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      ‘A failed experiment’: the racist legacy of California governor Pete Wilson

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      Pete Wilson backed efforts to exclude undocumented immigrants from public services and ban affirmative action. California voters will soon reconsider the banJoin us for a live digital event with former attorney general Eric Holder to discuss voter suppression in 2020, Thursday at 5pm ET. Register nowFormer California governor Pete Wilson left the governor’s mansion in 1999, but his legacy lived on in the anti-diversity policies he championed and helped enshrine into California law.As governor, Wilson used his pulpit to push reforms that were widely viewed as racist – including a ban on affirmative action, a prohibition on bilingual education, and an effort to exclude undocumented immigrants from public services. Continue reading… More

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      Mrs America's Uzo Aduba: 'It's worth examining the shortcomings of our feminist heroes'

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      Shirley Chisholm was a woman of many firsts. She was the first black woman elected to Congress, the first black candidate to seek the presidency, and the first woman, full-stop, to participate in a US presidential debate. She introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation, most championing racial, economic and gender equality, and is often credited as paving the way for Barack Obama. In doing so, she occupied a space that many black women recognise: the solitary seat as the only such face at the table.Uzo Aduba, who plays Chisholm in the acclaimed new FX series Mrs America, says that this was a key factor in bringing this formidable politician to life. “That feeling of being the ‘only’,” she says, speaking via Zoom with a warm smile on her face. “It was important to get that right.”It’s certainly something Aduba can relate to. The 39-year-old made history in 2015 as the first female actor to win both a drama and comedy Emmy for the same role – the part of Suzanne “Crazy Eyes” Warren in Orange Is the New Black. “It was an honour to represent Chisholm,” she says, “because she’s not often portrayed. I just wanted to get her humanity.”The humanity of the much-mythologised feminists of the 1970s is a central part of the series, which spotlights the aims and the internal struggles of the activists who fought to pass the Equal Rights Amendment – as well as the conservatives who opposed it, led by staunch anti-feminist Phyllis Schlafly. A lauded ensemble cast boasts Hollywood giants and household names: Cate Blanchett as Schlafly, Rose Byrne as Gloria Steinem and Tracey Ullman as Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique. More

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      Attorney general will defend aggressive US response to Portland protests

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      US attorney general William Barr will defend the aggressive federal law enforcement response to civil unrest in America in a highly anticipated hearing on Tuesday, arguing that “violent rioters and anarchists have hijacked legitimate protests” sparked by George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police.Barr will tell members of the House Judiciary Committee that the violence taking place in Portland, Oregon, and other cities is disconnected from the death of Floyd, which he described as a “horrible“ event that prompted a necessary national reckoning on the relationship between Black men and law enforcement.“Largely absent from these scenes of destruction are even superficial attempts by the rioters to connect their actions to George Floyd’s death or any legitimate call for reform,” Barr will say of the Portland protests, according to a copy of his prepared remarks released by the Justice Department on Monday.Barr will also touch on other controversies that have shadowed his tenure, including his handling of the investigation into Trump campaign ties to Russia, which he derisively refers to as “the bogus ‘Russiagate’ scandal”.According to his prepared remarks, Barr will try to differentiate recent protests in cities like Portland and Seattle and the demonstrations that erupted following the death of George Floyd in May.The attorney general will acknowledge to lawmakers that Floyd’s death struck a chord in the Black community because it reinforced concerns that Blacks are treated differently by police. But he will also condemn Americans who he says have responded inappropriately to Floyd’s death through what he said was rioting and anarchy.Civil unrest escalated in Portland after federal agents were accused of whisking people away in unmarked cars without probable cause. The US agents, drawn mainly from border patrol, were dispatched to the city by Donald Trump ostensibly to protect the courthouse. But they have succeeded in inflaming the situation.Washington DC was stunned in June when peaceful protesters were violently cleared from the streets by federal officers using tear gas ahead of a photo op by Trump in front of a church, where Barr had accompanied him.The attorney general has defended as necessary the broad use of law enforcement power to deal with the situation, but the department’s internal watchdog has opened investigations into use of force and other tactics by agents in both cities.The hearing on Tuesday marks Barr’s first appearance before the House Judiciary Committee, bringing him face-to-face with a panel that voted last year to hold him in contempt and is holding hearings on what Democrats allege is politicization of the Justice Department under his watch. It comes during a tumultuous stretch in which Barr has taken a series of actions cheered by Trump but condemned by Democrats and other critics.Barr makes reference in his prepared statement to that antagonistic relationship, saying that “many of the Democrats on this committee have attempted to discredit me by conjuring up a narrative that I am simply the president’s factotum who disposes of criminal cases according to his instructions. Judging from the letter inviting me to this hearing, that appears to be your agenda today.”Beyond the federal response to the demonstrations, Barr is also expected to be pressed in detail about his intervention in criminal cases arising from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.The hearing will provide Barr with a forum to offer his most detailed account to date for his actions in the criminal cases, which he has said were taken in the interests of justice and without political pressure.Those include the Justice Department’s decision to drop the prosecution of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn (a request now tied up in court) and his firing last month of the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan, whose office oversaw investigations into allies of the president.Barr also pushed for a more lenient sentence for Trump ally Roger Stone, prompting the entire trial team’s departure. That decision was at the center of a separate hearing before the same committee last month, when one of the prosecutors alleged that politics from Justice Department leadership had influenced the handling of the sentence.In the past, Barr has said that Flynn, who pleaded guilty as part of Mueller’s probe to lying to the FBI, should never have been charged and that the original sentencing recommendation for Stone – also charged in the Mueller investigation – was excessive. Barr’s opening statement does not delve into the details of the case, though he will insist Tuesday that Trump has not attempted to interfere in those decisions and has “played a role properly and traditionally played by presidents”. More

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      Tom Cotton calls slavery 'necessary evil' in attack on New York Times' 1619 Project

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      The Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton has called the enslavement of millions of African people “the necessary evil upon which the union was built”.Cotton, widely seen as a possible presidential candidate in 2024, made the comment in an interview with the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette published on Sunday.He was speaking in support of legislation he introduced on Thursday that aims to prohibit use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project, an initiative from the New York Times that reframes US history around August 1619 and the arrival of slave ships on American shores for the first time.Cotton’s Saving American History Act of 2020 and “would prohibit the use of federal funds to teach the 1619 Project by K-12 schools or school districts”, according to a statement from the senator’s office.“The entire premise of the New York Times’ factually, historically flawed 1619 Project … is that America is at root, a systemically racist country to the core and irredeemable,” Cotton told the Democrat-Gazette.“I reject that root and branch. America is a great and noble country founded on the proposition that all mankind is created equal. We have always struggled to live up to that promise, but no country has ever done more to achieve it.”He added: “We have to study the history of slavery and its role and impact on the development of our country because otherwise we can’t understand our country. As the Founding Fathers said, it was the necessary evil upon which the union was built, but the union was built in a way, as [Abraham] Lincoln said, to put slavery on the course to its ultimate extinction.”Nikole Hannah-Jones, who was awarded this year’s Pulitzer Prize for commentary for her introductory essay to the 1619 Project, said on Friday that Cotton’s bill “speaks to the power of journalism more than anything I’ve ever done in my career”.On Sunday, she tweeted: “If chattel slavery – heritable, generational, permanent, race-based slavery where it was legal to rape, torture, and sell human beings for profit – were a ‘necessary evil’ as Tom Cotton says, it’s hard to imagine what cannot be justified if it is a means to an end.“Imagine thinking a non-divisive curriculum is one that tells black children the buying and selling of their ancestors, the rape, torture, and forced labor of their ancestors for PROFIT, was just a ‘necessary evil’ for the creation of the ‘noblest’ country the world has ever seen.“So, was slavery foundational to the Union on which it was built, or nah? You heard it from Tom Cotton himself.”Cotton responded: “More lies from the debunked 1619 Project. Describing the views of the Founders and how they put the evil institution on a path to extinction, a point frequently made by Lincoln, is not endorsing or justifying slavery. No surprise that the 1619 Project can’t get facts right.”In June, the Times was forced to issue a mea culpa after publishing an op-ed written by Cotton and entitled “Send in the troops”. The article, which drew widespread criticism, advocated for the deployment of the military to protests against police brutality toward black Americans.Times publisher AG Sulzberger initially defended the decision, saying the paper was committed to representing “views from across the spectrum”.But the Times subsequently issued a statement saying the op-ed fell short of its editorial standards, leading to the resignation of editorial page director James Bennet. More

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      Portland: protesters bring down fence as confrontation with Trump agents rises

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      Portland

      Protests in cities across US as White House seeks confrontation
      ‘White as hell’: are protests eclipsing Black Lives Matter?
      ‘Made-for-TV fascism’: how Trump’s ploy could backfire

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      Portland protests: why Trump has sent in federal agents – video report

      The confrontation between protesters and federal paramilitaries in Portland escalated early on Sunday morning, when demonstrators finally broke down a steel fence around the courthouse after days of trying.
      The federal agents fired waves of teargas and “non-lethal projectiles” to drive back thousands besieging the courthouse to demand Donald Trump withdraw the paramilitaries, ostensibly sent to curb two months of Black Lives Matters protests. The city police, who had largely withdrawn in recent days, declared a riot and joined federal agents in making arrests.
      Portland is now the focal point of nationwide protests sparked by the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May. But many other cities are affected.
      In Seattle, in neighbouring Washington state, authorities said rocks, bottles and fireworks were thrown at officers who used flash bangs and pepper spray. The police chief, Carmen Best, told reporters she had not seen federal agents the Trump administration sent to the city.
      In Oakland, California, after a peaceful protest, a courthouse was set on fire. In Aurora, Colorado, a car drove into a Black Lives Matter protest and a demonstrator was shot. In Richmond, Virginia, a dump truck was set on fire and police appeared to use teargas to disperse protesters.
      In Portland, authorities erected the steel barrier around the federal courthouse after two earlier fences were swiftly torn down. The latest barrier was held in place by large concrete blocks and proved impregnable for several days.
      Early on Sunday, protesters attempted to bring it down with teams pulling on ropes, but the ropes broke. Then they used a chain, a section of the fence gave way, and the rest was toppled to huge cheers before the crowd was driven back by teargas and rubber bullets.
      “Fuck the feds,” shouted a young woman in a helmet and gas mask who declined to give her name. “You want war? We’ll give you war. We will win.”
      More than 5,000 people, one of the largest crowds to date, turned out for the protest on the two-month anniversary of Floyd’s death at the hands of a police officer.
      But support for the latest Portland protests has also been driven by the president deploying federal agents to the city dressed in camouflage and using unmarked white vans to snatch protesters off the streets, a tactic the mayors of several major cities called “chilling” in a letter to the Trump administration. More

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      Trump has helped the US to see its dark side. It will still be there when he goes | Nesrine Malik

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      If Donald Trump loses in November – and it’s a very big if, of course – then under Joe Biden, it will be hard for the United States not to be seduced into collective amnesia. The Trump presidency has represented such a thorough subversion of political norms that, with a Biden victory, the temptation to move on from it as swiftly as possible will be strong.Already the signs are beginning to appear. The polls look encouraging for the Democrats, coronavirus is ravaging the country and Trump is unravelling a little more every day as he tries, and fails, to prove that he is “cognitively there” in TV interviews. The temptation is to indulge in a sort of fast-forwarding to the future, where Trump is a blip, the first and last of his kind. In a town hall meeting last week, Biden said: “We’ve had racists, and they’ve existed, they’ve tried to get elected president. He’s the first one that has.”But 12 presidents, among them George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and Andrew Jackson, owned slaves. Others presided over segregation. Biden’s disavowal of racism in the most powerful office of the land is a piece of ahistoricism brought on by the need to believe that Trump is a singular monstrosity. The idea is that his toxicity can be cleansed with his ejection from the White House.This reassurance is, after all, what Biden is there for. His weakness as a Democratic candidate has turned into a strength in a period of heightened uncertainty. Here is a pastoral, non-controversial figure, who will not subject a traumatised country to any more sudden shocks. The purpose of his presidency would be restorative, the idea to return the US back to “normal”. Trump was just a long, vivid nightmare. Chroniclers of the US’s journey are already preparing to write this account of a country that can be managed back to health. The Johns Hopkins University professor Yascha Mounk tweeted that if the current polls holds and “Biden crushes Trump”, then “a lot of people are gonna have to change their narrative about America quite a lot”. He concluded that they probably wouldn’t, all the same.Nor should they. The conditions that brought Trump to power and kept his poll ratings pretty much level throughout allegations of sexual assault, impeachment and indulgence of white supremacy will not have disappeared overnight. And even though Trump’s departure, whenever it happens, will be enormously welcome, he did at least force a moment of national self-confrontation. He revealed that white supremacy is always waiting in the wings, ready to be emboldened. He revealed the extent to which many Americans don’t care about morality in foreign policy. He took Russia’s word about its interference over that of his own intelligence agencies – and in getting away with it, showed that his supporters’ xenophobia was more powerful than their patriotism.As long as he was dogwhistling against black people, Mexicans and Muslims, his betrayals would be forgiven. These are painful things to acknowledge. They run so contrary to the foundational myth of America, to its comforting rhetoric and its political sacraments, that the business of trivialising them must begin at once if the country is to heal after Trump goes.Getting back to normal after periods of abject moral failure is one of the US’s strengths. When the Senate select committee on intelligence released its damning report on the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” programme, concluding that the CIA avoided oversight and lied about the efficacy of torture, there was no punishment for anyone involved. The programme, during which one detainee died of hypothermia and another lost an eye, was “troubling” according to Barack Obama. The report was even presented as evidence that the US’s ideals were intact. “No nation is perfect,” Obama said, “but one of the strengths that makes America exceptional is our willingness to openly confront our past, face our imperfections, make changes and do better.”The same will happen if Trump loses later this year. An image-laundering exercise, where the US will appoint itself as judge and jury, but no sentence will be meted out. It will investigate his time in office, soberly declare that failures happen, then pat itself on the back for rejecting him.In 2016, it was a challenge to accept that Trump won for any reason other than the economic disaffection of rust-belt voters. Just as this “calamity thesis” dominated the aftermath of Trump’s victory, the idea that he is simply an anomaly will carry the day if he loses. But Trump is a culmination, not an aberration. The point in hoping the US doesn’t move on too quickly isn’t to self-flagellate. If there is no reckoning with what this presidency says about the country, another version of him, and all the dark forces he unleashed, will be back in short order.• Nesrine Malik is a Guardian columnist More