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      Supreme court: Stephen Breyer ‘did not want to die on bench’, says brother

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      Supreme court: Stephen Breyer ‘did not want to die on bench’, says brotherPressure campaign was fired by fear of repeat of disaster when Republicans replaced Ruth Bader Ginsburg

      Biden poised to appoint first Black female justice
      01:03Stephen Breyer, the supreme court justice who announced his retirement this week, “did not want to die on the bench”.White House burns Wicker for criticising Biden supreme court pickRead moreSo his brother, the federal judge Charles Breyer, told the Washington Post at the end of a momentous week in US politics.Democrats, meanwhile, rejected Republican complaints that Joe Biden’s pledge to nominate the first Black woman to the court meant he was prioritising politics over qualifications, or endorsing racially based affirmative action, or that the new justice would be too liberal.The Democratic chair of the Senate judiciary committee hinted at claims some criticism may be racially motivated, saying he hoped Republicans were not “doing it for personal reasons”.Breyer’s decision to step down, at 83, gives Biden the chance to nominate a liberal replacement. The pick will not alter the balance of the court, which conservatives dominate 6-3 after Donald Trump capitalised on ruthless Republican tactics to install three justices in four years.But progressives campaigned to convince Breyer to quit, many citing what happened when Ruth Bader Ginsburg died on the court in September 2020. Republicans who held the Senate confirmed her replacement – the hardline Catholic Amy Coney Barrett, nominated after Trump promised to pick a woman – before the November election.Democrats should be able to confirm Biden’s pick without Republican votes but they face losing the Senate in November. With that in mind, the campaign to convince Breyer picked up speed. Breyer spoke about how the court should not be politicised but one activist, Brian Fallon of Demand Justice, told the Post: “You have to view this as a political fight. It’s not a legal fight.”Charles Breyer told the Post his brother “was aware of this campaign. I think what impressed him was not the campaign but the logic of the campaign.“And he thought he should take into account the fact that this was an opportunity for a Democratic president – and he was appointed by a Democratic president [Bill Clinton] – to fill his position with someone who is like-minded. He did not want to die on the bench.”On Sunday, Dick Durbin of Illinois, chair of the Senate judiciary committee, told NBC’s Meet the Press: “I didn’t feel that external pressure was really helpful at all. [Breyer] had to make this decision. It is an important and timely decision in his life as to the right moment. And I didn’t want to push him, and I didn’t.”But a congressman who campaigned for Breyer to retire, Mondaire Jones of New York, told the Post that though “people adore Ruth Bader Ginsburg … the fact is, due to decisions or non-decisions around retirement, made by her, we got Amy Coney Barrett.”The Post said the White House did not pressure Breyer.“None of the justices want to be told when to leave,” Charles Breyer said. “They want to decide themselves. And that, I think, the president and others recognised. It actually worked out.”Republicans have signaled a willingness to make life uncomfortable for Biden’s nominee – as revenge for what happened to Brett Kavanaugh.Trump’s second pick, replacing the retiring Anthony Kennedy, faced accusations of sexual assault. He vehemently denied them. Democrats prominently including Kamala Harris, then a California senator, vehemently attacked him. Harris is now vice-president, presiding over the 50-50 Senate with a vote to confirm Biden’s pick.On Friday, the Republican senator Roger Wicker told Mississippi radio the Kavanaugh confirmation was “one of the most disgraceful, shameful things and completely untruthful things that [Democrats have] ever, ever done”.Wicker also predicted that Biden’s nominee would get no Republican votes. He said so in part because the GOP expects a more progressive choice than Breyer, who Wicker called a “nice, stately liberal”. But Wicker also complained about “affirmative racial discrimination [for] someone who is the beneficiary of this sort of quota”, at a time when the court seems poised to rule such practices unconstitutional.The White House reminded Wicker of his unquestioning support for Barrett.Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Durbin said Republicans should “recall that it was Ronald Reagan who announced that he was going to appoint a woman to the supreme court, and he did, Sandra Day O’Connor, and it was Donald Trump who announced that he was going to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with a woman nominee as well.“African American women, if they have achieved the level of success in the practice of law and jurisprudence, they’ve done it against great odds. They’re extraordinary people … they’re all going to face the same close scrutiny.US supreme court will hear challenge to affirmative action in college admissionRead more“… I just hope that those who are critical of the president’s selection aren’t doing it for personal reasons.”Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican senator, told Fox News Sunday Republicans would probably not support Biden’s pick “because I’ve seen dozens of his nominees to the lower courts and they’ve almost to person been leftwing ideologues”.Cotton also complained about Democrats’ treatment of Clarence Thomas, who was accused of sexual harassment in a stormy confirmation process, Biden playing a leading role as a senator from Delaware, in 1991.Most expect Democrats to move quickly. Durbin told NBC: “A great deal depends on the nominee. If the person has been before the committee seeking approval for a circuit court, then the committee knows quite a bit about that person.“If there are no new developments for someone who’s been before the committee in the previous year or two, it makes a real difference.”A leading contender, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was confirmed to the DC appeals court last June with Republican support. She replaced Merrick Garland, Biden’s attorney general who was nominated to the supreme court by Barack Obama in 2016 but blocked by Republicans.“I can just say this,” Durbin said. “It’s going to be fair, it’s going to be deliberate and we’re going to be timely about it too. This is a lifetime appointment to the highest court in the land. We should take it seriously.”TopicsUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsBiden administrationJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76

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      Sarah Weddington, attorney who won Roe v Wade abortion case, dies aged 76Texan lawyer and Linda Coffee won landmark 1973 case, safeguarding right now under threat from US supreme court

      How dismantling Roe v Wade would threaten other rights
      Sarah Weddington, an attorney who argued and won the Roe v Wade supreme court case which established the right to abortion in the US, has died aged 76.Susan Hays, a Democratic candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner, announced the news on Twitter on Sunday and the Dallas Morning News confirmed it.“Sarah Weddington died this morning after a series of health issues,” Hays wrote. “With Linda Coffee, she filed the first case of her legal career, Roe v Wade, fresh out of law school. She was my professor … the best writing instructor I ever had, and a great mentor.“At 27 she argued Roe to [the supreme court] (a fact that always made me feel like a gross underachiever). Ironically, she worked on the case because law firms would not hire women in the early 70s, leaving her with lots of time for good trouble.”The court ruled on Roe v Wade in 1973. Nearly 50 years later the right it established is under threat from a supreme court packed with hardline conservatives, in part thanks to a Texas law that drastically restricts access and offers incentives for reporting women to authorities.In 2017, speaking to the Guardian, Weddington predicted such a turn of events. “If [Neil] Gorsuch’s nomination is approved, will abortion be illegal the next day? No. One new judge won’t necessarily make much difference. But two or three might.”After steering Gorsuch on to the court – and a seat held open by Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell when Barack Obama was president – Donald Trump installed Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. Barrett replaced the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a champion of women’s rights.Weddington found her way to Roe v Wade soon after graduating from law school at the University of Texas. Represented by Weddington and Coffee, Norma McCorvey became the plaintiff known as “Jane Roe” in Roe v Wade. McCorvey became an evangelical Christian and opponent of abortion. She died in 2017.In her Guardian interview, Weddington discussed arguing the case in federal court. “I was very nervous,” she said. “It was like going down a street with no street lights. But there was no other way to go and I didn’t have any preconceived notions that I would not win.”She won, but the case continued.“Henry Wade, the district attorney, unwittingly helped us,” she said. “At a press conference, he said, ‘I don’t care what any court says; I am going to continue to prosecute doctors who carry out abortion.’ There was a procedural rule that said if local elected officials continue to prosecute after a federal court had declared a law unconstitutional, there would be a right to appeal to the supreme court.”‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical angerRead moreBefore the court in Washington, Weddington said: “It was impossible to read the justices’ faces. The attorney on the other side started by saying something inappropriate about arguing a case against a beautiful woman. He thought the judges would snicker. But their faces didn’t change a bit.“I had to argue it twice in the supreme court: in 1971 and again in 1972. On 22 January 1973 I was at the Texas legislature when the phone rang. It was a reporter from the New York Times. ‘Does Miss Weddington have a comment today about Roe v Wade?’ my assistant was asked. ‘Why?’ she said. ‘Should she?’“It was beginning to be very exciting. Then we got a telegram from the supreme court saying that I had won 7-2 and that they were going to air-mail a copy of the ruling. Nowadays, of course, you’d just go online.“I was ecstatic, and more than 44 years later we’re still talking about it.”Weddington later revealed that she had an abortion herself, in 1967. “Just before the anaesthesia hit,” she said, “I thought: ‘I hope no one ever knows about this.’ For a lot of years, that was exactly the way I felt. Now there’s a major push to encourage women to tell their stories so people will realise that it is not a shameful thing. One out of every five women will have an abortion.”Weddington predicted: “Whatever else I do in my life, the headline on my obituary is always going to be ‘Roe v Wade attorney dies’.”In fact she achieved much more, as Hays detailed in her tweets on Sunday. “Those career doors shut to her led her to run for office, getting elected as the first woman from Travis county in the [Texas legislature] in 1972 (along with four other women elected to the House: Kay Bailey, Chris Miller, Betty Andujar and Senfronia Thompson).“She was general counsel of the United States Department of Agriculture under [Jimmy] Carter and enjoyed her stint in DC. Federal judicial nominations for Texas were run by her as a high-ranking Texan in the administration.“A Dallas lawyer she knew sought a bench. She had interviewed with him while at UT law. He’d asked her, ‘What will we tell our wives if we hire you?’ She told him he was wasting their time and hers and walked out of the interview. He did not get the judgeship.“Ever the proper preacher’s daughter, she would never tell me who the lawyer was. People don’t know that about Sarah. She was such a proper Methodist minister’s daughter. One of the few people I couldn’t cuss in front of.”Hays also paid tribute to Weddington as a teacher and a member of a “Great Austin Matriarchy” that also included the former Texas governor Ann Richards and the columnist Molly Ivins.In her Guardian interview, Weddington indicated she was at peace with being remembered for Roe v Wade. “I think most women of my generation can recall our feelings about the fight,” she said. “It’s like young love. You may not feel exactly the same, but you remember it.”TopicsRoe v WadeAbortionUS politicsUS healthcareUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)newsReuse this content More

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      Republicans confident supreme court will overturn abortion rights

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      Republicans confident supreme court will overturn abortion rightsMississippi governor Tate Reeves says state ‘snap-back’ legislation will ban almost all abortion if Roe v Wade is thrown out entirely

      Opinion: the supreme court is coming for women’s rights
      As the supreme court weighs the future of abortion access in America, Republicans on Sunday expressed confidence that the landmark 1973 Roe v Wade decision would soon be overturned, paving the way for a raft of anti-abortion legislation around the country next year.‘Historical accident’: how abortion came to focus white, evangelical angerRead moreOn Wednesday, the supreme court heard arguments over a Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Observers suggested that the conservative supermajority on the court appeared poised to uphold the law and potentially go further by overturning Roe, which protects a woman’s right to choose. A decision is not expected until June next year.Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, told CNN’s State of the Union he had “some reason for optimism” after this week’s arguments.He also confirmed that if the landmark ruling was overturned entirely, Mississippi would enforce a ban on almost all abortions in the state under a so-called “trigger law”.“That is a yes,” Reeves said when asked if he would enforce the “snap-back” legislation.“Because if you believe as I believe very strongly that that innocent, unborn child in the mother’s womb is in fact a child, the most important word when we talk about unborn children is not unborn, but it’s children.”The position is not representative of the majority of Americans. According to recent polling, seven in 10 are opposed to overturning Roe v Wade while 59% believe abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances.Nonetheless, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a global research and policy organisation “committed to advancing sexual and reproductive health and rights”, 21 US states are certain to attempt some form of ban on abortion should Roe be overturned, using laws already on the books.Reeves caveated his answer by cautioning that Mississippi’s response to the forthcoming supreme court ruling would be “dependent upon how the court rules and exactly what those opinions allow us to do”. He also noted that any decision would not lead to a national ban but could permit states to make their own determinations.Mike Braun, a Republican senator for Indiana, echoed a number of Reeves’ arguments. He told NBC’s Meet the Press he wanted “abortions to be eliminated from the landscape” but would not be drawn into specifics regarding potential laws in his state.Indiana has enacted 55 abortion restrictions and bans in the past decade, according to the Guttmacher Institute, but does not have a “trigger law” or equivalent on the books. It is listed by the institute as one of five states without these laws that are still likely to move towards almost total bans should Roe be overturned.“When it comes to things like abortion, I think it’s clear it’s time to turn it back to the states,” Braun told NBC.Since former president Donald Trump installed three conservative justices to the supreme court in just four years, both sides of the fight over abortion rights have been preparing for a legal showdown.According to the Associated Press, campaign finance data reveals that pro-abortion-access groups donated $8m in 2018 and more than $10m in 2020.Those numbers outpace the public contributions of anti-abortion groups, which donated $2.6m in 2018 and $6.3m in 2020, according to data. But the complexity of the network of nonprofits and “dark money” funds makes it difficult to produce a full accounting of the money flows.TopicsRepublicansMississippiUS supreme courtAbortionUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US healthcarenewsReuse this content More

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      Justice on the Brink review: how the religious right took the supreme court

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      Justice on the Brink review: how the religious right took the supreme court Linda Greenhouse does a fine job of raising the alarm about the conservative conquest and what it means for the rest of us – it’s a pity she does not also recommend ways to fight backLinda Greenhouse’s byline became synonymous with the supreme court during the 30 years she covered it for the New York Times. She excelled at unraveling complex legal riddles for the average reader. She also had tremendous common sense – an essential and depressingly rare quality among journalists.The Agenda review: how the supreme court became an existential threat to US democracyRead moreBoth of these virtues are on display in her new book, which chronicles “12 months that transformed the supreme court” after the death of the liberal lion Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the obscenely rapid confirmation of her conservative successor, Amy Coney Barrett.As others have pointed out, Barrett’s ascension was the crowning achievement of a decades-long project of the American right, to pack the highest court with the kind of people who delight in telling graduating students things like the proper purpose of a legal career “is building the kingdom of God”.Barrett is also the sixth Catholic appointed to the court. Another, Neil Gorsuch, was raised Catholic but now attends the church of his wife, who was raised in the Church of England.Greenhouse describes the Federalist Society as the principal engine of this foul project. Founded in the second year of the Reagan administration to change the prevailing ideology of the leading law schools, its 70,000 members have become the de facto gatekeepers for every conservative lawyer hoping to serve in the executive branch or the judiciary.Most students of the judiciary know that all 226 judges appointed by Donald Trump were approved by the Federalists. But until I read Greenhouse’s book I never knew that every one of the 500-plus judges appointed by the two Bushes also earned the Federalist imprimatur.“Its plan from the beginning was to … nurture future generations of conservative law students” who years later would form the pool from which “conservative judges would be chosen”, Greenhouse writes.She also adds the telling detail that makes it clear that this situation is even worse than it appears. After Gorsuch thanked a Federalist banquet “from the bottom” of his heart, after his confirmation to the supreme court, the then White House counsel, Don McGahn, told the same gathering it was “completely false” that the Trump administration had “outsourced” judicial selection to the Federalists.“I’ve been a member of the Federalists since law school,” said McGahn. “So frankly, it seems like it’s been in-sourced.”Greenhouse’s main subject is the impact on the law of the replacement of a celebrated progressive, Ginsburg, with the anti-abortion and anti-contraception Barrett. A meticulous examination of the most important cases decided during Barrett’s first term demonstrates how the new justice contributed to Chief Justice John Roberts’ determination to “change how the constitution” understands race and religion.The centuries-old wall between church and state is being eroded and government efforts to promote integration – or prevent resegregation – are under steady attack.Roberts’s opposition to important sections of the 1965 Voting Rights Act goes all the way back to his service in Ronald Reagan’s justice department in the early 1980s. As chief justice he made his youthful scorn for the virtues of integration into the law of the land, writing a majority decision invalidating the plans of Seattle and Louisville to consider race to prevent resegregation of public schools. By a vote of 5-4 the court ruled the consideration of race violated the constitution’s guarantee of equal protection.Roberts’s opinion declared that the school systems’ “interest in avoiding resegregation was not sufficiently ‘compelling’ to justify a racially conscious remedy”.For most of the country’s history, the establishment clause of the constitution has prevented the government from “endorsing or coercing a religious practice or viewpoint”, Greenhouse writes, while “the free exercise clause requires the government to leave believers free to practice their faith”.But Roberts and his allies have thrown things upside down, turning the free exercise clause “from its historic role as a shield that protected believers from government interference into a sword that vaulted believers into a position of privilege”.Greenhouse is a woman of convictions. Even as a reporter, she was famous for taking part in a march supporting abortion rights. In a previous book she bragged of contributions to Planned Parenthood. But none of her critics could ever find any evidence that her stories in the Times were slanted by her personal beliefs.That objective stance was entirely appropriate when she was a daily reporter. But book writing is different. After doing such a good job of describing the decades-long rightwing campaign to produce a court whose views are increasingly at odds with the majority of voters, Greenhouse doesn’t endorse any ideas about how to remedy the situation.Supreme Ambition review: Trump, Kavanaugh and the right’s big coupRead moreShe shows no enthusiasm for the idea of expanding the number of seats on the court, which was championed by Pete Buttigieg and others during the 2020 election, and she doesn’t even support the idea that 83-year-old Stephen Breyer should feel any pressure to retire during the current Congress, to make sure Joe Biden can appoint, and a Democratic Senate confirm, a liberal successor.Similarly, Greenhouse never suggests Ginsburg was wrong to stay in office until her death, rather than retire during Barack Obama’s time in office so that she wouldn’t be replaced by someone like Barrett.Unwilling to regulate dark money’s vicious role in our politics, and happy to eviscerate the most basic protections of the Voting Rights Act, the court is increasingly tethered to religious rightwing orthodoxy.Greenhouse does a superb job of describing how we got here. What she lacks is the passionate imagination we need to re-balance an institution which poses an urgent threat to American democracy.
      Justice on the Brink is published in the US by Random House
      TopicsBooksUS supreme courtUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)US politicsPolitics booksReligionreviewsReuse this content More

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      Misfire review: a bullseye from Tim Mak – but the NRA isn’t beaten yet

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      BooksMisfire review: a bullseye from Tim Mak – but the NRA isn’t beaten yet The NPR reporter has written an important book about the moral bankruptcy which put the powerful and merciless gun group on the back footCharles KaiserSat 6 Nov 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sat 6 Nov 2021 02.02 EDTTim Mak has written a sprawling tale of the greed, incompetence and narcissism which has dominated the National Rifle Association throughout Wayne LaPierre’s 30 years as its leader. Abetted by his wife, Susan, LaPierre has allegedly used his members’ dues to fund a billionaire’s lifestyle.‘We have to break through that wall’: inside America’s battle for gun controlRead moreThe LaPierres’ wedding in 1998 was a near miss: he almost ran from the altar, until she and the priest changed his mind. Mak calls this “emblematic” of “a man driven by fear and anxiety over all other forces … his reaction to these emotions is usually to flee and hide”.These qualities, Mak writes, have made LaPierre “prey” to an endless series of conmen, throughout his leadership of America’s most-feared lobbying group.“Pushed and prodded” by his wife to discover “money’s alluring glow”, Mak writes, LaPierre saw his salary balloon from $200,000 in the mid-1990s to $2.2m in 2018. According to the investigation of the New York attorney general, which has done the most to expose serial excesses at the NRA, between 2013 and 2017 the black cars, private jets and hundreds of thousands of dollars of expensive clothing led to $1.2m in reimbursed expenses.Between 2013 and 2018, companies used to book the LaPierres’ private planes received an astonishing $13.5m. There were trips to Lake Como, Budapest and the Bahamas. Just the hired cars for trips to Italy and Hungary cost $18,000. LaPierre spent $275,000 on suits at a single Beverly Hills emporium, including $39,000 on one day in 2015. To disguise such excesses, the bills were sent to an outside vendor which the NRA reimbursed.Mak also does a good job of describing how every mass shooting has pushed the NRA ever further right, transforming it from advocacy group for gun rights into a fully fledged player in the culture war, especially after the massacre of 20 young children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December 2012.Mak offers a particularly depressing account of how the NRA chief lobbyist, Chris Cox, was personally involved in negotiations over the Manchin-Toomey bill, a Senate measure which would have modestly increased background checks if, as Mak points out, not enough to have prevented the Sandy Hook massacre, since that gunman used guns legally obtained by his mother.In any case, after months of negotiation the NRA double-crossed both sponsors, made sure the bill failed to get the 60 votes it needed to pass the Senate, then dropped its A-ratings for Manchin and Toomey to D and C respectively.The NRA’s role in the Trump-Russia scandal was substantial. Maria Butina, eventually convicted as a Russian spy, used “relationships within the NRA to build an informal channel of diplomatic relations with Russia”. Her efforts included a famous public exchange with Donald Trump during his first campaign, in which he expressed his affection for Vladimir Putin and promised to improve relations as president.The NRA spent $30m to help to elect Trump, more than his own fundraising super pac. Ironically, NRA membership dues fell after Trump entered the White House. The organization lost its most lucrative fundraiser when Barack Obama left office.Power struggles and a ‘personal piggy bank’: what the NRA lawsuit allegesRead moreThe great unravelling began on 6 August 2020, when the New York attorney general, Letitia James, filed a lawsuit to dissolve the NRA entirely. She accused LaPierre of using the organization for 30 years “for his financial benefit, and the benefit of a close circle of NRA staff, board members, and vendors”.Six months later, the NRA filed for bankruptcy. But despite endless infighting, Wayne LaPierre remains in charge. And because Trump was elected, with the NRA’s help, the supreme court now includes three justices appointed by him – at least two of whom seemed eager in arguments this week to demolish most of the remaining state restrictions on carrying concealed weapons, in New York and six other states.The passions of gun owners – and the fear they have instilled in a majority of public officials – remain dominant forces in American politics despite the greed and incompetence of their leaders chronicled so thoroughly in this important book.
      Misfire is published in the US by Dutton
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      Supreme court, Facebook, Fed: three horsemen of democracy’s apocalypse | Robert Reich

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      OpinionUS supreme courtSupreme court, Facebook, Fed: three horsemen of democracy’s apocalypseRobert ReichThese unaccountable bodies hold increasing sway over US government. Their abuses of power affect us all Sun 10 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 10 Oct 2021 05.22 EDTThe week’s news has been dominated by the supreme court, whose term began on Monday; the Federal Reserve, and whether it will start responding to inflation by raising interest rates; and Facebook, which a whistleblower claimed intentionally seeks to enrage and divide Americans in order to generate engagement and ad revenue.‘Facebook can’t keep its head in the sand’: five experts debate the company’s futureRead moreThe common thread is the growing influence of these three power centers over our lives, even as they become less accountable to us. As such, they present a fundamental challenge to democracy.Start with the supreme court. What’s the underlying issue?Don’t for a moment believe the supreme court bases its decisions on neutral, objective criteria. I’ve argued before it and seen up close that justices have particular and differing ideas about what’s good for the country. So it matters who they are and how they got there.A majority of the nine justices – all appointed for life – were put there by George W Bush and Donald Trump, presidents who lost the popular vote. Three were installed by Trump, a president who instigated a coup. Yet they are about to revolutionize American life in ways most Americans don’t want.This new court seems ready to overrule Roe v Wade, the 1973 ruling that anchored reproductive rights in the 14th amendment; declare a 108-year-old New York law against carrying firearms unconstitutional; and strip federal bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency of the power to regulate private business. And much more.Only 40% of the public approves of the court’s performance, a new low. If the justices rule in ways anticipated, that number will drop further. If so, expect renewed efforts to expand the court and limit the terms of its members.What about the Fed?Behind the recent stories about whether the Fed should act to tame inflation is the reality that its power to set short-term interest rates and regulate the financial sector is virtually unchecked. And here too there are no neutral, objective criteria. Some believe the Fed’s priority should be fighting inflation. Others believe it should be full employment. So like the supreme court, it matters who runs it.Elizabeth Warren tells Fed chair he is ‘dangerous’ and opposes renominationRead morePresidents appoint Fed chairs for four-year terms but tend to stick with them longer for fear of rattling Wall Street, which wants stability and fat profits. (Alan Greenspan, a Reagan appointee, lasted almost 20 years, surviving two Bushes and Bill Clinton, who didn’t dare remove him).The term of Jerome Powell, the current Fed chair, who was appointed by Trump, is up in February. Biden will probably renominate him to appease the Street, although it’s not a sure thing. Powell has kept interest rates near zero, which is appropriate for an economy still suffering the ravages of the pandemic.But Powell has also allowed the Street to resume several old risky practices, prompting the Massachusetts Democratic senator Elizabeth Warren to tell him at a recent hearing that “renominating you means gambling that, for the next five years, a Republican majority at the Federal Reserve, with a Republican chair who has regularly voted to deregulate Wall Street, won’t drive this economy over a financial cliff again.”Finally, what’s behind the controversy over Facebook?Facebook and three other hi-tech behemoths (Amazon, Google and Apple) are taking on roles that once belonged to governments, from cybersecurity to exploring outer space, yet they too are unaccountable.Their decisions about which demagogues are allowed to communicate with the public and what lies they are allowed to spew have profound consequences for whether democracy or authoritarianism prevails. In January, Mark Zuckerberg apparently deferred to Nick Clegg, former British deputy prime minister, now vice-president of Facebook, on whether to allow Trump back on the platform.Worst of all, they’re sowing hate. As Frances Haugen, a former data scientist at Facebook, revealed this week, Facebook’s algorithm is designed to choose content that will make users angry, because anger generates the most engagement – and user engagement turns into ad dollars. The same is likely true of the algorithms used by Google, Amazon and Apple. Such anger has been ricocheting through our society, generating resentment and division.US supreme court convenes for pivotal term – with its credibility on the lineRead moreYet these firms have so much power that the government has no idea how to control them. How many times do you think Facebook executives testified before Congress in the last four years? Answer: 30. How many laws has Congress enacted to constrain Facebook during that time? Answer: zero.Nor are they accountable to the market. They now make the market. They’re not even accountable to themselves. Facebook’s oversight board has become a bad joke.These three power centers – the supreme court, the Fed and the biggest tech firms – have huge and increasing effects on our lives, yet they are less and less answerable to us.Beware. Democracy depends on accountability. Accountability provides checks on power. If abuses of power go unchallenged, those who wield it will only consolidate their power further. It’s a vicious cycle that erodes faith in democracy itself.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new 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
      TopicsUS supreme courtOpinionUS constitution and civil libertiesLaw (US)FacebookSocial networkingFederal ReserveUS economycommentReuse this content More