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      Biden has revived democratic capitalism – and changed the economic paradigm

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      Biden has revived democratic capitalism – and changed the economic paradigmRobert ReichThe president’s domestic successes offer a rebuke to disciples of Reagan: the ‘free market’ has never existed How can inflation be dropping at the same time job creation is soaring?Schools and universities are ground zero for America’s culture war | Moira DoneganRead moreIt has taken one of the oldest presidents in American history, who has been in politics for over half a century, to return the nation to an economic paradigm that dominated public life between 1933 and 1980, and is far superior to the one that has dominated it since.Call it democratic capitalism.The Great Crash of 1929 followed by the Great Depression taught the nation a crucial lesson that we forgot after Ronald Reagan’s presidency: the so-called “free market” does not exist. Markets are always and inevitably human creations. They reflect decisions by judges, legislators and government agencies as to how the market should be organized and enforced – and for whom.The economy that collapsed in 1929 was the consequence of decisions that organized the market for a monied elite, allowing nearly unlimited borrowing, encouraging people to gamble on Wall Street, suppressing labor unions, holding down wages, and permitting the Street to take huge risks with other people’s money.Franklin D Roosevelt and his administration reversed this. They reorganized the market to serve public purposes – stopping excessive borrowing and Wall Street gambling, encouraging labor unions, establishing social security and creating unemployment insurance, disability insurance and a 40-hour workweek. They used government spending to create more jobs. During the second world war, they controlled prices and put almost every American to work.Democratic and Republican administrations enlarged and extended democratic capitalism. Wall Street was regulated, as were television networks, airlines, railroads, and other common carriers. CEO pay was modest. Taxes on the highest earners financed public investments in infrastructure (such as the national highway system) and higher education.America’s postwar industrial policy spurred innovation. The Department of Defense developed satellite communications, container ships and the Internet. The National Institutes of Health did trailblazing basic research in biochemistry, DNA and infectious diseases.Public spending rose during economic downturns to encourage hiring. Even Richard Nixon admitted “we’re all Keynesians”. Antitrust enforcers broke up AT&T and other monopolies. Small businesses were protected from giant chain stores. By the 1960s, a third of all private-sector workers were unionized.Large corporations sought to be responsive to all their stakeholders – not just shareholders but employees, consumers, the communities where they produced goods and services, and the nation as a whole.Then came a giant U-turn. The Opec oil embargo of the 1970s brought double-digit inflation followed by the Fed chair Paul Volcker’s effort to “break the back” of inflation by raising interest rates so high the economy fell into deep recession.All of which prepared the ground for Reagan’s war on democratic capitalism.From 1981, a new bipartisan orthodoxy emerged that the so-called “free market” functioned well only if the government got out of the way (conveniently forgetting that the market required government). The goal of economic policy thereby shifted from public welfare to economic growth. And the means shifted from public oversight of the market to deregulation, free trade, privatization, “trickle-down” tax cuts, and deficit-reduction – all of which helped the monied interests make more money.What happened next? For 40 years, the economy grew but median wages stagnated. Inequalities of income and wealth ballooned. Wall Street reverted to the betting parlor it had been in the 1920s. Finance once again ruled the economy. Spurred by hostile takeovers, corporations began focusing solely on maximizing shareholder returns – which led them to fight unions, suppress wages, abandon their communities and outsource abroad.Corporations and the super-rich used their increasing wealth to corrupt politics with campaign donations – buying tax cuts, tax loopholes, government subsidies, bailouts, loan guarantees, non-bid government contracts and government forbearance from antitrust enforcement, allowing them to monopolize markets.Democratic capitalism, organized to serve public purposes, all but disappeared. It was replaced by corporate capitalism, organized to serve the monied interests.Joe Biden is reviving democratic capitalism.From the Obama administration’s mistake of spending too little to pull the economy out of the Great Recession, he learned that the pandemic required substantially greater spending, which would also give working families a cushion against adversity. So he pushed for the giant $1.9tn American Rescue Plan.This was followed by a $550bn initiative to rebuild bridges, roads, public transit, broadband, water and energy systems. And in 2022, the biggest investment in clean energy in American history – expanding wind and solar power, electric vehicles, carbon capture and sequestration, and hydrogen and small nuclear reactors. This was followed by the largest public investment ever in semiconductors, the building blocks of the next economy.Notably, these initiatives are targeted to companies that employ American workers.Biden has also embarked on altering the balance of power between capital and labor, as did FDR. Biden has put trustbusters at the head of the Federal Trade Commission and the Antitrust Division of the justice department. And he has remade the National Labor Relations Board into a strong advocate of labor unions.Unlike his Democratic predecessors, Biden has not sought to reduce trade barriers. In fact, he has retained several from the Trump administration. But unlike Trump, he has not given a huge tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. It’s also worth noting that in contrast with every president since Reagan, Biden has not filled his White House with former Wall Street executives. Not one of his economic advisers – not even his treasury secretary – is from the Street.I don’t want to overstate Biden’s accomplishments. His ambitions for childcare, eldercare, paid family and medical leave were thwarted by senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. And now he has to contend with a Republican House.Biden’s larger achievement has been to change the economic paradigm that has reigned since Reagan. He is teaching America a lesson we once knew but have forgotten: that the “free market” does not exist. It is designed. It either advances public purposes or it serves the monied interests.Biden’s democratic capitalism is neither socialism nor “big government”. It is, rather, a return to an era when government organized the market for the greater good.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is 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 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
      TopicsState of the Union addressOpinionJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsUS domestic policyUS economycommentReuse this content More

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      Classified documents not found at Biden’s beach home after DoJ concludes search – as it happened

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      The justice department has concluded its search of Joe Biden’s home on Delaware’s coast, and while it found no classified material, agents did take away some documents for further review, an attorney for the president said.“The DOJ’s planned search of the President’s Rehoboth residences, conducted in coordination and cooperation with the President’s attorneys, has concluded. The search was conducted from 8:30 AM to noon. No documents with classified markings were found,” Bob Bauer, who is acting as a personal lawyer for Biden, said in a statement.“Consistent with the process in Wilmington, the DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President.”Federal agents have come and gone from Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home in their search for classified materials, after previously paying a visit to his residence in Wilmington and former office in Washington DC. There were no government secrets found at Biden’s beachfront property, but the search means the investigation will stay in the news for the time being. Meanwhile, Democratic lawmaker Jared Huffman is circulating a letter worrying over security in the House ahead of next week’s State of the Union address, which he says has grown worse since the GOP took control of the chamber at the start of the year.Here’s what else happened today:
      Nikki Haley and Tim Scott sure seem to be preparing to campaign for president, which would put them up against fellow Republican Donald Trump.
      Socialism is set to be formally denounced with a Republican-backed House resolution that has received surprising Democratic support.
      Biden is having his first meeting with Kevin McCarthy since the Republican was elected House speaker, but the press is not invited.
      It’s the usual partisan split when it comes to the public’s views of the unfolding classified document scandal, new polling has found.
      Just about anything can spark an argument in Congress these days, including the pledge of allegiance.
      Kevin McCarthy is heading to his first meeting with Joe Biden since becoming House speaker.Increasing the debt ceiling is the main item on their agenda, and as he left the Capitol, Fox News caught McCarthy again laying out his demands for spending cuts:McCarthy leaving to talk to Biden: I got a big plan. The first question is does the President want to continue reckless spending or find a way that we could be responsible. Sit down and find common ground where we put ourselves on a path to budget. Make a balanced budget.— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) February 1, 2023
      You might not hear much more than that about the meeting, at least not for a while. According to the White House, the encounter is “Closed Press”, meaning reporters are not invited to attend. That has sparked objections from Kelly O’Donnell, vice-president of the White House Correspondents’ Association, who said prior presidents have invited journalists to observe parts of such meetings:When presidents meet House speakers, there’s a long tradition of WH press pool covering a portion of meeting to document that for the day’s news and historical record. Today’s first meeting of Pres. Biden and Speaker McCarthy should be covered the same way. pic.twitter.com/fvMzhkLoNe— Kelly O’Donnell (@KellyO) February 1, 2023
      Republicans are moving forward with a plan to boot Democrat Ilhan Omar off the House foreign affairs committee, saying she used antisemitic rhetoric. But a Democratic colleague said the effort is about nothing more than revenge, the Associated Press reports. A vote on her ouster is expected Thursday:A House Republican attempt to remove Ilhan Omar from the foreign affairs committee, expected as soon as Wednesday, is about “vengeance” and “spite”, one of the Minnesotan’s fellow Democrats said.“This is about vengeance. This is about spite. This is about politics,” said James McGovern of Massachusetts, the top Democrat on the rules committee, as Republicans called a hurried meeting late on Tuesday to consider the matter.Republicans are targeting Omar, an African-born Black lawmaker, over comments she has made about Israel and as payback after Democrats kicked far-right Republicans off committees for incendiary and violent remarks. On Wednesday, the House voted 218-209 along party lines to move forward with a resolution to remove Omar from the committee. A final vote was expected later this week.The new House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, has been eager to remove Omar after blocking two other Democrats, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, from the intelligence committee.Omar, a Somali immigrant and one of the first female Muslims in Congress, has apologized for comments she has said she has come to understand were viewed as antisemitic. Republican bid to kick Ilhan Omar off panel is ‘spite’, fellow Democrat saysRead moreNikki Haley, the Republican former governor of South Carolina who served as ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump, has a “big announcement” planned for later this month.What could it be?My family and I have a big announcement to share with you on February 15th! And yes, it’s definitely going to be a Great Day in South Carolina! 👊 🇺🇸Be sure to RSVP here: https://t.co/fxxxpBbW2b pic.twitter.com/2QJIo0H7Jo— Nikki Haley (@NikkiHaley) February 1, 2023
      A run for president, is the most likely answer. Trump may already have announced a second campaign for the White House, but that isn’t scaring off other Republicans from throwing their hat in the ring.Case in point: Tim Scott, a GOP senator who is also from South Carolina, will launch “a listening tour focused on Faith in America” later this month, with stops in Iowa and South Carolina. Both states happen to be on the early primary calendar for Republicans, and often play a major role in winnowing the field of presidential nominees.The biggest name waiting in the wings is Florida governor Ron DeSantis, who has repeatedly come in second in polls of Republicans over their preferences for president.In Memphis, mourners are gathering for the funeral of Tyre Nichols, whose death at the hands of law enforcement sparked outrage and renewed calls for Congress to act on long-stalled police reform legislation.Vice-President Kamala Harris is among the attendees, and the Guardian has a blog dedicated to covering the event live:Tyre Nichols funeral begins as mourners gather at Memphis church – latestRead moreDonald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, told CNN earlier he has handed his cellphones to prosecutors in Manhattan as they look again at a 2016 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, the adult film star with whom Donald Trump denies having an affair.A grand jury has been convened in New York to hear evidence related to the payment, a potential campaign finance crime.Cohen said: “Most recently, they asked for my cellphones because they want to be able to extract from it the voice recordings that I had had with Keith Davidson, former attorney to Stormy Daniels before Michael Avenatti, as well as a bunch of emails, text messages and so on.”Cohen’s phones have been seized before, by federal investigators in 2018.Cohen has previously pleaded guilty to paying Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, $130,000 to be quiet about her alleged affair with Trump, which she says happened in 2006. Cohen says Trump directed him to make the payment. Cohen’s recompense for doing so has been detailed by federal prosecutors.As CNN put it, “Manhattan prosecutors are [now] looking into whether Trump and his business falsified business records by improperly treating the reimbursement as a legal expense. That charge is a misdemeanor in New York unless it can be tied to another crime, such as campaign finance laws.”There follows more on what Stormy Daniels is up to now, containing a quote for the ages, about her experience as a stand-up comic, thus: “It was the most terrifying experience of my life, and that’s saying something because I’ve seen Trump naked.”‘It was my most terrifying experience – and I’ve seen Trump naked!’: Stormy Daniels on standup, tarot and reality TVRead moreSpeaking of the debt ceiling, the meeting at the White House later, Republican messaging as practised by Senate minority leader Addison Mitchell McConnell III – you know and love him as Mitch – and our columnist Robert Reich, here’s Robert with some pertinent preparatory reading…The dire warnings of fiscal hawks are once again darkening the skies of official Washington.They’re demanding that the $31.4tn federal debt be reduced and government spending curtailed – thereby giving cover to Republican efforts to hold America hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling.It’s always the same when Republicans take over a chamber of Congress or the presidency. Horrors! The debt is out of control! Federal spending must be cut!When they’re in power, they rack up giant deficits, mainly by cutting taxes on corporations and the wealthy (which amount to the same thing, since wealthy investors are the major beneficiaries of corporate tax cuts).Then when Democrats take the reins, Republicans blame them for being spendthrifts.Not only is the Republican story false, but it leaves out the bigger and more important story behind today’s federal debt: the switch by America’s wealthy over the last half century from paying taxes to the government to lending the government money.This backstory needs to be told if Americans are to understand what’s really happened and what needs to be done about it. Republicans won’t tell it, so Democrats (starting with Joe Biden) must.More:Republicans aren’t going to tell Americans the real cause of our $31tn debt | Robert ReichRead moreMitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate, has issued a statement about the meeting scheduled for this afternoon between Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy, the Republican House speaker.True to Republican messaging about spending and debt – see Reich, Robert, former US labor secretary and Guardian US columnist, passim but also here, today – McConnell says “it is right, appropriate and entirely normal that our need to raise the debt limit would be paired with negotiations regarding Democrats’ runaway printing and spending”.McConnell cites previous remarks by his opposite number, Chuck Schumer, about the debt ceiling being something that should be negotiated over, and says: “The president of the United States does not get to walk away from the table.“The same president who happily signed off on [further messaging alert] trillions of dollars of reckless party-line spending needs to begin good-faith negotiations on spending reform with Speaker McCarthy today.”Schumer spoke on the Senate floor. He said Republicans had to show the American people their plan to avoid a catastrophic default..css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Later this afternoon President Biden will meet with Speaker McCarthy for their first one-on-one meeting of the year, and everyone is asking the same question of Speaker McCarthy: show us your plan. Where is your plan, Republicans? Where is your plan, Speaker McCarthy?McCarthy “showing up at the White House without a plan is like sitting down at the table without cards in your hand”, Schumer said, adding: “We know why the speaker has struggled and is unable to produce a plan – delaying it or avoiding it – he doesn’t have the votes for one, in all likelihood.”He concluded: “We Democrats have a plan – raise the debt ceiling without brinksmanship or hostage-taking as it’s been done before. Speaker McCarthy doesn’t have a plan. So, he is not really negotiating. And the clock is ticking.”Whatever else one might say about Lauren Boebert, the extremist Republican from Colorado, she knows how to get herself in the news.We mentioned her just a few posts ago, regarding a contretemps earlier today about security matters at the Capitol.On the House floor yesterday, the eve of Black History Month, Boebert claimed to be afraid the History Channel and even the Weather Channel could be “canceled” by the forces of wokeness – and/or DirectTV.In her remarks, Boebert bemoaned the recent decision by the cable provider to drop Newsmax, a rightwing, pro-Trump channel.Boebert said: “Will the Weather Channel be canceled next if they refuse to bow to the left’s altar of climate change? What about the History Channel? We see on a regular basis the left wants to erase history and deny truth. How about [the rightwing Christian channel] TBN?”DirecTV says it dropped Newsmax for commercial reasons, because the channel’s “demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs” for customers. It replaced Newsmax with The First, another rightwing operation.But the decision has stoked rightwing anger. In Florida on Tuesday the governor, Ron DeSantis, said DirecTV’s move “does warrant investigation”.Boebert insisted it was a political decision.“This is not the first time that we’ve seen this,” the Coloradan said, “and I’m afraid that it won’t be the last time that we are seeing this here in our great country.“OAN [One America News, also pro-Trump] was de-platformed by DirecTV in April of 2022. So what’s next? Fox News?”After DirecTV dropped OAN, Yosef Getachew, media and democracy program director at Common Cause, a government watchdog, told the Guardian: “No company should profit from spreading content that endangers our democracy.”But cancel culture is a profitable rightwing talking point, holding that people with views deemed unacceptable by the left are barred from public life.Insisting “conservatives are not being treated fairly”, Boebert said: “There has definitely been an increase in disdain and intolerance by many liberals for Christian beliefs simply by saying we love Jesus. So is TBN next? Americans are tired of cancel culture.”Federal agents have come and gone from Joe Biden’s Rehoboth Beach, Delaware home in their search for classified materials, after previously paying a visit to his former office in Washington DC and residence elsewhere in the state. There were no government secrets found at Biden’s beachfront property, but the search means the investigation will stay in the news for the time being. Meanwhile, in Congress, Democratic lawmaker Jared Huffman is circulating a letter worrying over security in the House ahead of next week’s State of the Union address, which he says has grown worse since the GOP took control of the chamber at the start of the year.Here’s what else has happened today:
      Socialism is set to be formally denounced with a Republican-backed House resolution that has received surprising Democratic support.
      It’s the usual partisan split when it comes to the public’s views of the unfolding classified document scandal, new polling has found.
      Just about anything can spark an argument in Congress these days, including the pledge of allegiance.
      The House will today begin considering a resolution proposed by Republicans to denounce “the horrors of socialism” – a non-binding statement that has received a surprising amount of support from Democrats.Florida Republican María Elvira Salazar first introduced the resolution in 2021 when Democrats controlled the chamber, and has proposed it again this year with the House under GOP control. “Through this resolution, the House of Representatives denounces socialism in all its forms and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States of America,” Salazar’s office said in 2021, noting it specifically singles out left-wing one-party states such as Cuba, China and the USSR, which broke up more than three decades ago.Ahead of the vote today, the second-largest Democratic caucus in the House, the New Democrat Coalition, announced their 96 members would back the measure. “New Dems strongly reject socialism – period. House Republican Leaders should set aside political games and join us as we work to grow our economy for all Americans,” the center-left group said in a statement.With support like that, the resolution seems sure to pass. But why bother with a statement condemning a governing philosophy that has few open adherents in Washington and is practiced by several of America’s best-known foes? According to Fox News, it’s an attempt to put progressive lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib on the spot, both of whom are affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America. The justice department has concluded its search of Joe Biden’s home on Delaware’s coast, and while it found no classified material, agents did take away some documents for further review, an attorney for the president said.“The DOJ’s planned search of the President’s Rehoboth residences, conducted in coordination and cooperation with the President’s attorneys, has concluded. The search was conducted from 8:30 AM to noon. No documents with classified markings were found,” Bob Bauer, who is acting as a personal lawyer for Biden, said in a statement.“Consistent with the process in Wilmington, the DOJ took for further review some materials and handwritten notes that appear to relate to his time as Vice President.”Democrats are expressing safety concerns in the House natural resources committee after Republicans proposed rules that exclude a ban on firearms in hearing rooms, which existed in the previous Congress.Here’s how the debate started, according to NBC News:👀The Committee on Natural Resources is meeting NOW to organize and vote on their rules… Some fireworks expected: GOP side is pushing to ALLOW FIREARMS in hearing rooms and we are told DEMS will loudly object— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) February 1, 2023
      Jared Huffman, the Democratic lawmaker who is also circulating a letter questioning security in the House ahead of next week’s State of the Union speech, has proposed an amendment to reinstate the ban:Happening NOW @RepHuffman: “my amendment explicitly prohibits carrying or having readily available any firearm dangerous weapon explosive or incendiary device within the hearing rooms and conference rooms of this committee” https://t.co/9GO2PfubY3— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) February 1, 2023
      Several far-right lawmakers serve on the committee, including Lauren Boebert. In the hearing, she harkens back to a time when Huffman donned a tinfoil hat to mock her:Boebert pulls up this poster and says “looks my colleague forget his tin foil hat so I brought this to remind” pic.twitter.com/UPbdQCXFlb— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) February 1, 2023
      She then gets into her reasoning for wanting to carry a gun in the Capitol, a building where access is controlled at all hours by a large police force:BOEBERT: “With threats now at an all time high I would like to remind the gentleman that now’s not the time to be stripping members of our constitutional right to defend ourselves. DC has a violent crime problem and it’s often wondered 50% higher than the national average.”— Haley Talbot (@haleytalbotnbc) February 1, 2023
      A Democratic representative is circulating a letter to congressional leadership warning that the security of the House is “precarious”, and asking what steps they will take to protect the chamber during the 7 February State of the Union address.California’s Jared Huffman blamed new rules passed under the House’s Republican leaders for worsening the security situation, and in his letter cited as evidence “the violent insurrection of January 6, an attempt by a Member of Congress to bring a concealed weapon on to the House Floor, other Members vowing to do so in contravention of House rules, and most recently a colleague distributing what appeared to be legitimate, and later revealed to be inert hand grenades on the House Floor.“We know from experience that the House is vulnerable to multiple fronts of attacks both from inside and outside Congress,” wrote Huffman. “Considering the ability of Members of Congress to carry firearms in the Capitol complex outside the House Floor, removal of magnetometers from the entrances to the House Floor, and with record threats against the lives of Members of Congress, the security of the House complex is today precarious.”Addressed to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate, Huffman’s letter requests “information on what steps you are taking, in coordination with the House and Senate sergeant at arms, Secret Service, and other federal agencies to protect the president, vice-president, the diplomatic corps, cabinet secretaries, supreme court justices, senators, representatives, and their guests ahead of the State of the Union address on 7 February 2023. Any attack on this gathering would threaten our democracy and undermine the functionality of the entire federal government.”Huffman is circulating the letter to lawmakers interested in signing it, and plans to send it to leadership this evening, his office said. More

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      Trump says in video ‘anyone in my position not taking the fifth would be an absolute fool’ – as it happened

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      What does Trump think of those who would answer questions in a deposition, like the one he sat for with New York’s attorney general?“Anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool,” he said in the interview.Meanwhile, on his Truth social network, which stands in for his inactive-but-no-longer-banned Twitter account, the former president was doing his usual thing.“The Democrat D.A.’s, Attorney Generals, and Prosecutors are very DANGEROUS to the well being of our Country. Many are deranged and only interested in pleasing the Fake News Media and the Democrat Party. Fair and True Justice means NOTHING in our Country anymore,” he wrote in a post released shortly after CBS News aired video of his deposition today.“I am being hit by so many DEMOCRAT Prosecutors, LOCAL, STATE, & FEDERAL, all to keep me from “running,” and all because I am leading by sooo much. The great people of our Country aren’t going to take it. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”“Witch-hunt”. “Unfair”. “Anyone in my position not taking the fifth would be a fool”. It was Donald Trump at his finest, or perhaps most exhausting, in video of his summer deposition before the New York attorney general obtained by CBS News. Besides bashing Letitia James and her inquiry – which alleges he and his children conspired to inflate his net worth in order to get better loan terms – Trump doesn’t say much, instead refusing to answer questions more than 400 times. Meanwhile, in Washington, lawmakers have plenty of questions of their own in the ongoing saga of the classified documents discovered in the possession of former White House occupants, with a top Democrat demanding information on Trump and Mike Pence’s visitors from the Secret Service.Here’s what else happened today:
      George Santos announced he will not serve on any House committees, even though Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would be willing to seat him.
      The Biden administration will let the emergencies declared over Covid-19 expire, but is considering declaring a new crisis to allow Americans to obtain access to abortions.
      Kamala Harris will attend Tyre Nichols’s funeral in Memphis on Wednesday, her office announced.
      Minnesota’s governor Tim Walz signed into law a measure protecting abortion rights, making the state’s legislature the first to enshrine access to the procedure since the end of Roe v Wade last year.
      Boris Johnson paid a visit to the US Capitol in search of support for Ukraine and perhaps also political relevance.
      Boris Johnson, the former British prime minister, has brought his quest for political relevance to Washington, holding talks with Republican members of Congress in an effort to shore up support for Ukraine.Johnson left office last September amid a Trumpian cascade of scandals but, far from fading into retirement, may be hoping that the war with Russia offers a shot at redemption and chance to emulate his hero Winston Churchill as a global statesman.The 58-year-old visited Ukraine earlier this month and, on Tuesday, was seen entering the office of House speaker Kevin McCarthy, who ruffled feathers last year by warning that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine if they win back the majority.Reporters also spotted Johnson heading to the office of Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader and staunch supporter of Ukraine who has urged Joe Biden to act faster, as well as Congressman Jim Banks, a veteran of the Afghanistan war.Cristina Maza, a journalist at the National Journal, tweeted that Johnson told her that he is on Capitol Hill to thank Americans for backing Ukraine and called Republican support for Kyiv “very robust”. The ex-PM also met Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the US, and took questions from Ukrainian journalists.Johnson has penned an opinion column for the Washington Post, arguing that years of “diplomatic doublespeak” about Ukraine joining Nato ended in disaster. “Ukrainians should be given everything they need to finish this war, as quickly as possible, and we should begin the process of admitting Ukraine to NATO, and begin it now,” he writes.The former PM is set to speak at a private Republican club on Tuesday evening and take part in a virtual conversation about sustaining support to Ukraine with the Atlantic Council think tank at 11.30am on Wednesday.Here’s a statement from Ben Crump, attorney for the parents of Tyre Nichols, regarding Vice-President Kamala Harris’s attendance at his funeral tomorrow:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}This morning, Ms. RowVaughn Wells, Mr. Rodney Wells, and I spoke on the phone with Vice President Kamala Harris for over thirty minutes about the tragic loss of Tyre. Vice President Harris and Ms. Wells spoke exclusively, and during this emotional time, the Vice President was able to console Ms. Wells and even help her smile. Tyre’s parents invited Vice President Harris to the funeral tomorrow, and were pleased that she accepted their invitation. Mr. and Mrs. Wells are grateful for Vice President Harris reaching out to them during this heartbreaking time and for her sensitivity on the call.Vice-President Kamala Harris will travel to Memphis tomorrow to attend Tyre Nichols’s funeral, her office has announced.Last week, Joe Biden spoke with Nichols’s mother and stepfather after the 29-year-old was beaten by Memphis police following a traffic stop, and died three days later.Minnesota’s Democratic governor Tim Walz has signed into law the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act, which creates a “fundamental right” to abortion under the state’s laws:Today, I signed the PRO Act into law. Your reproductive freedom will stay protected in Minnesota.— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) January 31, 2023
      Abortion access is already protected under a state supreme court ruling, but the Minneapolis Star Tribune reports Democrats controlling the state legislature passed the PRO Act to guard against the possibility that the precedent gets overturned.With the law, Minnesota has become the first state to add abortion protections to its statutes since the supreme court overturned Roe v Wade last June and allowed states to ban the procedure entirely. Voters elsewhere in the country have approved ballot measures protecting abortion access in reaction to the ruling from the supreme court’s conservative majority.In the wake of Tyre Nichols’s death, Joe Biden will meet with Black lawmakers on Thursday in a bid to revive stalled talks on a federal police reform bill, the Associated Press reports: >@POTUS will meet with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on Thursday to discuss police reform in light of Tyre Nichols’ death, @ODalton46 tells reporters on AF1 en route to NYC— Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) January 31, 2023
      Spurred by the death of George Floyd in 2020 and the nationwide protests that followed, negotiations over passing some kind of reform measure dragged on for months in 2021, but ultimately proved fruitless. The Washington Post reports that despite the outrage over Nichols’s death following a beating by Memphis police officers – five of whom have been charged with murder – the chances of passing such a measure have only worsened.“I don’t know what the space is for that,” Senator Lindsey Graham, who is the top Republican on the judiciary committee that would probably consider any such bill.Previous talks were held while Democrats controlled both the House and Senate, and negotiators were trying to find a compromise that could overcome a Republican filibuster in the upper chamber. Now, the GOP controls the House, and John Cornyn, a Republican who played a part in passing a bill to help police departments implement de-escalation training, doubts such a measure is feasible.“I think it’s probably less likely to happen now with divided government,” Cornyn said, according to the Post.George Santos has elaborated on his decision to recuse himself from the House committees on small business and science, space and technology.Here’s a statement from the New York Republican lawmaker and fabulist:.css-cumn2r{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}With the ongoing attention surrounding both my personal and campaign financial investigations, I have submitted a request to Speaker McCarthy that I be temporarily recused from my committee assignments until I am cleared. This was a decision that I take very seriously. The business of the 118th Congress must continue without media fanfare. It is important that I primarily focus on serving the constituents of New York’s Third Congressional District and providing federal level representation without distraction.
      I want to personally thank Speaker McCarthy for meeting with me to discuss the matter and allowing me to take time to properly clear my name before returning to my committees. To my constituents, I remain committed to serving the district, and delivering results for both New York’s Third Congressional District and for the American people.Most of Santos’s constituents would like him to resign, a recent survey said.Far-right commentators who joked or cast doubt about the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of former House speaker Nancy Pelosi, are having to eat their words, now that video of assault has been released, the Guardian’s Martin Pengelly reports:Conservative commentators were forced to backtrack over conspiracy theories and jokes about the hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, after the release of police video and audio last week.One Fox News commentator had to retreat from his claim there was no “evidence of a breaking and entering” when his host pointed out that footage of the attacker breaking into Pelosi’s home was playing on screen at the time.“Got it,” Brian Claypool said. “Yeah. OK. Can’t we talk more about what is the DoJ doing?”The Department of Justice has charged Pelosi’s attacker, David DePape, with assault and attempted kidnapping. The 42-year-old also faces state charges including attempted murder. He has pleaded not guilty.Pelosi, 82, was attacked in his San Francisco home in late October, a time when his wife, Nancy Pelosi, was still speaker of the US House. According to tapes released by the police, the attacker said he was looking for her. She was not present. Her husband suffered a fractured skull and injuries to his hand and arm.Republican leaders including Donald Trump and Mitch McConnell condemned the attack.But prominent rightwingers including Donald Trump Jr, the Fox News host Tucker Carlson, the Tesla and Twitter owner Elon Musk and Republican members of Congress including Ted Cruz and Marjorie Taylor Greene eagerly spread jokes, misinformation and conspiracy theories.Paul Pelosi attack: rightwing pundits backtrack after release of police videoRead more“Witch-hunt”. “Unfair”. “Anyone in my position not taking the fifth would be a fool”. It was Donald Trump at his finest, or perhaps most exhausting, in video of his summer deposition before the New York attorney general obtained by CBS News. Besides bashing Letitia James and her inquiry – which alleges he and his children conspired to inflate his net worth in order to get better loan terms – Trump doesn’t say much, instead refusing to answer questions more than 400 times. In Washington, lawmakers have plenty of questions of their own in the ongoing saga of the classified documents found in the possession of former White House occupants, with a top Democrat demanding information on Trump and Mike Pence’s visitors from the Secret Service.Here’s what else has happened today so far:
      George Santos announced he will not serve on any House committees, even though Republican speaker Kevin McCarthy said he would be willing to seat him.
      The Biden administration will allow the emergencies declared over Covid-19 to expire, but is considering declaring a new crisis to allow Americans to obtain access to abortions.
      The fallout from the police killing of Tyre Nichols continues in Memphis.
      What does Trump think of those who would answer questions in a deposition, like the one he sat for with New York’s attorney general?“Anyone in my position not taking the Fifth Amendment would be a fool, an absolute fool,” he said in the interview.Meanwhile, on his Truth social network, which stands in for his inactive-but-no-longer-banned Twitter account, the former president was doing his usual thing.“The Democrat D.A.’s, Attorney Generals, and Prosecutors are very DANGEROUS to the well being of our Country. Many are deranged and only interested in pleasing the Fake News Media and the Democrat Party. Fair and True Justice means NOTHING in our Country anymore,” he wrote in a post released shortly after CBS News aired video of his deposition today.“I am being hit by so many DEMOCRAT Prosecutors, LOCAL, STATE, & FEDERAL, all to keep me from “running,” and all because I am leading by sooo much. The great people of our Country aren’t going to take it. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”The top Democrat on the House oversight committee has sent the director of the Secret Service a letter asking for information on all visitors to Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort and Mike Pence’s Indiana home since they left office two years ago.Jamie Raskin, the ranking member on the Republican-led committee that is playing a major role in investigating Joe Biden, cited the FBI’s discovery of classified materials at Pence and Trump’s properties.“The Committee on Oversight and Accountability is investigating former President Donald Trump’s and former Vice President Mike Pence’s mishandling of sensitive, highly classified documents,” Raskin wrote in the letter to director Kimberly Cheatle.“Given that the U.S. Secret Service provided protection for Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence during the time they stored classified materials at their respective residences, the Committee is seeking information from your agency regarding who had access to former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and former Vice President Pence’s personal residence since leaving office.”Led by James Comer, Republicans on the oversight committee are investigating Biden over a number of matters, including his improper possession of classified documents. Comer has requested from the Secret Service information regarding visitors to Biden’s Delaware residence, where some of his classified documents were found. In a statement, Raskin said he asked Comer to join in his letter about Trump and Pence’s properties, but received no reply.Donald Trump invoked his fifth amendment right to refuse to answer questions more than 400 times last summer during his deposition in the New York attorney general’s fraud investigation, CBS News reports.The network obtained video of the interview, which starts with the former president accusing attorney general Letitia James of conducting an “unfair” investigation that amounted to a “witch hunt” – familiar words for anyone who has heard Trump talk about the many inquiries he has faced, and is facing.He then states that on the advice of his lawyers, “I respectfully decline to answer the questions under the rights and privileges afforded to every citizen under the United States constitution. This will be my answer to any further questions.”An investigator for the attorney general’s office tells Trump that he can just say “same answer” for all the questions put to him, which Trump does throughout the deposition.Weeks after Trump’s August deposition, James announced she was suing the former president and three of his children for what she called a fraud scheme of “staggering” scale in which they falsely inflated his net worth to win more favorable loan terms.Here’s the full report and footage of the deposition, from CBS: More

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      ‘We may have lost the south’: what LBJ really said about Democrats in 1964

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      ‘We may have lost the south’: what LBJ really said about Democrats in 1964Bill Moyers was there when Lyndon Johnson made his memorable assessment of the Civil Rights Act’s effects The Civil Rights Act of 1964 was one of the most consequential pieces of legislation in American history, giving protections and rights long denied to Black Americans. Like the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and Medicare for senior citizens, it was a pillar of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society.LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgentRead moreThe Civil Rights Act also had a profound effect on the American political landscape, triggering a reshaping that still influences the fortunes of Democrats and Republicans, particularly in the south.A brilliant political analyst, Johnson foresaw the consequences of his civil rights legislation on the day he signed it into law. He is said to have remarked: “We’ve lost the south for a generation.”Indeed, the south has become steadily more Republican since then, the victories of Joe Biden and two Democratic senators in Georgia in 2020 and 2022 rare blue successes in a Republican stronghold.But did Johnson really say it? He didn’t mention it in his memoir – and he died 50 years ago on Sunday, aged just 64. In his absence, historians debate and write.So the Guardian went to the source: the legendary journalist Bill Moyers. Now 88, he was Johnson’s special assistant when the Civil Rights Act passed.Moyers responded with a detailed e-mail.On 2 July 1964, “the president signed the Civil Rights Act around 6.45pm. Before he went into a meeting in his office with some civil rights leaders and [the deputy attorney general] Nick Katzenbach, he pulled me aside and said, sotto voce, ‘Bird [Johnson’s wife] and I are going down to the Ranch. I’d like you to come with us … I practically ran to my office to pack.’”Moyers made it to the airport in time.“When I boarded the Jet Star, the president was reading the latest edition of the Washington Post. We took off around around 11pm … I sat down across from him. Lady Bird was in the other seat by him … the papers were celebrating what they described as a great event.“I said, ‘Quite a day, Mr President.’ As he reached a sheaf of the wire copy he tilted his head slightly back and held the copy up close to him so that he could read it, and said: ‘Well, I think we may have lost the south for your lifetime – and mine.’“It was lightly said. Not sarcastic. Not even dramatically. It was like a throwaway sidebar.”To Moyers, “all these years later”, Johnson’s remark seems “maybe … merely a jest, lightly uttered and soon forgotten”. But after Moyers “repeated it publicly just once, it took on a life of its own.“Unfortunately, various versions appeared: ‘for a generation’, ‘once and for all’. I couldn’t keep up. I finally stopped commenting.”And so a legend grew.As Moyers pointed out, in summer 1964, Johnson’s “immediate concern was to carry the south in his own election for president”, against the Republican candidate, Barry Goldwater, a hard-right senator from Arizona.“He briefly threatened not to go to the Democratic national convention in Atlantic City, because he was very tense and uneasy about the fight over seating the Mississippi delegation, and especially the role of Fannie Lou Hamer.”Hamer was a legendary civil rights activist, beaten and shot at for registering Black voters in Mississippi. At the convention, she mesmerized a national audience when she testified in an unsuccessful effort to get the new Freedom Democratic Party seated as the official delegation from Mississippi.“As we all know,” Moyers wrote, “Johnson went on to the convention and lapped his nomination … Now he seemed fully in the game and determined to carry the south.“He called meetings with his campaign team, over and again. He talked often to our people on the ground, from Louisiana to North Carolina. He made the campaign south of the Mason-Dixon Line his personal battlefield. He wanted to win there. And he did – in five states.”Johnson won in a landslide. In the south, he took Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Virginia.Moyers remembered that “on election night, as the results rolled in, [Johnson] was elated. His dreaded private vision of losing the south … would have cost [him] the election.“I think he had doubled down on not handing Republicans the south. That would come with [Richard] Nixon’s southern strategy, four years later. For now, [Johnson] was spared what would have humiliated him.”TopicsBooksCivil rights movementUS politicsUS domestic policyRaceDemocratsRepublicansfeaturesReuse this content More

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      LBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgent

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      InterviewLBJ OK? Historian Mark Lawrence on a president resurgentMartin Pengelly Fifty years after Lyndon Johnson died, the director of the 36th president’s library discusses his politics and progressive idealsFifty years ago on Sunday, Lyndon Baines Johnson died. He was 64, and had been out of power since stepping down as president in 1969, in the shadow of the Vietnam war. Forty-five years later, in 2018, the Guardian marked the anniversary of his death. The headline: “Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero.”Why Lyndon Johnson, a truly awful man, is my political hero | Jack BernhardtRead moreMark Lawrence laughs.“I think I read that one,” he says.It seems likely. Lawrence, a distinguished Vietnam scholar, is director of the LBJ Presidential Library in Austin, Texas.Johnson was a Texas Democrat who rose through Congress to be vice-president to John F Kennedy, then assumed the presidency when Kennedy was killed. From 1963 to 1969, Johnson presided over great social reform at home and gathering disaster abroad. His legacy has never been less than complex, his place in American culture attracting historians by the hundred and big-name actors in droves. Bryan Cranston, Brian Cox and Woody Harrelson have recently played LBJ.Lawrence continues: “One of the ideas that an awful lot of people hold about LBJ, and I think it’s not wholly incorrect, but it’s problematic, is that he was this vulgar, crude man who used four-letter words and demeaned his subordinates and threw temper tantrums.“There’s no question that Caro” – Robert Caro’s biographical masterwork – “is the go-to source for the uglier parts of his personal style. But I think you can also make an argument, and Caro I think comes around to this view in the later books, that LBJ managed to combine whatever elements of that old caricature hold up with a genuine sense of compassion for ordinary people.“Many biographers see the link between his own hardscrabble youth and the struggles of his family and a peculiar sensitivity to the plight of the downtrodden, which certainly affected his view of racial discrimination. The sensitivity to poverty, whether it affected Black, brown or white, came from his own experience.“My writing about LBJ has largely been critical, but I don’t have any difficulty saying this was a man with a genuine sense of compassion.”Lawrence is speaking to mark the half-century since the 36th president died. LBJ is in the news anyway. He was the architect of the Great Society, overseeing the passage of civil rights protections and a welfare system now under renewed attack. Joe Biden often compares his post-Covid presidency to that of Franklin D Roosevelt amid the Great Depression, but comparisons to Johnson are ready to hand.Lawrence says: “The points of similarity are remarkable. The guy with long service in the Senate” – Johnson from Texas, 1949-1961, Biden from Delaware, 1973-2009 – “the guy who could cross the aisle, the guy who spoke in pragmatic, bipartisan terms. Both of these guys became vice-president to a younger, less experienced but much more charismatic person” – Biden to Barack Obama – “and that was kind of their ticket to the presidency.“But I think some of these comparisons are ultimately unfair to Biden, because the political context is just so different. My own view is, sure, LBJ deserves credit for being this enormously persuasive, forceful guy who knew how to bend people to his will. But at the end of the day, LBJ was pushing an open door.“Even the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act, these great achievements, they passed by big margins. There were bipartisan coalitions. LBJ deserves credit for his ability to put those coalitions together. But … I think it’s possible to exaggerate LBJ’s importance and to forget the importance of Hubert Humphrey, Jacob Javits and Everett Dirksen, all key players as well.”Bipartisan players, too. Humphrey was LBJ’s vice-president, Javits a Republican senator from New York, Dirksen, of Illinois, Republican Senate minority leader.“I think that’s precisely what’s lacking now. The situation is so polarised that you could bring LBJ back from the dead and he’d be an utter failure in this political context, because his skills would have been meaningless in the context of 2023.”Biden passed a coronavirus rescue package, an infrastructure bill and the Inflation Reduction Act, all meant to help the US recover from Covid, with razor-thin margins in Congress and against Republicans gone to extremes. LBJ’s shadow may be long – at a shade over 6ft 3in he is the second-tallest president, after Abraham Lincoln – but Biden does not necessarily labour within it.So how might progressives see Johnson? If they read Caro, they will learn how he came from a world of Texas populism, tinged with socialism, that now seems far gone indeed.“At least by the standards of the era,” Lawrence sees in LBJ “a genuine willingness to think hard about poverty and how to insulate people against economic forces over which individuals had no control whatsoever.”Whether teaching in a dirt-poor school in Cotulla in 1928 or working “for the National Youth Administration in the 1930s, LBJ shows glimmers of his willingness to cross racial lines and to think seriously about the situation of African Americans and Mexican Americans”.1968: the year that changed AmericaRead moreTo Lawrence, the Texas years “indicate that LBJ was an unusual person, for a southern white man who came of age in the 1920s and 30s.”In the 1950s, when Johnson led the Senate, he defended white supremacy. As president, he oversaw the Vietnam disaster. But Charles Kaiser, a Guardian contributor and author of 1968 in America and The Gay Metropolis, also sees the bigger picture.“In 1968, I hated Lyndon Johnson with all my heart, because I was 17 – and lived in fear of being drafted. Fifty years later, it is clear three other things about his presidency were much more important than the war that destroyed him.“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 made him the most courageous president since Lincoln. Johnson may or may not have said ‘We have lost the south for a generation’ after he signed the 1964 law, but he certainly knew that was true. By fighting for those two laws, he did more to redeem the promise of the Emancipation Proclamation than any president before him.“Medicare is the third prong of a noble legacy. It did more to improve the lives of senior citizens than anything else except Franklin Roosevelt’s social security. A hundred years from now, I think Johnson will be considered one of our greatest presidents.”To Lawrence, Johnson’s reputation is “mixed. But I think the mix of impressions is quite different from what it was certainly 30 years ago.“When he died, and for many years thereafter, Vietnam hung so heavily over LBJ that he was a little bit radioactive … it was something conservatives and the left could agree on. Vietnam was a debacle and LBJ bore principal responsibility for it. But I think in the last decade and a half, there’s been a gradual reappraisal.Turn Every Page: a peek into Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb’s long creative relationshipRead more“The level of dysfunction and partisanship in Washington has led people to take another look at LBJ and how he was able to work across the aisle and achieve so much. There’s a kind of longing, I think, for that kind of political effectiveness.“So many of the issues that LBJ worked on are back with us, and I think this has led at least parts of the political spectrum to have a new appreciation for him.“In a period when immigration and the environment and voting rights are under threat in a profound way, people are rediscovering LBJ as someone who maybe didn’t have perfect answers but worked very effectively, at least by the standards of recent decades, and achieved real results.”TopicsBooksUS politicsPolitics booksHistory booksDemocratsUS domestic policyUS foreign policyinterviewsReuse this content More

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      ‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House book

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      Interview‘Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated’: Chris Whipple on his White House bookDavid Smith in Washington Fight of His Life author on Kamala Harris’s struggles and growth, Afghanistan, a strong second year … and if Biden will run againThere are those who believe that at 80, Joe Biden is too old to serve a second term as president. Yet few clamour for him to hand over to the person who would normally be the heir apparent.The Fight of His Life review: Joe Biden, White House winnerRead moreTwo years in, Kamala Harris, the first woman of colour to be vice-president, has had her ups and downs. Her relationship with Biden appears strong and she has found her voice as a defender of abortion rights. But her office has suffered upheaval and her media appearances have failed to impress.Such behind-the-scenes drama is recounted in The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, written by the author, journalist and film-maker Chris Whipple and published this week. Whipple gained access to nearly all of Biden’s inner circle and has produced a readable half-time report on his presidency – a somewhat less crowded field than the literary genre that sprang up around Donald Trump.“In the beginning, Joe Biden liked having Kamala Harris around,” Whipple writes, noting that Biden wanted the vice-president with him for meetings on almost everything. One source observed a “synergy” between them.Harris volunteered to take on the cause of voting rights. But Biden handed her another: tackling the causes of undocumented immigration by negotiating with the governments of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras.“But for Harris,” Whipple writes, “the Northern Triangle would prove to be radioactive.”With the distinction between root causes and immediate problems soon lost on the public, Harris got the blame as migrants kept coming.One of her senior advisers tells Whipple the media could not handle a vice-president who was not only female but also Black and south Asian, referring to it as “the Unicorn in a glass box” syndrome. But Harris also suffered self-inflicted wounds. Whipple writes that she “seemed awkward and uncertain … she laughed inappropriately and chopped the air with her hands, which made her seem condescending”.An interview with NBC during a visit to Guatemala and Mexico was a “disaster”, according to one observer. Reports highlighted turmoil and turnover in Harris’s office, some former staff claiming they saw it all before when she was California attorney general and on her presidential campaign. Her approval rating sank to 28%, lower than Dick Cheney’s during the Iraq war.But, Whipple writes, Biden and his team still thought highly of Harris.“Ron Klain [chief of staff] was personally fond of her. He met with the vice-president weekly and encouraged her to do more interviews and raise her profile. Harris was reluctant, wary of making mistakes.“‘This is like baseball,’ Klain told her. ‘You have to accept the fact that sometimes you will strike out. We all strike out. But you can’t score runs if you’re sitting in the dugout.’ Biden’s chief was channeling manager Tom Hanks in the film A League of Their Own. ‘Look, no one here is going to get mad at you. We want you out there!’”Speaking to the Guardian, Whipple, 69, reflects: “It’s a complicated, fascinating relationship between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.“In the early months of the administration they had a real rapport, a real bond. Because of Covid they were thrown together in the White House and spent a lot of time together. He wanted her to be in almost every meeting and valued her input. All of that was and is true.“But when she began to draw fire, particularly over her assignment on the Northern Triangle, things became more complicated. It got back to the president that the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, was complaining around town that her portfolio was too difficult and that in effect it was setting her up for failure. This really annoyed Biden. He felt he hadn’t asked her to do anything he hadn’t done for Barack Obama: he had the Northern Triangle as one of his assignments. She had asked for the voting rights portfolio and he gave it to her. So that caused some friction.”A few months into the presidency, Whipple writes, a close friend asked Biden what he thought of his vice-president. His reply: “A work in progress.” These four words – a less than ringing endorsement – form the title of a chapter in Whipple’s book.But in our interview, Whipple adds: “It’s also true that she grew in terms of her national security prowess. That’s why Biden sent her to the Munich Security Conference on the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She spent a lot of time in the meetings with the president’s daily brief and Biden’s given her some important assignments in that respect.”A former producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, Whipple has written books about White House chiefs of staff and directors of the CIA. Each covered more than 100 years of history, whereas writing The Fight of His Life was, he says, like designing a plane in mid-flight and not knowing where to land it. Why did he do it?“How could I not? When you think about it, Joe Biden and his team came into office confronting a once-in-a-century pandemic, crippled economy, global warming, racial injustice, the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol. How could anybody with a political or storytelling bone in his body not want to tell that story? Especially if you could get access to Biden’s inner circle, which I was fortunate in being able to do.”Even so, it wasn’t easy. Whipple describes “one of the most leakproof White Houses in modern history … extremely disciplined and buttoned down”. It could hardly be more different from the everything-everywhere-all-at-once scandals of the Trump administration.What the author found was a tale of two presidencies. There was year one, plagued by inflation, supply chain problems, an arguably premature declaration of victory over the coronavirus and setbacks in Congress over Build Back Better and other legislation. Worst of all was the dismal end of America’s longest war as, after 20 years and $2tn, Afghanistan fell to the Taliban.“It was clearly a failure to execute the withdrawal in a safe and orderly way and at the end of the day, as I put it, it was a whole-of-government failure,” Whipple says. “Everybody got almost everything wrong, beginning with the intelligence on how long the Afghan government and armed forces would last and ending with the botched execution of the withdrawal, with too few troops on the ground.”Whipple is quite possibly the first author to interview Klain; the secretary of state, Antony Blinken; the CIA director, Bill Burns; and the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, Gen Mark Milley, about the Afghanistan debacle.“What became clear was that everybody had a different recollection of the intelligence. While this administration often seems to be pretty much on the same page, I found that there was a lot more drama behind the scenes during the Afghan withdrawal and in some of the immediate aftermath,” he says.The book also captures tension between Leon Panetta, CIA director and defense secretary under Barack Obama, who was critical of the exit strategy – “You just wonder whether people were telling the president what he wanted to hear” – and Klain, who counters that Panetta favoured the war and oversaw the training of the Afghan military, saying: “If this was Biden’s Bay of Pigs, it was Leon’s army that lost the fight.”Whipple comments: “Ron Klain wanted to fire back in this case and it’s remarkable and fascinating to me, given his relationship with Panetta. Obviously his criticism got under Ron Klain’s skin.”Biden’s second year was a different story. “Everything changed on 24 February 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine. Joe Biden was uniquely qualified to rise to that moment and he did, rallying Nato in defiance of Putin and in defence of Ukraine. Biden had spent his entire career preparing for that moment, with the Senate foreign relations committee and his experience with Putin, and it showed.“Then he went on to pass a string of bipartisan legislative bills from the Chips Act to veterans healthcare, culminating in the Inflation Reduction Act, which I don’t think anybody saw coming.“One thing is for sure: Joe Biden has been constantly underestimated from day one and, at the two-year mark, he proves that he could deliver a lot more than people thought.”Biden looked set to enter his third year with the wind at his back. Democrats exceeded expectations in the midterm elections, inflation is slowing, Biden’s approval rating is on the up and dysfunctional House Republicans struggled to elect a speaker.But political life moves pretty fast. Last week the justice department appointed a special counsel to investigate the discovery of classified documents, from Biden’s time as vice-president, at his thinktank in Washington and home in Delaware.Whipple told CBS: “They really need to raise their game here, I think, because this really goes to the heart of Joe Biden’s greatest asset, arguably, which is trust.”The mistake represents a bump in the road to 2024. Biden’s age could be another. He is older than Ronald Reagan was when he completed his second term and if he serves a full second term he will be 86 at the end. Opinion polls suggest many voters feel he is too old for the job. Biden’s allies disagree.Whipple says: “His inner circle is bullish about Biden’s mental acuity and his ability to govern. I never heard any of them express any concern and maybe you would expect that from the inner circle. Many of them will tell you that he has extraordinary endurance, energy.“Bruce Reed [a longtime adviser] told me about flying back on a red-eye from Europe after four summits in a row when everybody had to drag themselves out of the plane and was desperately trying to sleep and the boss came in and told stories for six hours straight all the way back to DC.”During conversations and interviews for the book, did Whipple get the impression Biden will seek re-election?“He’s almost undoubtedly running. Andy Card [chief of staff under George W Bush] said something to me once that rang true: ‘If anybody tells you they’re leaving the White House voluntarily, they’re probably lying to you.’“Who was the last president to walk away from the office voluntarily? LBJ [Lyndon Baines Johnson]. It rarely happens. I don’t think Joe Biden is an exception. He spent his whole career … thinking about running or running for president and he’s got unfinished business. Having the possibility of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee probably makes it more urgent for him. He thinks he can beat him again.”
      The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House is published in the US by Scribner
      TopicsBooksJoe BidenBiden administrationKamala HarrisUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansinterviewsReuse this content More

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      The FTC is back to being the activist US agency progressives sought in 1914 | Robert Reich

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      The FTC is back to being the activist US agency progressives sought in 1914Robert ReichLast week, under its Biden-appointed chair, the Federal Trade Commission proposed a new rule banning non-compete agreements – and it’s a big deal Have you ever been forced to sign a non-compete agreement when you started a job?About 30 million Americans are trapped by contracts that say if they leave their current job, they can’t take a job with a rival company or start a new business of their own.The US should break up monopolies – not punish working Americans for rising prices | Robert ReichRead moreThese clauses deprive workers of higher wages and better working conditions. In effect, they’re a form of involuntary servitude.Last week, while America was fixated on Kevin McCarthy’s travails, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposed a sweeping new rule that would ban these non-compete agreements.This is a big deal. The FTC estimates that such a ban could increase wages by nearly $300bn a year (about $2,000 a worker, on average) by allowing workers to pursue better job opportunities.Non-competes also harm the economy, depriving growing businesses of talent and experience they need to build and expand. California’s ban on non-competes has been a major reason for Silicon Valley’s success.The rule isn’t a sure thing. House Republicans will try to kill it. Corporate America will appeal it up to the supreme court, which is hostile to independent regulatory agencies such as the FTC.For decades, non-compete agreements have been cropping up all over the economy – not just in high-paying fields like banking and tech but as standard boilerplate for employment contracts in many low-wage sectors such as construction, hospitality and retail.A recent study found one in five workers without a college education subject to them, disproportionately women and people of color.Employers say they need non-compete agreements to protect trade secrets and investments they put into growing their businesses, including training workers.Rubbish. Employers in the states that already ban them (such as California) show no sign of being more reluctant to invest in their businesses or train workers.The real purpose of non-competes is to make it harder (or impossible) for workers to bargain with rival employers for better pay or working conditions.As we learn again and again, capitalism needs guardrails to survive. Unfettered greed leads to monopolies that charge high prices, suppress wages and corrupt politics.As Adam Smith, the putative godfather of conservative economics, put it in The Wealth of Nations: “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.”America once understood the importance of fighting monopolies.The presidential election of 1912 was dominated by the question. Once elected, Woodrow Wilson created the FTC to save capitalism from the depredations of powerful corporations and “robber barons” that had turned the economy of the Gilded Age into vast monopolies, fueling unprecedented inequality and political corruption.But as the FTC began prosecuting giant corporations, the robber barons saw the agency as a major threat – and did what they could to strip it of its powers. Within a few years, the FTC was derided as the “little old lady of Pennsylvania Avenue”.In 1976, when I ran the policy planning staff of the FTC, the agency again began cracking down on corporations under its aggressive chairman, Michael Pertschuk. (Pertschuk died just weeks ago.)Big corporations were so unhappy with the FTC under Pertschuk that they tried to choke off the agency’s appropriation, briefly closing it down in 1978. But Pertschuk didn’t relent.He (and I) left the agency when Ronald Reagan appointed a new chairman, who promptly defanged it.Now, under its new Biden-appointed chair, Lina M Khan, the FTC is back to being the activist agency that progressives sought in 1914 and Pertschuk resurrected in 1976.The FTC’s new proposed rule banning non-compete agreements marks the first time since Pertschuk headed the FTC that the agency has issued a rule prohibiting an unfair method of competition.I wouldn’t be surprised if the new radical-right Republicans now in control of the House tried to pull off a stunt similar to what the House tried in 1978.In the meantime, kudos to Biden, Lina Khan (and her fellow FTC commissioners Rebecca Kelley-Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya), and to the FTC staff for protecting American workers and economic competition – and thereby protecting American capitalism from the depredations of untrammeled greed.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is 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 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
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      ‘I’ve got to get out and tell people’: Pete Buttigieg on his road ahead

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      Interview‘I’ve got to get out and tell people’: Pete Buttigieg on his road aheadDavid Smith in Washington Can the US revitalise its infrastructure? Is the US ready for a gay president? And does Buttigieg still plan to run one day?From Pete Buttigieg’s old office in South Bend, Indiana, you could see the hospital where he was born, churches built for Irish and Polish immigrants and a factory that made cabinets for Singer sewing machines. “This was the Silicon Valley of its day,” the then mayor told the Guardian in February 2019.Nearly four years later, Buttigieg is occupying a loftier perch. As America’s transportation secretary, his framed photograph sits alongside those of Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris in the lobby of the Department of Transportation. The building is located in Navy Yard, a neighbourhood on the Anacostia River that is home to the Washington Nationals baseball team.Too much, too young? Mayor could become the first millennial presidentRead moreButtigieg has gone from running a city of 100,000 people to a department whose budget is bigger than the gross domestic product of most countries. “As mayor, of course, I worked on a broad range of issues – anything that happened in the city was my concern,” he recalls in a pre-Christmas interview with the Guardian in Washington.“But here you work with a daunting scope and scale. The scope ranges from commercial space travel to the oversight of our Merchant Marine Academy, so not just planes, trains and automobiles, but everything in between.”The meteoric rise helps explain why Buttigieg is widely seen as potential presidential material in 2024, 2028 or beyond. He speaks eight languages, had spells at Harvard, Oxford and McKinsey, became a mayor before he turned 30 and did military service in Afghanistan. He won the Democratic presidential caucuses in Iowa in 2020 but, perhaps more importantly, knew when it was time to step aside so the party could unite around Biden.Now Biden is 80 and Buttigieg is 40, until his next birthday on 19 January. Some Democrats yearn to see generational change, especially if Republicans nominate Ron DeSantis, the 44-year-old governor of Florida, for president in 2024. The Politico website recently highlighted the activities of his allies in a “dark money” group and political action committee under the provocative headline “Pete’s campaign in waiting”.But part of Buttigieg’s formidable communication skills is a refusal to take such bait. He insists with AI-worthy precision: “I have my hands more than full with my day job and one job at a time is plenty. And it’s a great job and I have a great boss and I’m proud to be part of this team.”The day job undeniably offers a lot to chew on. American infrastructure ranked just 13th in the world in 2019, according to the World Economic Forum. This was the nation that erected the tallest and most beautiful skyscrapers, built an interstate highway system and put a man on the moon. But in recent decades there has been a sense of turning inward – of decline and neglect – as Asia and Europe raced ahead with gleaming airports and faster trains.Where did it all go wrong? One answer is President Ronald Reagan, an arch exponent of laissez-faire capitalism who memorably declared that the nine most terrifying words in the English language are “I’m from the government and I’m here to help.”Buttigieg, who is unapologetically from the government and here to help, says: “The beginning of the Reagan era brought about a vicious cycle of public trust, where resources were stripped away from the government. It became harder for government to deliver for people and then those policy failures reduced trust in government, which made people more reluctant to trust their taxpayer dollars to government, which meant even fewer resources and even worse results.“The cycle of disinvestment has been accumulating for essentially my entire lifetime and part of what’s so exciting about this moment is a chance to re-establish public trust by making big investments to get big results to build public confidence in the things we can do together through good public policy and good public investment.”Biden, openly critical of Reagan’s trickle-down economics, set about changing the paradigm. After long negotiations with Congress, including late-night phone calls and several declarations that the deal was dead, he last year signed a trillion-dollar bipartisan infrastructure law.‘Glad to have a president who can ride a bicycle’: Buttigieg dismisses Republican claims about Biden’s healthRead moreThe money is being – or will be – spent on rebuilding roads, bridges, ports and airports, upgrading public transit and rail systems, replacing lead pipes to provide clean water, cleaning up pollution, providing high-speed internet, delivering cheaper and cleaner energy – and creating thousands of jobs.One year in, the administration has announced more than $185bn (£154bn) in funding and more than 6,900 specific projects reaching more than 4,000 communities across the country. This includes 2,800 bridge repair and replacement projects and $3bn for 3,075 airport upgrades.The legislation handed the former “Mayor Pete” the biggest infusion of cash into the transport sector since the 1950s interstate highways. He understands how much is riding on it. “What’s at stake in this transportation legislation – and the president talks about it this way too – is more than just the nuts and bolts of it,” he says.“It really is a chance to vindicate the democratic system over some of the systems that are trying to challenge us right now in this century. It sounds a little bit cosmic but that really is part of what is on the table right now with our responsibility to deliver.”The bipartisan law allowed the White House to crow that while “infrastructure week” was a punchline under President Donald Trump, his successor is delivering an “infrastructure decade”. Buttigieg comments: “As you might imagine, I’m no fan of President Trump. I will say this is the one time I was fooled. I actually thought they were going to do it because he talked about it all the time.“It would have been good politics and everybody wanted it to happen, it would have benefited the economy, and they still couldn’t get it done. So after four years of chest thumping and big promises without results, this administration knew, this president knew, that it was long past time to do something and it turned out the public appetite was there, the deal space was there.”Even Republicans who voted against the law, branding it a “socialist wishlist”, are happy to reap the benefits. “It’s hard not to chuckle when I get a letter from some member of Congress, invariably a Republican member of Congress, who declared this legislation to be garbage or wasteful social spending or whatever now saying this is funding that really needs to come to my district for these needs. But at the end of the day, it vindicates our approach.”Buttigieg want to be “strategically shameless” in putting up signs on active projects to make sure that the law gets the credit it deserves. Infrastructure is not like tax policy where, at the stroke of a pen, people feel results instantly. “I often tell the team: part of what we’re doing is building cathedrals and the nature of cathedrals is the person who celebrates the opening may not have been there when the cornerstone was laid.“But because we’re doing so much at so many different scales and in so many different places, the truth is there’s a range of projects where we’ve already turned a spade, improvements that are going to be felt very quickly to some of the bigger cathedrals that will be years and years in the making.”Indeed, Democrats insist that some of the positive effects are being felt already. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia tweeted on 19 December: “Week after week, the infrastructure law is paying dividends. It’s expanding highways like I-64, upgrading airports, fixing crumbling bridges and building new bike paths. It’s revitalizing our communities and making every travel day better.The law’s provisions to tackle systemic racism have come under attack from Republicans and others on the right. Senator Ted Cruz tweeted with sarcasm: “The roads are racist. We must get rid of roads.” DeSantis remarked: “I heard some stuff, some weird stuff from the secretary of transportation trying to make this about social issues. To me, a road’s a road.”Buttigieg is ready to have that debate. He often notes that the phrase “on the wrong side of the tracks”, referring to the undesirable part of town, is indicative of how a railway or highway not only connects but also divides. “As I’ve had this conversation around the country, it’s striking how, wherever I am, I can see in the faces nodding when I bring this up that people are visualising their own community’s version of this.“I talk about this not to go around scolding anybody but precisely because we have the means to do better and that’s why it’s so perplexing to see the resistance to it, because, if you have a choice between having a place become more divided or less divided along racial lines through transportation infrastructure choices, why wouldn’t you want it to be less divided?”At least $1bn (£831m) will help reconnect cities and neighbourhoods that had been racially segregated or divided by road projects. But the legislation is also about including businesses and workers who have been left out in the past.“There’s some impressive – and sometimes moving – things taking place in the building trades, for example, that are in many places opening their doors to workers of colour and women who will make great skilled labourers and make good incomes to build their families around, who just never would have this opportunity in the last round of major infrastructure investment in this country.”Transport contributes more greenhouse gases to the US economy than any other sector; Buttigieg wants it to be part of the climate solution as the infrastructure law promises a national network of electric vehicle chargers. Road accidents kill about 40,000 people a year, comparable with gun violence and far worse than other countries; Buttigieg finds this unacceptable and hopes that self-driving cars might be part of the solution.The secretary, who speaks in paragraphs more polished than most people write, has been willing to make such arguments on Rupert Murdoch’s conservative Fox News network in a series of appearances that have gone viral. It is the kind of outreach to hostile territory that evokes comparisons with Biden’s spirit of bipartisanship – and fuels talk of a future White House run.He explains: “There are a lot of people who tune into ideological networks, as viewers in good faith who may never hear our administration’s perspective if we’re not out there. I’m not the only one doing it but I have been surprised to see it become something of a speciality.“You can’t blame somebody for rejecting our approach if they’ve literally never even heard us defend it, especially when it comes to transportation, where most of what we’re doing is actually broadly well-understood and popular but we’ve got to remind people of that.“It can be tough in a space – and Fox is an example – that tends to offer more coverage of some controversial angle around electric vehicles or racial justice than would offer any coverage of the thousands of specific projects that we’re investing in around the country. I’ve got to get out there and tell people. As long as they’ll have me, I’ll keep doing it.”Buttigieg recently moved from a red state, Indiana, to an increasingly blue one, Michigan, with his husband Chasten and their two young children. On 13 December the couple were on the White House south lawn to watch Biden sign the Respect for Marriage Act, which protects same-sex and interracial marriages under federal law.The secretary reflects: “To be sitting with Chasten and seeing the president make that into law was really moving and and reassuring. We shouldn’t have to depend on a one-vote margin on the supreme court to have something as important as millions of marriages be protected and I think Congress recognised that, and I think the American public recognised that.”The shift in public attitudes was illustrated in last month’s midterm elections, where for the first time LGBTQ+ candidates ran for election in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, and where Oregon’s Tina Kotek and Massachusetts’ Maura Healey ensured that the US will have an out lesbian governor for the first time. Buttigieg himself was in demand as a campaign surrogate for various Democratic candidates.A New York Times article about him in June 2016 was headlined “The First Gay President?” So is America now ready? “I’m sure it’ll happen,” he says. “What we’re seeing right now is the good, the bad and the ugly. The good news is we have this progress on things like marriage and representation in senior leadership. The bad news is it’s coming in a climate of rights being withdrawn at the US supreme court, including potentially more of the hard-won rights of the LGBTQ+ community.“And the ugly is you see a level of targeting going on for political convenience, in my view, driven by a lot of figures who don’t want to talk about their lack of solutions on other issues, that can really be costly and even physically dangerous for vulnerable communities right now. You can connect the rhetoric we’ve seen, and some of the legislation we’ve seen in state legislatures, with the sometimes violent atmosphere -especially towards transgender youth but across the board for vulnerable people in this community.”The interview draws to a close in a meeting room where one wall is dominated by the faces of past transportation secretaries in neat rows. Biden’s Rooseveltian ambitions look set to make Buttigieg the most powerful holder of the office yet.“Good to see you – and different from the 14th floor in South Bend,” he says affably on his way out. “Who knows where I’ll see you next?”TopicsPete ButtigiegUS politicsInfrastructureBiden administrationUS domestic policyDemocratsinterviewsReuse this content More