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    The Rebels review: AOC, Bernie, Warren and the fight against Trump

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    In 2017, mere months after Donald Trump settled into the White House, Joshua Green of Bloomberg News delivered Devil’s Bargain, a mordantly amusing but deadly serious take on the 45th president and his relationship with Steve Bannon, the far-right ideologue who became Trump’s chief strategist. With wit, insight and access, Green informed, entertained and horrified. More than six years later, both Trump and Bannon face criminal trials. Then again, the band may soon be back together – in the West Wing.Green is acutely aware of the economic and social cleavages that roil the US and divide Democrats ranged against the Republicans’ rightward turn. With his new book, The Rebels, he shifts his gaze to three notables of the Democratic left: two senators, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a congresswoman from New York. Once again, Green’s work is smart, sharp and smoothly written.Warren and Sanders failed in bids to become president. In 2020, his second such primary campaign, Sanders won early contests but saw his ambitions crash in South Carolina. That heavily African American primary electorate wasn’t all that keen on Brooklyn-bred progressivism, as Sanders offered.As for Warren, she failed to win a single contest and finished third in her home state, behind Sanders and Joe Biden. What worked for her in debates, congressional hearings and the faculty lounge did not resonate with voters. A highly contentious claim to be Native American raised damning questions too.Still, Warren’s critiques of the mortgage meltdown and resulting displacements provided intellectual heft for the populist left. Furthermore, unlike Biden she was intellectually brilliant and not beholden to Delaware and its credit card giants. Warren was a harsh critic of Wall Street too. The two billionaires in the 2020 race, Michael Bloomberg and Tom Steyer, regularly felt her sting. Ditto Tim Geithner, first treasury secretary to Barack Obama and another key character in Green’s book.Warren made an impact. Green writes: “Knowing [Trump’s] commitment to economic populism was merely rhetorical, Bannon fretted that Warren would lure away blue-collar voters with a program he described as ‘populist Democratic nationalism’.”In the House, Ocasio-Cortez, who at 34 is decades younger than Warren, Biden and Sanders, is the one member of the “Squad” of progressives who possesses the tools and dexterity to play politics nationally. She is emotionally grounded.At one 2019 hearing, the congresswoman widely known as AOC filleted Mark Zuckerberg over Facebook’s ties to Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct data-harvesting and research firm owned by Bannon and the rightwing Mercer family. She also put the wood to Exxon over its early but non-disclosed knowledge about global heating and its effects.All three of Green’s subjects convey seriousness. Humor, less so. Nonetheless, the book offers a valuable recapitulation of the crack-up of the New Deal coalition, the impact of Ronald Reagan’s victories and the continued reverberations of the Great Recession of 2008.The Democrats hold the White House and the Senate but their future is unclear. Non-college graduates, regardless of race, find less to love in the historic home of working America. Green seizes on the havoc wrought by economic liberalization, financialism and expanded trade with China – factors that have driven a wedge between the Democrats and what was once their base.Convincingly, Green argues that neo-liberalism is in retrograde and that Biden is more a transitional figure than a harbinger of what comes next. Even so, Biden tacked left – instead of pivoting toward the center – as he faced Trump in 2020.In 2021, on inauguration day, Biden issued the Executive Order on Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government. His White House intoned: “Advancing equity is not a one-year project – it is a generational commitment that will require sustained leadership and partnership with all communities.”Good luck with that. The controversial fall of Claudine Gay, the first Black president of Harvard, who came under sustained conservative fire over the Israel-Hamas war, student protest and allegations of plagiarism in her work, is just one recent illustration of how tough such terrain will remain.Green traces many Democratic dilemmas to 1980, when Reagan handily defeated an incumbent president, Jimmy Carter. Afterwards, Democratic mandarins concluded that the old-time religion of lunch-bucket liberalism needed to make room for market-based economics. Reagan’s embrace of tax cuts and reduced government resonated with the public. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama came to stand as heirs of that strategic decision. But it was about more than “it’s the economy, stupid”, as Clinton would learn on the job.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“You mean to tell me that the success of the program and my re-election hinges on the Federal Reserve and a bunch of fucking bond traders?” Clinton told Robert Rubin, his treasury secretary, a former head of Goldman Sachs.James Carville, the guru of Clinton’s first victory, later said that were he to be born again, he wanted to be reincarnated as the most powerful thing in the world: the bond market.Green homes in on the close relationships that existed between the Obama administration and Wall Street. In 2008, for all the then Illinois senator’s talk of hope and change, he was the financial sector’s choice for president over John McCain. Green quotes Geithner’s pitch to Obama for the treasury slot, and describes how Geithner beat out Larry Summers, Rubin’s successor, to secure the job.Green also examines how in saving the financial system despite its players’ unadulterated greed and stupidity, Geithner helped incubate resentments that haunt the US today.“In a crisis, you have to choose,” Geithner said. “Are you going to solve the problem, or are you going to teach people a lesson?”In 2016, when Trump beat Hillary Clinton, voters did the latter. Ten months from now, they may do so again.
    The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics is published in the US by Penguin Random House More

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      Left revolts over Biden’s staunch support of Israel amid Gaza crisis

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      On Wednesday afternoon, hundreds of liberal Jewish American activists staged sit-ins in the Capitol Hill offices of top Democrats, including in the senate office of progressive champion Bernie Sanders, to demand a ceasefire in the escalating war between Israel and Hamas.As they sang in Hebrew and prayed for peace, the House floor resumed legislative activity for the first time in weeks after the election of a new Republican speaker, congressman Mike Johnson.In his first act, Johnson brought to the floor a resolution declaring US solidarity with Israel after Hamas rampaged through Israeli cities, killing 1,400 people and taking more than 200 hostages, Americans among them. Nearly all House Democrats voted to approve the measure, save for a resolute minority who dissented, citing its failure to address the thousands of Palestinians killed in Israel’s retaliatory bombing campaign of Gaza.The discontent on display in Washington was a testament to the rising anger among the party’s left over the response from Biden and Democratic leaders to Israel’s war in Gaza. But as many progressives split from the White House over the US’s staunchly pro-Israel stance, there were also splits within the left itself – a sign of the raw emotions stirred by the conflict.Nor were the scenes in the House the only signs of discontent as US politics – and civil society as a whole – becomes increasingly roiled by Israel’s response to the 7 October Hamas attack.That same afternoon, Joe Biden was asked about the rising Palestinian death toll during a news conference at the White House. Biden replied that he had “no confidence” in the death count provided by the Gaza health ministry, which says nearly 7,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began.“I’m sure innocents have been killed, and it’s the price of waging a war,” Biden said, in comments the Council on American-Islamic Relations described as “shocking and dehumanizing.”Online, many progressives seethed, accusing Biden of further enabling violence against Palestinians and predicting that he would pay an electoral price next year with Muslim and Arab American voters, who have emerged as an important Democratic constituency in recent elections.“The White House and many in the US government are clear as they should be that 1,000 Israelis killed is too many,” said Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, a progressive Jewish group leading many of the demonstrations in Washington, including the one at the Capitol on Wednesday. “Our question for them is: How many Palestinian deaths are too many?”As Israel intensifies its bombardment of Gaza, Biden is facing extraordinary and growing resistance from his party’s left flank, especially from young voters and voters of color, over his steadfast support for Israel. They have staged demonstrations, penned open letters and even tendered resignations in protest of the Biden administration’s handling of a war they say is threatening the president’s standing at home and possibly his chances of winning re-election next year.A Gallup poll released on Thursday found that Biden’s approval rating among Democrats plummeted 11 percentage points in one month, to a record low of 75%. According to the survey, the drop was fueled by dismay among Democratic voters over Biden’s support for Israel.Meanwhile, a poll released last week by the progressive firm Data for Progress found that 66% of likely US voters strongly or somewhat agree that the US should call for a ceasefire.Still, the White House has firmly rejected calls for a ceasefire, which Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, initially described as “repugnant” and “disgraceful” in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack. The administration’s rhetoric has since evolved, with White House spokesperson John Kirby arguing this week that a ceasefire at this stage “only benefits Hamas”. Asked earlier this week whether the US would support a ceasefire, Biden said: “We should have those hostages released and then we can talk.”Pressure is building in Congress, where 18 House Democrats – all progressive lawmakers of color – joined a resolution calling for the White House to support “an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire in Israel and occupied Palestine”.On Capitol Hill, a group of Jewish and Muslim staffers wrote an anonymous open letter to their bosses similarly calling for an “immediate ceasefire” between Israel and Hamas. Urging congressional leaders to act swiftly, they cited the rising death toll in Gaza and the rise of antisemitism, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian sentiments in the United States.Meanwhile, hundreds of former campaign and congressional staffers to progressive senators, including Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have penned open letters urging them to call for a ceasefire.So far no senator has backed a ceasefire. Warren, Sanders and several other Democratic senators have urged a “humanitarian pause” to allow aid, food and medical supplies to flow into Gaza after Israel ordered a “complete siege” of the territory. It echoes the position of the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, who said earlier this week that it “must be considered” to protect civilian life.Sanders’ resistance to back a ceasefire has disappointed some of even his most loyal followers, in a sign of how emotionally fraught the debate over Israel has become on the left.Though the 2024 presidential election is a year away, many progressives, and especially younger activists, have threatened to withhold support for Biden, while Arab and Muslim Americans have expressed deep alarm over the president’s actions and rhetoric.Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, the only Palestinian American in Congress, has accused Biden of abetting the deadly war. “We will remember where you stood,” she wrote in a social media post tagging the president.At his press conference on Wednesday, Biden also cautioned Israel to be “incredibly careful to ensure they’re going after the folks propagating this war”. For many on the left, the warning was buried behind his comments casting doubt on the scale of war deaths in Gaza.“Like many progressive Democrats, I have applauded and been pleasantly surprised by President Biden’s actions on climate and the economy,” Waleed Shahid, a progressive strategist tracking the administration’s response to the war, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “But he’s crossed a moral line with nearly every Muslim, Arab and anti-war young voter I know.”The White House said on Thursday the Biden administration did not dispute that thousands of Palestinians had been killed and emphasized that the health ministry was run by Hamas.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionEven a slight erosion in support could spell danger for Biden, who was already struggling with low enthusiasm, particularly among young voters.In polling conducted after the Hamas attack, a Quinnipiac survey found that slightly more than half of voters under 35 say they disapprove of the United States sending weapons and military support to Israel in the wake of the Hamas attack. By contrast, nearly six in 10 voters between the ages of 35 and 49 support sending weapons to Israel, with older age groups offering even stronger approval.Biden’s allies have largely downplayed the disagreements among the party’s grassroots. They note that most Democrats, including the party’s congressional leaders, the senator Chuck Schumer and the congressman Hakeem Jeffries, are strong supporters of Israel and fully back the president’s handling of the conflict. In the coming weeks, their caucuses are expected to overwhelmingly support a White House request to send $14.3bn in security aid to Israel.A letter to Biden, signed by ​a majority of House Democrats, including every Jewish​ member ​of their caucus and several liberal members, praises his ​”strong leadership during a tragic and dangerous moment in the Middle East​.​”It further commends Biden for displaying​ “steadfast support for our ally Israel in a moment of need and horror” while ​also making “clear statements regarding the fundamental importance of ensuring that the humanitarian needs of the civilian population of Gaza are met.”Deep, abiding support for Israel among Democrats on Capitol Hill obscures a shift among the party’s voters, and especially among those who came of age in a post-9/11 US. A Gallup poll conducted in March found for the first time that a greater number of Democrats say they sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis.Republicans have sought to exploit those divisions in an attempt to cast the Democratic party as anti-Israel, a narrative progressives say media coverage has unfairly promoted.Many liberal Democrats, including the congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have forcefully denounced pro-Hamas or antisemitic sentiments expressed by the party’s activist fringe. At the same time, they contend that there is a double standard in the way elected officials speak about Palestinians.They point to comments from Republicans like the senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who described the conflict as a “religious war” and said Israelis should “do whatever the hell you have to do to defend yourself. Level the place.”Senator Tom Cotton, a Republican from Arkansas, made a similar remark, saying in an interview: “As far as I’m concerned, Israel can bounce the rubble in Gaza.”“I have long found the ignoring and sidelining of Palestinians in the US House of Representatives, the humanity of Palestinian populations, in the five years I have been in Congress, quite shocking,” Ocasio-Cortez said recently on MSNBC.With expectations that a large-scale Israeli invasion of the besieged territory is imminent, demands for an immediate ceasefire have grown louder and more urgent.In a statement on Friday, amid intensifying bombing and a communications blackout in Gaza, Alexandra Rojas, the executive director of the progressive group Justice Democrats, implored the president to act now to prevent a ground invasion that would “ensure thousands more civilian casualties, bring us closer to an all-out regional conflict in the Middle East, and thrust the United States into another endless war”.Looking to the future, progressives say the administration must be prepared to dramatically reshape Washington’s decades-long approach to Israel and Palestine.“If we want to take a consistent policy towards human rights, we cannot always be focused on supporting the rights and security of one side here,” said Matt Duss, a former foreign policy adviser to Sanders.“The status quo,” he said, “is clearly unsustainable.” More

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      Elizabeth Warren says Fed chair ‘failed’ and calls for inquiry into bank collapse

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      Political fall-out in the US from the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank continued on Sunday when leftwing Senator Elizabeth Warren hit the morning talk shows and repeatedly called for an independent investigation into US bank failures and strongly criticised Federal Reserve finance officials.The progressive Democrat from Massachusetts, who has positioned herself as a consumer protection advocate and trenchant critic of the US banking system, told CBS’s Face the Nation that she did not have faith in San Francisco Federal Reserve president Mary Daly or Fed chairman Jerome Powell.“We need accountability for our regulators who clearly fell down on the job,” Warren said, adding that it “starts with” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who she said “was a dangerous man to have in this position”.“Remember the Federal Reserve Bank and Jerome Powell are ultimately responsible for the oversight and supervision of these banks. And they have made clear that they think their job is to lighten regulations on these banks. We’ve now seen the consequences,” Warren added.Asked if she had “faith” in Daly, under whose jurisdiction SVB fell, Warren said flatly: “No, I do not.”In the wake of the collapse of Silicon Valley and Signature banks, the one-time presidential candidate has in recent days launched a broad offensive on politicians on both the left and the right who supported Trump-era deregulation of smaller US banks.Warren sent a letter to the inspectors general of the US treasury department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp (FDIC) and the Federal Reserve, urging regulators to examine the recent management and oversight of the banks which collapsed earlier this month.Last week, Warren unveiled legislation that would repeal that law and raise “stress-tests” on “too big to fail” banks from $50bn to $250bn. On Sunday, Warren also argued for raising federal guarantees on consumers deposits above the current $250,000.“Is it $2m? Is it $5m? Is it $10m? Small businesses need to be able to count on getting their money to make payroll, to pay the utility bills,” Warren said. “These are not folks who can investigate the safety and soundness of their individual banks. That’s the job the regulators are supposed to do.”Warren broadened out her criticism on NBC’s Meet the Press, calling for a stop to interest rates rises when central bankers meet next week and claiming that Powell was pushed by Congress to support deregulation in 2018.“Look, my views on Jay Powell are well-known at this point. He has had two jobs. One is to deal with monetary policy. One is to deal with regulation. He has failed at both,”, she said.US prosecutors are investigating the SVB collapse, a source familiar with the matter told Reuters last week, after the $212bn bank collapsed when depositors rushed to withdraw their money.A blame-game erupted, with some arguing that the bank’s apparent lack of adequate risk management, combined with deregulation and a sharp interest rate rises, had created an accident waiting to happen.US banks have since lost around half a trillion dollars in value. On Friday, President Joe Biden promised that bank customers deposits are safe and the crisis had calmed down.In Warren’s letter published Sunday, the senator also called for executives of the failed banks to be held to account.“The bank’s executives, who took unnecessary risks or failed to hedge against entirely foreseeable threats, must be held accountable for these failures,” Warren said. “But this mismanagement was allowed to occur because of a series of failures by lawmakers and regulators.” More

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      Warren pushes bipartisan bill to regulate crypto firms after FTX collapse

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      Warren pushes bipartisan bill to regulate crypto firms after FTX collapseMove co-sponsored by Republican Roger Marshall aims to crack down on money laundering after arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried Elizabeth Warren is pressing Congress to adopt new bipartisan legislation which would force crypto firms to abide by the same regulations as banks and corporations in an attempt to crack down on money laundering through digital assets.The Democratic US senator from Massachusetts is pushing for the new controls on the crypto industry in the wake of the spectacular collapse of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX. On Tuesday its founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried was charged with eight criminal counts including conspiracy to commit money laundering.Five things we know about the collapse of FTX and Sam Bankman-FriedRead moreWarren’s bill is being co-sponsored by the Republican senator from Kansas Roger Marshall. The Digital Asset Anti-Money Laundering Act would essentially subject the world of crypto to the same global financial regulations to which more conventional money markets must conform.Under current systems, crypto exchanges are able to skirt around restrictions designed to stop money laundering and impose sanctions. Should the bill be enacted into law it would authorize the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCen) to reclassify crypto entities as “money service businesses” which would bring them under basic regulations laid out in the Bank Secrecy Act.In a statement to CNN, Warren said that the “commonsense crypto legislation” would protect US national security. “I’ve been ringing the alarm bell in the Senate on the dangers of these digital asset loopholes,” she said, adding that crypto was “under serious scrutiny across the political spectrum”.Bankman-Fried, 30, was indicted by prosecutors at the southern district of New York and is being held in custody in the Bahamas. The US Securities and Exchange commission (SEC) has also brought civil charges against him, accusing him of creating a firm that was a “house of cards”.An ongoing area of interest to investigators was the vast political contributions made by Bankman-Fried to the Democratic party, as well as to Republicans in the form, he has said, of secretive dark money donations. The Wall Street Journal has calculated that he gave more than $95,000 in direct campaign donations to the same members of the US House financial services committee who are now investigating him.Even before the implosion of FTX, the treasury department was focusing on the feared risks to national security posed by relatively unregulated digital currency exchanges. In August it moved against Tornado Cash, a virtual currency mixer which it accused of laundering more than $7bn in virtual currency since 2019.The Treasury said that Tornado Cash was attractive to launderers of the proceeds of cybercrime, including the Lazarus Group, a hacking group sponsored by North Korea. The entity’s appeal to cybercriminals was that it could move digital assets around anonymously, obscuring the origin and destination of transactions and hiding the parties involved.Warren is a former Harvard law professor and expert on consumer protection and economic inequality. She entered the Senate in 2013, where she established herself as a leading progressive critic of corporate largesse and a spirited opponent of Donald Trump.She made an unsuccessful bid for the White House in 2020.TopicsElizabeth WarrenCryptocurrenciesUS politicsFTXSam Bankman-FriednewsReuse this content More

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      ‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversal

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      ‘They set a torch to it’: Warren says court lost legitimacy with Roe reversalTop Democrats again call for appointing additional justices to blunt conservative super-majority which made ruling possible Leading Democrats on Sunday continued calling the supreme court’s legitimacy into question after it took away the nationwide right to abortion last week, and some again called for appointing additional justices to the panel so as to blunt the conservative super-majority which made the controversial ruling possible.Abortion banned in multiple US states just hours after Roe v Wade overturnedRead moreThe Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren suggested to ABC’s This Week that there was urgency to do that because supreme court justice Clarence Thomas indicated within Friday’s decision to overturn the landmark Roe v Wade ruling that he’s open to reconsidering precedents guaranteeing contraception, same-sex marriage rights and consensual gay sex.“They have burned whatever legitimacy they may still have had,” Warren said of the supreme court. “They just took the last of it and set a torch to it.”Warren joined Georgia gubernatorial candidate and Democratic organizer Stacey Abrams in again lobbying to expand the supreme court in a way that balances the current makeup of six conservatives and three liberals.Joe Biden has rejected the strategy. But Abrams – who’s also previously served in Georgia’s house of representatives – said the president doesn’t have the final word on the matter, with legislators also having a potential say.“There’s nothing sacrosanct about nine members of the United States supreme court,” Abrams said on CNN’s State of the Union.Warren didn’t just once again mention the idea of abolishing the filibuster, a delaying tactic that both parties use to prevent legislative decisions, which Biden and centrist Democrats have also rejected.She also urged Biden to issue orders shielding medication abortions and authorizing the terminations of pregnancies on federal land.Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, the New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocascio-Cortez argued that drastic measures were justified.Trying to avoid burn-out: a Colorado abortion clinic braces for even more patientsRead more“I believe that the president and the Democratic party needs to come to terms with is that this is not just a crisis of Roe – this is a crisis of our democracy,” Ocascio-Cortez said.The congresswoman also said the supreme court was undergoing “a crisis of legitimacy”, making it a point to allude to how Thomas’s wife, Ginni, emailed 29 Republican lawmakers in Arizona as she tried to help overturn Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.“The supreme court has dramatically overreached its authority,” Ocascio-Cortez said. “This is a crisis of legitimacy.”Speaking from a Republican point of view on another program, South Dakota governor Kristi Noem fawningly said it was “incredible” that reproductive laws had been returned to the states. South Dakota is one of 13 states where trigger laws banning most abortions came into effect after Friday’s decision.“The supreme court did its job: it fixed a wrong decision it made many years ago and returned this power back to the states, which is how the constitution and our founders intended it,” Noem told CBS’ Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan”.World leaders condemn US abortion ruling as ‘backwards step’Read moreSouth Dakota, she said, would ensure that “babies are recognized and that every single life is precious”.The governor said the state would move to block Democratic efforts to allow access to out-of-state telemedicine and the ability of health practitioners in legal abortion states to provide pills in the mail that would allow them to end a pregnancy.Noem voiced that abortion pills were “very dangerous medical procedures”, though Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan correctly pointed out that the pills were approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration.Nonetheless, Noem insisted, saying, “A woman is five times more likely to end up in an emergency room if they’re utilizing this kind of method for an abortion.“It’s something that should be under the supervision of a medical doctor and it is something in South Dakota that we’ve made sure happens that way.”The governor, a rising star in Republican circles, said that mothers would not be prosecuted for receiving abortions, rather the state planned to target illegal abortion providers.“We will make sure that mothers have the resources, protection and medical care that they need and we’re being aggressive on that. And we’ll also make sure that the federal government only does its job,” Noem added.TopicsUS politicsElizabeth WarrenAlexandria Ocasio-CortezRoe v WadeUS supreme courtnewsReuse this content More

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      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it coming | Emma Brockes

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      There’s rage at this Roe v Wade mess – and those on the left who didn’t see it comingEmma BrockesFrom anti-Hillary Democrats to Ruth Bader Ginsberg, who clung on at Supreme Court, unlikely targets are being identified for blame After the initial shock, the blame. On Monday, when news broke of the leaked US supreme court draft opinion overturning Roe v Wade, millions of horrified Americans sought emotional release. “I am angry,” said Elizabeth Warren, voice shaking, leading a pack of reporters straight over a flowerbed outside the supreme court. Her face ignited with rage as she reminded them that 69% of Americans are against overturning the abortion legislation. “The Republicans have been working towards this day for decades,” she said. In the background, a man shouted, “You want to dismember children in the womb!”For many of us, that man – the you-want-to-kill-babies guy – and his ilk were not the first target for righteous abuse. It’s hard, in moments of duress, to get much satisfaction from reiterating an existing and long-held revulsion, particularly when its subject is beyond reasonable reach. When considering the rightwing architects of this moment, there was no “what if” in attendance; all the what ifs belonged to the left. Political purists who in 2016 urged Democrats to avoid voting for Hillary Clinton (hi, Susan Sarandon) were the first in line, and social media echoed to the sound of, “We told you this would happen.”Biden condemns efforts of extremist ‘Maga crowd’ to overturn Roe v Wade abortion protections – as it happenedRead moreSacrificing the good in pursuit of the better and winding up with the absolute worst – a dynamic as familiar to British as to American leftwing politics – was, in this moment of horror, a more enraging consideration than flat hatred of the right. From revived outrage at the Bernie bros, it was a quick descent into rage against various champions of the left. “You know who I blame for this?” said a friend. “Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” The late supreme court justice’s vanity in hanging on to her seat, her overconfidence that Clinton would win, her refusal to listen to warnings from the Obama White House that, should the unthinkable happen and the Republicans regain the presidency, the first casualty would be Roe v Wade – her fundamental enjoyment, one assumed, of being RBG when she could have ceded her seat to an Obama appointee – twisted us up into pretzels. I love Ginsburg, so all this had about it the extra and extremely female zing of self-harm.Oh, and Clinton wasn’t off the hook either. “If she’d bothered to campaign in Michigan,” said another friend sourly, “none of this would’ve happened.” All the terrible, bad-tempered fights of that election flew back up into the air, like a water column after a bomb. The only Republican who came in for similar ire was that idiot Susan Collins, senator from Maine, a supporter of abortion rights who had nonetheless voted in line with her party to confirm both Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh to the supreme court. Both had assured her, she said at the time, that they wouldn’t go after Roe v Wade. Shocked! Shocked, she was, this week to discover these were not men of their word.Of course, all this fury was mere displacement for the fundamental truth that rightwing forces were smarter, more organised, disciplined and talented in prosecuting a digestible narrative – “don’t kill babies” – than the fractured and dissembling left. Progressives tried to rally towards concrete solutions. There were things to be done – in the first instance, register to vote. (After less than a year of citizenship, I hadn’t. This weekend, I will). There was the call for fundraising. Celebrities started throwing around $10,000 matching donations to anyone giving to local abortion funds.And both Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders, as well as senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Chuck Schumer, hyped the necessity of codifying Roe v Wade in Congress, a move backed by President Biden that would enshrine the right to abortion in federal law irrespective of actions taken by the supreme court. It sounds good, and has the advantage of generating political action. But it is also a long shot, a case of last-resort measures, and too little too late. Earlier this year, Democrats tried to codify Roe, and while it passed the House it failed in the Senate, overcome by a filibuster. (Then “we must end the filibuster”, tweeted Sanders. None of this can happen quickly, if at all.)The fact is that if, as Warren said, the Republicans had been planning this moment for decades, rigging composition of the supreme court with precisely this endgame in mind, there was, irrespective of the scale of public outrage, no immediate way to turn back. In this first week of shock, before anger might become effectively organised, there was only the tiny compensation of the blame spiral.
      Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
      TopicsRoe v WadeOpinionAbortionElizabeth WarrenUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)WomencommentReuse this content More

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      ‘An abomination’: Pelosi leads outcry on supreme court draft abortion ruling

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      ‘An abomination’: Pelosi leads outcry on supreme court draft abortion rulingSpeaker warns scrapping Roe v Wade would be ‘greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years’ as AOC calls for Senate reform

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      Supporters of abortion rights reacted with outrage to the leak on Monday night of a supreme court decision overturning Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling which has safeguarded the right till now.According to Politico, the draft ruling, written by Samuel Alito, is supported by Clarence Thomas and the three conservative justices appointed by Donald Trump: Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.It would also overturn Planned Parenthood v Casey, a 1992 decision which upheld Roe.Supreme court voted to overturn Roe v Wade abortion law, leaked draft opinion reportedly showsRead moreNancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, said: “If the report is accurate, the supreme court is poised to inflict the greatest restriction of rights in the past 50 years – not just on women but on all Americans.“The Republican-appointed justices’ reported votes to overturn Roe v Wade would go down as an abomination, one of the worst and most damaging decisions in modern history,” Pelosi said.“Several of these conservative justices, who are in no way accountable to the American people, have lied to the US Senate, ripped up the constitution and defiled both precedent and the supreme court’s reputation.”Elizabeth Warren, a Massachusetts senator and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, said an “extremist supreme court” was poised to “impose its far-right, unpopular views on the entire country.“It’s time for the millions who support the constitution and abortion rights to stand up and make their voices heard,” she said. “We’re not going back – not ever.”If confirmed, the ruling would make abortion rights a state matter. As many as 26 Republican-run states are poised to end or restrict access.Congress could codify Roe into law but it would require scrapping the filibuster, the Senate rule that requires a 60-vote majority for most legislation. That seems unlikely, given the 50-50 split in the chamber and opposition from moderate Democrats such as Joe Manchin of West Virginia.Republican senators including Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who have expressed concern over abortion rights, were slower to react to the Politico report than their Democratic counterparts. Their support would be needed for filibuster reform.Among progressives, outrage was fierce.Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the New York congresswoman, tied her outrage to calls for Senate reform and to impeach Thomas, the senior conservative on the court, over the political activities of his wife around the January 6 insurrection.Tell us: have you had to travel to another US state for an abortion? Read moreOcasio-Cortez also warned of possible court moves on other hitherto protected rights.“[The court] isn’t just coming for abortion – they’re coming for the right to privacy Roe rests on, which includes gay marriage and civil rights.“Manchin is blocking Congress codifying Roe. House has seemingly forgotten about Clarence Thomas. These two points must change.”Ocasio-Cortez also took aim at Joe Biden, calling for the use of executive actions.“People elected Democrats precisely so we could lead in perilous moments like these – to codify Roe, hold corruption accountable and have a president who uses his legal authority to break through congressional gridlock on items from student debt to climate. It’s high time we do it.“If we don’t, what message does that send? We can’t sit around, finger-point and hand-wring as people’s futures and equality are on the line. It’s time to be decisive, lead with confidence, fight for a prosperous future for all and protect the vulnerable. Leave it all on the field.”Campaigners were equally vocal.The National Women’s Law Center called the “language in the draft opinion … outrageous, irresponsible and shocking”. Alexis McGill Johnson, president of the women’s health provider Planned Parenthood, called the draft ruling “horrifying and unprecedented”.Laphonza Butler, president of the advocacy group Emily’s List, pointed to the effect the draft ruling could have on Democratic campaigning and turnout in the November midterm elections.Supreme court abortion law leak: what happened and why does it matter?Read more“For years, anti-choice politicians have worked overtime to strip away our fundamental rights and give government control of critical healthcare decisions. They are working to ban abortion, full stop. This was the plan all along.“It’s past time to vote out every official who stands against the pro-choice majority.“We will fight harder than ever to make them pay, by electing more Democratic pro-choice women at all levels of government who will protect our rights and ensure that our abortion rights do not depend on our zip code or our financial situation. And we will work to vote every one of them out.”Cecile Richards, formerly president of Planned Parenthood, pointed to polling which shows clear support for abortion rights.“This is not what the American people want,” she said. “This is Republican politicians putting government in charge of your pregnancy. Full stop.”TopicsAbortionUS supreme courtUS politicsNancy PelosiAlexandria Ocasio-CortezDemocratsLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test positive for Covid amid US Omicron surge

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      Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker test positive for Covid amid US Omicron surge
      Massachusetts and New Jersey senators confirm they have both been vaccinated
      Fauci: Omicron ‘raging through the world’
      US senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Booker have confirmed they have tested positive for Covid-19, as the US deals with another surge in cases and the emergence of the Omicron variant.Doug Ericksen, state senator who fought vaccine mandates, dies at 52Read moreWarren, a progressive Democrat who ran for the presidential nomination in 2020, tweeted that she was vaccinated, had received her booster shot and was experiencing mild symptoms in a breakthrough case of the virus.“Thankfully, I am only experiencing mild symptoms and am grateful for the protection provided against serious illness that comes from being vaccinated and boosted,” the Massachusetts senator wrote, using the occasion to also urge anyone not vaccinated to do so.Warren, 72, didn’t elaborate on where she might have contracted the virus but said she was regularly tested and had returned a negative result earlier this week.Her office did not respond to an email seeking comment.Booker, a Democratic senator for New Jersey who also ran for president in 2020, said in a statement on Sunday he had tested positive for Covid after feeling symptoms a day earlier.“Fortunately, my symptoms are relatively mild. I’m beyond grateful to have received two doses of vaccine and, more recently, a booster – I’m certain that without them I would be doing much worse. I encourage everyone who is eligible to get vaccinated and boosted,” he said.Warren was at the US Capitol this week along with other senators as Democrats sought to pass Joe Biden’s $1.75tn Build Back Better social and environment bill.That effort resulted first in delay and then, on Sunday, in fury, as the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin, a centrist and therefore key vote in the 50-50 chamber, said he would not support the bill.TopicsElizabeth WarrenUS politicsDemocratsUS SenateUS CongressCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More