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Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance
Kyrsten Sinema courted Republican fossil fuel donors with filibuster stance Houston fundraiser reveals Democrat’s aggressive efforts to capitalize on her Senate power on matters ranging from climate to taxes With a crucial vote pending over filibuster rules that would have made strong voting rights legislation feasible, Democratic senator Kyrsten Sinema flew into Houston, Texas, for a fundraiser that drew dozens of fossil fuel chieftains, including Continental Resources chairman Harold Hamm and ConocoPhillips chief executive Ryan Lance.The event was held on 18 January at the upmarket River Oaks Country Club. One executive told the Guardian that Sinema spoke for about half an hour and informed a mostly Republican crowd that they could “rest assured” she would not back any changes with filibuster rules, reiterating a stance she took several days before during a Senate speech.The Arizona senator also addressed some energy industry issues according to the executive, who added that overall he was “tremendously impressed”.The day after the Houston bash, Sinema voted against changing filibuster rules, thereby helping to thwart the voting rights bill.The Houston gusher of fossil fuel donations for Sinema from many stalwart Republican donors underscores how pivotal she has become, along with West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin, in an evenly divided Senate involving high-stakes battles for Republican and fossil fuel interests.Campaign finance watchdogs say that the Houston fundraiser reveals much about Sinema’s aggressive efforts to capitalize on her Senate power on matters ranging from climate change to taxes to the filibuster rule.“Sinema isn’t up for re-election this year, but she’s fundraising full-tilt,” Sheila Krumholz, the executive director of OpenSecrets, told the Guardian. “By her comment to oil-industry attendees last week, she clearly knew her vote to protect the filibuster would please them.”The Houston fundraiser, which was expected to raise tens of thousands of dollars for the senator’s campaign coffers, offers a stark example of how Sinema has been courting major Republican donors and special interests who, in turn, seem to be increasingly eager to help her.Sinema’s drive to rope in more big Republican donors was also apparent at a September fundraiser in Dallas at the $18m home of G Brint Ryan, a prominent Republican donor and CEO of a global consulting company, who hosted another money bash last year for Manchin.Sinema’s stance against changing filibuster rules has also won her support from other top Republican donors such as Stan Hubbard, a Minnesota billionaire broadcaster who gave her $2,900 last September, which reportedly was the first donation he made to a Democrat since 2019.Hubbard told the Guardian that her opposition to the filibuster was a crucial reason he donated, adding that it would “be terrible to get rid of the filibuster”, and that he thought voting rights were “just fine”, without passing a Democrat-backed bill to protect them.Little wonder that voting rights advocates were dismayed by Sinema’s staunch opposition to any changes with the filibuster.“We are very disappointed that Senator Sinema has put formalistic rules over protecting our democracy,” said Danielle Lang, the senior director of voting rights at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center.Sinema’s position on the filibuster rule has sparked anger among liberal backers such as the powerful group Emily’s List, which endorses Democratic women who support abortion rights. One week after Sinema gave a floor speech indicating that she wouldn’t support altering filibuster rules, Emily’s List publicly stated that the group would no longer endorse her.In her floor speech backing the filibuster rule, Sinema touted the need for more bipartisanship, stressing that she would not “support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country”.But Sinema’s vote and speech only spurred more criticism in Arizona where the state Democratic party issued a rare censure in the wake of her continued support for the filibuster.Arizona’s Democratic party chair Raquel Teran has stated that the vote was a “result of her failure to do whatever it takes to ensure the health of our democracy”.More broadly, Democratic angst about Sinema was highlighted by a January tracking poll before her filibuster vote that showed just 8% of registered Arizona Democrats had a favorable view of the Senator.The recent poll reflects a steep drop from the 70% positive rating the Senator had in 2020. Her declining popularity also has been spurred by the senator’s voting against raising the federal minimum wage, and skipping a Senate vote to create a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 mob attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters.Sinema has also drawn brickbats from Democrats for her unwillingness last month to endorse the House passed Build Back Better legislation that she and Manchin were instrumental in whittling down from the measure’s original size, while accelerating their fundraising outreach to rightwing donors and lobbyists.Sinema told Democratic senators according to the New York Times that she was opposed to any tax increases in personal rates or corporate rates to pay for the bill, which included approximately $550bn for clean energy and climate change measures, a crucial part of President Joe Biden’s agenda.Leftwing Vermont senator Bernie Sanders was especially irked when both Sinema and Manchin joined all the Senate Republicans in blocking the filibuster rule change, saying that they “forced us to go through five months of discussions which have gotten absolutely nowhere”, and indicating he might support primary challengers to both senators.Veteran Arizona Republican consultant Chuck Coughlin noted that Sinema “clearly understands the electoral position she is in, and is using this opportunity to raise as much as she can in order to make challenging her a herculean task – whether she runs as a Democrat or an independent.”Coughlin’s analysis seems on target based on the very robust $4.4m that Sinema’s campaign had in the bank at the end of September.Charlie Black, a longtime Republican operative and lobbyist, added that “Sinema’s gotten a lot of support from the business community, including both Republicans and Democrats.”Still, with Democratic attacks on Sinema increasing, the odds are good that if she opts to run again in 2024 she will have a primary opponent, perhaps Congressman Ruben Gallego, who has publicly suggested he might challenge her, and knocked the senator over her filibuster vote.A group called the Primary Sinema Project that began last summer has raised at least $330,000, including $100,000 during the week after her filibuster speech.Sinema’s drive to raise big bucks early seems to be underscored by the jump last year in donations from fossil fuel interests, according to campaign finance data.Last year, Sinema hauled in $24,310 from fossil fuel donors compared with just $7,522 the year before, according to OpenSecrets.Although there’s no data yet on how much Sinema raised in Houston, a veteran fossil fuel lobbyist told the Guardian that donors at such fundraisers are often asked to pony up the maximum of $5,800 to the senator’s campaign committee, and write another check for as much as $5,000 to the senator’s leadership Pac.For Krumholz of OpenSecrets, the Houston fundraiser offers a broader message.“The timing of the fundraiser and Sinema’s filibuster-protecting vote really puts a fine point on the return on investment for her donors.”Krumholz added that the fossil fuel fundraiser “seems well timed as Congress revisits the $550bn BBB measure focused on climate change provisions, where her vote could help industry minimize new regulatory and tax burdens.”TopicsOil and gas companiesUS SenateDemocratsUS politicsOilnewsReuse this content More
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US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against Russia
US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against RussiaNegotiations for package of sanctions against Putin ‘on the one-yard line’, says Bob Menendez of foreign relations committee
Opinion: Russia’s phony war is playing out as surreal theatre
The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine.UK to bring in measures to allow for tougher sanctions on Russia, says TrussRead more“We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war.“Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates.Tensions on the Ukraine border continued to escalate with Reuters reporting the Russian military build-up included supplies of blood in anticipation of casualties. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told Fox News Sunday: “Putin has a lot of options available to him if he wants to further invade Ukraine, and he can execute some of those options imminently. It could happen really, honestly, at any time.”Seeking to show bipartisan resolve, Menendez gave CNN a joint interview with his committee’s ranking Republican, James Risch of Wisconsin.Menendez said: “There is an incredible bipartisan resolve for support of Ukraine, and an incredibly strong bipartisan resolve to have severe consequences for Russia if it invades, and in some cases for what it has already done.“We are building on the legislation that both Senator Risch wrote independently, and I wrote, which I called the mother of all sanctions. It’s to include a variety of elements, massive sanctions against the most significant Russian banks, crippling to their economy, Russia sovereign debt. These are sanctions beyond any that we have ever levied before.”Risch said talks had been a “24 hour-a-day effort for the last several days” in an attempt to reach agreement over sanctions timing and content, and that he was optimistic.“That’s a work in progress,” Risch said, when pressed over discussions about pre-emptive sanctions or measures to be taken in the event of an invasion. “[But] I’m more than cautiously optimistic that when we get back to DC tomorrow that we’re going to be moving forward.”Menendez said he believed western allies did not have to wait to start penalising Putin.“There are some sanctions that could take place up front because of what Russia has already done, cyber attacks on Ukraine, false flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally,” he said.“But then the devastating sanctions that ultimately would crush Russia’s economy, and the continuing lethal aid that we are going to send, means Putin has to decide how many body bags of Russian sons are going to return to Russia.“The sanctions we’re talking about would come later on if he invades, some sanctions would come up front for what has been done already, but the lethal aid will travel no matter what.”Risch criticized the stance of several far-right figures, including the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, who have questioned why the US is backing Ukraine and opposing Russia. Carlson said “it makes sense” that Putin “just wants to keep his western border secure” by opposing moves by Ukraine to join Nato.“We side always with countries that are democracies, and certainly there isn’t going to be a truce committed in that regard,” Risch said.“But the people who were saying that we shouldn’t be engaged in this at all are going to be singing a very different tune when they go to fill up their car with gas, if indeed there is an invasion. There are going to be sanctions that are going to be crippling to Russia, it is going to cripple their oil production. And as we all know, Russia is simply a gas station that is thinly disguised masquerading as a country. It is going to have a devastating effect on the economy around the world.”UK ready to commit extra forces to Nato allies as Russia tension mountsRead moreOn NBC’s Meet the Press, Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Ukraine caucus, addressed concerns aired by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday that growing rhetoric over the crisis was causing panic and destabilising his country’s economy.His comments followed a call with Joe Biden that Ukraine officials said “did not go well”.“Any decision about the future of Ukraine will be made by Ukraine,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “It won’t be made in Moscow or in Washington, in the European Union or in Belarus. It’s their future and their fate and their decision as far as that is concerned.”The caucus co-chair, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, who is also on the foreign relations committee, told NBC he believed Putin had underestimated the unity of Nato and others.“One thing Vladimir Putin has done successfully is he has strengthened the transatlantic alliance and countries around the world who are looking at this and saying, ‘We cannot let this stand, we cannot let this happen’,” Portman said.“For the first time in nearly 80 years we could have a major and very bloody conflict in Europe unless we stand up together and push back, and so far so good.”TopicsUkraineRussiaUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
Supreme court: Stephen Breyer ‘did not want to die on bench’, says brother
Supreme court: Stephen Breyer ‘did not want to die on bench’, says brotherPressure campaign was fired by fear of repeat of disaster when Republicans replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Biden poised to appoint first Black female justice
01:03Stephen Breyer, the supreme court justice who announced his retirement this week, “did not want to die on the bench”.White House burns Wicker for criticising Biden supreme court pickRead moreSo his brother, the federal judge Charles Breyer, told the Washington Post at the end of a momentous week in US politics.Democrats, meanwhile, rejected Republican complaints that Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the court meant he was prioritising politics over qualifications, or endorsing racially based affirmative action, or that the new justice would be too liberal.The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee hinted at claims some criticism may be racially motivated, saying he hoped Republicans were not “doing it for personal reasons”.Breyer’s decision to step down, at 83, gives Biden the chance to nominate a liberal replacement. The pick will not alter the balance of the court, which conservatives dominate 6-3 after Donald Trump capitalised on ruthless Republican tactics to install three justices in four years.But progressives campaigned to convince Breyer to quit, many citing what happened when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the court in September 2020. Republicans who held the Senate confirmed her replacement – the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett, nominated after Trump promised to pick a woman – before the November election.Democrats should be able to confirm Biden’s pick without Republican votes but they face losing the Senate in November. With that in mind, the campaign to convince Breyer picked up speed. Breyer spoke about how the court should not be politicised but one activist, Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, told the Post: “You have to view this as a political fight. It’s not a legal fight.”Charles Breyer told the Post his brother “was aware of this campaign. I think what impressed him was not the campaign but the logic of the campaign.“And he thought he should take into account the fact that this was an opportunity for a Democratic president – and he was appointed by a Democratic president [Bill Clinton] – to fill his position with someone who is like-minded. He did not want to die on the bench.”On Sunday, Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I didn’t feel that external pressure was really helpful at all. [Breyer] had to make this decision. It is an important and timely decision in his life as to the right moment. And I didn’t want to push him, and I didn’t.”But a congressman who campaigned for Breyer to retire, Mondaire Jones of New York, told the Post that though “people adore Ruth Bader Ginsburg … the fact is, due to decisions or non-decisions around retirement, made by her, we got Amy Coney Barrett.”The Post said the White House did not pressure Breyer.“None of the justices want to be told when to leave,” Charles Breyer said. “They want to decide themselves. And that, I think, the president and others recognised. It actually worked out.”Republicans have signaled a willingness to make life uncomfortable for Biden’s nominee – as revenge for what happened to Brett Kavanaugh.Trump’s second pick, replacing the retiring Anthony Kennedy, faced accusations of sexual assault. He vehemently denied them. Democrats prominently including Kamala Harris, then a California senator, vehemently attacked him. Harris is now vice-president, presiding over the 50-50 Senate with a vote to confirm Biden’s pick.On Friday, the Republican senator Roger Wicker told Mississippi radio the Kavanaugh confirmation was “one of the most disgraceful, shameful things and completely untruthful things that [Democrats have] ever, ever done”.Wicker also predicted that Biden’s nominee would get no Republican votes. He said so in part because the GOP expects a more progressive choice than Breyer, who Wicker called a “nice, stately liberal”. But Wicker also complained about “affirmative racial discrimination [for] someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota”, at a time when the court seems poised to rule such practices unconstitutional.The White House reminded Wicker of his unquestioning support for Barrett.Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Durbin said Republicans should “recall that it was Ronald Reagan who announced that he was going to appoint a woman to the supreme court, and he did, Sandra Day O’Connor, and it was Donald Trump who announced that he was going to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a woman nominee as well.“African American women, if they have achieved the level of success in the practice of law and jurisprudence, they’ve done it against great odds. They’re extraordinary people … they’re all going to face the same close scrutiny.US supreme court will hear challenge to affirmative action in college admissionRead more“… I just hope that those who are critical of the president’s selection aren’t doing it for personal reasons.”Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican senator, told Fox News Sunday Republicans would probably not support Biden’s pick “because I’ve seen dozens of his nominees to the lower courts and they’ve almost to person been leftwing ideologues”.Cotton also complained about Democrats’ treatment of Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment in a stormy confirmation process, Biden playing a leading role as a senator from Delaware, in 1991.Most expect Democrats to move quickly. Durbin told NBC: “A great deal depends on the nominee. If the person has been before the committee seeking approval for a circuit court, then the committee knows quite a bit about that person.“If there are no new developments for someone who’s been before the committee in the previous year or two, it makes a real difference.”A leading contender, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was confirmed to the DC appeals court last June with Republican support. She replaced Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general who was nominated to the supreme court by Barack Obama in 2016 but blocked by Republicans.“I can just say this,” Durbin said. “It’s going to be fair, it’s going to be deliberate and we’re going to be timely about it too. This is a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. We should take it seriously.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More - in US Politics
Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to task
Dignity in a Digital Age review: a congressman takes big tech to taskRo Khanna represents Silicon Valley and the best of Capitol Hill and wants to help. His aims are ambitious, his book necessary Just on the evidence of his new book, Ro Khanna is one of the broadest, brightest and best-educated legislators on Capitol Hill. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Yale Law School who represents Silicon Valley, he is by far the most tech-savvy member of Congress.Silicon Holler: Ro Khanna says big tech can help heal the US heartlandRead moreAt this very dark moment for American democracy, this remarkable son of Indian immigrants writes with the optimism and idealism of a first-generation American who still marvels at the opportunities he has had.Even more remarkable for a congressman whose district includes Apple, Google, Intel and Yahoo, Khanna is one of the few who refuses to take campaign money from political action committees.Once or twice in a “heated basketball game” in high school, he writes, someone may have shouted “go back to India!” But what Khanna mostly remembers about his childhood are neighbors in Pennsylvania’s Bucks county who taught him “to believe that dreams are worth pursuing in America, regardless of one’s name or heritage”.His book is bulging with ideas about how to transform big tech from a huge threat to liberty into a genuine engine of democracy. What he is asking for is almost impossibly ambitious, but he never sounds daunted.“Instead of passively allowing tech royalty and their legions to lead the digital revolution and serve narrow financial ends before all others,” he writes, “we need to put it in service of our broader democratic aspirations. We need to steer the ship [and] call the shots.”The story of tech is emblematic of our time of singular inequality, a handful of big winners on top and a vast population untouched by the riches of the silicon revolution. Khanna begins his book with a barrage of statistics. Ninety percent of “innovation job growth” in recent decades has been in five cities while 50% of digital service jobs are in just 10 major metro centers.Most Americans “are disconnected from the wealth generation of the digital economy”, he writes, “despite having their industries and … lives transformed by it”.A central thesis is that no person should be forced to leave their hometown to find a decent job. There is one big reason for optimism about this huge aspiration: the impact of Covid. Practically overnight, the pandemic “shattered” conventional wisdom “about tech concentration”. Suddenly it was obvious that high-speed broadband allowed “millions of jobs to be done anywhere in the nation”.The willingness of millions of Americans to leave big city life is confirmed by red-hot real estate markets in far flung towns and villages – and a Harris poll that showed nearly 40% of city dwellers were willing to live elsewhere.“The promise is of new jobs without sudden cultural displacement,” Khanna writes.He suggests a range of incentives to spread tech jobs into rural areas, including big federal investment to bring high-speed connections to the millions still without them. This is turn would make it possible to require federal contractors to have at least 10% of their workforces in rural communities.The congressman imagines nothing less than a “recentering” of “human values in a culture that prizes the pursuit of technological progress and market valuations”. A vital step in that direction would be a $5bn investment for laptops for 11 million students who don’t have them.The problems of inequality begin at the tech giants themselves. Almost 20% of computer science graduates are black or Latino but only 10% of employees of big tech companies are. Less than 3% of venture capital lands in the hands of Black or Latino entrepreneurs.If redistributing some of big tech’s gigantic wealth is one way to regain some dignity in the digital age, the other is to rein in some of the industry’s gigantic abuses. Data mining and the promotion of hate for profit are the two biggest problems. Khanna has drafted an Internet Bill of Rights to improve the situation.Throughout his book, he drops bits of evidence to suggest just how urgent it is to find a way to make the biggest companies behave better.“Algorithmic amplification” turns out to be one of the greatest evils of the modern age. After extracting huge amounts of data about users, Facebook and the other big platforms “push sensational and divisive content to susceptible users based on their profiles”.An internal discussion at Facebook revealed that “64% of all extremist group joins are due to our recommendations”. The explosion of the bizarre QAnon is one of Facebook’s most dubious accomplishments. In the three years before it finally banned it in 2020, “QAnon groups developed millions of followers as Facebook’s algorithm encouraged people to join based on their profiles. Twitter also recommended Qanon tweets”. The conspiracy theory was “actively recommended” on YouTube until 2019.And then there is the single greatest big tech crime against humanity. According to Muslim Advocates, a Washington-based civil rights group, the Buddhist junta in Myanmar used Facebook and WhatsApp to plan the mass murder of Rohingya Muslims. The United Nations found that Facebook played a “determining role” in events that led to the murder of at least 25,000 and the displacement of 700,000.The world would indeed be a much better place if it adopted Khanna’s recommendations. But the question Khanna is too optimistic to ask may also be the most important one.Have these companies already purchased too much control of the American government for any fundamental change to be possible?
Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work For All Of Us is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
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‘We have to fight back’: can Joe Biden recover before the midterms?
‘We have to fight back’: can Joe Biden recover before the midterms? As the president seeks to reset course, a booming economy and receding pandemic reveal encouraging signsSnow fell lightly as Joe Biden stared into the wooded hollow where, just hours before he arrived in Pittsburgh, a half-century old bridge had collapsed. It was a dramatic illustration of what had brought the president to the City of Bridges: his urgent drive to rebuild crumbling US infrastructure.Silicon Holler: Ro Khanna says big tech can help heal the US heartlandRead moreLast year, Biden signed a $1tn infrastructure bill, an achievement that eluded his most recent predecessors and one he was eager to champion after legislative setbacks.“There are another 3,300 bridges here in Pennsylvania, some of which are just as old and just as in decrepit a condition as that one was,” Biden said later, in a speech at a manufacturing research and development center. Funding in the infrastructure law would help repair the Pittsburgh bridge and “thousands of other bridges across the country”.“We’ve got to move,” he said. “The next time, we don’t need headlines saying that someone was killed.”The visit to Pittsburgh was the beginning of an effort by the White House to change the narrative of Biden’s presidency, as he shifts from an inaugural year mired in legislative battles to elections that will determine control of Congress. The new approach was a recognition of a stalled agenda, an unyielding pandemic, rising inflation and flagging popularity.Yet the week brought a much-needed burst of good news, a reminder that the electoral landscape may look very different come November.The supreme court justice Stephen Breyer announced his retirement, giving Biden the opportunity to name his replacement. The commerce department reported that the US economy grew last year at its fastest pace since 1984. US households began receiving free coronavirus tests from the government. And suddenly, after months of gridlock, the administration is optimistic Congress will pass a plan aimed at making the US more competitive against China.Democratic strategists, progressive activists and former party officials welcomed Biden’s use of the bully pulpit, urging him to seize such momentum by touting economic success and drawing sharp contrasts with Republicans.“In the districts, people can’t tell you a thing that’s in Build Back Better but they can tell you to the penny how much a tank of gas is,” said Chuck Rocha, a progressive Democratic strategist. “They can also tell you what their relief check meant to them.”“We just have to not be afraid to beat our chest as Democrats,” he said.‘Toast in the midterms?’Historical patterns suggest Republicans are well-positioned to win the House and possibly the Senate in November. The party that holds the White House typically loses seats during its first midterm elections, the extent of such losses often correlating with a president’s popularity.Biden will use time away from Washington to build support for his legislative priorities while highlighting what his administration has accomplished: a poverty reducing coronavirus stimulus package, the infrastructure law, full vaccination of more than 210 million Americans.Strategists say his travels may remind Americans why they voted for him.Biden began his presidency with high approval ratings and broad public confidence in his ability to confront the pandemic. But the national mood darkened, sending Biden’s popularity spiraling, including among Black, Latino, female and young voters – core segments of his coalition. A survey by Pew Research this week found the president’s approval rating down to 41%, from a high of 59% in April.“We need to get Biden’s approval numbers up or else we’re toast in the midterms,” warned Lanae Erickson, senior vice-president at the moderate think tank Third Way.Disappointment with Biden’s handling of the pandemic is a key factor weighing down such ratings. Now that vaccines have proven effective, including against fast-spreading variants like Omicron, Erickson said voters want to hear the White House strategy for living with the virus.“Right now people are hearing a lot of ‘Stay home, stay safe’ from Democrats. But people are tired of staying home,” she said. “We have to be the party that’s talking about getting people back to work.”Biden’s relatively infrequent travel during his first year in office was partly due to the pandemic. But he was also grounded by negotiations on Capitol Hill. In September, the White House canceled a trip to Chicago so Biden could hammer out a deal on his domestic spending package, only to see such efforts collapse soon after.This month, Biden’s visit to Capitol Hill to pressure Democrats to pass voting rights protections was forestalled by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, who declared her opposition to changing the filibuster, thereby dooming the legislation, in a speech just before the president’s arrival.Pittsburgh bridge collapses hours before Biden’s infrastructure speech in cityRead moreBiden appeared to acknowledge that his involvement with negotiations on Capitol Hill hurt his standing with voters, who wanted to see him govern more like a commander-in-chief. Defending his reputation as a bipartisan dealmaker, built over 36 years in the Senate, Biden conceded that the role of president required a different type of engagement.“The public doesn’t want me to be the ‘president-senator,’” he told reporters this month. “They want me to be the president and let senators be senators.”The retirement of Justice Breyer immediately put a spotlight on one of the most consequential responsibilities of any presidency: filling a vacancy on the supreme court. At a press conference this week, Biden said he would draw up a list of candidates based on his promise to nominate a Black woman.Stefanie Brown James, co-founder and executive director of the Collective Pac, which aims to build Black electoral power, said the assurance “felt monumental”, particularly after the disappointments on domestic spending and voting rights.Though the replacement would do little to shift the ideological composition of the court, after three Trump-era appointments created a conservative supermajority, James said appointing a Black woman would “right a historic wrong”.Antjuan Seawright, a South Carolina Democratic strategist, said the chance for Biden to add a woman of color could be a “galvanizing” moment for Democrats, a reminder to supporters Biden can still deliver on his promises.“The president won because of our votes, Black voters, the most consequential and loyal voting bloc in the country,” Seawright said. “And so this is going to remind them of the net worth of their vote and why it’s important to keep showing up.”‘Look people in the eye’A natural retail politician with a zeal for campaigning, Biden lamented that he had so few opportunities to “look people in the eye” in his first year as president.On Tuesday, he stepped out of the White House to visit a boutique that opened during the pandemic, purchasing a necklace for his wife and a coffee mug featuring the face of Kamala Harris, his vice-president. The excursion also included a stop for ice-cream, where he posed with employees after greeting US Marines.On Wednesday, Biden bantered with the General Motors chief executive, Mary Barra, about the speed of a new electric vehicle, during a White House roundtable with the heads of major US companies.“I’m looking for a job, Mary,” quipped the president, a car enthusiast, after Barra told him the vehicle went from “zero to 60 in three seconds”.Next week, Biden will travel to New York to discuss plans for combatting gun crime with Mayor Eric Adams, after the fatal shooting of two police officers. The White House has sought to elevate efforts to combat rising violent crime as Republicans attempt to portray the country as lawless. Centrist Democrats believe Adams, a retired NYPD captain who campaigned on a promise to reduce crime, offers a model for how the party can beat back such attacks.The White House insists the president hasn’t given up on passing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda or voting protections, but is scaling back his involvement – and his ambitions. Activists and progressives are pressing him to ramp up use of his executive authority.Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez, president of NextGen America, a youth voting organization, said canceling student debt was one of the “most basic and critical” steps Biden could take to deliver for young people. She said the issue was a top priority for voters under 35, and would help fulfil a promise to reduce the racial wealth gap.Biden has expressed doubt whether he has the legal authority to enact widespread student loan forgiveness. In December, he extended a moratorium on student loan payments put in place by the Trump administration in the early days of the pandemic.“Young folks overwhelmingly supported the Biden administration and now it’s up to the Biden administration to support young people,” Tzintzún Ramirez said. “We understand they can’t pass every single policy but on student debt they hold the power to make it happen.”‘Best messenger’If Biden’s standing slips further, his visits could become a political headache for Democrats in battleground states.American muckrakers: Peter Schweizer, James O’Keefe and a rightwing full court pressRead moreOn Friday, a leading Democratic contender in the Pennsylvania governor’s race was noticeably absent from Biden’s Pittsburgh event, citing a scheduling conflict. Earlier in the month, Stacey Abrams, the leading Democratic candidate for governor in Georgia, also cited a scheduling conflict for her absence at Biden’s Atlanta speech on voting rights, which was boycotted by some civil rights groups. Beto O’Rourke said he was “not interested” in help from the president or any national politician in his bid to become governor of Texas.Ed Rendell, a former governor of Pennsylvania, said Biden was still the “best messenger to motivate our rank-and-file Democrats” in battleground states.But Rendell said the time for bipartisan backslapping had passed. Biden’s message to voters, he said, must be clear: Republicans, not Democrats, are squarely to blame for his stalled agenda.“We have to fight back with the weapons at our disposal,” Rendell said. “We’d rather negotiate peace … but we’re not going to fight with a hand tied behind our back.”TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022DemocratsUS CongressUS SenatefeaturesReuse this content More
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Silicon Holler: Ro Khanna says big tech can help heal the US heartland
InterviewSilicon Holler: Ro Khanna says big tech can help heal the US heartlandLauren Gambino in Washington As part of his drive to use tech to close social divides, the California Democrat has written a book, Dignity in the Digital AgeShortly after Silicon Valley sent him to Washington, Ro Khanna visited “Silicon Holler”, a name coined by a colleague, Hal Rogers, for the fledgling tech sector in eastern Kentucky.Gentrification destroyed the San Francisco I knew. Austin is next | Patrick BresnanRead moreThe two congressmen’s districts had little in common. Khanna’s was among the wealthiest, most diverse and most Democratic. Rogers’ was among the poorest, whitest and most Republican.But when he visited Rogers’ district, in once-prosperous coal country, the California Democrat did not meet with resentment. Desire to participate in the digital revolution was there. Only opportunity was lacking.“In my district, young people wake up optimistic about the future – there’s $11tn in market value in the district and surrounding areas,” Khanna said.“But for many working-class Americans, across the country, globalization has not worked. It’s meant jobs going offshore. It’s meant the shuttering of communities and it’s meant that their kids have to leave their hometowns.“We need to figure out how to bring economic opportunity for the modern economy to these communities that have been left out.”In his new book, Dignity in a Digital Age, Khanna lays out his vision for democratizing the digital economy. He wants the tech industry to expand to places like Paintsville, Kentucky, and Jefferson, Iowa, where the Guardian watched him make his case.Khanna is an intellectual property lawyer who taught economics at Stanford before serving as the congressman for California’s 17th district, home to companies like Apple and Intel. The top contributors to his most recent campaign were employees of Alphabet, Google’s parent company.And yet Khanna is a member of the Congressional Antitrust Caucus and was a co-chair of Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential campaign. He says tech companies must be held accountable for harm, and has backed regulatory and privacy reforms.Two senators, Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, and Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican, have introduced legislation to stop tech platforms disadvantaging smaller rivals. Khanna calls it a “promising” start. Despite fierce opposition from large tech companies, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act was voted out of committee this month on a bipartisan vote, 16–6.A House committee passed a version of the bill last year. Khanna, however, was critical of that effort, warning that the language was imprecise and could have unintended consequences. His nuanced views on tech and its impact on the economy and democracy have helped make him a rare figure in Washington and Silicon Valley, taken seriously by politicos and entrepreneurs alike.“You can’t just have the tools of antitrust and think, ‘OK, now we’re going to have jobs in Youngstown or jobs in New Albany,’” Khanna said. “You want to have antitrust so new competitors can emerge but then you also need a strategy for getting jobs into these communities.”Antitrust: Hawley and Klobuchar on the big tech battles to comeRead moreKhanna says Silicon Valley has a responsibility to address inequality it helped create. Tech companies would benefit, he argues, from a diversity of talent and lower costs of living. Such a shift, he says, would help revitalize communities devastated by the decline of manufacturing and construction, and by automation and outsourcing, thereby allowing young people to find good jobs without leaving their home towns.For years, Khanna said, the notion met resistance. But millions have transitioned to remote work during the coronavirus pandemic, pushing tech companies to embrace changing practices. He says he has gone from “swimming against the tide” to “skiing down the mountain”, so much so that an industry friend said he had put into practice many of the ideas Khanna outlines in his book.“It’s amazing how people go from, ‘It’s impossible’ to ‘It’s already been done’ as if there are no steps in between,” Khanna said. “The truth is, it’s not impossible, but it hasn’t already been done. My book is sort of an accelerant for what is now taking place.”Early in the pandemic, tech workers fled San Francisco for smaller cities in neighboring states. While the transplants brought new business and wealth, in some places they widened wage gaps and drove up real-estate prices. Growth has to be planned, Khanna says.“It’s important to learn some of the lessons and the mistakes of the Valley. There has to be more housing supply, there has to be proper conditions for workers and fair wages so you don’t have the stark inequality that you see in Silicon Valley, where you have, in certain communities, 50% of people’s income going to rent because rents are so high.”Khanna thinks bridging the digital divide might also begin to alleviate polarization that Donald Trump exploited.“Just having good economic empowerment and prosperity for rural Americans, for Black Americans, for Latino Americans is not a silver bullet for becoming a multiracial, multi-ethnic democracy,” he said. “But it could be a starting point.”He has called for billions in federal investments in research, manufacturing and workforce development; building tech hubs that emphasize regional expertise, such as a hub in eastern Washington state to focus on lumber technology; providing tax incentives for federal contractors who employ workers in rural areas; underwriting training programs at historically black colleges; and expanding Stem (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) in public schools.Such ideas have captured the attention of Joe Biden’s White House, as it looks to expand opportunity at home and counter China abroad.This week, House Democrats turned to a bill that aims to make the US more competitive with China by strengthening technology, manufacturing and research, including incentives for producing computer chips, which are in short supply.The plan incorporates key planks of Khanna’s Endless Frontier Act, including the establishment of a Directorate for Science and Engineering Solutions. A similar measure passed the Senate with unusual bipartisan support last year but House Republicans seem less amenable.“We need to produce things in this country, including technology, and have the supply chains here,” Khanna said. “Everyone now recognizes that it’s a huge challenge for America to have semiconductors produced in Taiwan and South Korea. With the shipping costs and the disruption with Covid, it has created huge challenges in America from manufacturing cars to making electronics.”‘Can we get more Republicans?’With much of the Democrats’ agenda stalled, Khanna believes the new bill can provide a second major bipartisan accomplishment for the party to tout in a difficult midterms campaign.Billionaire Republican backer donates to Manchin after he killed key Biden billRead more“Can we get more Republicans than voted for the infrastructure bill?” Khanna said, recalling 13 who crossed the aisle. “That’s the barometer.”Khanna, who is also a deputy whip for the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said Democrats must be ready to accept a less ambitious version of Biden’s Build Back Better domestic spending plan. That is in limbo after Joe Manchin – a senator from West Virginia, the kind of state to which Khanna wants to bring tech jobs – announced his opposition.“A big pillar of [the spending plan] should be climate,” Khanna said, “and then let’s get a couple more things that can get support from Senator Manchin, like establishing universal pre-K and expanding Medicaid.”When it comes to combatting climate change and easing child and healthcare costs, he said, “something is certainly better than nothing”.
Dignity in a Digital Age: Making Tech Work For All Of Us is published in the US by Simon & Schuster
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