Democrats

Subterms

    Latest story

    125 Shares24 Views

    ‘Parents’ rights’: Republicans wage education culture war as 2024 looms

    by

    Speaking recently at a theater in Davenport, Iowa, Donald Trump marveled at the crowd’s reaction when he vowed to “bring back parental rights into our schools”. The line elicited thunderous applause – one of the loudest ovations of his nearly two-hour address.“Can you imagine what I’m doing? I’m saying, ‘Parents, you have rights’ … and the place goes crazy,” remarked the former president, who is again seeking the Republican nomination.With the 2024 election cycle looming, Republicans are leaning into the education culture wars, championing policies that they say will give parents more of a say in their children’s education, from the subjects they are taught to the books they read, with hopes of appealing to suburban voters who recoiled from the party during the Trump years. In their telling, Republicans are the defenders of America’s schoolchildren whose education is threatened by a leftwing ideology that promotes activism, racial history and gender fluidity over academic outcomes.But critics and many educators say conservatives are using the term “parents’ rights” as a guise to advance a rightwing education agenda that undermines public schools, whitewashes American history and marginalizes LGBTQ+ students.The debate took center stage in the House this week, where Republicans broke into cheers after narrowly advancing their “Parents Bill of Rights”. Friday’s vote followed a contentious 16-hour committee hearing and a bitter floor debate over the legislation, whose sponsor argued would “bring more transparency and accountability to education” and whose opponents derisively rebranded the “politics over parents act”.Democrats argued that the bill would only serve to embolden a far-right movement that has pushed book bans, restrictions on the instruction of American history and turned classrooms into “ground zero” for conservative culture wars.“This legislation has nothing to do with parental involvement,” said Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic House minority leader. “It has everything to do with jamming the extreme Maga Republican ideology down the throats of the children and the parents of the United States of America.”Though the legislation has little chance of advancing in the Democratic-controlled Senate, it will serve as a rallying cry for Republicans on the campaign trail.‘A line in the sand’The origins of the “parents’ rights” movement, experts say, can be traced back to the 1925 “trial of the century” in which a Tennessee biology teacher was fined for teaching evolution in violation of state law. The term has been invoked repeatedly in the decades since, notably in clashes related to desegregation, the red scare, sex education and homeschooling.“The idea of parents’ rights is really nothing new in American politics,” said Melissa Deckman, the CEO of the non-partisan Public Religion Research Institute who has written extensively about culture war battles in education.The present-day movement emerged in response to the upheaval sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, when extended school lockdowns led to a burst of political activism by parents who felt overwhelmed and abandoned, and by the racial justice protests that erupted in the summer of 2020, with the murder of George Floyd. Conservative politicians were quick to seize on any backlash, channeling voter frustration into a sophisticated national campaign aimed at restricting instruction on race and gender.As the presidential primary begins to take shape, the notional field of Republican hopefuls are using the education battles to distinguish themselves on an issue they believe has the potential to motivate their base.By far the most aggressive education culture warrior has been Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is widely seen as Trump’s strongest rival for the Republican nomination, though he has not formally entered the contest.“I think we have really done a great job of drawing a line in the sand to say the purpose of our schools is to educate kids not to indoctrinate kids,” DeSantis said at a recent event in Des Moines, Iowa.He has pointed to his successes in Florida, where he notably signed into law the Parental Rights in Education Act, branded by critics as “don’t say gay”, which forbids the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in early elementary grades. He also approved the “Stop Woke Act” that restricts conversations around race in schools, colleges and even private workplaces; banned transgender athletes from competing on women’s sports teams at public schools and colleges; and blocked high schools in the state from offering an Advanced Placement course on African American studies.Emboldened by his re-election victory, DeSantis is now pushing a raft of education-related proposals that would go even further ahead of an anticipated White House run.Not to be outflanked, Trump and the budding field of GOP candidates and potential contenders have also sharpened their attacks on the education system.In Iowa this month, Trump vowed to prohibit the teaching of “critical race theory”, “transgender insanity” and “any other inappropriate racial, sexual or political content” in public classrooms while calling for universal school choice, the direct election of school principals by parents and breaking up the Department of Education.Former vice-president Mike Pence, who built a reputation as a staunch social conservative and is weighing a run for president, has also staked out territory in the education wars, pushing what he calls a “parents’ rights” agenda. In Iowa last month, he stood with conservative parents as a federal appeals court considered a case involving a local school district’s policy to support transgender students.Nikki Haley, Trump’s former UN ambassador who is now challenging him for the nomination, has denounced critical race theory as “un-American” and blamed leftwing ideology for fueling a culture of “woke self-loathing” she has called a “virus more dangerous than any pandemic”. And in a likely preview of the education fights to come, Haley suggested Florida’s so-called “don’t say gay” law “didn’t go far enough”.‘A front-row seat’In 2021, Glenn Youngkin’s victory in the race for Virginia’s governor under the banner of “Parents matter” in a state that had been steadily trending blue offered a model for Republicans candidates across the country.“During Covid, parents for the first time weren’t just going to PTA conferences; they were literally turning their living rooms into classrooms and so they got a front-row seat to curriculum, standards, grading, teaching practices,” said Kristin Davison, a top strategist for Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign. “That awoke a number of parents across the political spectrum to demand more out of their schools.”As governor, Youngkin issued a day one executive order prohibiting the teaching of “inherently divisive concepts, including critical race theory” from Virginia classrooms and overhauled policies related to transgender students in public schools. He also set up a tip line for parents to report teachers who raise “divisive” topics in the classroom, thought it has since been shut down.With parents and teachers continuing to grapple with the repercussions of the pandemic on students – the learning loss and mental health challenges – Davison believes the education agenda championed by Republican politicians like Youngkin, who has also been raised as a potential presidential candidate in 2024, will only become more resonant with voters.Since Youngkin’s election, the conservative campaign to expand parental control over public education has moved from contentious school board meetings to state capitols and now Congress. Over the last two years, Republican-controlled legislatures have enacted or are considering a dizzying array of new proposals limiting the instruction of what proponents deem “divisive concepts” in public schools.And this week House Republicans pressed ahead with their “Parents Bill of Rights”, a centerpiece of their midterm election campaign and a top priority for the speaker, Kevin McCarthy.The measure outlines five pillars that Republicans say will guarantee a parent’s right to scrutinize library books and classroom curricula and review school budgets, among other aspects. It would also require parents’ consent before a student is allowed to change their gender designation, pronouns or name, a provision that Democrats warned would force schools to out LGBTQ+ students to their families that may not be accepting of their identity.“Parents across this country have overwhelmingly spoken out that they have had enough,” said Julia Letlow, the Republican congresswoman of Louisiana who sponsored the bill. “They want a seat at the table because at the end of the day, these are our children, not the government’s.”‘It’s just terrible what they’re doing’Democrats say the focus on divisive cultural issues distracts from the real challenges facing American students and public education – and suspect voters will punish Republicans for it.They point to the midterms results and polling as evidence that voters are more concerned about school funding, teacher shortages, student mental health and campus safety than they are about the instruction of critical race theory, an academic framework for examining systemic racism in American institutions.A pre-election memo by the Republican National Committee last year seemed to recognize that risk and last year advised candidates to center their general election pitch on “parental rights and quality education”, as opposed to cultural attacks.And though DeSantis soared to re-election last year in Florida, several other GOP candidates for governor who pushed a socially conservative agenda lost, including in Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. House Republicans failed to secure the dominating majority they predicted, while many of the “parents’ rights” activists who ran for seats on their local school board came up short, even though conservative groups poured millions of dollars into winning the once-sleepy contests.“Unless we say stupid things,” Democratic pollster Celinda Lake said, a reference to the debate-stage blunder by the party’s nominee for Virginia governor that many believe contributed to Youngkin’s victory, “our proactive agenda of quality education, well-paid teachers, mental health and job skills beats their agenda of transgender, CRT every single time.”Democrats believe they can offer a strong contrast. They are promoting an education agenda focused on boosting federal funding for public schools and raising teachers’ pay while expanding pre-K programs and increasing college affordability, plans that face strong Republican resistance.In the president’s State of the Union address, Joe Biden, who is expected to run for re-election, proposed two years of tuition-free community college as a way to expand access to “the best career training in America”. He also used his executive authority to forgive more than $400bn in student-loan debt, an action that enraged Republicans and some Democrats and which the supreme court appears poised to invalidate.In a recent interview, Biden criticized the flurry of legislation targeting transgender students and athletes and singled out new laws in Florida as particularly problematic.“What’s going on in Florida is, as my mother would say, close to sinful,” he said. “It’s just terrible what they’re doing.”‘Peddling hysteria’For many of the teachers, parents and students caught up in the political battle of so-called parents’ rights, the impact has been disorienting and demoralizing.Public school teachers, already grappling with the impacts of the pandemic on their students’ mental health and academic achievement, are now trying to navigate a thicket of new restrictions that critics say are having a chilling effect on what they can discuss in the classroom.Educators and librarians have come under attack, inundated with conspiracy-fueled accusations that they are “grooming” students by offering books that address LGBTQ+ issues. Some have quit or retired early, exacerbating, some say, the nation’s teacher shortage.A survey by the Pew Research Center found that parents divided sharply along partisan lines when asked how their school-age children should be taught about gender identity, the legacy of slavery and whether they had enough influence over school curriculum. But some polls have found broader support for laws restricting certain instruction on gender and sexuality in elementary grades.There are areas of consensus. In general, Americans strongly oppose book bans and believe students should be taught both “the good and bad” aspects of American history. And though public attitudes on transgender rights are complex and still being shaped, especially on issues involving trans youth, Americans remain widely supportive of laws that protect LGBTQ+ people from discrimination.But as the debate over parental rights in education rages, LGBTQ+ students, and especially trans youth, say the efforts to place aggressive controls on their identities is harming their mental health, while LGBTQ+ parents in states like Florida reporting that they have considered moving away to protect their families.“The politicians and rightwing zealots behind this anti-LGBTQ+ movement are peddling hysteria,” said Brandon Wolf of the LGBTQ+ rights group Equality Florida, adding: “While it’s a marketing ploy for those folks, it has had real impacts on people across the state.”Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, denounced Republicans’ attacks on public education as a “divisive” political strategy. While it may serve Republicans on the campaign trail, she said, it was doing a “disservice” in the classroom, where teachers must prepare students for a world that is socially, culturally and technologically different than the one into which their parents graduated.“I don’t think it has anything to do with parental rights or education,” she said. “I think it’s a fear of the future.” More

    More stories

    • 125 Shares56 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden vetoes Republican effort to overturn socially conscious retirement rule

      by

      Joe Biden issued the first veto of his presidency on Monday, rejecting legislation to overturn a labor department rule related to an investment strategy for Americans’ retirement plans that Republicans have derided as “woke capitalism”.“The legislation passed by the Congress would put at risk the retirement savings of individuals across the country. They couldn’t take into consideration investments that would be impacted by climate, impacted by overpaying executives,” Biden said in an Oval Office video released by the White House. “And that’s why I decided to veto it.”Republicans have railed against so-called “ESG” investing, an acronym that stands for “environmental, social and governance”, arguing that it prioritizes allocating money based on liberal political causes, such as efforts to combat climate change and divest from fossil fuels, instead of earning the best returns for retirement accounts.“In his first veto, Biden just sided with woke Wall Street over workers. Tells you exactly where his priorities lie,” the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, wrote in response. “Now – despite a bipartisan vote to block his ESG agenda – it’s clear Biden wants Wall Street to use your retirement savings to fund his far-left political causes.”Their willingness to challenge corporate America, long seen as a reliable Republican ally, is just one front in the right’s “war on wokeness” that they claim has affected schools, companies and government.The veto underscores Biden’s new, more confrontational relationship with Republicans in Congress after two years of working with Democratic majorities. Now the White House is readying for even more consequential battles in the months ahead over government spending and the nation’s debt limit. House Republicans, in turn, are using their control of the chamber to advance legislation they intend to use against Democrats in next year’s election.The White House has argued that the legislation would have made it illegal for pension fund managers to consider “risk factors Maga House Republicans don’t like” such as the climate crisis when making investment decisions.“Your plan manager should be able to protect your hard-earned savings — whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene likes it or not,” Biden said in a tweet, referring to the far-right Georgia congresswoman who has made opposition to progressive ideas her political brand.House Republicans advanced the bill after taking control of the chamber this year. And earlier this month, two Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Jon Tester of Montana, voted with Republicans, sending the measure to Biden’s desk. Tester is running for re-election next year in states Donald Trump won handily.In a statement, Manchin called it “absolutely infuriating” that Biden had chosen to “put his administration’s progressive agenda above the wellbeing of the American people”. The coal country Democrat said the rule threatened the nation’s economic security as Americans contend with high inflation and Russia’s war in Ukraine upends energy markets.The veto, which was expected, sends the legislation back to Congress. House Republicans have scheduled a vote on Thursday in an attempt to override the veto, though to succeed would require support from at least two-thirds of each chamber, which appears unlikely.Biden’s veto effectively preserves the status quo, allowing – but not requiring – retirement fund managers to consider environmental, social and corporate governance factors when making investment decisions. The rule ​reversed restrictions imposed by the Trump administration that ​made it harder for ​​retirement fund managers to consider such factors.Though ESG is often framed as a socially-conscious way of investing, proponents say weighing a company’s working conditions​, pending lawsuits​ or its environmental record can help uncover more stable and​ crucially, they argue,​ more profitable savings opportunities. ​The popular investment strategy has become a target of conservatives, with several Republican-led state legislatures passing or proposing legislation that would limit or ban their state governments from considering social or environmental impacts when making investment choices.In a formal statement notifying Congress of his veto, Biden said that the labor department rule allowed “retirement plan fiduciaries to make fully informed investment decisions by considering all relevant factors that might impact a prospective investment”. By refusing to allow these considerations, Biden said, Republicans were “disregarding the principles of free markets and jeopardizing the life savings of working families and retirees”.In a statement, Chuck Schumer called Biden’s veto “totally appropriate” and that Republicans’ efforts to stop the practice were “counterproductive and un-American”.“Maga Republicans were ostrich-like in their actions, putting their heads in the sand, denying the realities of the changing world and trying to force American companies to do the same,” the Senate majority leader said. “This veto was the right thing for American companies and families alike.” More

    • 163 Shares71 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Let’s make these folks famous’: the leftwing push to raise 18 Republicans’ profiles

      by

      Juan Ciscomani. Tom Kean Jr. Brian Fitzpatrick. Marc Molinaro. David Schweikert. Brandon Williams … Many Americans would struggle to identify who these people are or what they do.They are all, in fact, Republican members of Congress. And progressive activists argue that their fate is more crucial to the future of American democracy than more high-profile rightwing political figures such as Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene.Indivisible, a leftwing political umbrella movement founded in response to Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016, has launched a campaign to unseat 18 Republican members of the House of Representatives from districts that Joe Biden won in the election of 2020.The “Unrepresentatives” initiative is based on the premise that these 18 districts – not the safe, deep red ones of Gaetz and Greene – will determine if Republicans maintain control of the US lower chamber next year. They are the “Achilles heel” of the Maga (Make America great again) House.“These are folks who are not in the headlines,” said Ezra Levin, co-founder and co-executive director of Indivisible, acknowledging that the sole exception is Congressman George Santos because of his outlandish lies. “But the other 17, I would guess practically no Americans have ever heard of and are not hearing of right now because they have a different pathway to re-election. They understand this. They’re not dummies.”Although the 18 are in swing districts, they are not really moderates. They are under pressure to raise money for their next election campaign. That means they have to make commitments to donors about how they will vote in Congress – which is in line with Greene and the Maga wing of the party about 95% of the time.Speaking from Austin, Texas, Levin explained: “They are basically Marjorie Taylor Greenes in how they vote. But then that gets to the third step: they’ve got to convince the constituents in their own districts that, while Congress is messed up and there’s a lot of dysfunction there, they’re normal, everyday folks who just want the best for their constituents.”“It’s tricky to do that when you have a voting record that looks like Marjorie Taylor Greene. But that is the strategy. The way you accomplish that is by keeping your head down, by not making a lot of headlines, by not advertising every vote you take that looks like Marjorie Taylor Greene’s vote.”These Republicans work hard to cultivate a low profile away from the bright lights of Fox News or other rightwing media, steering clear of hot button topics such as abortion or Maga circuses such as the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).But now Levin, a former congressional staffer, intends to shine a light on them and ensure they have no hiding place.“We have a clear goal and that is: let’s make these folks famous – famous locally, specifically. Let’s make it as clear as possible to their constituents that they are in fact backing up the Maga majority.”Indivisible is coordinating groups in the battleground districts across eight states and supporting them with training, media training and public relations help, and funding for billboards and ads, props and costumes.The effort includes rapid response-style protests calling attention to Republicans’ votes and pressuring them to publicly condemn their fellow Republicans’ worst positions, highlighting such instances in local media.Levin hopes that this might sometimes persuade the 18 Republicans to flip their votes, for example on lifting the debt ceiling: six would be enough to stave off a default.“The second possible outcome is that you don’t flip their vote but everybody knows then in the district that they voted with the Magas. If you accomplish that, then they’re more easy to defeat next year because they’ll have a harder time accomplishing that last step in their re-election strategy, which is trying to convince their constituents that they are not indeed part of the Maga problem.”Democrats fared much better than widely expected in last year’s midterm elections, maintaining control of the Senate and only narrowly losing the House – even that outcome might have been avoided if only the party had not underperformed badly in New York. A third of Indivisible’s targets are in the Empire state, traditionally a Democratic stronghold.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“In New York many folks on the Democratic side played up an artificial rise in crime,” Levin recalled. “The dominant story was not how extreme these Republicans are and how they’re coming after your freedoms, your abortion rights, your schools, your community, your democracy. It was fought on an entirely different field. We fought on the field that the Republicans chose and I do think that was a mistake. That is a shame because had we taken all those Biden-won seats, there would be a Democratic trifecta right now.”Even so, Levin found plenty of grounds for optimism in the midterms as Republicans fell short of expectations and Trump-endorsed extremists were wiped out in Arizona, Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He did not approve of Democrats’ efforts to boost election deniers in Republican primaries – “playing with fire, a dangerous strategy” – but believes the 2024 landscape is propitious.“I see these 18 Democratic districts currently represented by Republicans, eminently winnable. I see a presidential contest in which the Republican party is tearing itself apart with [Florida Governor Ron] DeSantis or Trump or folks who are trying to take both of them on.“And I see a Senate map that is indisputably tougher than the presidential and the House map but one that is quite winnable. You look at the polling that we’re seeing now in Montana, in Ohio, in West Virginia, in Arizona, some of these tough seats that we’d better hold, and they look pretty darn good for us, which is why for Indivisible’s political work, our north star is retake the House, hold the Senate, hold the presidency.”Levin argues that, should Democrats replace the Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent who has defended a Senate procedural rule known as the filibuster, with challenger Ruben Gallego, they have a shot at reforming the filibuster and working towards the codification of Roe v Wade, the recently overturned supreme court ruling that enshrined a woman’s right to abortion.Biden is an important part of that equation. Levin notes that the president was widely criticised for focusing on abortion rights and democracy in his last two speeches of the midterms campaign. “He got a ton of flak for that. There were folks even on our side calling it a strategic blunder. And yet he did indeed double down on that strategy and the proof is in the pudding. It was the best midterm margins arguably in modern American history.”There is no sign of the Republican fever breaking for now. Greene has risen to prominence in the House and appears to wield influence over the speaker, Kevin McCarthy. Trump and DeSantis are racing to the right ahead of the Republican presidential primary.But Levin keeps faith in the survival of US democracy. “I do believe that the Republican party can be saved. It’s got to be drilled into their heads that as long as the Marjorie Taylor Greenes are wielding the gavel, they’re going to have at best a tenuous grip on power. That is doable.“The vast majority of Republicans were privately and publicly predicting a massive red wave in 2022. They are not dummies. The folks who look at the same numbers I look at know the reason why they lost is because, when the folks got into the voting booth, they looked at the names on the list and they thought, well, the Republicans are being driven by folks who are coming after my schools, my communities, my freedoms, abortion rights, my family, I can’t empower them.”Levin added: “Their brand is in the gutter because they’re empowering the Marjorie Taylor Greenes. They don’t currently have the latitude to kick folks like them out of the party. There’s a reason why George Santos is still a member of the House of Representatives. But if they suffer enough electoral defeats they will be forced into moderation and the dream: to have two pro-democracy parties in the Congress. We’re not there right now but I do think it’s an achievable outcome.” More

    • 138 Shares79 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump deregulated railways and banks. He blames Biden for the fallout

      by

      When a fiery train derailment took place on the Ohio-Pennsylvania border last month, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. The former US president visited East Palestine, accused Joe Biden of ignoring the community – “Get over here!” – and distributed self-branded water before dropping in at a local McDonald’s.Then, when the Silicon Valley Bank last week became the second biggest bank to fail in US history, Trump again lost no time in making political capital. He predicted that Biden would go down as “the Herbert Hoover of the modrrn [sic] age” and predicted a worse economic crash than the Great Depression.Yet it was Trump himself who, as US president, rolled back regulations intended to make railways safer and banks more secure. Critics said his attacks on the Biden administration offered a preview of a disingenuous presidential election campaign to come and, not for the first time in Trump’s career, displayed a shameless double standard.“Hypocrisy, thy name is Donald Trump and he sets new standards in a whole bunch of regrettable ways,” said Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. “For his true believers, they’re going to take Trump’s word for it and, even if they don’t, it doesn’t affect their support of him.”The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on 10 March and of New York’s Signature Bank two days later sent shockwaves through the global banking industry and revived bitter memories of the financial crisis that plunged the US into recession about 15 years ago.Fearing contagion in the banking sector, the government moved to protect all the banks’ deposits, even those that exceeded the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation $250,000 limit for each individual account. The cost ran into hundreds of billions of dollars.The drama reverberated in Washington, where Trump’s criticism was followed by that of Republicans and conservative media, seeking to blame Biden-driven inflation or, improbably, to Silicon Valley Bank’s socially aware “woke” agenda. Opponents saw this as a crude attempt to deflect from the bank’s risky investments in the bond market and more systemic problems in the sector.The 2008 financial crisis, triggered by reckless lending in the housing market, led to tough bank regulations during Barack Obama’s presidency. The 2010 Dodd-Frank Act aimed to ensure that Americans’ money was safe, in part by setting up annual “stress tests” that examine how banks would perform under future economic downturns.But when Trump won election in 2016, the writing was on the wall. Biden, then outgoing vice-president, warned against efforts to undo banking regulations, telling an audience at Georgetown University: “We can’t go back to the days when financial companies take massive risks with the knowledge that a taxpayer bailout is around the corner when they fail.”But in 2018, with Trump in the White House, Congress slashed some of those protections. Republicans – and some Democrats – voted to raise the minimum threshold for banks subject to the stress tests: those with less than $250bn in assets were no longer required to take part. Many big lenders, including Silicon Valley Bank, were freed from the tightest regulatory scrutiny.Sabato commented: “The worst example is the bank situation because that is directly tied to Trump and his administration and changes made in bank regulations in 2018. Yes, some Democrats voted for it, but it was overwhelmingly supported by Republicans and by Trump who heralded it as the real solution to future bank woes.”The minority of Democrats who supported the 2018 law have denied that it can be directly tied to this month’s bank failures, although Bernie Sanders, an independent senator from Vermont, was adamant: “Let’s be clear. The failure of Silicon Valley Bank is a direct result of an absurd 2018 bank deregulation bill signed by Donald Trump that I strongly opposed.”Sherrod Brown, a Democratic senator for Ohio who introduced bipartisan legislation to improve rail safety protocols, drew a parallel between the banks’ collapse to rail industry deregulation lobbying that contributed to the East Palestine train disaster. “We see aggressive lobbying like this from banks as well,” he said.Trump repealed several Barack Obama-era US Department of Transportation rules meant to improve rail safety, including one that required high-hazard cargo trains to use electronically controlled pneumatic brake technology by 2023. This rule would not have applied to the Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine – where roughly 5,000 residents had to evacuate for days – as it was not classified as a high-hazard cargo train.But the debate around the railway accident and bank failures points to a perennial divide between Democrats, who insist that some regulation is vital to a functioning capitalism, and Republicans, who have long claimed to believe in small government. Steve Bannon, an influential far-right podcaster and former White House chief strategist, framed the Trump agenda as “the deconstruction of the administrative state”.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The Republican party has gotten by for many years on this idea that less is better. However, we’re now learning in this country that, as America continues to mature, in some cases more is better, and more has to be how we get to better. Otherwise the mistakes can spin out of control and cause generations of people long-term damage.”Biden called on Congress to allow regulators to impose tougher penalties on the executives of failed banks while Warren and other Democrats introduced legislation to undo the 2018 law and restore the Dodd-Frank regulations. It is likely to meet stiff opposition from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives and even some moderate Democrats.Biden has also insisted that no taxpayer money will be used to resolve the current crisis, keen to avoid any perception that average Americans are “bailing out” the two banks in a way similar to the unpopular bailouts of the biggest financial firms in 2008.But Republicans running for the 2024 presidential nomination are already contending that customers will ultimately bear the costs of the government’s actions even if taxpayer funds were not directly used. Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, said: “Joe Biden is pretending this isn’t a bailout. It is.”Another potential 2024 contender, Senator Tim Scott, the top Republican on the Senate banking committee, also criticised what he called a “culture of government intervention”, arguing that it incentivises banks to continue risky behavior if they know federal agencies will ultimately rescue them.Larry Jacobs, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Governance at the University of Minnesota, said: “This is familiar ideological territory. The battle lines between liberalism and a fake conservatism appear to be playing out here. But the tragedy of the situation is that the liberals are right.“You do need government to regulate finance and, when you don’t, you get mischief making and bank failures but that point cannot be made if you’ve got Donald Trump inventing reality. He’s demonstrated that facts and position taking don’t matter. It’s an extraordinary political strategy but it’s even more devastating to our whole political system and our media that this could be allowed.”This poses a huge messaging challenge for Democrats, who after the 2008 financial crisis came up against the Tea Party, a populist movement feeding off economic and racial resentments. Long and winding explanations about the negative impacts of Trump era deregulation are a hard sell compared to the former president’s sloganeering in East Palestine.Wendy Schiller, a political science professor at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, said: “Once again we see that Trump is taking advantage of the Achilles’ heel of the Democratic party by telling voters that the Democrats like big government because it bails out industries and it never provides a bailout for the little guy.”Democrats’ efforts to point out that Trump was responsible for deregulation are unlikely to cut through, Schiller added.“Any time it takes more than 10 seconds to explain something, you’re done in politics. This is why Trump has catchy phrases, sound bytes. He understands that all voters see is that rich people made a bad investment and then more rich people are making sure that their money’s available to them within three days, coming off the heels of all the closures during Covid, lost business, lost income, people struggling, inflation.“Democrats don’t want to call it a bailout but it is a bailout. The high visibility of this bailout smothers anything else the Democrats are doing for the average voter. It’s a perfect issue for the Republicans. It’s not new that the Republicans will deregulate an industry and then it collapses and the Democrats have to save it. Look at American political and economic history of the last 50 years: this is exactly what happens.” More