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Trump administration asks supreme court to uphold order curtailing birthright citizenship – live
The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, Reuters reports.Donald Trump signed the order shortly after taking office, but multiple federal judges have ruled against it in lawsuits filed by rights groups. Here’s more on the appeal, from Reuters:
The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal courts in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
As our colleagues Anna Betts and Erum Salam reported on Wednesday, a government charging document addressed to Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent US resident and green card holder who is currently being held in a Louisiana detention center, said that secretary of state Marco Rubio “has reasonable ground to believe that your presence or activities in the United States would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States”.The phrase “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States” is a direct reference to a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 that gives the secretary of state the power to expel non-citizens deemed to be a threat.As the New York Times reported this week, in 1996, when the Clinton administration tried to use this provision to deport a former Mexican government official, a federal judge ruled that this section of the law was “void for vagueness”, deprived the non-citizen of “the due process right to a meaningful opportunity to be heard”, and was “an unconstitutional delegation of legislative power”.That judge was Maryanne Trump Barry, the president’s eldest sister, who was nominated to the federal bench by Ronald Reagan in 1983, elevated to an appeals court by Bill Clinton, and passed away in 2023.Although a three-judge appeals court panel later overturned her ruling on procedural grounds, in an opinion written by then-Circuit Judge Samuel Alito, the forceful language of her opinion still resonates with the arguments of Mahmoud Khalil’s lawyers:“Make no mistake about it. This case is about the Constitution of the United States and the panoply of protections that document provides to the citizens of this country and those non-citizens who are here legally and, thus, here as our guests”, Judge Barry wrote. “The issue before the court is not whether plaintiff has the right to remain in this country beyond the period for which he was lawfully admitted…[t]he issue, rather, is whether an alien who is in this country legally can, merely because he is here, have his liberty restrained and be forcibly removed to a specific country in the unfettered discretion of the Secretary of State and without any meaningful opportunity to be heard. The answer is a ringing ‘no’”.Corks were not popping on Wall Street on Thursday, as stocks plunged again following Donald Trump’s threat to impose a 200% tariff “on all wines, Champagnes, and alcoholic products” from European Union countries if the trading bloc makes good on its threat to retaliate for steel and aluminum tariffs announced by the US president by adding a 50% tariff on American products, including Kentucky bourbon.The sharp drop in the S&P 500 meant that a the index is now in “a correction” — a term used when when stocks falls 10 percent or more from their peak.While the Wall Street Journal blamed the drop on “investors on edge over new tariff threats”, pro-Trump media outlets further to the right, like Newsmax, sought to play down the president’s role in the plunging markets. “This correction is overdue”, a guest on the far-right network assured viewers on Thursday. “Nothing to do with Trump. Nothing to do with tariffs”.As the New Yorker staff writer John Cassidy noted in a podcast interview this week, the downturn began in the middle of February “when it became clear that Tump was serious about these tariffs, a lot of people on Wall Street thought he was bluffing”.Cassidy went on to explain that Trump appears to be wedded to a dream of undoing globalization and returning to a period in the 19th century when the United States was closer to being an autarky, a self-sufficient country, closed off from the rest of the world.That seems to jibe with Trump’s claim, in his announcement of the 200% tariff on Champagne, a form of sparkling wine that is only produced in the Champagne region of France, “This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the US”.The Trump administration has appealed to the supreme court to uphold the president’s executive order curtailing birthright citizenship, Reuters reports.Donald Trump signed the order shortly after taking office, but multiple federal judges have ruled against it in lawsuits filed by rights groups. Here’s more on the appeal, from Reuters:
The Justice Department made the request challenging the scope of three nationwide injunctions issued against Trump’s order by federal courts in Washington state, Massachusetts and Maryland.
The administration said the injunctions should be scaled back from applying universally and limited to just the plaintiffs that brought the cases and are “actually within the courts’ power.”
“Universal injunctions have reached epidemic proportions since the start of the current administration,” the Justice Department said in the filing. “This court should declare that enough is enough before district courts’ burgeoning reliance on universal injunctions becomes further entrenched.”
Trump’s order, signed on his first day back in office on January 20, directed federal agencies to refuse to recognize the citizenship of U.S.-born children who do not have at least one parent who is an American citizen or lawful permanent resident.
The order was intended to apply starting February 19, but has been blocked nationwide by multiple federal judges.
The US Postal Service will reduce its staff by 10,000 through early retirements, and has signed an agreement with Elon Musk’s department of government efficiency (Doge) to streamline its operations, postmaster general Louis DeJoy announced.USPS aims to reduce its workforce in 30 days, DeJoy said in a letter addressed to leaders of Congress – a much faster timeline than the 30,000 positions it reduced from fiscal year 2021.The postmaster added that Doge would help USPS “in identifying and achieving further efficiencies”.“This is an effort aligned with our efforts, as while we have accomplished a great deal, there is much more to be done. We are happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause. The DOGE team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with,” DeJoy said.A dozen national Jewish organizations are condemning the Trump administration for detaining and attempting to deport Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil under the pretense of fighting antisemitism.“Arresting and/or deporting people because of their political views goes against the very foundation of our national identity and is profoundly un-American,” the groups wrote in a letter to homeland security secretary Kristi Noem today.The organizations, including J Street and T’ruah, warned that using antisemitism as justification for suppressing political dissent threatens both Jewish safety and democracy in the United States.The coalition are urging the administration to ensure Khalil receives due process and to stop “co-opting the fight against antisemitism” in ways that endanger vulnerable communities.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt hit back at the federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to reinstate thousands of federal workers fired during their probationary terms, saying they overstepped their bounds.Leavitt added that the administration would appeal the decision. Here’s her statement:
A single judge is attempting to unconstitutionally seize the power of hiring and firing from the Executive Branch. The President has the authority to exercise the power of the entire executive branch – singular district court judges cannot abuse the power of the entire judiciary to thwart the President’s agenda. If a federal district court judge would like executive powers, they can try and run for President themselves. The Trump Administration will immediately fight back against this absurd and unconstitutional order.
Several Senate Democrats have announced their determination to block passage of a measure approved by House Republicans earlier this week to keep the government funded through September and prevent a shutdown that will begin after Friday.It’s a significant move, as it raises the possibility that funding will lapse after midnight on Saturday, potentially handing Donald Trump the ability to further undermine the federal government’s operations. But several Democratic senators say it’s a fight worth having.Mark Kelly of swing state Arizona said:
I cannot vote for the Republican plan to give unchecked power to Donald Trump and Elon Musk.
I told Arizonans I’d stand up when it was right for our state and our country, and this is one of those moments.
Fellow Arizonan Ruben Gallego said much the same (it’s worth noting neither man is up for election next year):
This is a bad resolution that gives Elon Musk and his cronies permission to continue cutting veterans’ benefits, slashes resources for Arizona’s water needs, and abandons our wildland firefighters.
Newly arrived New Jersey senator Andy Kim is against it:
Republicans have made it so Musk and the most powerful win and everyone else loses. I don’t want a shutdown but I can’t vote for this overreach of power, giving Trump and Musk unchecked power to line their pockets. I’m a NO on the CR.
So is Ben Ray Luján and Martin Heinrich, both of New Mexico:
We want to see the federal government funded and functional, and we have been fighting every day to force this administration to put the chainsaw down when it comes to the healthcare, education, and VA benefits our communities depend on.
But we won’t stand by as Republicans try to shove through this power grab masquerading as a funding bill. For the people of New Mexico, we will vote ‘no’ on Republicans’ continuing resolution.
The GOP controls the Senate but will need at least some Democratic support to get the spending bill through. Despite this opposition, there is also a chance that enough Democrats will get on board with the bill for it to be enacted.Donald Trump’s order to release billions of gallons of water from California reservoirs is widely viewed in the state as a waste of water.Despite that, the president believes it helped Los Angeles deal with its risk of wildfires, a contention he just repeated, using some odd phrasing, in the Oval Office:
I broke into Los Angeles. Can you believe it? I had a break in, I invaded Los Angeles, and we opened up the water, and the water is now flowing down. They have so much water, they don’t know what to do. They were sending it out to the Pacific for environmental reasons, okay, can you believe it? And in the meantime, they lost 25,000 houses … Nobody’s ever seen anything like it.
The facts tell a different story:On Greenland, Trump gets asked about his vision for potential annexation of the island.“Well, I think it will happen. I’m just thinking, I didn’t give it much thought before, but I’m sitting with a man that could be very instrumental,” he says, as he turns to Rutte saying “Mark, we need that for international security … as we have a lot of our favourite players, cruising around the coast.”Rutte distances himself from his comments on annexing Greenland, but says Trump is right talking about growing risks in the North Arctic.Trump is then asked about the recent elections in Greenland, and says “it was a good election for us.”“The person that did the best is a very good person as far as we are concerned, so we will be talking about it and it is very important,” he says.The president says the US “is going to order” 48 icebreakers, and that would help to strengthen US position “as that whole area is becoming very important.”“So we are going to have to make a deal on that and Denmark is not able to do that [offer protection],” he says.He then mocks Denmark saying they have “nothing to do with that” as “a boat landed there 200 years ago or something, and they say they have rights to it?” “I don’t know if that is true.”“We have been dealing with Denmark, we have been dealing with Greenland, and we have to do it,” he says.He again suggests Nato could be involved given its bases there, and says “maybe you’ll see more and more soldiers” there. He then asked defence secretary Pete Hegseth if he should send more troops there. “Don’t answer that Pete,” he laughs.Reporters took the opportunity to question Trump and whether he’s willing to let up on the tariffs he is levying on major trade partners like Canada.“No, we’ve been ripped off for years,” Trump said. “I’m not going to bend at all.”He went on to say that the country has nothing the US needs but added that he loves Canada and mentioned its contributions like former Canadian ice hockey player, Wayne Gretzky.You can follow our Europe live blog for more on Trump and Rutte’s comments happening now:The Trump-Rutte meeting is being held to discuss the costs of supporting Ukraine as it defends itself against Russia.Trump said hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent and “really wasted” on defense for Ukraine. He said: “It’s also a tremendous cost to the United States and other countries.” More - in US Politics
Democratic congressman Raúl Grijalva dies aged 77
Democratic US representative Raúl M Grijalva of Arizona, who championed environmental protection during his 12 terms in Congress, died on Thursday of complications from cancer treatments, his office said.Grijalva, who was 77, had risen to chair the US House natural resources committee and was the top Democrat on the committee until earlier this year. He had been absent from Congress as he underwent cancer treatment in recent months.Grijalva’s office said in a statement: “From permanently protecting the Grand Canyon for future generations to strengthening the Affordable Care Act, his proudest moments in Congress have always been guided by community voices.”Another Democratic House member, Sylvester Turner of Texas, died last week from health issues.Grijalva, the son of a Mexican immigrant, was first elected to the House in 2002. Known as a liberal leader, he led the Congressional Progressive Caucus in 2008 and dedicated much of his career to working on environmental causes on the natural resources committee. He stepped down from that position this year, after announcing that he planned to retire rather than run for re-election in 2026.During his time in Congress, Grijalva championed protections for endangered species and wilderness areas, as well as stronger regulations on the oil and natural gas industries. He played a key role in writing the National Landscape Conservation System Act and the Federal Lands Restoration Act, which were passed and signed by Barack Obama.Grijalva had announced in April last year that he had been diagnosed with cancer but would be able to continue his work. He also sought re-election and won easily in the blue-leaning district. More
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The ADL and the Heritage Foundation are helping to silence dissent in America | Ahmed Moor
The repression that began under the Biden administration has accelerated under Trump. Mahmoud Khalil’s detention by federal agents – reportedly Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers – despite his legal, permanent resident status will probably have its intended effect. People will speak up less; their fear of the irreversible harm meted out by a vengeful state is justified. Now we are all left to contend with the wreckage of the first amendment to the US constitution, which used to guarantee the right to speech in this country.Responsibility for the erosion of our rights is attributable – in part – to the bipartisan embrace of the non-governmental, non-profit sector. That’s because from the 1940s onward, the federal government has ceded much state authority to philanthropies and non-profits. Those groups, in turn, have acted to craft policy – everything from how to develop equitable housing or the benefits of inoculating children to ensuring that speech targeting Israel is punishable by law.The tax code ensures that we subsidize special interest groups, such as the Israel lobby, even as it skirts the ordinary mechanisms of democratic policymaking and accountability. Today, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a rightwing Israel advocacy group, has taken the lead in seeking to undermine bedrock American freedoms in support of Israel. The Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther roadmap explicitly describes its goal of having “foreign [‘Hamas Support Network’] leaders and members deported from the US”.It should be said here that “Hamas Support Network” is a made-up, strangely emotional and overwrought phrase used by the Heritage Foundation to describe college students who oppose Israel’s genocide in Palestine.In her essay How Philanthropy Made and Unmade American Liberalism, Lila Corwin Berman, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, argues that the rise of the philanthropic apparatus in America, defined broadly as tax-exempt, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), presented special interests with the means to exercise power in an unregulated, nontransparent way.Starting in the early 20th century, when the federal income tax was codified into law, special effort was made to exempt “public-benefit associations” from taxation. The argument was that they acted in the public good while simultaneously representing the best of capitalist success, a core tenet of American liberalism.There was a practical component to the argument, too. Philanthropies could act as policy labs – in the 1930s, the Carnegie Foundation could support educational programs away from the public. If policies were successful, they could be implemented across a broader swathe of society. For their utility, NGOs and philanthropies received tax-exempt status. Yet, as Corwin Berman said, “any time there’s a tax exemption, it’s a tax expenditure, but it’s an expenditure which avoids public scrutiny”. When Nixon restructured USAid through the Foreign Assistance Act in 1973, it was in part to obscure government efforts “that doubled as global capitalist and neocolonial ventures” – all without democratic oversight or public participation.Early opposition to private policymaking for the “public good” came from anti-elite quarters and from the right. In the 1960s, Wright Patman, a populist Democratic representative from Texas, kicked off a series of investigations designed to curtail the power of what’s sometimes called the “submerged state”.But in the 80s and 90s, the right began to co-opt non-governmental frameworks. The Heritage Foundation and others learned how to leverage “philanthropy as a tool and a cudgel”, as Berman said to me. Today, non-profits work across a broad range of policy issues both domestically and abroad. Many of the groups that have engineered the bipartisan consensus on the suppression of speech that is critical of Israel are non-profits. They obtain tax-exempt status and simultaneously craft policy, and they do so on behalf of Democrats and Republicans, away from public scrutiny.The ADL, which controls total net assets of 200m tax-free dollars, in particular lobbied for policy responses to student activism in both the Biden and Trump administrations. In 2022, the ADL – which regularly conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel – commended the Biden administration for developing a “national strategy to combat antisemitism”.The statement went on to take credit for the policy: “This is one of the steps that we have long advocated for as part of a holistic approach to address the antisemitism that has been increasingly normalized in society.”After Khalil’s detention, the ADL, whose leader, Jonathan Greenblatt, was paid more than $1.2m in 2022, issued a statement on X that reads in part: “We appreciate the Trump Administration’s broad, bold set of efforts to counter campus antisemitism.”There is an irony in all this. The right is now on a mission to defund universities, a process which started with angry pro-Israel billionaires on X. It seems reasonable to expect the IRS to be weaponized to revoke the tax-exempt status of philanthropies and other elite institutions deemed to be sympathetic to the Democratic party’s agenda.Khalil’s detention – a shocking assault by the Israel lobby on American freedom – is not the first time that constitutional rights in this country have been assailed by a president. Abraham Lincoln famously suspended habeas corpus during the civil war, this country’s first major constitutional crisis. But this may be the first time that a dramatic erosion in Americans’ constitutional liberties has been engineered by policymaking organizations that are subsidized by the public but are accountable to no one at all.
Ahmed Moor is a writer and fellow at the Foundation for Middle East Peace. He is a plaintiff in a lawsuit that charges the US state department with circumventing the law to fund Israeli military units accused of human rights abuses More
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Schumer says no to Republican funding bill as US shutdown risk intensifies
Senator Chuck Schumer, the minority leader, said on Wednesday that Democrats would not provide the necessary votes to pass a stopgap funding bill, dramatically raising the risk of a partial government shutdown at the end of the week.Announcing the decision in a speech on the Senate floor, Schumer urged Republicans to consider a shorter funding extension that would give congressional negotiators more time to consider a bipartisan path forward.“Funding the government should be a bipartisan effort. But Republicans chose a partisan path, drafting their continuing resolution (CR) without any input, any input, from congressional Democrats,” Schumer said of the Republican-drafted bill, which passed the House on Tuesday.“Our caucus is unified on a clean April 11 CR that will keep the government open and give Congress time to negotiate bipartisan legislation that can pass,” he continued, referring to a short-term bill that would temporarily extend federal funding. “We should vote on that.”To avert a shutdown, Congress must act to extend federal funding by midnight on Friday. Changes – or a new bill entirely – would also need to pass the House before the deadline. The House speaker adjourned the chamber after the bill passed on Tuesday, deliberately sending members home and in effect daring the Senate to reject their bill.Senate Democrats could still reverse course as the reality of a government shutdown – at a moment when Donald Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk are working to permanently shut down parts of the government – comes into clearer focus. Several Senate Democrats have expressed an openness to voting for the measure, citing their distaste for government shutdowns. “I disagree with many points in the CR, but I will never vote to shut our government down,” John Fetterman, the Democratic senator of Pennsylvania tweeted on Tuesday.But Democrats are also under mounting pressure from their base to take a stronger stand against Trump and Republicans.Senate Republicans hold a narrow 53-seat majority, well shy of the 60-vote threshold needed to advance the legislation. Senator Rand Paul, a staunch fiscal hawk, has indicated his opposition to the House bill, meaning eight Democrats would likely need to support the bill for it to overcome procedural hurdles to reach a final vote in the chamber.Democrats have raised concerns about the discretion the measure gives to the Trump administration on spending decisions as it pursues massive cuts to the federal workforce.From the annual House Democratic caucus retreat in Leesburg, Virginia, on Wednesday, caucus leaders implored their Senate counterparts to follow their lead and unite against the government funding bill.“I don’t know why anyone would support that bill,” California congressman Pete Aguilar, the House Democratic caucus chair, told reporters during a press conference earlier on Wednesday.The 99-page House-passed measure provides a $6bn boost to military budgets while carving out $13bn from non-defense spending – which Democrats say amounts to an assault on critical programs for vulnerable Americans.Republicans’ “defunding bill is going to wreak havoc on working families”, Katherine Clark, the House Democratic whip, told reporters on Wednesday, assailing cuts that she said could result in domestic violence survivors being evicted and less funding for Alzheimer’s prevention research.“Whether it’s born out of cruelty, cowardice or corruption are all three, the GOP is hell bent on making families at home unsafe,” she added.The House voted 217-213 to approve a bill that would keep federal agencies funded through 30 September. All Democrats with the exception of Jared Golden, a conservative from Maine, voted for it.Congressman Thomas Massie of Kentucky, a committed deficit hawk who often bucks his party on fiscal matters, voted no, defying Trump’s demand that all House Republicans support the bill. After the vote, Trump derided Massie as a “GRANDSTANDER” and threatened to oust the seven-term lawmaker from office.In a joint statement, the House Democratic leaders backed Schumer’s call for a short-term funding extension and urged Republicans to return to Washington to consider it. More
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Where has the left’s technological audacity gone? | Leigh Phillips
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View image in fullscreenTechno-optimism – the belief that technology will usher in a golden age for humanity – is in vogue once more.In 2022, a clutch of pseudonymous San Francisco artificial intelligence (AI) scenesters published a Substack post entitled “Effective Accelerationism”, which argued for maximum acceleration of technological advancement. The 10-point manifesto, which proclaimed that “the next evolution of consciousness, creating unthinkable next-generation lifeforms and silicon-based awareness” was imminent, quickly went viral, as did follow-up posts.Effective accelerationism, or “e/acc”, exploded from being a fringe movement dedicated to pushing back against AI extinction-fearing “doomers” to being namechecked by major Silicon Valley CEOs such as Garry Tan, the CEO of start-up accelerator Y Combinator; Sam Altman, head of OpenAI; Marc Andreessen, the billionaire software engineer; and Elon Musk.In 2023, Andreessen issued his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, expanding beyond the e/acc’s focus on AI to encompass all questions of technological progress. “We are told to be angry, bitter, and resentful about technology,” he writes, yet previously and for hundreds of years, we had glorified it. The enemies of techno-optimism are, he says, statism, economic planning and socialism. Andreessen tells us: “Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential … It is time, once again, to raise the technology flag.”And last year saw the release of the Techno-Humanist Manifesto from the Roots of Progress Institute and Jason Crawford, who makes similar arguments for the liberatory power of technology, while also arguing that anything that can be for profit should be.But where is the left in all this?One would think that in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, which saw the market flounder and the state rise to the occasion with responses such as Operation War Speed’s vaccine development and rollouts, the left would be crowing about how it produced technological progress far better than all this market fundamentalism.It was the embrace of varieties of economic planning that produced the innovation needed to defeat the virus. For decades, large firms had gotten out of the business of vaccine development because it was insufficiently profitable. The mRNA vaccine delivery vehicle that is now recognized as revolutionary for the life sciences far beyond Covid had been sitting on the shelf for about a decade, spurned by uninterested, risk-averse investors.At the start of the pandemic, big pharma remained wary that transmission might fizzle out and they’d be left having spent billions on a white elephant. Instead, it was the advance purchase agreements, subsidies and coordination of the government – which does not need to turn a profit – via the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda) and Operation Warp Speed that delivered the vaccine and saved the world.Meanwhile, free-market driven distribution of PPE, ventilators, medical fridges and oxygen had produced little more than corruption, bottlenecks and irrational allocation to those who could pay the highest price – not allocation where it was most needed. It was only when the White House deployed the Defense Production Act to enable the government to takeover distribution that the market’s deadly mess was cleared up.@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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The left should be proudly flaunting the record of governments around the world in responding to Covid
The left should be proudly flaunting the record of governments around the world in responding to Covid. It should make the case that all major technological and scientific advancements are best delivered by governments. And it should make the case that we – the people – should embrace faith in technological progress that is rooted in public investment.In other words, the left should be the real techno-optimists. But instead, in recent years, there has been a growing skepticism of technology on the contemporary left – from cynicism about space-faring to fear of genetic engineering and opposition to nuclear power.The left should be calling for government intervention to ensure decarbonization of data centers for AI. It should demand that we direct machine-learning research to prioritize the solving of grand scientific challenges such as prediction of protein folding instead of than bad fantasy-art fabrication and plagiarism. But instead, the most popular leftwing tech podcast calls for degrowth of generative AI and data centers due the latter’s carbon intensity.Progressives could be reminding the world of Neil Armstrong’s warning about the privatization of space – while still cheering on SpaceX’s work to develop reusable rocketry, radically reducing the cost of humans and payloads escaping our planet’s gravity well, all the better to deliver the space and planetary science we need to monitor and solve so many ecological challenges.We could be explaining how space colonization, a worthwhile multigenerational, perhaps millennia-long endeavor, will be public sector led or it will not happen, due to the risible likelihood of it being profitable. Musk won’t get to mars without Nasa. But instead the left declares space-faring to be settler-colonialism, oddly equating lifeless rocks with indigenous peoples.Environmentalists and green NGOs should be celebrating research into genetically modified crops that if successful will reduce pesticide use, nitrogen pollution, and land-use change. But instead, anti-GMO campaign groups vandalized an Italian research trial of rice-blast-resistant arborio (risotto) rice this summer, while Greenpeace successfully convinced a Filipino court to overturn approval of commercial cultivation of Golden Rice, a variety modified to combat vitamin A deficiency, which causes blindness and even death in tens of thousands of children annually in Asia.This leftwing technophobia is something of an historic aberration. Traditionally, the left had always been enthusiastic about the potential of technology for liberation, to release us from drudgery and boundlessly expand our degrees of freedom – so long as technology was unfettered from the irrationality of profit and hierarchy and yoked to egalitarian reason. Prometheus plus Spartacus, as mid-century Marxist Hal Draper put it.We sometimes forget that the Communist Manifesto was itself a techno-optimist declaration of intent. It was a critique of capitalism but it was also a celebration of the new technologies, both industrial and social, that this system had set loose.From Karl Marx’s enthusiasm for the Industrial Revolution through to British Labour prime minister Harold Wilson’s call to harness the “white heat” of the Scientific Revolution, the conventional left position was that its programme would enable society to surpass the technological progress of mere capitalism. The point was not to retreat from capitalism, but instead to advance from it. We the people would develop the “forces of production” much more rapidly through conscious, democratic planning (albeit to greater or lesser degrees of such planning, depending on the flavour of leftist) rather than leaving such development to the fetters imposed by the risk-averse, poorly coordinated and unconscious anarchy of the market.@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline 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format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-titlepiece/noalts-not-hinted/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-titlepiece/noalts-not-hinted/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}The left should be the real techno-optimists. But instead, in recent years, there has been a growing skepticism of technology on the contemporary left
Scientific, technological and industrial development would not only be faster, but broader, for the left would share the fruits of development with all humanity as rapidly as economic capacity would allow, rather than limiting their spread to those locations and populations where such production was profitable. A virtuous circle was then supposed to emerge as a result: with ever more humans benefiting from such progress, ever more humans would be able to contribute to science, engineering, medicine and agronomy, resulting in yet more progress. Liberation would beget ever accelerating liberation.It was instead the counter-Enlightenment right – aristocrats, the church, Burkean critics of the French Revolution – who were horrified at how technology and industry constantly revolutionized society, washing away ancient traditions and endlessly transforming social relations. The industrial engineering of the factory and the “social engineering” of democracy were the same thing to the reactionary, anti-modernist mind. The children of the Radical Enlightenment, both liberals and socialists, also made little distinction between social and technological progress, but thought them good, and were intent on carrying out French revolutionary Georges Danton’s commandment: “De l’audace, encore de l’audace, toujours de l’audace!” (“Audacity; yet more audacity; always audacity!”)Today, however, that leftwing optimism and confidence about humanity’s capacity for superior, entwined social, scientific and technological progress – once political economy was thoroughly democratized, has been lost, especially on the environmental left. It has been replaced by a techno-scepticism and cynicism about progress that varies from a soft neo-Luddism through to a more thoroughgoing Malthusian opposition to further economic development, prompted by a fear that we have long since outstripped the carrying capacity of the planet. Many believe industrial modernity was a mistake.(Note that these contemporary neo-Luddites should not be confused with the historical Luddites, the 19th Century stockingers – workers running stocking frame mechanical knitting machines – who engaged in riot and sabotage of automated textile machinery to protest employers’ use of such machines to drive down wages. It was the capitalist socio-economic relations surrounding this technology that the Luddites were protesting, not technology itself. If anything, today’s neo-Luddites should learn from their namesakes and focus less on the machines and more on who owns them.)All of this creeping anti-modernism threatens not merely human development and the expanding freedom that flows from it, but also undermines our ability to adequately respond to a range of existential threats, from climate change to pandemics. We are caught between the capitalist techno-hucksterism of Musk and the Malthusian technophobia of Greenpeace and friends.Thankfully, there is – to coin a phrase – a third way.In place of technophobia, the left’s traditional arguments around the “market alignment problem” still offer a better path toward enhancing human liberation. In place of both market fundamentalist neoliberalism and green-inflected neo-Luddism, the left should be talking once again about conscious design of the economy – and thence which technologies we want to develop and accelerate – through industrial policy, public ownership and other forms of democratic economic planning.As of 2024, we are roughly at the halfway point between the first climate treaty, 1997’s Kyoto Protocol, and the 2050 deadline for net-zero decarbonization of the economy. Yet due to policymakers’ overdependence on market-based mechanisms such as carbon-pricing (and the developing world’s understandable demand for fossil-fueled development), the share of fossil fuels in global energy consumption has barely moved, dropping from 86% to 82%. But industrial policy domestically – building on Bidenomics’ version of the Green New Deal, the Inflation Reduction Act – and a properly egalitarian approach to climate finance and economic development internationally, can turn all this around.Our suite of antibiotics is rapidly failing and so in the absence of new discovery and development of new ones, as well as new diagnostic techniques and vaccines, clinicians warn that we are nearing a collapse of the foundation of antimicrobial protection upon which almost all of modern medicine depends. But decommodification of pharmaceutical production and, again, internationalism could solve the problem entirely.Similarly, pandemic monitoring and early warning systems require robust public-sector funding, restructuring of intellectual property rights, and even global democracy. All of this is optimized by a more muscular social democracy.@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-Light.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:300;font-style:normal}@font-face{font-family:Guardian Headline Full;src:url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff2) format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-headline/noalts-not-hinted/GHGuardianHeadline-LightItalic.woff) 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format(“woff2”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-titlepiece/noalts-not-hinted/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.woff) format(“woff”),url(https://assets.guim.co.uk/static/frontend/fonts/guardian-titlepiece/noalts-not-hinted/GTGuardianTitlepiece-Bold.ttf) format(“truetype”);font-weight:700;font-style:normal}There are so many areas where the left should have so much more to say about technology and progress
Biodiversity loss threatens to undermine ecosystem services that we depend upon, but precision agriculture, new genetic techniques and “lab meat” can radically reduce humanity’s land-footprint, so long as there is strong state intervention to de-risk these new technologies.In order to overcome less well known but still profound risks from space debris and near-Earth asteroids, we need not cynicism about space, but a revival of space as primarily a public-sector enterprise and the sort of internationalism and global democracy that the left favours.But a left approach to technology is not just about avoiding harm, but about grand ambition. Getting to Mars and beyond, spreading life throughout the cosmos, is a gargantuan multi-generational endeavour, of the level of audacity that Danton commanded. Markets will never get us there if it isn’t profitable enough – and it is unlikely to be so.Artificial intelligence has already solved the hard problem of protein-folding, and soon it could radically enhance medical diagnosis, accelerate materials discovery, and reduce mineral exploration costs, and maybe even predict earthquakes, but much of this will require humans working alongside AI rather than AI replacing humans – meaning an increased cost over either humans or computers alone, which will thus tend to be far less attractive to capital. And so AI thus far appears to be primarily directed at much more profitable but far less freedom-enhancing endeavours such as enterprise software, theft from artists and musicians, and ever more panoptical state surveillance.To steal a phrase from artificial intelligence discourse, the market has an “alignment problem”. It is an algorithm independent of human control. And so it could be said that the techno-libertarians want to liberate themselves from all things that unconsciously dominate humanity – except for markets.There are so many areas where the left should have so much more to say about technology and progress, whether the challenges we face are existential threats or how to achieve the most soaring of ambitions.Neither Silicon Valley tech hucksters nor eco-austerity technophobes are up to the task.Leigh Phillips is a science writer and a political journalist More
- in US Politics
Democrats are reeling. Is Stephen A Smith the way back to the White House?
The View, one of the US’s most popular daytime television programmes, was a vital campaign stop last year for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. This week, it played host to a cable sports channel personality who might be nurturing political ambitions of his own.Stephen A Smith was asked by co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin what he makes of hypothetical polls that show him among the leading contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028.“I make of it that citizens, particularly on the left, are desperate,” Smith said in characteristically forthright style. “And I mean it when I say it: I think I can beat them all.”Despite – or because of – his lack of political experience, Smith is emerging as an unlikely force in a Democratic party badly in need of critical friends, fresh ideas and blunt truth-telling. The idea of him running for the White House remains wildly speculative – but speaks volumes about a shift in the US media ecosystem and a blurring of the lines between culture, entertainment and politics.The 57-year-old, born Stephen Anthony Smith in the Bronx in New York, began his career in print journalism, writing for newspapers such as the Philadelphia Inquirer, then made his name as a broadcaster, especially on ESPN. Smith is now the co-host of First Take, where he shares provocative opinions on basketball and other topics.His fans include Kurt Bardella, a media relations consultant and Democratic strategist who watches First Take “religiously”. Bardella said: “He is out there with passion and charisma and he provokes emotion and conversation and debate. He has become the singular most influential person in all of sports.“We live in a time where our politics is shaped and informed by culture more than at any time in our history. There’s that old adage that politics is just culture downstream, and Stephen A is a good embodiment of that.”Smith’s star continues to rise. It emerged this week that he had agreed to a new ESPN contract worth at least $100m for five years. He will continue on First Take but reduce other sports-related obligations, increasing his opportunities for political commentary: in recent months he has appeared on Fox News, NewsNation and HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher.The Stephen A Smith Show, which streams on YouTube and iHeart, has featured interviews with Hakeem Jeffries, the House of Representatives Democratic minority leader; rightwing personality Candace Owens; and Andrew Cuomo, in his first interview since announcing his candidacy for New York mayorThe political chatter around Smith is also a symptom of the demoralisation in the leaderless Democratic party following last November’s defeat in elections for the White House, House and Senate. This week, for example, Democrats struggled to find a coherent response to Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.After nominating Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris in past elections, some in the party hunger for a fighter in the mould of Trump, an outsider not beholden to the traditional political establishment. And witnessing the rise of podcasters such as Joe Rogan and an entire “Maga” media ecosystem, they crave a liberal alternative.In Smith, they see a bracing energy. He voted for Harris but has been outspoken in criticising Democrats for failing to connect with voters and for prioritising niche issues – which in his view includes the transgender community – and failing to address the concerns of a broader electorate.In January, appearing alongside the Democratic representative Ro Khanna on Real Time with Bill Maher, he offered a blistering diagnosis of why Democrats lost to Trump: “The man was impeached twice, he was convicted on 34 felony counts and the American people still said: ‘He’s closer to normal than what we see on the left.’”Smith added: “What voter can look at the Democrat party and say: ‘There’s a voice for us, somebody who speaks for us, that goes up on Capitol Hill and fights the fights that we want them fighting on our behalf’?”His gift for storytelling and communicating impresses Bardella, a former spokesperson and senior adviser for Republicans on the House oversight committee. Bardella said: “His style of speaking, the directness, the boldness, the bombastic at times kind of PT Barnum-esque quality that he brings to the conversation is exactly what Democrats are lacking and exactly what made Donald Trump the showman such an appealing character to begin with when he arrived on the stage.“Rather than just dismiss it or make fun of it or ignore it, Democrats would be wise to study what makes him so successful because there is nobody in the Democratic party that is as relevant a voice on a day-to-day basis as Stephen A Smith.”It was striking that a January poll by McLaughlin & Associates for the 2028 Democratic nomination decided to include him in a survey that put Kamala Harris at 33%, Pete Buttigieg at 9%, Gavin Newsom at 7%, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at 6%, Josh Shapiro at 3%, Tim Walz at 3% and Smith at 2%.Still, many Democrats would think twice before gambling on an outsider such as Smith or the billionaire businessman Mark Cuban. Lack of experience could be a liability in the eyes of some voters. Smith’s controversial statements and “yelling” style could alienate certain segments of the electorate. The perception of Smith as a celebrity candidate could undermine his credibility.Bill Whalen, a former media consultant for politicians including the former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, said Smith’s eloquence and in-your-face style could be appealing to voters in this political moment: “But the question is, what does Stephen A Smith believe in at the end of the day? He’s been very vocal criticising the Democratic party. What positions does he hold? What does he believe in?“The fact is, if you’re going to run for a party’s nomination in America, there are about a half a dozen or so issues in which you need to be on the right side. Otherwise, you’re not going to go very far. Where is Stephen A Smith on abortion? Where is he on DEI? Where is he on quotas and affirmative action? Where is he on crime? Where is he on spending?“The list goes on. You just don’t know, so my advice to any Democrat looking at this is: before you become a Stephen A Smith supporter, give him a questionnaire and have him fill it out and see what the answers are.”Whether Smith, who has a recurring guest-acting role on the ABC soap opera General Hospital, would want to take on a gruelling election campaign is far from certain.He has expressed ambivalence on the topic but told the Daily Mail last month that “if the American people came to me and looked at me and said ‘Yo, man, we want you to run for office’, and I had a legitimate shot to win the presidency of the United States, I’m not gonna lie. I’ll think about that.”But on Friday, Smith’s agent, Mark Shapiro, sought to quell the rumours, insisting at a conference in Boston: “He will not run for president. He’s going to continue to entertain those conversations, but he will not run for president.”Still, the buzz reveals a bigger picture about Democratic soul-searching in the aftermath of election defeat. Trump proved effective at exploiting the new media ecology of podcasts, TikTok and other platforms in portraying the party as elitist, out of touch and obsessed with “woke” issues. Some Democrats are now recalibrating – for example, by removing gender pronouns from their social media accounts.David Litt, an author and former speechwriter for Barack Obama, said: “Democrats, for most of my lifetime, which is 38 years at this point, sort of assumed we are dominant in the culture, whether or not we’re dominant politically. One of the things we learned from this most recent election is, that may not be the case and either things are more even than we thought or, I would even argue, the right, at least during the election season, took an advantage in the culture.“It’s important that Democrats are saying our ‘political voices’ may not come from the world of politics, particularly at a moment when people are deeply sceptical of politicians. Who are some people who have ways of thinking and communicating that don’t sound like every politician out there? That search and that openness is going to end up being pretty useful and pretty important one way or the other.” More
