Society

Subterms

    More stories

    • 88 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      How Covid changed politics | David Runciman

      by

      Like many people, I have had Covid and I have had long Covid. They are very different experiences. I first caught the disease at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, when its effects were relatively unknown. It was unnerving and highly unpredictable. I did not get particularly sick, but I probably gave the virus to my father, who did. Back then, Covid appeared to be the great divider – the old were far more at risk than the young, and those with pre-existing vulnerabilities most at risk of all – and the great equaliser. Almost everyone experienced the shock and the fear of discovering a novel killer among us. We soon acquired a shared language and a sense of common purpose: to get through this together – whatever this turned out to be.I developed long Covid last year, six months after I had caught glandular fever. The fresh bout of the Covid virus made the effects of the glandular fever far worse: more debilitating and much harder to shake. Some mornings it was a struggle to get out of bed, never mind leave the house. It was as though Covid latched on to what was already wrong with me and gave it extra teeth. The experience was unpredictable in a very different way from the drama of getting sick in 2020: not a cosmic lottery, but a drawn-out bout of low-level, private misery. Good days were followed by bad days for no obvious reason, hopes of having recovered were snuffed out just when it seemed like the worst was past. Long Covid is less isolating than being locked down, but it is also a lonelier business than getting ill at the peak of the pandemic was, if only because other people have moved on.The physical and psychological effects of these different versions of Covid – the short and the long – are oddly parallel to its political consequences. The disease turns out to be its own metaphor. We are all suffering from political long Covid now. The early drama is over. A series of lingering misfortunes has replaced it. As with long Covid, different countries are suffering in different ways, trapped in their own private miseries. The shock of the new has gone, to be replaced by an enduring sense of fatigue.When the pandemic hit, its effects on politics were intensely felt and hard to predict. In some ways, it seemed like the ultimate stress test. Different political systems – and leaders – were exposed in different ways. Those with longstanding vulnerabilities seemed destined to fail. At the same time, the advent of Covid appeared to open up the prospect of new kinds of political solidarity. We were in this together. Covid’s global impact was a reminder of what it is that we all have in common. An acute awareness of our shared vulnerability might create the conditions for a renewed sense of purpose in tackling global problems, including the climate emergency. Maybe a pandemic was just what we needed to remember what was at stake, and to remind some of us how lucky we are.Four years on, the picture looks very different. The immediate experience of the pandemic feels more and more remote, even though public inquiries are now under way, trying to establish just what really happened and who was to blame for what went wrong. Part of the reason for the remoteness is that much of what once looked like high-stakes decision-making has come out in the wash: many outcomes were similar, regardless of the political choices that were made. Maybe it was in the lap of the gods after all.At the same time, the more pernicious but harder to recognise political consequences of Covid are all around us. The immediacy of the threat has passed, but the lingering signs of the damage it did to the body politic are everywhere. The pandemic and its consequences – lockdowns, economic dislocation, inflation, growing frustration with political elites – have found out pre-existing weaknesses in our politics and made them worse. It has given what ails us extra teeth.The early days of Covid gave reason to hope that the massive disruption it entailed might also shift the direction of travel of global politics. That hope turned out to be illusory. In the first phase of the pandemic, it looked to have exposed populist grandstanding for what it was: bleach, it turned out, was no sort of viral disinfectant. But populism remains on the rise around the world, feeding off the many discontents of the lockdown years, and of the years that preceded them.Likewise, Covid did not start any major wars – 2020 and 2021 were two of the most peaceful years for international conflict on record. But a post-Covid world is now as militarily dangerous as at any time since the cold war.Covid did not exacerbate climate breakdown: for a short while, carbon emissions fell as economies shut down. But the world is still getting warmer and the hope that tackling the virus would provide a model for more urgent climate action turns out to have been a pipe dream.The pandemic wormed its way into the weak spots in our political life, just as long Covid finds weaknesses in the human body. It no longer galvanises us, nor is it capable of destroying us. Instead, its symptoms are erratic and hard to fathom, appearing in surprising and seemingly unrelated places. Political long Covid is neither the great divider nor the great equaliser. It’s the great destabiliser.During 2020, when the pandemic forced governments around the world to improvise their responses at breakneck speed, it looked as though it would expose some basic truths about the strengths and weaknesses of different political systems. The biggest and most immediate contrast was between autocratic China and the democratic west. Ruthlessness and decisiveness – which the Chinese political system appeared to possess in abundance – were the order of the day. The democracies struggled to keep up.In March of that year, after Italy became the first European country to grapple with the question of how to keep its population from infecting one another, the Chinese sent a group of health officials to help advise. The Italians were concerned by the fact that, despite putting draconian lockdowns in place, the virus was still spreading. The Chinese explained the problem. These weren’t actually lockdowns as they understood them. People could still leave their homes for emergencies, enforcement was sporadic, and punishment was relatively light. Meanwhile, in Wuhan, the very centre of the Covid outbreak, armed guards stood outside apartment blocks, curfews were brutally enforced and those with the virus could be barricaded inside their homes. Within a matter of weeks, Italy’s death toll was more than double that of China’s.The biggest contrast with China was the US, where a federal system of executive decision-making, a widespread suspicion of government mandates and an incompetent president meant that Covid soon killed far more people than anywhere else. If the US was the flagship for democracy, then it looked like democracy was failing to answer the call.However, it quickly became clear that the global picture was more complicated than any hastily assembled political morality tale might suggest. New Zealand – democratic, liberal and with a robustly independent population – for a long time kept the virus almost completely at bay. The country had the advantage of being an island state that was able to shut its borders. But Britain is also an island, and that made no difference to the government’s ability – or inability – to act. Vietnam, which is not an island, did almost as well as New Zealand. Russia did almost as badly as the US. Some of the worst death tolls were in the countries of eastern Europe, such as Bulgaria and Serbia, which had a mixed legacy of authoritarianism and democracy. Dividing the world up by regime types proved little.Demography turned out to be as important as politics: elderly, unhealthy populations suffered more. Equally, any geopolitical morality tales concealed a more complex set of tradeoffs. A zero-Covid policy, ruthlessly enforced as in China, turned out to be storing up trouble for the future. Even with the advent of effective vaccines – and China’s homegrown versions turned out to be less effective than elsewhere – too many of China’s population remained unprotected from the virus and the much-delayed economic opening left them exposed. China has also displayed a longstanding weakness of autocratic systems: an absence of transparency means we don’t know the ultimate death toll there, because they are not telling. It is simply not possible to compare it with other countries.View image in fullscreenThe wider tradeoffs – the toll that lockdowns have taken on mental health, on treatment for other illnesses, on educational prospects for the children worst affected – make it hard to draw any clear political lessons. Sweden, which was heralded – and viciously derided – for providing a real-time experiment in the efficacy of non-lockdown policies, now presents as mixed a picture as anywhere else: more Covid-related deaths than its Scandinavian neighbours (2,576 deaths per million, compared with Denmark’s 1,630 and Norway’s 1,054) but similar or even lower overall excess mortality rates from all causes, and less educational and economic disruption, though no readily quantifiable economic benefits. Covid was not just a political stress test. It was a series of impossible choices.Four years on, it is also clear that many of the lasting political consequences of the virus have little to do with the relative performance of individual governments. In the UK, the long-term incumbent parties north and south of the border are suffering serious Covid fallout despite adopting opposed approaches to the pandemic. The Tories in Westminster were reluctant lockdowners, the SNP in Edinburgh far more enthusiastic ones. It made little odds for the final outcomes: overall mortality rates were relatively consistent for the UK as a whole and variations had more to do with the underlying population profiles in different parts of the country than with the policy preferences of elected politicians.What lingers is something more familiar: the whiff of corruption and the stench of hypocrisy. Although Rishi Sunak, as chancellor, was responsible for one of the more hare-brained schemes of 2020, “eat out to help out” – which gave diners discounts for getting back into pubs and restaurants, at a time when the virus was still widespread in the population and about to surge back – that is not the reason why he is in such deep political trouble. Instead, the Covid legacy that haunts the Tories stems almost entirely from the parties held in Downing Street during Boris Johnson’s premiership, when the rest of the country was still locked down. Ultimately it is not the contrast between the public performance of different administrations that has come to matter politically, but the contrast between public pronouncements and private practice: not how many died in the end, but how many died while the wine was flowing in Downing Street. Hypocrisy is the political killer.The same is true for the SNP. Nicola Sturgeon, who once appeared caring and decisive in her nightly news conference, now seems sanctimonious and evasive, her WhatsApp messages long deleted, her personal grievances exposed. The harsh light of a public inquiry has revealed the SNP to have been as motivated by petty point-scoring and score-settling as any other self-interested political party.Politics everywhere – in whatever form – takes its toll on its practitioners. The scars accumulate, especially for longstanding administrations. Covid, initially, appeared to be something else: an unprecedented governmental challenge, requiring a new kind of skill set. But in the end, it found a way to expose the regime fatigue that had set in regardless. As Johnson and Sturgeon have discovered, long political Covid is a lonelier business than the exposure they faced in the white heat of the initial outbreak. It works its way through to latch on to personal vulnerabilities and makes them far harder to shake off.What happened to the sense of solidarity that the arrival of Covid appeared to have engendered? In the early days of the pandemic, many governments – including in the UK – were worried that people would soon tire of restrictions on their freedom of movement. Some behavioural models had indicated that widespread disobedience would become the norm after a matter of weeks. Those models turned out to be wrong. Most citizens around the world did as they were told for far longer than might have been expected.This gave rise to a hope that concerted action on an equivalent scale might be possible in other areas, too. If, in the face of a serious threat, the public was willing to act in the common interest, even if that meant making significant personal sacrifices, then perhaps other collective action problems – from mass migration to the climate crisis – might be amenable to a similar spirit of cooperation. Maybe we were more public-spirited than we had given ourselves credit for.Yet no such dividend has been delivered. On the most contentious political questions, we remain as far apart as ever. Environmental policies – particularly when tied to net zero targets – still provoke deep divisions and can stoke widespread anger. A voting public that was so furious with Johnson over breaking his own Covid rules that it effectively helped turf him out of office nonetheless elected a Tory in his Uxbridge and Ruislip constituency when the party turned the issue of the Ulez traffic levy being introduced by the mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, into a symbol of bureaucratic meddling in the affairs of local communities. Lockdown was one thing. But environmental protections are something else: readily weaponised as evidence of elite interference in ordinary people’s lives.Anti-immigrant sentiment, including among many of the older voters who most dutifully complied with Covid restrictions, continues to fuel populism around the developed world. Geert Wilders won the popular vote in last year’s Dutch general election on a platform that combined migrant-bashing with net zero scepticism. But unlike some other far-right politicians, Wilders is no Covid sceptic. He had also been one of the first Dutch politicians to complain about his country’s slow rollout of its Covid vaccination programme.View image in fullscreenWhy does Covid solidarity not translate to other areas? In part, it is the lack of any comparable sense of urgency. Net zero targets are there to stave off long-heralded but also long-distant threats of catastrophe. At its height, Covid threatened to crash public health systems in a matter of days. But there is another difference. Public support for government restrictions during Covid was about controlling collective behaviour when it threatened our personal safety. The danger was other people: keep them in to keep us safe. Climate action is so much harder to sell because it seems to represent an infringement of personal freedom for the sake of some far less immediate collective benefit. In that sense, Covid compliance has more in common with anti-immigrant sentiment. Keep them out to keep us safe.Throughout the pandemic, public opinion in the UK tended to be critical of the government for being too eager to lift restrictions rather than too keen to impose them. In a pandemic the majority of British people want other people to be told what to do, even if it means being told what to do themselves.This has not been the case everywhere. In large parts of the US, the public proved deeply resistant to the many varieties of mandated behaviour, particularly when it came to mask-wearing, which became a proxy for a whole host of other resentments and frustrations. The pandemic latched on to what unites us and what divides us. It did nothing to change the contours of those divisions.The truth is that public cooperation during Covid did not reveal civic capabilities of which we had been unaware. Publics obeyed the injunctions of democratic politicians because those politicians were already doing their best to respond to the choices of the public. Successfully observed lockdowns were as much a reflection of ongoing behaviour as they were a constraint upon it. Likewise, when lockdowns failed, it was often because political leaders, themselves pandering to perceived public opinion, failed to endorse them wholeheartedly.Covid didn’t generate the political response required to change the way we live. In most cases, it gave us the political response that we asked for.The area where Covid made the biggest immediate political difference was in public finance. Politicians suddenly found the money that was needed to stave off disaster, conjuring it up any way they could. The magic money tree turned out to exist after all. In a genuine crisis, despite everything that had been said about the insurmountable limits on public spending, there proved to be both a will and a way to surmount them.As chancellor in 2020, Sunak launched a furlough scheme that guaranteed 80% subsidies to almost everyone in employment: the closest the UK has ever come to instituting a kind of universal basic income. In the US, a rolling series of extensive relief and stimulus packages included direct cash payments to all households, mortgage relief, tax holidays and giant subsidies to businesses. As a result, people stayed in work and businesses stayed afloat, while public debt in both countries soared. At the same time, governments around the world spent heavily to support vaccine development programmes. Conventional practice in the pharmaceutical industry meant there was invariably a multi-year gap between finding a new treatment and bringing it to market. But again, these constraints turned out to be dispensable. Effective vaccines arrived within a year of the outbreak.Was this, then, the model for an alternative political future, in which vastly accelerated public spending can drive innovation while protecting citizens from disruption? Could it be the means of tackling the climate crisis?In reality, the response to Covid was less like a trial run for a new climate politics and more like the response to a war. The emergency measures were put in place for the attritional phase of the pandemic, when the threat of collapse was real. They have been steadily wound down ever since. Meanwhile, the spending on vaccine research was only a part of wider government programmes that tended to be far less efficient and highly wasteful. As in any actual war, successful weapons programmes are the exception, not the norm. Most of the money gets siphoned off by schemes that go nowhere.View image in fullscreenAs a result, the legacy of government action on Covid has been lingering dissatisfaction rather than a new sense of political possibility. The symptoms of political long Covid include public frustration with the bill that has to be paid. Part of the cause for that frustration is widespread inflation, stoked by looser public finances, which has fuelled anger with governments around the world and created electoral volatility. Javier Milei might not be president of Argentina without Covid-fuelled inflation. Donald Trump might not be making a comeback without it, either.At the same time, stories of the waste and corruption that inevitably went along with unfettered government spending continue to surface. In the UK, the face of government pandemic spending is not Kate Bingham, the head of the highly effective UK vaccines taskforce, but the Tory peer Michelle Mone, who is accused of having used a VIP fast-lane to bypass standard procurement processes and secure government contracts for a company to supply PPE worth more than £200m, much of which apparently turned out to be useless (though the company denies this). The price of sidelining politics as normal is that when politics as normal resumes, the corner-cutting doesn’t look so good.In the aftermath of the first and second world wars, when government spending among the belligerents was colossal, and waste and corruption were widespread, lasting social transformation nonetheless followed in their wake. The foundations of a new kind of welfare state were laid by the scale of wartime public investment, along with a sense that public sacrifices needed to be repaid.The pandemic has not been the same. In part, it is a question of scale. The $12bn the US federal government spent supporting vaccine research is a drop in the ocean of public spending. Even the trillions of dollars the US government made available in various forms of aid pales compared with the legacy of pre-existing programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid. The levels of US public debt in 2024 are similar as a percentage of GDP to what they were in 1945, in the immediate aftermath of second world war. But that has more to do with the long-term burdens of welfare programmes and defence spending than with the response to Covid.In a war, the young fight and give up their lives to keep the old safe, who in return pledge to make life better for the those who are being asked to make the ultimate sacrifice. It is part of what creates a sense of mutual obligation between the generations. In Covid, it was the old who lost their lives, but it was still the young who made many of the sacrifices, in lost employment and educational opportunities. That makes the tradeoff more complicated. Its legacy has not been a new intergenerational compact. If anything, political differences between the generations are wider than ever, and Covid has exacerbated them. The young have not been repaid for their sacrifice with the kinds of promises that tend to follow an actual war: better housing, greater educational access, full employment. This is in part because the price paid by the younger generation has proved far harder to quantify than the physical toll the disease took on the old. Who owes whom for what? This was a war with no obvious winners.Except, perhaps, those politicians who saw what might come next. In October 2022, as his invasion of Ukraine was stalling, Vladimir Putin told his government coordination council in Moscow that the lesson was clear: Russia needed to translate Covid urgency into military urgency. “We faced certain difficulties and the need to upgrade our work, give it a new momentum and a new character when we were responding to the coronavirus pandemic,” he said. Those lessons had to be taken forward in prosecuting the war. “We need to get rid of those archaic procedures that are preventing us from moving forward at the pace the country needs.” As a first step, Putin declared martial law in the four regions controlled by Russian forces.Covid was not an actual war, though it often felt like one. Nor was Covid a dry run for how to deal with the challenge of the climate crisis, though it occasionally felt like that too. Now we know that Covid was, for some politicians, a dry run for war itself.Covid did not fundamentally change the way we live. The French writer Michel Houellebecq, when asked what impact Covid would have on the future, said: “The same, but worse.” That is perhaps too bleak. It is not all worse. In some respects, life has returned to its previous patterns, for better and for worse. The drivers of change remain the same, even if some of them have accelerated.The pandemic dramatically accelerated some social transformations that were already under way. Working from home was something being facilitated by new technology long before 2020. The pandemic did not create hybrid working, nor did it begin the steady hollowing out of downtown office space. But it brought them forward by about a decade.Politics, too, is similar enough to what went before that it seems unlikely future historians will see 2020-21 as representing a sea-change in world affairs. The US and China are more hostile to each other than they were, though the hostility had been growing for more than a decade before 2020. The Middle East is more unstable than it was, electoral politics more fractious, authoritarians more assertive, the planet hotter, the disparities greater. This is somewhat different. But none of it is new. And there is no vaccine for political long Covid, any more than there is for the longer form of the disease itself. Its effects are too sporadic and its triggers still too poorly understood for that.But in one respect, the political consequences of Covid in 2024 might yet come to look decisive in the history of the 21st century. The politician who paid the highest electoral price for the pandemic was Donald Trump. At the start of 2020 he was well set for re-election: the US economy was relatively strong, his base was relatively happy (above all with his nominations to the supreme court), and the Democrats were unable to agree on a candidate to oppose him. Covid changed all that. Trump handled it badly – he never got his message straight – and even some of his supporters noticed. The economy suffered. The Democrats rallied behind Joe Biden, who did not have to suffer the physical stresses of a full campaign because most forms of campaigning were impossible. Trump lost, but only narrowly – without Covid he would almost certainly had won.For the many people inside and outside the US who found Trump beyond the pale, his removal from office looked like one of the few blessings of the pandemic. Yet had Trump won in 2020 he would have been, like most second-term US presidents, something of a lame duck. He had achieved little by way of serious reform in his first term: a second term would have likely been even more underwhelming, since Trump runs on resentment, which re-election would have done much to defuse. Now, in 2024, we would be looking at the back of Trump, and at a new generation of candidates, some of whom might have been offering something new.Instead, a narrow defeat in 2020 – coupled with his insistence that he had been robbed – has given Trump all the resentment he needs. It is Biden who has inherited the problems of a post-Covid world and the challenge of defending his administration from the resentments that have built up. A second Trump term coming after an interlude of four years, during which time he and his supporters have been making sure they won’t get fooled again, and his opponents have been looking for ways to have him jailed, is a far more serious prospect. The stakes are much higher. The damage could be far greater.This year is the busiest year around the world in the history of electoral democracy: more than 4 billion people are entitled to vote in elections from India to Ireland to Mexico. It is one sign that Covid, which put so many democratic freedoms on hold, did not do so permanently. But the US presidential election in November still has the potential to outweigh all that. Trump is by no means certain to win. Yet if he does, and if he decides this time to make good on his promise to change the way the US is governed, by hollowing out the administrative state and by withdrawing US support for Ukraine and for Nato, then Covid will have had a truly lasting impact on global politics. At that point, political long Covid will be hard for any of us to escape. More

    • 163 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      The Republican party wants to turn America into a theocracy | Robert Reich

      by

      In a case centering on wrongful-death claims for frozen embryos that were accidentally destroyed at a fertility clinic, the Alabama supreme court ruled last Friday that frozen embryos are “children” under state law.As a result, several Alabama in-vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics are ceasing services, afraid to store or destroy any embryos.The underlying issue is whether government can interfere in the most intimate aspects of people’s lives – not only barring people from obtaining IVF services but also forbidding them from entering into gay marriage, utilizing contraception, having out-of-wedlock births, ending their pregnancies, changing their genders, checking out whatever books they want from the library, and worshipping God in whatever way they wish (or not worshipping at all).All these private freedoms are under increasing assault from Republican legislators and judges who want to impose their own morality on everyone else. Republicans are increasingly at war with America’s basic separation of church and state.According to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution, more than half of Republicans believe the country should be a strictly Christian nation – either adhering to the ideals of Christian nationalism (21%) or sympathizing with those views (33%).Christian nationalism is also closely linked with authoritarianism. According to the same survey, half of Christian nationalism adherents and nearly four in 10 sympathizers said they support the idea of an authoritarian leader powerful enough to keep these Christian values in society.During an interview at a Turning Point USA event last August, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (a Republican from Georgia) said party leaders need to be more responsive to the base of the party, which she claimed is made up of Christian nationalists.“We need to be the party of nationalism,” she said. “I am a Christian and I say it proudly, we should be Christian nationalists.”A growing number of evangelical voters view Trump as the second coming of Jesus Christ and see the 2024 election as a battle not only for America’s soul but for the salvation of all mankind. Many of the Trump followers who stormed the Capitol on 6 January 2021 carried Christian symbols and signs invoking God and Jesus.An influential thinktank close to Trump is developing plans to infuse Christian nationalist ideas into his administration if he returns to power, according to documents obtained by Politico.Spearheading the effort is Russell Vought, who served as Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget during his presidential term and remains close to him.Vought, frequently cited as a potential chief of staff in a second Trump White House, has embraced the idea that Christians are under assault and has spoken of policies he might pursue in response.Those policies include banning immigration of non-Christians into the United States, overturning same-sex marriage and barring access to contraception.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn a concurring opinion in last week’s Alabama supreme court decision, Alabama’s chief justice, Tom Parker, invoked the prophet Jeremiah, Genesis and the writings of 16th- and 17th-century theologians.“Human life cannot be wrongfully destroyed without incurring the wrath of a holy God,” he wrote. “Even before birth, all human beings have the image of God, and their lives cannot be destroyed without effacing his glory.”Before joining the court, Parker was a close aide and ally of Roy Moore, the former chief justice of the Alabama supreme court who was twice removed from the job – first for dismissing a federal court order to remove an enormous granite monument of the Ten Commandments he had installed in the state judicial building, and then for ordering state judges to defy the US supreme court’s decision affirming gay marriage.So far, the US supreme court has not explicitly based its decisions on scripture, but several of its recent rulings – the Dobbs decision that overruled Roe v Wade, its decision in Kennedy v Bremerton School District on behalf of a public school football coach who led students in Christian prayer, and its decision in Carson v Makin, requiring states to fund private religious schools if they fund any other private schools, even if those religious schools would use public funds for religious instruction and worship – are consistent with Christian nationalism.But Christian nationalism is inconsistent with personal freedom, including the first amendment’s guarantee that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”.We can be truly free only if we’re confident we can go about our private lives without being monitored or intruded upon by the government and can practice whatever faith (or lack of faith) we wish regardless of the religious beliefs of others.A society where one set of religious views is imposed on those who disagree with them is not a democracy. It’s a theocracy.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His newest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com More

    • 125 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘Out of control’: Congresswoman sounds alarm over ‘unchecked’ gambling boom

      by

      America’s “unchecked” gambling boom risks exacerbating a nationwide mental health crisis, according to a congresswoman pushing for federal government support. The industry is pushing back hard.Operators must be held “accountable” for rising addiction rates, Andrea Salinas told the Guardian, after lawmakers proposed legislation that – if approved – would provide tens of millions of dollars in funding to help those affected.Sports betting is “proliferating like never before”, she said. “Rather than try to put the genie back in the bottle, let’s make sure we have the research and the treatment before it does become out of control.”The supreme court struck down a decades-old law in 2018 that had banned sports betting across much of the nation. The market is now legal in 38 states, attracting billions of dollars in wagers every month. Its rapid growth has coincided with a spike in addiction cases, according to clinicians, counsellors and campaigners.Diverting taxes already raised on sports wagers towards compulsive gambling support services would make “the entire industry healthier”, said Salinas, a Democrat representing Oregon’s sixth district. “I, as much as anybody, enjoy the recreation of gambling, in a fun casino. When done, like everything, in moderation, it’s fun, right?“But the access to these applications for sports betting has taken us in a direction that is harmful. Nearly 7 million Americans are struggling with the gambling addiction.”The Grit (Gambling addiction Recovery, Investment and Treatment) Act, proposed this month by Salinas and the Democratic senator Richard Blumenthal, is pinned around the federal sports excise tax. Receipts from the tax, which dates back to the early 1950s, have surged in recent years as the legal market expanded; it raised an estimated $271m last year.Under the proposed law, half of the revenues raised by the tax would be set aside for gambling addiction treatment, prevention and research. Taxes would not rise and the funds for treatment would go through an existing federal grant program.Researchers have identified close links between gambling addiction and other mental health disorders, like alcoholism. “If we let this go unchecked, this could be one of the sources” of an escalating mental health crisis, said Salinas. “We would be ignoring an upstream problem that we could start to address.”Keith Whyte, executive director of the National Council on Problem Gambling, which has been pushing for the Grit Act, has said it would “significantly bolster” addiction prevention, research and treatment resources.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut gambling operators are against the proposal. “Our industry’s growth means that there’s never been more attention paid to, or money invested in, problem gambling support than there is today,” Chris Cylke, senior vice-president at the American Gaming Association, said.Suggesting the Grit Act would “give criminals a leg up”, Cylke argued that the excise tax – upon which it is based – should be repealed. “Today, this antiquated policy puts the nascent legal market at a competitive disadvantage against offshore illegal operators, who do not pay any taxes and prey on vulnerable customers.”Advocates for greater compulsive gambling support criticised the “predictable, shortsighted objection” of operators. “The gambling sector can no longer reasonably expect to evade external responsibility,” said Derek Webb, founder of the Campaign for Fairer Gambling. “The Grit Act is our best chance to save lots of lives by doing what’s responsible, fair and inevitable.”But Salinas is braced for a long campaign to pass the Grit Act. Politicians in Washington and beyond “aren’t really paying attention” to gambling addiction rates, she said. Congress is “not doing a lot of substantive work right now. So, yeah, it could take a while.” More

    • 163 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Brawny billionaires, pumped-up politicians: why powerful men are challenging each other to fights

      by

      The first rule of insecure masculinity fight club? Tell everyone about it. And I mean everyone. Tweet about it, talk to reporters, shout about it from the rooftops. Make sure the entire world knows that you are a big boy who could beat just about anyone in a fistfight.Twenty twenty-three, as I’m sure you will have observed, was the year that tech CEOs stepped away from their screens and decided to get physical. Elon Musk, perennially thirsty for attention, was at the center of this embarrassing development. The 52-year-old – who challenged Vladimir Putin to single combat in 2022 – spent much of the year teasing the idea that he was going head-to-head with Mark Zuckerberg in a cage fight. At one point he suggested the fight would be held at the Colosseum in Rome.Don’t worry, you didn’t miss it. The fight never happened and will never ever happen for the simple reason that Musk would get destroyed by Zuckerberg, who has been obsessively training in mixed martial arts (MMA) and won a bunch of medals in a Brazilian jiujitsu tournament. The only way Musk will actually follow through with the cage match is if he manages to get his hands on some kind of brain-implant technology that magically transforms him into a lean, mean, fighting machine. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if Neuralink, Musk’s brain-chip startup, was working on that brief right now. Although seeing as the company is under federal investigation after killing 1,500 animals in testing– many of which died extremely grisly deaths – it may be a while before any such technology comes to fruition.Musk and Zuck aren’t the only tech execs looking to get physical. Vin Diesel-level biceps have become the latest billionaire status symbol. Just look at Jeff Bezos: his muscles have increased at about the same rate as his bank account. The Airbnb CEO, Brian Chesky, has also been working on getting swole. Back in June, Chesky told the Bloomberg writer Dave Lee that he’d “challenge any leader in tech to bench press”. He added: “I’ve been waiting for these physical battles in tech. It’s just so funny.”It’s not just tech bros. Politicians are at it too. Over the summer, Robert F Kennedy Jr posted a video of himself doing push-ups while shirtless with the caption “Getting in shape for my debates with President Biden!” Which may or may not have been prompted by Biden once challenging an Iowa voter and Donald Trump to a push-up contest.I don’t know how good Kevin McCarthy is at push-ups, but he’s certainly fond of shoving. In November, the former speaker bumped into the congressman Tim Burchett of Tennessee and reportedly elbowed him in the back. Burchett then chased after him, calling him a “jerk” and a “chicken”. McCarthy, it seems, was angry that Burchett had helped oust him from the speakership in October, making him the first speaker in US history to have been removed by his own side.Just a few hours after that altercation, Markwayne Mullin, a Republican senator from Oklahoma, challenged Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a physical confrontation during a Senate committee hearing on labor unions. Mullin, a former businessman who regularly boasts about his prowess as an MMA fighter, was miffed that O’Brien had once called him a “greedy CEO” and a “clown” on Twitter. He decided to settle his private grievance during a public hearing and the two agreed to have a fight right there and then – yelling at each other to “stand your butt up” and get started. Eventually Bernie Sanders got them to calm down.Just pause for a moment and imagine acting like this in your own job. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure that if I challenged a colleague to a fight and started yelling at them to “sit their butt down” in the middle of a public meeting, I would face some sort of consequences. In the Mullins case, the meltdown doesn’t seem to have had any impact on his career. It may have even increased his popularity among his base. Politicians routinely seem to be held to a lower standard than the rest of us.If you ignore the fact that we’re being ruled by people with enormous egos and no self-restraint, then there is an amusing element to all this. But more than anything, it’s just pathetic, isn’t it? All these grown men so clearly worried about their masculinity that they feel the need to puff out their chests and show everyone just how strong they are.The one per cent’s desperate shows of bravado are part of a broader insecurity about masculinity in the west that plenty of snake-oil salesmen and opportunists are exploiting for all it’s worth. In 2022, for example, the rightwing commentator Tucker Carlson came out with a documentary called The End of Men that argues testosterone counts are plummeting and “real men” are an endangered species. The documentary was full of bizarre ways to counteract this, including testicle tanning. I’m not sure how many tech bros and politicians are regularly exposing their balls to red-light therapy, but there does seem to be a widespread preoccupation with “bromeopathic” ways to increase testosterone. Testosterone blood-test “T parties” are apparently a growing trend among tech types: a bunch of founders get together and find ways to raise their T.Do whatever you like in private, I say. Tan your testicles, go to T parties, organize push-up competitions. Just don’t foist your masculine insecurities on the rest of us. Stop challenging each other to public fights and getting into brawls in government. It seems to be easy enough for women to follow this advice, doesn’t it? I mean … has a female CEO or politician ever tried to organize a public fistfight with a female counterpart? I’ve got a weird feeling the answer is “no, they would be a complete laughingstock if they did”, but if anyone can find me a recent example then I’ll eat my hat. Or – on second thoughts – I’ll throw my hat in the ring and fight Elon Musk myself in the Roman Colosseum. Consider that a challenge. More

    • 150 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      ‘There’s no limit’: one congressman’s solitary crusade to rein in sports betting

      by

      As Las Vegas prepares to host Super Bowl LVIII sports betting is preparing to celebrate its remarkable shift from the illegal fringes of American sports to the heart of its establishment. In Congress, one man is not cheering.Congressman Paul Tonko fears the industry has already gone too far. “There’s no limit to this,” he told the Guardian. “You can’t have this wild west environment.” So far Tonko is a rare voice of dissent in Washington, another arena where the new gambling establishment is gaining ground.The gambling capital of the world is playing host to one of its largest sporting events for the first time in February – less than six years after the supreme court set the stage for sports betting’s surge across much of the United States.The transformation of official attitudes to online gambling has been head-spinning. Barely a dozen years ago, US authorities were still arresting and jailing online gambling executives. Now, in most of America, placing a wager has never been so easy.This now-legal sector’s sprint must be stopped, according to Tonko, who has become its fiercest critic on Capitol Hill. The congressman is calling for a federal crackdown to halt a “public health crisis” from engulfing the country – starting with a nationwide ban on advertising.The crusade has so far been a solitary one. No other member of Congress has yet publicly endorsed his campaign against betting ads, launched nine months ago. But Tonko is not prepared to throw in the towel.Over the course of an hour-long interview, the Democrat of New York let rip at a sector he believes must be reined in, accusing it of “preying on” the vulnerable, targeting ads at recovering addicts and putting “profits over people”.Back in May 2018, when the US supreme court struck down a decades-old law which had prohibited legal sports betting across much of the country, it knew the ruling would be divisive. Supporters of the ruling believed it would prompt a financial boon for states and “critically weaken” illegal platforms, Justice Samuel Alito wrote in the court’s opinion. Opponents feared it would “hook the young on gambling” and corrupt professional and college sports.The sports betting industry loudly highlights potential signs that its supporters were right. The American Gaming Association (AGA), which represents legal gambling companies, estimates they paid $13.5bn in taxes to state and local governments last year.So far the opponents of legalization have tended to speak more quietly. Signs of climbing youth addiction rates are more likely found in treatment clinics and helpline call centers than in political press releases.Tonko is trying to turn up the volume. “I’m very academic about this job,” he said. “And if I see something as a looming crisis… then I should respond.”The congressman was drawn to scrutinize the burgeoning gambling market after hearing “routinely” from younger constituents about a “constant bombardment” of ads. This is a “known addictive product” which, as far as he’s concerned, should be regulated like any other.At 74, Tonko noted that his generation was not “much of a target” for the sector’s marketing blitz. “But high schoolers, young children, college students and, believe it or not, people that were on the list as people in recovery were a targeted list of populations that sportsbooks went after.”With online sportsbooks now live and legal in more than two dozen states, Tonko is alarmed that this liberalization has triggered a sharp increase in compulsive gambling rates. “It’s an issue that needs to be addressed before we are overwhelmed by pain and suffering.”Back in February, on the eve of the last Super Bowl, Tonko proposed the Betting on our Future Act, based on legislation that banned tobacco advertisements in the 1960s. It is designed to “protect the innocent” from the betting commercials that have flooded television, radio and the internet in recent years. “We didn’t outlaw smoking,” he said, “and we’re not outlawing gambling here.”Days later, with 115 million people tuned into the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, and companies reportedly shelling out up to $7m per ad to reach them, gambling giants dug deep. DraftKings, one of the biggest players in sports betting, recruited a cadre of celebrities to promote its special offer: a “FREE BET” for all customers. “Man, that’s big,” the comedian Kevin Hart said during its advert. Only the small print (displayed in the last seven seconds) explained it was impossible to withdraw winnings from such a “non-cashable” wager.The wider industry continues to spend heavily. The top four operators – FanDuel, DraftKings, BetMGM and Caesars – spent $825.3m on advertising last year alone, according to data from the advertising intelligence groups Vivvix and Pathmatics, and an estimated $417.2m on adverts in the first eight months of this year; more than the same period of 2022.These digital gladiators are still battling to dominate this nascent arena. Their extensive marketing campaigns have made gambling more visible than ever before; their innovations have made it more accessible, too. Regular prompts and opportunities to gamble have made the practice “far more destructive”, argued Tonko, who believes legal operators want “free rein” to do as they please. This is a market with “no parameters”, he claimed, laying out his case for swift action.So far, however, support for his proposal has been muted. Privately, some in Washington question whether advertising restrictions would make more sense than outright ban. The pushback has been blunt.The congressman’s comments “ignore the hard work and commitment of thousands of state and tribal gaming regulators who work every day to safeguard consumers, uphold marketplace integrity, and enforce the law”, Cait DeBaun, the AGA’s vice-president for strategic communications and responsibility, said. “The only ‘Wild West’ out there is the unchecked illegal market enabled by failed federal legislation, which handed bad actors a monopoly for almost three decades.“Offshore sportsbooks pad their pockets by targeting kids, college students and those with gambling problems. Anyone interested in protecting vulnerable Americans should focus their efforts on strengthening and enforcing existing laws to stop illegal gambling.”The industry has made some changes. The AGA’s marketing code, for example, was updated in March to prohibit use of the term “risk free”, and clarify that ads should be “designed to appeal primarily” to people aged 21 and over. Insiders deny this move was prompted by anything in particular. (Asked if it still uses the term “free bet” in ads following the change, DraftKings did not respond.)“As legalized gaming expands, our commitment to responsibility continues to grow and evolve in tandem,” said DeBaun. “The changes to the Code enacted by AGA members demonstrate this commitment by raising standards and introducing increased protections for college-aged audiences who are more vulnerable.”Such action is not enough for Tonko. “Intervening here, I think, is the just and right thing to do,” he said. The congressman is focused “for now” on advertising, but in time believes his colleagues should consider the best ways to both prevent and treat compulsive gambling.Congressional hearings could explore what should be “off limits” for this industry, he suggested. “There will be ripple effects of all sorts that, I hope, will be reviewed, and given intense examination. And if it warrants public policy, let’s do the bills. Let’s do that legislation.”Tonko is not sure the current safety net for problem gamblers is sufficient. “We do a lot to fund efforts to address people with alcohol, tobacco and heroin” issues, he said. When it comes to gambling, “you’ll tell me there’s an 800 number. How strong is it? How functional is it? You don’t treat any mental health disorder, any addiction, [with] a simple telephone number.”Media companies selling ads, gambling operators pursuing customers and states collecting tax revenue “all stand to gain” from sports betting’s rise, Tonko observed. “But at what price?”Toward the end of his interview, the congressman trailed off. “Look, I have a horse track in my district,” he said. “I’m not against gambling.”Tonko visits the Saratoga course, in upstate New York, from time to time. His staffers reckon the congressman most recently placed a bet last summer.But attending a track to wager on which horse finishes first seems quaint in an era when smartphones have enabled myriad bets – from the length of the longest touchdown to the number of passes two players might complete – during a single football game. The congressman believes tougher regulations are needed to reduce the odds of addiction trapping a new generation. More

    • 150 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      High stakes for abortion rights as Pennsylvania votes on key judge pick

      by

      Pennsylvania voters will select a new member of the state’s supreme court on Tuesday in a judicial election that has become the unlikely focus of Republican billionaire donors, political action committees and abortion rights advocates.Democrat Daniel McCaffery is facing off against Carolyn Carluccio, a conservative judge whose apparent opposition to abortion access has drawn the ire of Planned Parenthood and other reproductive justice groups.As McCaffery and Carluccio compete for a seat on the Pennsylvania supreme court, total spending in the race surpassed $17m, according to the Associated Press – an unusually high price tag for an election that typically sees low voter turnout. But Democrats and abortion rights advocates hope Pennsylvania voters view Tuesday’s ballot as a proxy for reproductive freedom in Pennsylvania.“This election, Pennsylvania voters have a choice between Carolyn Carluccio, who has tried to hide her anti-abortion positions and dodge questions about the judiciary’s role in protecting abortion rights, and Daniel McCaffery, a proven champion of reproductive freedom,” said Breana Ross, campaigns director of Planned Parenthood Votes Pennsylvania.Abortion rights advocates hope to energize Pennsylvania voters by casting Carluccio as an existential threat to abortion access. This strategy delivered liberals a resounding victory in the Wisconsin supreme court race earlier this year, when record numbers of voters turned out to elect Janet Protasiewicz, a Democrat who pledged to defend abortion rights. Protasiewicz’s conservative opponent, Dan Kelly, refrained from voicing his opinion on voting rights.Carluccio’s campaign, taking its cues from Kelly’s unsuccessful playbook, has avoided sharing her views on abortion. After winning the primary election in May, Carluccio removed information about her opposition to abortion from her campaign website, according to a May report from the Keystone.Carluccio’s campaign site previously vowed to defend “all life under the law”.“When we redesigned our website, we chose to no longer include a résumé link. Judge Carluccio listed on her résumé that she would ‘defend all life under the law’, and she meant just that: under the law,” Rob Brooks, a spokesman for Carluccio’s campaign, told the Guardian.Carluccio has frequently branded herself as a non-political actor who operates outside the bounds of traditional partisanship.“I reject calls to rule based on partisan or ideological grounds and instead rule according to our laws,” Carluccio wrote in an August op-ed about her candidacy.Despite Carluccio’s insistence on her own ideological neutrality, her campaign has invited the support of distinctly rightwing groups. In a February letter to the Pennsylvania Coalition for Civil Justice Reform, Carluccio disclosed that her candidacy was endorsed by the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation, a leading anti-abortion group in the state.According to campaign finance reports, her campaign received over $4m from Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a political organization funded by the billionaire GOP donor Jeffrey Yass.Pennsylvania Democrats said Carluccio is hiding her ties to the anti-abortion movement in a disingenuous bid for primary voters. The general electorate is supportive of abortion access – 64% of all Pennsylvania voters in the 2022 midterms said abortion should be legal in most or all cases, according to polling from the Associated Press.“Her campaign is clearly trying to portray her as acceptable to a primary audience,” said JJ Abbott, executive director of Commonwealth Communications, a progressive political consulting firm. “They know abortion is a motivator for voters, since the Dobbs decision, voters are more likely to engage in elections because of what is at stake for abortion.”But the stakes of Tuesday’s election are not straightforward. Unlike Wisconsin, where the threat of the 1849 near-total abortion ban loomed overhead, the outcome of Pennsylvania’s supreme court race will not directly affect abortion access in the state. Tuesday’s race will not change the composition of Pennsylvania’s high court – four of the seven seats on the current bench are held by Democrat-affiliated justices. Carluccio is operating in what appears to be a much less dire political environment than Kelly, whose campaign struggled to avoid the topic of abortion while Wisconsin was feeling the effects of the 1849 ban.Still, Planned Parenthood and other reproductive justice advocates said the abortion rights movement needs to look ahead to the 2025 election, when three of Pennsylvania’s Democratic justices will appear on the ballot.The long-term maintenance of Pennsylvania’s liberal supreme court majority is a priority for abortion rights advocates. In September, Planned Parenthood Votes launched a seven-figure advertisement campaign against Carluccio, the largest ad buy in the group’s history.As anxieties mount, abortion rights supporters are hopeful that Pennsylvania voters, as in Wisconsin, will heed the warnings offered by Planned Parenthood on the long-term consequences of Carluccio’s candidacy.Dr Benjamin Abella, a medical professor and emergency physician in Philadelphia, said voters like him are “paying attention” to Carluccio’s efforts to hide her campaign’s ties to rightwing anti-abortion groups.“The public understands that we should not be lulled into a false sense of security on abortion rights, especially if a judge is keeping quiet on their intentions and positions,” he said. “There’s no such thing as a safe state any more and that any and every election poses a risk.” More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      This racist US housing policy that tried to fix poverty is a massive failure

      by

      For 20 or so years, the architects of public housing have clung tightly to what became conventional wisdom in the field: move residents of low-income neighborhoods out of public housing and into economically resourced neighborhoods.As the theory goes, middle-class and wealthy communities with high-quality schools, healthcare and public facilities could work “wonders” on the residents of low-income and mostly Black neighborhoods. This idea – which advocates call “mixed-income housing” and includes Section 8, among other programs – depends on the idea that people with low incomes, especially those who are Black, are somehow culturally deficient. They need to be immersed in “better” neighborhoods so they are no longer exposed to food deserts, street violence and a lack of employment opportunities.More often than not, this policy experiment fails. In Chicago, many residents who were moved into higher-income neighborhoods ended up living in Black, low-income neighborhoods within five years. Mixed-income housing policy initiatives have struggled for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they are rooted in racist notions of public housing as a breeding ground for Black dysfunction.It’s clear “compassionate relocation” has been a notoriously mixed bag. Sociologist Ann Owens found that mixed-income housing policy has had a minimal impact on concentrated poverty from 1977 to 2008. Another study examined the experiences of 4,600 families who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, which offered families subsidized vouchers for private rentals. Moving improved the educational prospects of younger children and the mental health of women (who wouldn’t feel better in housing not plagued by chronic plumbing or heating problems, pests and cramped living conditions?). But relocation had no effect on employment or income for people who moved as adults. Economic opportunity didn’t magically appear at a new address.By the 1990s, scholars and politicians had made a cottage industry out of claiming that grouping poor Black people in high-density residential communities causes poor quality of life in the form of struggling schools and other ills. If you subscribe to this view, you probably believe poverty spreads among people with lower incomes like a highly contagious virus.The US Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) bought into this narrative and, with its Hope VI transformation plans, emphasized moving former public housing residents out of their old neighborhoods. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), one of the nation’s largest public housing systems, committed to this course of action in 1999.Soon Chicago began demolishing “severely distressed public housing”. Among them were high-rise public housing developments like the infamous Cabrini-Green complex, which became a national symbol of urban blight and failed housing policy; those ideas were imprinted on the American imagination when Cabrini-Green appeared as the location of the 1970s sitcom Good Times and as the nightmarish setting for the 1992 horror film Candyman.The real experts on how relocation is not all it’s cracked up to be are the very targets of resettlement. As a political scientist who studies public housing, I’ve interviewed dozens of women who lived in properties owned by the CHA, which has a 50-year-old track record of grossly mismanaged and dilapidated public housing.I attended a memorable 2011 CHA tenants association meeting where women questioned discriminatory drug-testing policies in mixed-income housing developments. A CHA official claimed, “We don’t have a drug policy.” Chaos erupted because the women knew otherwise. Developers who managed mixed-housing programs often did as they pleased and made their own policies, sometimes in violation of CHA or HUD rules. Later in the meeting, another official seemed to admit those enrolled in mixed-income programs were subjected to more drug testing than residents who paid full market value.That contradicted talking points from advocacy groups like the National Housing Conference. It has contended that “mixed-income communities provide a safer environment that offers a greater range of positive role models and exposure to more job leads for area residents”. Transplanted residents weren’t safer, but rather vulnerable to additional surveillance, potential interaction with law enforcement (sometimes when neighbors reported them for no reason) and a different kind of stress in their nice, new homes. White supremacy and class bias followed residents wherever they moved, if they could move. Many participants in voucher programs continue to have trouble finding landlords willing to accept them.Researchers who hew to the old, entrenched school of thought – that masses of poor Black people living together are the problem – don’t seem to grasp that kids who once lived in public housing may not be accepted in their new schools. Or that their parents don’t “fit in” enough to get a nearby job. Or that groceries and life essentials are often more expensive in wealthier areas. Or that families are often placed in suburbs far from any of the public housing or welfare offices, let alone public hospitals and other support systems.Robert Chaskin and Mark Joseph coined a term for the marginalization of relocated families: “Incorporated exclusion”. People considered “lucky” enough to “get out” deal with isolation from valuable community networks. Contrary to popular belief and social entitlement policy, such networks and social support do exist in public housing. Far from being the “welfare queens” of the Reagan era, residents work hard and frequently to support each other. They provide childcare or elder care, organize meals for each other and advise neighbors on how to deal with bureaucracy that ignores the crumbling state of public housing it’s supposed to maintain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet mixed-income housing policy has shown little to no consideration of the importance of living near friends, family, church, schools and so on. Lack of easy access to community can also have detrimental effects on both community and individual health. By transferring residents all over metro Chicago, the CHA disrupted mutual aid mechanisms. Importantly, it also undermined tenants’ ability to organize and advocate for themselves.Because Black and poor Americans are presumed to be socially, culturally and spiritually broken, US poverty policy has never prioritized maintaining or protecting their communities. We don’t have enough meaningful public conversation about what redlining housing discrimination, systemic underdevelopment of places like Chicago’s South Side and police torture have done to low-income Black communities today.Housing policies forged in racism, sexism and classism do little but duplicate anti-Blackness and socioeconomic biases. Mixed-income housing policy attempts to shift the blame for what geographer Ruthie Wilson Gilmore calls “the organized government abandonment” of public housing stock and inner cities, de facto economic dead zones where white people and investment will not go.The problem is not high concentrations of Black, low-income people causing negative child and family outcomes. Rather, it’s that our government, businesses, schools and citizens discriminate against the working class, the poor and the unhoused. Members of the “underclass” – once a popular term in US poverty studies – are literally pushed out of sight and into public housing, low-performing schools and low-wage jobs.We deny them the rights to safe and secure housing, transportation and living-wage employment. White, middle-class and wealthy citizens refuse to frequent businesses or attend schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, and businesses are disincentivized to offer services in neighborhoods with high numbers of Black people.Assumptions about public housing residents have been built into the very foundations of public housing policy. It’s time to retire these damaging scripts – and eradicate them in policy because, as Fannie Lou Hamer said: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”Alex J. Moffett-Bateau PhD is from Detroit, Michigan, and is an assistant professor of political science at John Jay College in New York City More

    • 175 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Abortion providers on two years of Texas ban: ‘We’re living in a devastating reality’

      by

      Nearly a year before the US supreme court eviscerated Roe v Wade, the court allowed an unprecedented abortion ban to take effect in Texas, serving as a harbinger of what was to sweep over the rest of the country.The most restrictive abortion law at the time, with no exception for rape, incest, or lethal fetal abnormality, Senate Bill 8 barred care after six weeks of pregnancy, and carried a private enforcement provision that empowered anyone to sue a provider or someone who “aids or abets” the procedure.The move successfully wiped out almost all abortion care in the second-most populous state in the US. When Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization hit, the state doubled down, criminally banning all care and solidifying itself as the largest state in the US to outlaw abortion.In the two years since, Texas abortion providers – some of the first in the US to experience a nearly post-Roe world – reflect on the devastating and lasting effect of the severe law, the trauma they felt denying patients care, and the struggle they faced when deciding whether or not to flee the state or stay put.Dr Jessica Rubino: ‘The law forced me to be a bad doctor’ When Senate Bill 8 took effect, Dr Rubino felt like she was on a “sinking ship”. The abortion provider and family medicine specialist was forced to turn away dozens of patients at Austin Women’s Health Center – including one who was experiencing kidney failure. At the same time, patients below the six-week mark were rushing to choose abortion care before it was too late, leaving thoughtful decision-making behind.“I had to tell people there’s nothing I can legally do for you, unless you’re on death’s doorstep,” said Rubino. “The law forced me to be a bad doctor.”“It was heartbreaking and soul-crushing,” she continued. “I was watching a healthcare disaster play out in real time, knowing that this law not only affects our state but is causing a ripple effect in every other state. With SB 8 – and even years before the law – we saw the writing on the wall with Roe and tried to warn everyone, but I’m not sure who was listening.”Rubino also recalled a conversation she had six months prior to SB 8 with colleagues across the state who appeared united, vowing to continue providing care despite the law’s consequences. People are going to die, she told them, we should take the “personal hit”. However, that wave of defiance never materialized. Rubino lacked critical mass.She soon fell into an “extreme” depression; it was difficult to get out of bed each day and she eventually sought mental health therapy and antidepressants. Her brain felt “broken”, she said. After Dobbs, she stopped performing abortion for nearly a year, exacerbating her gloom.“Having to deny patients the healthcare you are trained – and able – to give them is something you never get over. It’s not only medically unethical, it’s morally wrong,” said Rubino. “It was traumatizing, and it still haunts me.”SB 8, she said, was the tipping point for abortion providers in Texas like her who have been forced to navigate onerous laws over the years that compromise the care they give, including a mandatory sonogram and 24-hour waiting period that incorporates relaying erroneous medical information, bans on insurance coverage for care, restrictions on minors’ access to abortion, and more.In May, under the advice of attorneys and those closest to her, Rubino and her family left Texas with no plans to return. She worked at a clinic in Bristol, Virginia, where she largely served patients in banned southern states, before moving to DC in late August to help expand abortion services at a reproductive health clinic there.Rubino still struggles with the decision to flee Texas, while also acknowledging the legal inability to continue her calling.“There is a sense of guilt, of letting down the community I serve. Sometimes I feel like I gave up on these people,” she said.She also worries that a national abortion ban could once again pull her away from the community she now treats. She considers one day working in the UK or New Zealand.Rubino feels deeply anxious about the fate of the patients she has left behind and mentioned a recurring patient, a victim of domestic violence, whose partner blocked her access to birth control.“She’s going to call and I’m not going to be there,” said Rubino. “She’s not in a safe situation and we know staying pregnant can lead to more abuse, and even death by an abusive partner. The safest thing for her would be to get an abortion but now she’s not going to have that choice.”Dr Ghazaleh Moayedi: ‘Inhumane and illogical’ Testifying before Congress three separate times to oppose abortion bans and uplift the right to access, Dr Ghazaleh Moayedi has made her mark as an outspoken and passionate reproductive justice advocate for Texans.But the road wasn’t always clear for the doctor: unsure of what to do after graduating college, Moayedi’s friend recommended she take a nanny job. Her boss was Amy Hagstrom-Miller, the head of a network of abortion clinics and then major figure in Texas reproductive rights who would go on to lead several legal challenges against the state, including a 2016 US supreme court victory. Moayedi began working in Miller’s clinic, where she saw her interests collide.As a “brown, Muslim” n Iranian American woman who grew up in Texas, Moayedi quickly realized the majority of state abortion doctors – largely white men – did not reflect the diversity of the patients they treated, and vowed to fix that.“I could feel a palpable racial and cultural divide,” she said. “None of the doctors looked like the people we take care of. I wanted to be a provider that helped represent the communities we serve. I decided to go to medical school with that goal as a driving force.”Moayedi has worked in Texas abortion care since 2014, weathering the roller coaster of state abortion laws, including a 2020 order to ban abortion under the pretense of the Covid emergency, which, at the time, upended her plans to start her own practice.After SB 8, she transitioned her care to Oklahoma. When Oklahoma’s abortion law took effect, she switched gears, providing ultrasounds in Texas to those traveling to and from out-of-state abortion care. Moayedi then became uncertain if she could safely venture to states where abortion was still legal, as the Texas attorney general, Ken Paxton, encouraged local prosecutors to go after providers shortly after Roe fell. She and abortion funds sued the state for legal protection, and paused their services in the meantime.After securing a court victory, Moayedi has worked to build an abortion and miscarriage telemedicine practice, still in the process of getting off the ground. She is now licensed in 20 states – but only half allow abortion telemed. She also travels to Kansas, a safe haven state, to provide care.“I’ve had to really pivot quite a bit. It’s been absolutely wild,” she said. “My practice doesn’t look anything like I thought it would. For now, my goal is to stay in Texas but we’ll see what happens.”Moayedi says the law’s “inhumane and illogical” impact is especially pronounced when she is treating a patient in another state only to discover they’re from not just the same city as her, but the same neighborhood.“Here we both are, hundreds of miles away from our home and support system, just to receive healthcare,” she said. “Moments like those just hit you in the gut.”As a complex family planning specialist, Moayedi constantly worries for patients with “potentially catastrophic” high-risk pregnancies, especially as the Texas law offers only vague medical emergency exceptions, leading patients to near-death experiences. She receives calls from colleagues wondering if pregnant patients with complications, like C-section scar ectopic pregnancies, can receive care in Texas. She often refers them out of state to be safe.“I really don’t have words to describe the deep, deep pain I feel,” said Moayedi. “These laws are insulting, disgusting, cruel, and absolutely pointless.”The provider and advocate expresses disappointment with the federal administration, who she feels has failed to meaningfully protect abortion providers and patients since SB 8 took effect.“The Biden administration’s response has been a limp handshake,” she said. “We want to see tangible, bold action to restore or at least prevent the further erosion of reproductive rights. We need unwavering support – not a leader who can barely say the word ‘abortion’.”Kathy Kleinfeld: ‘SB 8 was meant to be a fear tactic that paralyzed care’ Kathy Kleinfeld will never forget the desperation that swept over Houston Women’s Reproductive Services after SB 8 took effect. Anxious patients begged her and her staff to perform abortion care past the six-week mark, even offering money under the table and other favors.“They were crying and pleading with us, saying ‘I’ll do whatever you want,’” said Kleinfeld. “It was so heartbreaking, there was nothing we could do.”Patients – as well as clinic staff – held their breath during each ultrasound, hoping the pregnancy would fall under the state-mandated time frame. For those past the mark, Kleinfeld and colleagues became “dystopian travel agents” connecting patients with out-of-state care.After 30 years of providing abortion in Houston, Kleinfeld had never experienced anything so chaotic and devastating. Then Dobbs hit.“It felt like everything we experienced with SB 8 was magnified – it was like SB 8 on steroids,” said Kleinfeld. “The intensity, the confusion, the chaos all became so overwhelming.”While she was forced to halt abortion care, Kleinfeld did not want to leave her patients behind. One month after the fall of Roe, she regrouped, considerably downsizing her 5,000 sq-ft clinic and cutting her staff by more than half. She now provides pre- and post- abortion ultrasounds for those traveling out of state, as well as abortion clinic referrals. Her clinic is only one of two former independent abortion providers in Texas – and just a handful across the US – that have not closed or moved away.“We did not want to completely abandon pregnant people in Houston,” said Kleinfeld. “We felt it was still really important to adapt and provide this necessary service. It feels absolutely awful to not be able to offer abortion care, but at the same time, we feel grateful to be able to still help patients in whatever way we can.”Her clinic received around 1,200 visits this year, with most traveling to and from New Mexico, Colorado and Kansas.The fear unleashed by SB 8 two years ago still lingers today: Patients are scared to disclose that they want or have had an abortion; they are fearful to bring a partner or family member with them to a procedure out-of-state or even to the ultrasound at Kleinfeld’s clinic, worrying that a loved one may be in legal trouble for “aiding or abetting” care.“We still have to explain to patients all the time that it is not illegal to help someone obtain a legal abortion,” said Kleinfeld. “SB 8 was meant to be a fear tactic that paralyzed care and instilled anxiety in patients, and even after Dobbs, we are still seeing its impact.”Dr Alan Braid and Andrea Gallegos: ‘Waving our hands hands on top of a burning building’As a medical resident in 1972, Dr Alan Braid will never forget treating a 15-year-old girl in a San Antonio emergency room who was suffering from sepsis – a life-threatening blood infection – after a botched and illegal abortion, her vaginal cavity packed with rags. Braid and doctors did everything they could but the infection was so severe, she died a few days later from massive organ failure. That year, he saw another two teenagers die from illegal abortions.It was then that Braid realized that abortion care was vital and medically necessary, an inextricable component of overall healthcare. One year later, Roe would help solidify and protect Braid’s mission.For the next 45 years, he provided ob-gyn and abortion care in Texas. When Senate Bill 8 hit, it felt like 1972 all over again, he said.“To repeat history and expect a different outcome is insanity. Women will be injured and women will die – again – without access to healthcare,” said Braid.With a passion for reproductive rights, Andrea Gallegos joined her father’s practice as manager of Alamo Women’s Reproductive Services a few years ago. She describes the impact of SB 8 as “devastating” to patients, many of whom were saddled with multiple barriers to care. Even when staff would offer to pay for travel or the procedure itself, patients – still bound by the inability to find child care or time off work – couldn’t make the journey out of state.Braid felt like he had to fight back. In an act of overt defiance, the provider performed an abortion on a patient beyond the six-week limit. He was not only acting out of medical duty but hoped to invoke a legal challenge that would eventually halt SB 8.“I don’t think any of us really thought SB 8 would last – it’s so blatantly unconstitutional and just crazy, we figured the courts – even a court as conservative as the fifth circuit – would recognize the law needs to be stopped,” said Gallegos.While Braid’s intentional act of resistance attracted an outpouring of nationwide support, the lawsuits against him ultimately failed to halt SB 8, leaving the provider feeling largely defeated.He and his team continued to navigate the draconian law, routinely sending patients to their Tulsa, Oklahoma, clinic, where the caseload tripled within the first couple of months, placing a strain on the out-of-state provider.When Oklahoma’s governor signed into law an abortion ban – modeled after Texas’s SB 8 – in April 2022, Braid was forced to shutter the critical pipeline for Texans.“It felt like we were waving our hands on top of a burning building, trying to warn everyone else that this is what it’s going to look like for the rest of the country soon,” said Gallegos. “While we see the lack of access, the forced travel, the domino effect on surrounding clinics now everyday post-Dobbs, in Texas we were experiencing it first.”Following Roe’s demise, Braid was forced to close the doors to his San Antonio clinic and stopped practicing abortion care in Texas after nearly five decades. In May, he officially moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he has set up a clinic in the safe haven state.Gallegos relocated to Carbondale, Illinois, in July, a spot nestled between abortion-hostile states, to oversee a new clinic there.Leaving Texas – and friends and family behind – is deeply “bittersweet” for the father-daughter duo: there is a sense of “abandonment” but also a recognition that the move was necessary.“It’s not easy to completely start over but I know this is where I’m supposed to be,” said Gallegos.For the abortion providers, it’s also a painful reminder of the growing inequity of reproductive healthcare across the US.“It hits me hard knowing geography has played such a significant role in privilege to access to what I consider basic healthcare,” said Gallegos. “Geography should not determine if you can have a safe or dangerous pregnancy. We are living in a devastating reality.”Braid, now in his late 70s, describes working in New Mexico as “refreshing”, as he can “just be a doctor” and not “have to call attorneys” for guidance every step of the way, as he did in Texas.However, he has left his home state – and the place where he learned to be a physician so many years ago – with a tinge of regret, wishing he not only provided one abortion in violation of SB 8, but several more, convinced that the act of rebellion would have eventually led to a successful court battle that brought down the law. His daughter seeks to allay his remorse.“I remind my dad that the law was so unprecedented, so hard to predict and navigate, none of us knew what would happen,” said Gallegos. “In the end, the whole point of SB 8 was to elicit fear in abortion providers and sadly, that’s exactly what it did.” More