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      in US Politics

      Minnijean Brown-Trickey: the teenager who needed an armed guard to go to school

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      When Minnijean Brown-Trickey looks back at old pictures of 4 September 1957, she remembers the day her courage kicked in. “I look at the photos of the nine of us, standing there, in contrast to those crazy people,” she says. “And what I say is that they threw away their dignity and it landed on us.”Brown-Trickey, now 79, was one of the Little Rock Nine, the first group of African American children to go to the city’s Central high school in September 1957 – and in doing so, desegregate it. On the teenagers’ first day at the Arkansas school, white residents were so furious they amassed in a 1,000-strong mob at the gates. In preparation, eight of the teenagers had been instructed by Daisy Bates, the leader of the Arkansas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), to meet at her house, so they could travel to the school in a group. But one of the nine, Elizabeth Eckford, had no telephone and so was not told of the safety plan. Instead she was forced to run the gauntlet of the mob’s hatred alone. The pictures of the young girl encountering the baying crowd is the enduring image of that day for many. But to Brown-Trickey, despite its power, it cannot completely capture all nine children’s fear. “Still photos cannot show how we are shaking in our boots, sandwiched between the Arkansas National Guard and a mob of crazy white people,” she says.As they tried to walk into school, the children were subject to verbal abuse, spat on and denied admission. Three black journalists watching were also attacked. One, L Alex Wilson, was hit on the head with a brick, developed a nervous condition and died three years later aged only 51.It took a further three weeks for the students to actually step inside the building, thanks to fierce resistance from the Arkansas governor Orval Faubus, who used the mob as a pretext for barring the nine, putting the state’s National Guard in their way. Brown-Trickey recalls how he warned of “blood in the streets” should the children be allowed to go to school. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump bids to take credit for Moderna vaccine while Biden offers cautious optimism

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden offered sharply contrasting reactions on Monday to news of a coronavirus vaccine that proved nearly 95% effective in trials.
      In a press conference the president-elect called the vaccine news “really encouraging” but warned “more people may die” unless the Trump administration starts cooperating with the incoming Democratic administration. “We are going into a very dark winter. Things are going to get much tougher before they get easier,” he said.
      Rather than working to combat the virus, which is spreading faster than ever and on average killing more than 1,000 Americans a day, Trump has stayed focused on unsubstantiated claims that the presidential election was stolen.
      Pharmaceutical giant Moderna said on Monday its experimental vaccine was 94.5% effective, based on interim data from a late-stage clinical trial.
      “Another vaccine just announced,” Trump tweeted, seeking to claim credit. “This time by Moderna, 95% effective. For those great ‘historians’, please remember that these great discoveries, which will end the China Plague, all took place on my watch!”
      Critics say Trump has all but surrendered to the pandemic, which has killed more than 244,000 people in the US and is averaging more than 100,000 cases per day. Michael Osterholm, an adviser to Biden, told NBC on Sunday: “We are in a very dangerous period – the most dangerous public health period since 1918.”
      Yet Trump has not attended a taskforce meeting in “at least five months”, public health expert Dr Anthony Fauci said on Sunday, and seems to have bet everything on a vaccine. Trump appeared consumed instead by the election – and now by denying its outcome.
      Biden beat him by the same 306-232 margin in the electoral college Trump described as a “landslide” when he won in 2016. The Democrat is also ahead in the popular vote by 5.5m votes, or 3.6%, with ballots still being counted.
      The Trump administration has not recognised Biden as president-elect, preventing his team from gaining access to government office space and funding. Democrats and some Republicans have warned that refusal to give Biden access to intelligence poses a risk to national security and hampers the battle against the virus, including vaccine distribution planning.
      Biden said the delay was “more embarrassing than debilitating” and that he was continuing to put in place his team and plans to deal with the pandemic and its economic fallout.
      The pandemic is the most pressing crisis facing the incoming president. Ron Klain, who will be White House chief of staff, said Biden advisers would meet Pfizer and other drugmakers this week.
      White House officials and Republicans in Congress are outnumbered by world leaders in acknowledging Biden’s win. On Monday Robert O’Brien, Trump’s national security adviser, noted that a transition would only take place “if the current lawsuits don’t work out for the president”.
      But speaking at the Global Security Forum, O’Brien acknowledged: “If there is a new administration, they deserve some time to come in and implement their policies.
      “We may have policy disagreements but look, if the Biden-Harris ticket is determined to be the winner – and obviously things look that way now – we’ll have a very professional transition from the National Security Council. There’s no question about it.”
      The president appeared on Sunday to publicly acknowledge that Biden had won the election, but then backtracked and reiterated his false claim the vote was rigged.
      Trump, who has put Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, in charge of his legal offensive, tweeted on Sunday that he would soon file “big cases” challenging election results. However, his campaign has already lost numerous court battles and dropped a major part of a suit seeking to prevent Pennsylvania from certifying its results, narrowing the case to a small number of ballots. Biden won the state by more than 68,000 votes.
      On Monday Trump tweeted: “The Radical Left Democrats, working with their partner, the Fake News Media, are trying to STEAL this Election. We won’t let them!”
      In a statement issued last week by the lead US cybersecurity agency, federal election security officials dismissed such “unfounded claims” and expressed “utmost confidence” in the integrity of the elections. Officials from both parties have said there is no evidence of major irregularities.
      Biden has called Trump’s refusal to concede “an embarrassment” and is pressing ahead with the transition. On Monday afternoon he and running mate Kamala Harris were due to speak “on the economic recovery and building back better in the long term”, in their first speech addressing the economic situation since their victory.
      Biden outlined a $7.3tn plan ahead of the election that among other goals would bolster crumbling infrastructure, build a clean energy economy and support domestic manufacturing with cash for research and development.
      His first aim is to pass a new stimulus plan. But it is unclear how likely he is to pass any deal while Republicans control the Senate, which will hinge on runoff elections in Georgia in January. Talks about a new stimulus package have been deadlocked for months.
      The economic situation has improved but remains on a knife edge. Unemployment has dropped dramatically since a high of 14.7% in April but worrying signs remain.
      By October the unemployment rate had fallen to 6.9% but the number of long-term unemployed – those jobless for 27 weeks or more – increased by 1.2 million to 3.6 million. Almost a third of the total number of people out of work are now long-term unemployed, black and latino Americans suffering far higher rates of unemployment than their white neighbors.
      Jobs growth has continued to slow and each week people are filing unemployment claims at a rate still more than three times as high as before the pandemic.
      Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economics Policy Institute, said: “If this drags on and the pace of jobs growth continues to slow, it will take years before we get back to a pre-pandemic economy. Americans can not afford the political games that are being played.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Dominic Cummings: voting to leave | Editorial

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      Boris Johnson should have asked his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, to resign months ago when he broke the first coronavirus lockdown and showed no regret afterwards. Perhaps Mr Johnson thought he could not do without the architect of his election victory and his ally in pursuing a hardline Brexit. But the damage was done. Public confidence in the government’s handling of coronavirus fell and has not stopping falling since.Mr Cummings walked out of Downing Street, in an act of theatrical defiance, on Friday. It is a mark of the tragicomic nature of Mr Johnson’s government that a week of infighting within No 10 dominates the news at a time of national emergency when hundreds are dying every day from a dangerous disease. Mr Cummings gets to walk away while Britain is stuck with the damage he has wrought.He won the Brexit referendum by spreading lies, unconcerned about damaging public trust. He has snubbed parliament, weaponised populist sentiment against state institutions and played fast and loose with the constitution. He may say that unconventional times needed unconventional ideas. But he seemed to enjoy his war too much. He picked, and lost, too many fights for his own good. A swirling cast of characters was drawn in. Even Carrie Symonds, Mr Johnson’s fiancee, got involved.Mr Cummings was edged out of power before he could flounce out. This tawdry episode demonstrates two things. One is Mr Johnson’s palpable lack of leadership in a crisis. He encouraged his chief adviser to embrace his inner Leninism — where the end justifies the means. Second is the government’s well-deserved reputation for incompetence. The prime minister over-centralised Downing Street and let Mr Cummings ride roughshod over a weak cabinet that he had hand-picked but which lacked the confidence or foresight to predict problems.Mr Cummings’ plans have gone awry thanks to the unpredictability of politics. After the US election his ideas for a hard Brexit were going nowhere. A Biden White House would have little time for the UK if it turned its back on Europe. Mr Cummings’ departure is a clear indication that the prime minister is ready to make the compromises needed to strike a deal with the EU.Coronavirus required bigger government. Fiscal conservatives like the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, and many other Tory MPs worried that once voters understood that big spending would not bankrupt the economy they might get a taste for decent public services. Mr Sunak wanted to balance the books, Mr Cummings wanted to blow them up. He agitated for the un-Tory idea that state power could turbocharge the economy, making powerful enemies in No 11.Resentments have built like sediment on the river bed of Conservatism and threatened to choke the flow of government. Backbench MPs see Mr Cummings’ contempt for them as symptomatic of a high-handed Downing Street and have rebelled in such numbers that it threatens the stability of a government that, paradoxically, won a landslide largely thanks to Mr Cummings.Mr Johnson might think that, without his adviser, his ungovernable party becomes governable. But he might find that elections become unwinnable. Some of this is more about style than substance. Mr Johnson still has to make good on his promise to “level up” Britain, especially since north-south divisions have been dramatically exposed by coronavirus. The prime minister needs to up his game. Once gained, a reputation for incompetence is hard to shift. Too often with Mr Johnson the buck stops somewhere else and blame is dumped on someone else. With Mr Cummings out, there is no hiding place for Mr Johnson. More

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      in US Politics

      How will drug legalization affect America's communities of color?

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      From the Pacific Northwest to the Deep South, drug legalization won big nationwide on election day in America.Under the first state law of its kind, people in Oregon soon won’t be arrested for possessing small amounts of drugs including heroin, meth and cocaine. In New Jersey, Arizona, South Dakota and Montana, voters joined 11 other states and the District of Columbia in legalizing recreational marijuana. Washington DC passed an initiative to make mushrooms and other natural psychedelics the lowest possible enforcement priority. Even Mississippi legalized medical marijuana.After months of global protests over racism in policing, advocates behind many of these campaigns focused their messaging on racial disparities in drug-law enforcement. In New Jersey, a social media ad explaining how a marijuana arrest could ruin someone’s life centered images of young Black men and women. Activists in Oregon pointed to a statewide study that found drug convictions for Black and Native people would drop by nearly 95% under the state’s decriminalization law.Yet despite these electoral successes, it remains unclear what effect the new measures will have for communities of color, who have long been disproportionately targeted in the war on drugs. Even as many states move toward legalization, drug-related violations remain the most frequent cause for arrest in the US. Nearly 40% of those arrests are for marijuana possession alone, according to federal data from 2018. Black people make up 27% of drug arrests, but only 13% of the country.Even in states that have already enacted more lax drug laws, racial disparities in enforcement didn’t disappear. An April study from the ACLU found that “in every state that has legalized or decriminalized marijuana possession, Black people are still more likely to be arrested for possession than white people.” Being caught with large amounts of marijuana, selling it, using it in a school zone, or underage use is still illegal in states that have legalized. In states like Maine and Vermont, according to the ACLU, racial disparities in weed arrests worsened after legalization passed. Disparities improved in California and Nevada.Some opponents of legalization say this increase in arrests is the result of the continued criminalization of black markets that still exist outside of the heavily regulated legal market. And they believe the potential for more widespread drug abuse under legalization, in the form of crimes like DUIs, can lead to more interactions with police – especially for people of color.Kevin Sabet, a former White House Office of National Drug Control Policy adviser, thinks that if the goal is to end racial disparities, states should continue focusing on decriminalization. “It’s a false dichotomy to think that you either have to arrest someone and lock them up, or you need to be in bed with big tobacco and have edibles,” he said. “Oregon already had a decent system for referring drug users [from jail time].”But even if people aren’t serving long sentences for simple drug possession, the impact of an arrest or a criminal conviction can follow them for years, legalization supporters say. And for repeat offenders, a drug conviction can mean a longer sentence for any future offense.“They own you after that,” said Bobby Byrd, a volunteer with Yes on 110 in Oregon who struggled to find a place to live, get promoted, and get licensed to become a drug counselor because of his felony cocaine conviction. “People need help, not punishment. Punishment didn’t help me; it just slowed me down in my life and made me have to work 20 times harder.”In South Dakota, which legalized marijuana last week, weed arrests have increased significantly since 2007, and the racial disparities for Indigenous people are especially stark. Native Americans are 10% of the state population, but were nearly 20% of marijuana possession arrests in 2018. They are nearly a third of the state prison population.Campaign organizers for decriminalization say they’ll have to stay vigilant against the over-policing of communities of color. “The reality is that systems of oppression always find different ways of incarcerating Black and Brown folks,” said Kayse Jama, executive director of Unite Oregon, a social justice organization. “I think [the new law] is a good step forward; it’s one tool we want to remove from their toolbox. But we also understand that [law enforcement] will continue to target our community.”Jama also noted the importance of decriminalization for immigrants, who will be less likely to face deportation or other federal immigration consequences over state-level drug crimes. So far in fiscal year 2020, over 600 people have been deported from the US, whose most serious conviction was marijuana possession.There’s also the question of whether Black communities can profit from the cannabis industry in states legalizing for the first time. Many states prohibit people with felony convictions from working for or owning dispensaries – convictions that are disproportionately saddled on people of color.Crucial to undoing this dynamic is ensuring that people who have already been prosecuted for marijuana can be released from jail or expunge their record. While expungement was not part of the initial ballot proposal in South Dakota, Melissa Mentele, executive director of New Approach South Dakota, said her group would push for such a policy through the state legislature.“Expungement is everything,” Mentele said. “It’s not just passing a law – you have people’s lives in your hands.”Organizers in Oregon also said they planned on addressing expungement and sentencing reductions in the upcoming legislative session. At least 15 states have passed laws making it easier to wipe marijuana-related crimes from people’s records.Applying the new law retroactively could be especially significant in New Jersey, which has some of the highest arrest rates for marijiuana – locking up an average of more than 600 people every week in 2019 for pot sales and possession.But in a state where the economic impact of a new legal weed industry could be as high as $6bn, it has been a challenge to put racial justice at the center of the conversation when some supporters of legalization see it as either a new business opportunity or tax revenue generator.The American public seems very open to a total rethink on the drug war and economic justice“In 2014, we saw a version of a bill come through that didn’t even have the word expungement in it,” said Amol Sinha, the campaign chairman of NJ CAN 2020, which backed the new measure, and the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey.After a 2019 bill failed to pass the New Jersey state senate, the question to amend the constitution and legalize weed was passed to the voters. The ACLU led the campaign for the ballot measure, spending more than $300,000. “It was a huge, strategic investment,” said Sinha. “We led with racial justice every step of the way … And that is what resonated with voters.”Now it’s up to legislators to write the law, and it remains to be seen how much of the racial equity message will be baked into the new legislation. But Assemblyman Jamel Holley of district 20, a Democrat who was instrumental in writing the old marijuana bill and is helping shepherd the new one, said he is committed to delivering upon the demands of the voters.“[We can’t] have big conglomerates take over this [marijuana] industry, but at the same time have individuals who look like me have a record and can’t get a job or housing,” said Holley, who is Black. “My sole focus is that we repair the harms of the past.”Before the ballot measure had even passed, Holley called for the state to immediately dismiss all marijuana-related court cases, suspend all marijuana arrests, and implement an expedited expungement process.These kinds of actions illustrate that politicians are catching up to voters in seeing legalization as a racial justice issue, not just a revenue question, said Alex Vitale, author of The End of Policing and a sociology professor at Brooklyn College.“One thing we’ve seen from the measures that have passed and the exit polling data is that the electorate is more progressive than the candidates,” Vitale said. “The American public seems very open to a total rethink on the drug war and economic justice.”This article was published in partnership with the Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the US criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow the Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter More

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      in Elections

      US elects first trans state senator and first black gay congressman

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      A deeply polarised US electorate has given the country its first transgender state senator and its first black gay congressman – but also its first lawmaker to have openly supported the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.
      All four members of the progressive “Squad” of Democratic congresswomen of colour – Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – have been comfortably re-elected, and Sarah McBride’s victory in Delaware has made her the highest-ranking trans official in the US.
      “I hope tonight shows an LGBTQ kid that our democracy is big enough for them, too,” McBride, 30, who easily defeated the Republican Steve Washington to represent Delaware’s first state senate district, tweeted after the election was called.
      McBride, a former spokesperson for the LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign, was a trainee in the White House during the Obama administration and became the first trans person to speak at a major political convention when she addressed Democrats in Philadelphia in 2016.
      “For Sarah to shatter a lavender ceiling in such a polarising year is a powerful reminder that voters are increasingly rejecting the politics of bigotry in favour of candidates who stand for fairness and equality,” said Annise Parker of the LGBTQ Victory Fund, which trains and supports out candidates.
      In Vermont, Taylor Small, 26, has become the state’s first openly transgender legislator after winning 41% of the vote to make it to the House of Representatives, making her the fifth “out” trans state legislator in the US. More

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      in US Politics

      We’re endlessly told why populism works. Now see how it might fail | Nick Cohen

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      We have heard lectures on why radical rightwing movements win for what feels like an age. A more pressing subject gains less attention. Like catching a glimpse of the path from a dangerous mountain when the mist parts, we can begin to see how they may lose.When liberals treat their enemies as evil geniuses, they bestow a backhanded compliment. They imply that, however wicked it may be, the right has a supernatural power to manipulate the electorate and rig the system. Donald Trump is many things, but he’s no genius, evil or otherwise. If Trump were a beggar screaming at passersby on a Washington sidewalk, rather than a billionaire in the White House, we would have no difficulty in saying he was mentally ill. I accept Boris Johnson has the superficial charm and rat-like cunning of the journalist-conman. But if he were a political mastermind, he would never have confirmed the deep suspicion of northern voters that southern snobs view them with contempt.One day, their obituaries may record that Trump and Johnson destroyed the base of their support without realising they were doing it; that they no more understood the forces that brought them to power than plastic sheeting blowing down a street understands the wind.Johnson’s failure to protect the British is equal to Trump’s failure to protect Americans, as the death rates showAge does not bring wisdom and before it is anything else Trump and Johnson’s base is old. Sixty per cent of voters over 65 supported Leave in the 2016 Brexit referendum. American pensioners preferred Trump over Hillary Clinton 53%-45% in the 2016 presidential election. You don’t need me to tell you that Covid-19 targets the old. And you don’t need to be a genius to know that politicians shouldn’t give their supporters the impression they are happy to see them die. Trump’s failure to get a grip on the pandemic and the Republican party’s dismissal of basic health protections gives exactly that impression. Joe Biden can now tell old, white voters, whose backing Trump could once have counted on: “You’re expendable, you’re forgettable, you’re virtually nobody. That’s how he sees seniors. That’s how he sees you.”US polls bear out the staggering political insight that voters don’t want to die by showing that Biden has taken a substantial lead among pensioners. Far from making the clever choice and downplaying an issue that only harms him, Trump reveals his compulsive narcissism by refusing to let Covid-19 go. Moving on to talk about, say, the economy would entail accepting that he was in the wrong about the pandemic. Rather than bite his tongue, last week he was ridiculing the head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, whom Trump loathes for the childish reason that Americans trust his medical advice more than they trust Trump.Johnson’s failure to protect the British is equal to Trump’s failure to protect Americans, as the near-identical per capita death rates show. Johnson is also displaying Trumpian levels of political ineptitude, although the reason for his blundering is different. If Trump is driven by a narcissistic compulsion, Johnson is driven by power hunger.Not a single cabinet minister visited Manchester to make the government’s casePerhaps you have to be from the north of England to understand the suicidal politics of behaving as if the south can humiliate the north. I moved away from Manchester in the 1980s and even I found myself overcome by volcanic rage as ministers issued ultimatums that Manchester must accept the government’s miserly Covid-19 relief or pay the price. Johnson’s behaviour is incomprehensible because he knows the power of northern resentment. Since the Brexit referendum, the right has spun the story that elitist Remainers, lounging in their Islington ivory towers, had the nerve to denounce honest northerners as “thick” for backing Leave. The opinion pages of the Daily Telegraph have been filled with little else these past four years.Exploiting anti-metropolitan feeling helped the Conservatives win. Now northern Labour politicians can turn the years of physical and economic suffering that coronavirus will bring into the story of how Westminster’s Tory elite refused to treat the north with common decency. The Manchester Evening News’s Jennifer Williams wrote of her incredulity that, as reports of Tories refusing the support the north needed cut through to such an extent that pubs were offering free pints to Andy Burnham, not a single cabinet minister visited Manchester to make the government’s case. Perhaps it isn’t such a puzzle. This government hates and wants to crush anyone who argues back: judges, broadcasters, civil servants, regional mayors. When the mayor of Greater Manchester stood up for his region, the right’s hatred of a rival source of power blinded it to the danger of confirming every northern suspicion about the south.A deterministic explanation of contemporary society has taken a deep hold. The corruption and incompetence of governments do not matter, we are told. The material reality of whether you have a job or are unemployed, whether you expect to live or die, no longer determines how you vote. If you went to university, you back the left. If you didn’t, you back the right. Or so the story goes. Johnson can break his promises about Brexit bringing a new dawn. Trump can break his promises about fighting for working-class Americans. It doesn’t matter. Trump’s boast that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters” encapsulates our age.If Trump wins, the cultural determinists will be vindicated. If he does not, however, the reasons for his defeat won’t be a mystery. Astonished US journalists won’t be wondering how to explain it. They will know that, far from helping him, Trump’s vicious culture war politics alienated white women, who came to find him repulsive, and his mishandling of the Covid-19 crisis alienated elderly people and many others besides.Northern Labour politicians I speak to still believe that Corbyn and the far left gifted the Conservatives another 10 years in 2019. But even they are wavering now and, like lost walkers when the mist parts on the fells, are catching the faintest glimpse of a way through the murk.• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist More

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      in US Politics

      How Trump success in ending Obamacare will kill Fauci plan to conquer HIV

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      In his State of the Union address in February 2019, Donald Trump vowed to end the HIV epidemic by 2030.
      But if Trump has his way and the supreme court strikes down the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the resulting seismic disruption to the healthcare system would end that dream.
      Democrats have expressed grave concern that if Amy Coney Barrett is seated on the supreme court, the conservative jurist could cast a decisive vote to destroy the ACA in the California v Texas case scheduled for oral argument starting 10 November. The Senate judiciary committee will vote on Barrett’s nomination on Thursday. A full Senate vote is expected on Monday.
      The brainchild of Dr Anthony Fauci and other top brass at the Department of Health and Human Services, the ambitious Ending the HIV Epidemic: A Plan for America has received for its debut year $267m in new federal spending, largely targeted at HIV transmission hotspots across the US. More

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      in US Politics

      If the poorest Americans are selling their blood, the US is in serious trouble | Arwa Mahdawi

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      Looking to make extra cash? Don’t want to retrain in “cyber” but need a new gig? Good news! All you need to do is contract Covid-19, try not to die, then sell your antibody-rich blood plasma. Blood centres in the US are currently paying Covid-19 survivors a premium for their plasma, the yellowish liquid that makes up about 55% of blood. Apparently, you can get $100-$200 (£75-£155) a pop.It would seem some enterprising students have cottoned on to this money-making scheme. Administrators at Brigham Young University’s campus in Idaho recently announced that they are “deeply troubled” by accounts of students who have “intentionally” exposed themselves to coronavirus in order to get that sweet, sweet blood money. “There is never a need to resort to behaviour that endangers health or safety in order to make ends meet,” the school said.A noble sentiment. However, the US would not have a booming blood plasma industry in the first place if it weren’t for the fact that so many people have to resort to potentially endangering their own health in order to make ends meet. Even before the coronavirus hit, low-income Americans were selling blood plasma to get by.“Selling plasma is so common among America’s extremely poor that it can be thought of as their lifeblood,” a 2015 Atlantic article noted. The US is an outlier in this regard: you’re not allowed to sell your blood plasma in the UK or in many other developed countries. In the US, however, you can donate up to twice a week; the procedure typically takes about 90 minutes, and you will get somewhere between $30 (£23) and $50 (£38) a time. Which is more than the $7.25 (£5.50) per hour federal minimum wage. The companies bleeding you dry, of course, will be earning a whole lot more: blood plasma is a multibillion dollar business in the US. Indeed, blood products are the US’s 12th most valuable export; in 2016, they made up a greater percentage of all American exports than soya beans or computers. Industry people joke that the US, which produces 70% of all plasma worldwide, is “the Opec of plasma collections.”Giving blood plasma now and again won’t hurt you. Indeed, it is something we should all do if we can: plasma is desperately needed for life-saving therapies. In Britain, the NHS is urging Covid-19 survivors to donate plasma to treat those who fall ill during a second wave. But selling your blood plasma 104 times a year, as some desperate Americans do, may be another matter. Someexperts and research have queried whether it is healthy, and even in the US if you donate plasma rather than sell, there are limits on how many times you can do it. Some people who sell their plasma frequently have also complained about things like migraines, numbness, and fainting.I am not necessarily against the idea of allowing people to sell blood plasma: as long it is strictly regulated, the number of donations safely capped, and the pay fair. However, I am definitely against people having to resort to selling plasma because the lack of a meaningful welfare state, along with a stagnant minimum wage, means it’s the only way they can scrape by. Even if there were zero health consequences involved there is something fundamentally sickening about the blood plasma industry. According to one study, plasma donation centres are disproportionately located in low-income areas and the most frequent use of money earned from donating was paying for food and basic necessities. And this is happening in the richest country in the world. It should make your blood boil.• Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist More