mass shootings, has announced his first steps to curb the “epidemic” and “international embarrassment” of gun violence in America.The president has prioritised the coronavirus pandemic and economic recovery during the first two and half months of his presidency. But a series of recent shooting tragedies in Georgia, Colorado and California led to renewed calls for urgent action on guns.Biden said he is directing the justice department to tighten regulations on sales of so-called “ghost guns”, which are untraceable firearms assembled from kits.Other executive actions include a state-level push of “red-flag laws” that allow courts and local law enforcement to remove guns from people deemed a risk to communities.On Thursday Biden was joined in the sunshine of the White House Rose Garden by Kamala Harris, the vice-president, Merrick Garland, the attorney general, as well as members of Congress steeped in the issue.“Gun violence in this country is an epidemic and it’s an international embarrassment,” said Biden, pointing out that on Wednesday five people were killed – including young children – in a shooting at a home near Rock Hill in South Carolina.About 316 people are shot every day in America and 106 of them die, he noted, “hitting Black and brown communities the hardest”. Gun violence is estimated to cost the nation $280bn a year, according to the Everytown for Gun Safety Support Fund. “This is an epidemic, for God’s sake, and it has to stop,” an emotional Biden said.The White House event included parents family members who have lost loved ones to the scourge. “They know what it’s like to bury a piece of their soul deep in the earth,” remarked Biden, who has endured his own measure of loss. “They understand that.”Seeking to break a Washington paralysis that confounded former president Barack Obama, even after horrific mass shootings, Biden said he was announcing immediate concrete actions that he can take now without Congress. Republicans have long resisted fundamental reform, citing the second amendment to the constitution that protects the right to bear arms.“Nothing I’m about to recommend in any way impinges on the second amendment,” Biden insisted. “They’re phony arguments, suggesting that these are second amendment rights at stake, what we’re talking about. But no amendment to the constitution is absolute. You can’t shout ‘Fire!’ in a crowded movie theatre and call it freedom of speech.”Biden said regulations on the purchase of “ghost guns” would be tightened. More than 30% of the illegal weapons confiscated in some areas of California are “ghost guns”, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.“You can go buy the kit,” said Biden. “They have no serial numbers so when they show up at a crime scene they can’t be traced, and the buyers aren’t required to pass background checks to buy the kit to make the gun.“Consequently, anyone from a criminal to a terrorist can buy this kit and in as little as 30 minutes put together a weapon. I want to see these kits treated as firearms under the gun control act which is going to require that the seller and manufacturers make the key parts with serial numbers and run background checks on the buyers when they walk in to buy the package.”The justice department is also publishing model legislation within 60 days that is intended to make it easier for states to adopt their own “red-flag” laws. Such laws allow for individuals to petition a court to allow police to confiscate weapons from a person deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.“Red-flag laws can stop mass shooters before they can act out their violent plan,” Biden said.The department will also issue, within 60 days, proposed rules that make clear that devices marketed as “stabilising braces”, effectively turning pistols into rifles, will be subject to the National Firearms Act, which requires the registration of firearms. Other measures include a justice department report on arms trafficking for the first time since 2000.In addition, the White House will provide more than $1bn in funding for evidence-based community intervention and prevention. And Biden nominated a gun control advocate, David Chipman, to lead the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.But many of his election campaign promises – such as banning assault weapons altogether and requiring background checks for most gun sales – require congressional action. He urged the Senate to pass bills to close loopholes that allow gun buyers to avoid background checks, and curb firearms access for people found by courts to be abusers.“They’ve offered plenty of thoughts and prayers, members of Congress, but they’ve passed not a single new federal law to reduce gun violence. Enough prayers. Time for some action.”Thursday’s executive actions were praised by gun violence prevention campaigners as a promising start. Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action for Sense in America, told the MSNBC network: “We are thrilled about what happened today. This is a huge victory for the gun safety movement. We applaud President Biden for his strong leadership.”Brian Lemek, executive director of the Brady political action committee, which is focused on gun violence, added: “What couldn’t be more clear today is that elections matter. Joe Biden has been a gun-violence-prevention champion for decades and today he continues to be one … Now he needs a partner, and we urge Congress to come to the table and pass the bipartisan, common sense solutions that will keep our children and our families safe.”But the top Republican in the House, Kevin McCarthy, raised instant objections. “President Biden plans to announce his attempts to trample over our constitutional 2A rights by executive fiat,” McCarthy tweeted. “He is soft on crime, but infringes on the rights of law-abiding citizens.”And the National Rifle Association vowed to fight Biden’s moves. Amy Hunter, a spokeswoman, said: “Biden has made clear his sights are set on restricting the rights of law-abiding gun owners while ignoring criminals and foregoing substantive measures that will actually keep Americans safe.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden restores $200m in US aid to Palestinians slashed by Trump

      by

      The US will restore more than $200m (£145m) in aid to Palestinians, reversing massive funding cuts under the Trump administration that left humanitarian groups scrambling to keep people from plunging into poverty.
      “[We] plan to restart US economic, development, and humanitarian assistance for the Palestinian people,” the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said in a statement.
      The aid includes $75m in economic and development funds for the occupied West Bank and Gaza, which will provide food and clean water to Palestinians and help small businesses. A further $150m will be provided to the United Nations relief and works agency for Palestine refugees in the near east (UNRWA), a UN body that supports more than 5 million Palestinian refugees across the region.
      After Donald Trump’s row with the Palestinian leadership, President Joe Biden has sought to restart Washington’s flailing efforts to push for a two-state resolution for the Israel-Palestinian crisis, and restoring the aid is part of that. In his statement, Blinken said US foreign assistance “serves important US interests and values”.
      “The United States is committed to advancing prosperity, security, and freedom for both Israelis and Palestinians in tangible ways in the immediate term, which is important in its own right, but also as a means to advance towards a negotiated two-state solution,” he said.
      Palestinian leaders and the UN welcomed the resumption of aid. Israel, however, criticised the decision to restore funds to UNRWA, a body it has long claimed is a bloated, flawed group.
      “We believe that this UN agency for so-called refugees should not exist in its current format,” said Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Gilad Erdan. Pro-Israel US lawmakers joined the country in opposition to the aid and said they would scrutinise it in Congress.
      From 2018, Trump gradually cut virtually all US money to Palestinian aid projects after the Palestinian leadership accused him of being biased towards Israel and refused to talk. The US president accused Palestinians of lacking “appreciation or respect”.
      The former president cancelled more than $200m in economic aid, including $25m earmarked for underfunded East Jerusalem hospitals that have suffered during the Covid-19 crisis. Trump’s cuts to UNRWA, which also serves Palestinian refugees in war-stricken Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East, was described by the agency’s then head as “the biggest and most severe” funding crisis since the body was created in 1949. The US was previously UNRWA’s biggest donor.

      To outcry from aid workers, leaked emails suggested the move may have partly been a political tactic to weaken the Palestinian leadership. Those emails alleged that Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner had argued that “ending the assistance outright could strengthen his negotiating hand” to push Palestinians to accept their blueprint for an Israeli-Palestinian deal.
      The cuts were decried as catastrophic for Palestinians’ ability to provide basic healthcare, schooling and sanitation, including by prominent Israeli establishment figures.
      Last April, as the coronavirus pandemic hit, Trump’s government announced it would send money to Palestinians. The $5m one-off donation was roughly 1% of the amount Washington provided a year before Trump began slashing aid. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘A system of global apartheid’: author Harsha Walia on why the border crisis is a myth

      by

      The rising number of migrant children and families seeking to cross the US border with Mexico is emerging as one of the most serious political challenges for Joe Biden’s new administration.
      That’s exactly what Donald Trump wants: he and other Republicans believe that Americans’ concerns about a supposed “border crisis” will help Republicans win back political power.

      But Harsha Walia, the author of two books about border politics, argues that there is no “border crisis,” in the United States or anywhere else. Instead, there are the “actual crises” that drive mass migration – such as capitalism, war and the climate emergency – and “imagined crises” at political borders, which are used to justify further border securitization and violence.
      Walia, a Canadian organizer who helped found No One Is Illegal, which advocates for migrants, refugees and undocumented people, talked to the Guardian about Border and Rule, her new book on global migration, border politics and the rise of what she calls “racist nationalism.” The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
      Last month, a young white gunman was charged with murdering eight people, most of them Asian women, at several spas around Atlanta, Georgia. Around the same time, there was increasing political attention to the higher numbers of migrants and refugees showing up at the US-Mexico border. Do you see any connection between these different events?
      I think they are deeply connected. The newest invocation of a “border surge” and a “border crisis” is again creating the spectre of immigrants and refugees “taking over.” This seemingly race neutral language – we are told there’s nothing inherently racist about saying “border surge”– is actually deeply racially coded. It invokes a flood of black and brown people taking over a so-called white man’s country. That is the basis of historic immigrant exclusion, both anti-Asian exclusion in the 19th century, which very explicitly excluded Chinese laborers and especially Chinese women presumed to be sex workers, and anti-Latinx exclusion. If we were to think about one situation as anti-Asian racism and one as anti-Latinx racism, they might seem disconnected. But both forms of racism are fundamentally anti-immigrant. Racial violence is connected to the idea of who belongs and who doesn’t. Whose humanity is questioned in a moment of crisis. Who is scapegoated in a moment of crisis.
      How do you understand the rise of white supremacist violence, particularly anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim violence, that we are seeing around the world?
      The rise in white supremacy is a feedback loop between individual rightwing vigilantes and state rhetoric and state policy. When it comes to the Georgia shootings, we can’t ignore the fact that the criminalization of sex work makes sex workers targets. It’s not sex work itself, it’s the social condition of criminalization that creates that vulnerability. It’s similar to the ways in which border vigilantes have targeted immigrants: the Minutemen who show up at the border and harass migrants, or the kidnapping of migrants by the United Constitutional Patriots at gunpoint. We can’t dissociate that kind of violence from state policies that vilify migrants and refugees, or newspapers that continue to use the word “illegal alien”. More

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      in World Politics

      Obstructing Governance as a Substitute for Public Policy

      by

      It is hard to figure out why it seems so difficult to be a white guy in today’s America, even though I am a white guy and should be able to figure it out. The problem seems to be that there are just too many people in America who are not white guys, or even white guys and gals combined. Whenever this feeling seems to overwhelm some white guys, their solution to the perceived problem is to try to preclude something that non-white guys want: entry into the country, voting rights, equal opportunity, racial justice, access to meaningful health care and, way too often, the simple desire to live in peace or continue to live at all.

      So, now that the mass shootings have started again in earnest in America after seemingly taking a small break during the height of pandemic restrictions, it is again mostly white guys out front depriving lots of others of their lives and sense of security. Of course, who can forget the hordes of white guys storming the US Capitol a few months ago trying to prevent their fearless leader from the perceived insult of a permanent return to his beloved mansion in Florida.

      Escaping Thucydides’ Trap: Keeping the Peace Between Rising and Reigning Powers

      READ MORE

      It is worth asking who these white guys are who continue to board their trains to nowhere, callously leaving misery, destruction and even death in their wake. Some are among the really challenged people in America. Among other things, they seem to be intellectually incapable of seeing the connection between incredibly easy access to firearms and mass human slaughter in the American landscape. Find an assault weapon, and you are likely to find a challenged white guy.

      However, those white guys fueling the nation’s resistance to humane immigration policies, to easy access to the polls to affect democratic change, to a racial reckoning and equal opportunity, to universal access to meaningful health care, and even to a comprehensive public health response to the pandemic are all on the same trains to nowhere, along with their gun nut buddies. Tragically, they enable America to fail and they empower each other to add critical mass to their efforts.

      Many of these white people live in neighborhoods with a lot of other white people, only some of whom share their views. Some live in more diverse neighborhoods or pockets of poverty where they often hide their views until, for some reason, they have had enough of “others” and snap. But a whole bunch of these white people were among the 74 million people who voted for Trump in the last election.

      Thwarting Efforts to Govern

      Worse yet, they and their Republican cohorts are now determined to thwart any Biden administration effort to govern. Governing is not the same thing as being a government. Governing is, in its most basic sense, the exercise of authority thru the making of policy and the administration of that policy. President Joe Biden often has the authority to act, but to exercise that authority within America’s constitutional framework requires collaboration with, and the cooperation of, other institutional elements of that framework.

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      Take immigration policy as an example, since there is often talk of “comprehensive immigration reform.” The Biden administration can determine policy and administer elements of that policy through executive action. It can humanely allow Latino children to enter the United States and then make sure that they have a bed, a blanket and enough food to sustain them. After that, figuring out how these immigrant minors should be processed and treated becomes much more complicated, unless it is viewed as a component of a much larger US immigration problem that requires “comprehensive reform.”

      Enter Congress, enter the Republicans in Congress, enter the white guys on the trains to nowhere and that comprehensive reform is almost certainly doomed. So, what happens to the children? With some luck, they disappear into the fabric of the world of undocumented immigrants striving to find a place in a nation where a lot of white guys don’t want them to be.

      Although the immigration example is bad enough, there is more bad news from the white guys on the trains to nowhere. They don’t seem to want anybody but themselves to have a go at voting. It would be nice to say that this effort will fail in that exceptional “model democracy” known as America. But hold on, the white guys have a plan: You change the voting rules to get better results. This is easier than changing the policies, programs and personalities that many of the voters rejected under the old rules.

      Just to make sure that nobody mistook the latest white guy effort at voter suppression for a serious effort to make voting easier, those wacky Republicans in the Georgia legislature, aided and abetted by the Republican governor, just criminalized providing food and water to their fellow citizens waiting in voting lines. That is, of course, only part of what they did, but enough to fully demonstrate the lengths to which the white guys on the trains to nowhere will go to preserve their shrinking political influence.

      You see, prior voting practices in Georgia often left voters of color waiting in longer lines than their white counterparts, so instead of legislating to reduce wait times for everybody, someone came up with the bright idea of making it harder to wait in line. (This plan will work even better if the white guys also make it a crime to sell those little cooler bags to anyone who isn’t a white guy.)

      The Key That Unlocks the Door

      I wish I were making this up, but I am not. The Biden administration’s capacity to govern is being challenged not by people who have a sincere agenda of constructive reform for the nation, but by those same kind of white guys on their trains to nowhere who have just criminalized giving grandma a drink of water while she waits in line to vote.

      Even some things as potentially lifesaving for white guys as wearing masks and seeking COVID-19 vaccines seem challenging to way too many of them. While they should overwhelmingly embrace these measures if for no other reason than if only people of color get vaccinated and white guys die off, their situation gets even more desperate. Yet the world has watched while many white guys on their trains to nowhere have overtly contributed to tens of thousands of COVID deaths in the US and continue to try to thwart coordinated government efforts to address the nation’s pandemic and public health crisis.

      For some reason, even their significant contribution to the deaths of so many has failed to pause the white guys on their trains to nowhere long enough to stand back so that those of good will in government have the space they need to function and the support they need to govern.

      For as long as the mindless obstruction continues, the nation’s governmental institutions will be significantly impeded from pursuing the long-delayed promise of a more just and equitable America. And it will be that much harder to demonstrate that good government is the key that unlocks the door.

      *[This article was co-published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More