US foreign policy

Subterms

    More stories

    • 138 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguished

      by

      Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguished ABC’s man in Washington delivers a second riveting and horrifying read about how close America came to disasterTrumpworld is in legal jeopardy. The 45th president’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, urging the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, may have birthed a grand jury.‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreIn Manhattan, the outgoing district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, has empaneled one of those, to look at Trump’s business. As a Vanity Fair headline blared, “The Trump Organization should be soiling itself right now.”In Washington, the Department of Justice ponders the prosecution of Steve Bannon, chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign and a pivotal figure in the “Stop the Steal” movement second time round.For Trump, out-of-office has not translated into out-of-mind. He thrives on all the attention.Amid it all, Jonathan Karl dives once again into the Stygian mosh pit, this time with Betrayal, a sequel to Front Row at the Trump Show, a New York Times bestseller.In that book, in the spring of 2020, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent prophesied that “Trump’s war on truth may do lasting damage to American democracy”. Sadly, he wasn’t wrong. Front Row preceded by months a coup attempt egged on by a defeated president. Looking back, Trump’s embrace of birtherism, “alternative facts” and crowd violence were mere prelude to the chaos that filled his time in power, his final days in office and all that has come and gone since then.In his second book, under the subtitle The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl gets members of Trump’s cabinet to speak on the record. They paint a portrait of a wrath-filled president, untethered from reality, bent on revenge.Karl captures Bill Barr denouncing Trump’s election-related conspiracy theories and criticizing his election strategy. Appearing determined to salvage his own battered reputation, Trump’s second attorney general tells Karl his president “was making it too much of a base election. I felt that he had to repair the bridges he had burned [with moderate voters] in the suburbs.”By that metric, Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s governor-elect, has a bright future, a politician who puts suburban dads and rural moms at ease. No wonder Republicans think they have found a star, and with him a winning formula.As for Trump’s claims about rigged voting machines, Barr “realized from the beginning it was just bullshit” and says “the number of actual improper voters were de minimus”. No matter, to Trump: he continues to demand Republican legislatures carry out post-election audits.Karl delivers further confirmation of Mitch McConnell’s fractious personal relationship with Trump, a man the Kentucky senator reportedly repeatedly mocked. According to Karl, McConnell, then Senate majority leader, sought to formally disinvite Trump from Joe Biden’s inauguration. Kevin McCarthy, the chief House Republican, leaked the plan to the White House. In turn, Trump tweeted that he would not attend.McConnell attempted to thread the needle, placating Trump while keeping the GOP’s Koch brothers wing onside. But once he acknowledged Biden’s victory, the damage was permanently done. McConnell was an object of Trumpian scorn.That the senator jammed Amy Coney Barrett on to the supreme court days before the 2020 election and before that played blocking back for Brett Kavanaugh is now rendered irrelevant. Trump wants McConnell out of Senate leadership. Adding insult to injury, Trump recently told the Washington Post McConnell wasn’t a “real leader” because “he didn’t fight for the presidency”, and said he was “only a leader because he raises a lot of money”.“You know,” Trump said, “with the senators, that’s how it is, frankly. That’s his primary power.”He’s not wrong all the time.Betrayal also documents a commander-in-chief who scared his own cabinet witless. After Trump junked the Iran nuclear deal, for example, Tehran thumbed its nose back. Drama ensued, because Trump wanted to know his options.Chris Miller, then acting defense secretary, tells Karl that to dissuade Trump from ordering the destruction of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, he chose to play the role of “fucking madman” – his words, not Karl’s – which meant advocating that very course of action. According to Karl, not even Mike Pompeo, then secretary of state and an Iran hawk, played along.“Oftentimes with provocative people, if you get more provocative than them, they then have to dial it down,” Miller explains to Karl. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, I was fucking crazy, but that guy’s batshit.’”Here, the reader might pause to imagine a campaign slogan for Trump in 2024: “Fucking crazy, but not batshit”.On a similar note, Karl depicts Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s crony and attorney, as a walking timebomb. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, avoided the former New York mayor. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, saw him as a corrosive force.“I’m not going to let Rudy in the building for any more of these,” Meadows reportedly told Chris Christie, New Jersey’s former governor, and Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, as they prepared for debates with Biden.These days, Giuliani is suspended from the bar, reportedly under investigation and unable to persuade Trump to pay his bills. Christie and Trump are at loggerheads too, over sins real and imagined, past and present.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read moreAs for Meadows and Stepien, they are in the crosshairs of the House select committee focused on the US Capitol attack. From the looks of things only Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have so far remained intact, ensconced in Florida, sufficiently distanced from Big Daddy.Despite such fallout, Betrayal concludes with words of warning. Karl rightly contends that Trump’s “betrayal” of American democracy highlighted “just how vulnerable” the system is.“The continued survival of our republic,” he writes, “may depend, in part, on the willingness of those who promoted Trump’s lies and those who remained silent to acknowledge they were wrong.”In a hypothetical rematch, Trump leads Biden 45-43. Among independent voters, he holds a double-digit lead. Don’t hold your breath.
      Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show is published in the US by Dutton
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

    • 125 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden plays up positives but frustrations apparent after Cop26 talks

      by

      Cop26Biden plays up positives but frustrations apparent after Cop26 talksTrip to Glasgow was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep emissions cuts – and ended with him blaming China and Russia Oliver Milman@olliemilmanWed 3 Nov 2021 08.07 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 11.05 EDTJoe Biden returned to the US in the pre-dawn gloom on Wednesday to a climate agenda still held in frustrating limbo by Congress, following his high-profile cameo at crunch UN climate talks in Scotland that was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep cuts to planet-heating emissions.Nuclear arms hawks give bureaucratic mauling to Biden vow to curb arsenalRead moreThe US president had aimed to arrive in Glasgow for the Cop26 summit with historic climate legislation in hand, which he could use to brandish at world leaders who still harbor resentments over four turbulent years of Donald Trump, where the climate crisis was variously ignored and mocked.Instead, the intransigence of Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat and leading beneficiary of fossil fuel industry largesse, has left the landmark climate bill pared back and not voted upon, its fate left uncertain throughout Biden’s trip.In Glasgow, Biden vowed America will “lead by the power of our example”, but was the target of activist protests over oil and gas leases issued back home, while leaders of several major emitters either did not show up or failed to submit vastly improved emissions reduction plans.Biden ended his time in Scotland by ladling blame upon China for not taking the climate emergency seriously.“The most important thing the president needed to do was reassure the rest of the world that the US is back in addressing this global crisis,” said Christy Goldfuss, an environment adviser to Barack Obama and now a policy expert at the Center for American Progress.“But we have to have some humility, we have ground to make up. We can’t reclaim the mantle of leadership until the US can deliver on its commitments. Every Democrat, apart from one senator, supports climate action. That is untenable and everyone understands that.”Biden has sought to play up the positives of his time at Cop26, where he has left negotiators to thrash out a deal aimed at averting disastrous global heating of beyond 1.5C. “I can’t think of any two days where more has been accomplished on climate,” he said.The highlights include a global pledge, led by the US and European Union, to slash methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by 30% by 2030, based on last year’s levels. More than 100 countries, including six of the 10 largest emitters of methane, have signed on to the agreement to cut methane, which is spewed out by oil and gas drilling operations and agriculture and is about 80 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide.Biden backed this move with new regulations rolled out by the US Environment Protection Agency to cut methane emissions by about 75% from hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells. “The pledge to cut methane is the single biggest and fastest bite out of today’s warming,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.There was also a sweeping accord, which Biden vowed to support with billions of dollars, to end deforestation within a decade. The pact encompasses 85% of the world’s forests, vital for biodiversity and to soak up excess carbon from the atmosphere, and is backed by Brazil, Russia and China, countries often reluctant to make such promises.But the US was clearly piqued at how little the relentless diplomacy of John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, had done to extract deeper emissions cuts from leading carbon polluters. Neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping, who both offered barely improved new targets at the talks, traveled to Glasgow. Biden’s frustration bubbled over as he prepared to depart on Tuesday.“The fact that China is trying assert a new role in the world as a world leader, not showing up? Come on,” Biden said. “It’s just a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to have any leadership now? Same with Putin in Russia: his tundra is burning. Literally his tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems and he’s mum on his willingness to do anything.”The blame placed at Cop upon China, which is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, comes amid frayed US-China relations on several fronts. The Global Times, a newspaper run by China’s Communist party, said in an editorial that Washington’s attitude had made it “impossible for China to see any potential to have fair negotiation amid the tensions”.Goldfuss said: “The blame game is not something the US should be really playing right now given we have so much work to do ourselves.”Back home, Biden has acknowledged his presidency will probably be defined by the proposed reconciliation bill that contains $555bn in climate measures. The White House says the legislation would bring the country close to the president’s goal of cutting emissions in half this decade and help curb disastrous climate breakdown that is already unleashing severe heatwaves, floods and drought at home and around the world.The far-reaching legislation needs every Democratic vote to pass the Senate but West Virginia’s Manchin has questioned its scope, said it is filled with “gimmicks” and has already ensured that a centerpiece plan to phase out fossil fuels from the American electricity grid was axed from the bill.Democrats continue to fret over the fate of the bill, with a vote that could take place as early as this week, with Biden saying he is “confident we will get it done”. But climate campaigners say the president could do more without the help of Congress to stem the flow of fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis.The opening week of Cop26 saw Biden’s administration announce it will sell off oil and gas drilling leases across 730,000 acres of the US west, with a further auction of 80m offshore acres of the Gulf of Mexico, an area larger than the UK, set to commence later this month. The International Energy Agency has said that no new fossil fuel projects can commence if the world is to keep to the agreed 1.5C warming limit.“With all eyes on Glasgow this week, the Biden administration seems to be turning its back on reality and throwing climate leadership into the toilet,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians.TopicsCop26Joe BidenUS politicsDemocratsJohn KerryUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Master of the Game review: Henry Kissinger as hero, villain … and neither

      by

      BooksMaster of the Game review: Henry Kissinger as hero, villain … and neitherMartin Indyk’s well-woven biography is sympathetic to the preacher of realpolitik condemned by many as a war criminal Lloyd GreenSun 31 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 02.02 EDTAs secretary of state, Henry Kissinger nursed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war to a close. The disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel ultimately yielded a peace treaty. The Syrian border remains tensely quiet. Unlike Vietnam, in the Middle East Kissinger’s handiwork holds.Friendly Fire review: Israeli warrior Ami Ayalon makes his plea for peaceRead moreThe Sunni Arab world has gradually come to terms with the existence of the Jewish state. Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. Relations with Saudi Arabia are possible.For Kissinger, student and preacher of realpolitik, peace was seldom an end in itself. His pivot to China was about boxing in the USSR. To him, the cold war and existing nation states were what mattered most. The Viet Cong earned a seat at the table because US troops were bogged down. The Palestinians were not so high on Kissinger’s agenda.Now comes Martin Indyk with a 688-page, well-woven history fittingly subtitled “Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy”. The book reflects the author’s admiration for and access to his subject.Kissinger last granted Indyk an interview at the age of 97. Now he’s 98. Indyk’s wife, Gahl Burt, once worked on Kissinger’s staff. Indyk himself is a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations. His gigs included ambassador to Israel and Middle East envoy. A former Australian national, he volunteered on a kibbutz. He checks many boxes.Master of the Game does convey a sense that Indyk wishes his own attainments equaled those of his subject. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1998 Wye River Memorandum between the Israelis and Palestinians quickly degenerated into the second intifada, flareups in Gaza and Hamas vying with the Palestinian Authority for power on the ground.In the Obama years, Israel emerged as a partisan flashpoint in the US, like abortion and taxes, to the chagrin of the Democratic establishment and Israel’s diplomatic corps but to the delight of the Republicans and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister.In Master of the Game, Indyk lays out the run-up to the October war of 1973, the responses of the US and the USSR, and Kissinger’s nearly two-year hopscotch between Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus.Indyk confirms what is widely known, that while Kissinger did not explicitly give Egypt the green light to attack Israeli-occupied Sinai, he was pleased with the outcome. The war and its aftermath presented the US with the opportunity to lure Egypt out of the Soviet orbit, even if Israel had to pay a price.The war Kissinger “had not expected at the moment”, writes Indyk, “would provide him with the opportunity to manipulate antagonisms”. Those, in turn, would help “begin the construction of what he intended to be a new, more stable American-led order in the Middle East”.Israeli combat deaths topped 2,600 – reportedly more than 1,000 in the war’s first five days. At the time, Kissinger noted that the latter figure would be proportionally equal to twice the number of US deaths in eight years in Vietnam. As a result, Kissinger coldly “assumed that when he needed Israel to accept a ceasefire it would have no choice but to do so”.Kissinger saw that a ceasefire would yield territorial concessions. He got that right but the pace was not necessarily to his liking. Disengagement arrived too quickly and then too slowly for him.In spring 1975, Gerald Ford announced the reassessment of America’s relationship with Israel. Months later, in early September, Egypt and Israel entered a second disengagement agreement, a precursor to the 1978 Camp David Accords hashed out by Jimmy Carter.While “Start-up Nation” has emerged as durable military power, Indyk yearns for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.After noting the Abraham Accords, agreements between Israel and Gulf states, Indyk contends that the “Trump administration actually made matters worse” by proposing a Palestinian entity “as a heavily circumscribed enclave within Israeli territory”. He also acknowledges that the accords took Israeli annexation of the West Bank off the table.As a Talmudic dictum goes, “avar zemano, batel korbano”. Loosely translated, the train has left the station. What applies to a sacrificial rite may pertain to politics. Even the peace process came with a sell-by date. Indyk admits that “the three presidents who succeeded Clinton” tried but failed to reach a lasting agreement, but while Jared Kushner failed to snag the deal of the century, his diplomatic achievement is tangible.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read moreIndyk also explores the competing tugs on Kissinger, a refugee, of loyalty, religion and ethnicity. Richard Nixon told Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador, Kissinger was prone to “indulge Israel’s nationalist sentiments”. On the other hand, Israeli protestors outside Kissinger’s hotel once bellowed: “Jew boy go home.” The Jackson-Vanick amendment, which linked preferred trade status for the USSR to its performance on emigration, infuriated Kissinger.Kissinger has plenty of detractors. Against the backdrop of Nixon’s Vietnam policy, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, genocide in Bangladesh and East Timor and a coup and invasion in Cyprus, he has been called a war criminal.On the right, the late Phyllis Schlafly dangled Kissinger’s otherness in the face of Ford’s bid for the nomination in 1976. She said Kissinger did not understand “typical American values” and claimed that the loyalty of the German-born and accented diplomat rested with a “supranational” order.Indyk writes: “When it came to managing violent middle eastern passions and preserving peace, history’s judgment should surely be that Henry Kissinger did well.”Reasonable people will freely differ.
      Master of the Game is published in the US by Knopf
      TopicsBooksUS foreign policyUS national securityUS politicsIsraelPalestinian territoriesMiddle East and North AfricareviewsReuse this content More

    • 175 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver

      by

      Cop26Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his wordsOliver Milman@olliemilmanFri 29 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 04.17 EDTWith no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate AronoffRead moreThe US president, who has vowed to tackle a climate crisis he has described as an “existential threat” to civilization, will be welcomed to the Cop26 talks with a sense of relief following the decisions of his predecessor, who pulled his country out of the landmark Paris climate agreement and derided climate science as “bullshit”.But Biden, who departed to Europe on Thursday and arrived in Rome on Friday morning for a G20 summit, will head to Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda whittled away by a recalcitrant Congress and a barrage of criticism from climate activists who claim Biden’s actions have yet to match his words.This disconnect has perturbed delegates keen to see a reliable American partner emerge from the Trump era, amid increasingly dire warnings from scientists that “irreversible” heatwaves, floods, crop failures and other effects are being locked in by governments’ sluggish response to global heating.“The US is still the world’s largest economy, other nations pay attention to it, and we’ve never had a president more committed to climate action,” said Alice Hill, who was a climate adviser to Barack Obama. “But there is skepticism being expressed by other countries. They saw our dramatic flip from Obama to Trump and the worry is we will flip again. A lack of consistency is the issue.”Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was a key architect of the Paris agreement, said that Biden had put climate “at the top of his agenda” and that US diplomacy has helped eke some progress from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Africa and India.But she added the US had a “historical climate credibility problem” and that other leaders fret about its domestic political dysfunction and long-term commitment.“We do worry, because it has happened before and could happen again,” she said. “The US is the world’s largest historical emitter and never passed a significant climate bill. [Biden] has still got a long way to go to make up for Trump’s lost years.”In a show of soft American power, Biden is bringing a dozen of his cabinet members to Glasgow, where delegates from nearly 200 countries will wrangle over an agreement aimed at avoiding a disastrous 1.5C of global heating, a key objective of the Paris deal. But perhaps the most consequential figure to the American effort, rivaling the president himself, is remaining at home – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.Manchin, a centrist Democrat, looms large at the talks having derailed the centerpiece of a landmark reconciliation bill that would slash US emissions. The White House still hopes the bill, which would be the first major climate legislation ever passed in the US, will help convince other leaders to also increase their efforts in Glasgow to head off climate breakdown.Cop26 delegates have become acutely aware of how Biden needs the vote of Manchin, who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, to pass his agenda and help determine the future livability of places far from the West Virginia senator’s home state.“Bangladeshis probably know more about American politics than the average American does, people know about Joe Manchin,” said Saleemul Haq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh, which faces looming devastation from flooding. “Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry and is trying to cut everything the coal lobby doesn’t want.“Biden’s agenda is stuck in Congress with his own senators and he hasn’t delivered anything near what the US should deliver. It’s just words. His actions are woefully inadequate.”Biden has admitted that “the prestige of the United States is on the line” over the reconciliation bill, according to Democrats who met with the president, but publicly he has remained upbeat. When John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, said that the failure to secure the legislation would be like “President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again”, Biden gently rebuked him, saying that Kerry had indulged in “hyperbole”.“In every single day of this administration we’ve been driving forward a whole of government approach that sets us up to go into this climate conference with an incredible deal of momentum,” said an administration official.The White House has pointed to the rejoining of the Paris accords, the resurrection of several environmental rules axed by Trump and what it is calling the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history” with the reconciliation bill, which is still set to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars in support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.Progressives argue, however, that the Biden administration has done little to curb the fossil fuel industry, most notably in allowing two controversial oil projects, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Line 3 pipeline, to proceed. Just a week after the end of Cop26, the administration will auction off 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, an area larger than the UK.“The president is doing so much, but he is simply not doing everything he can to deliver climate justice and save lives – and we need him to now,” said Cori Bush, a progressive Democratic congresswoman who has visited the site of the Line 3 construction in Minnesota.Protests have erupted in front of the White House over this record, with several young climate activists currently staging a hunger strike to demand Biden does more.“President Biden started very strongly by rejoining the Paris agreement but it’s been a frustrating past few months, things have slowed down,” said Jade Begay, a climate activist who is part of a White House advisory council. “Joe Manchin is holding hostage our survival on planet Earth for his own political career and people are really questioning if Biden will stick to his promises.”05:18The US has also declined to set an end date for the coal sector, unlike countries such as the UK and Germany. This position runs contrary to a key objective of the British government as Cop26 hosts, with Alok Sharma, the conference’s president, pledging the talks will help “consign coal to history”.Asked by the Guardian about the US’s stance on coal, Sharma said progress on the issue has been slow until now but “we want to see what is going to be possible” at the Glasgow summit. “I welcome the fact we now have an administration in the US that is very focused on taking climate action and supporting the international effort,” he said.Sharma added: “It is ultimately on world leaders to deliver. It is world leaders who signed up to the Paris agreement and … if I can put it like this, it is on them to collectively deliver at Cop.”TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsUS foreign policyJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More

    • 163 Shares119 Views

      in US Politics

      Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate Aronoff

      by

      OpinionCop26Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed?Kate AronoffThe tools at Biden’s disposal to limit dangerous global heating are enormous. If he wants it, he can do it – but does he want it? Thu 28 Oct 2021 09.24 EDTLast modified on Thu 28 Oct 2021 12.39 EDTAfter months of bullish rhetoric about the United States’ climate leadership, the US could still show up to COP 26 empty handed. That doesn’t have to be the case – whatever charismatic obstructionists like Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema have to say about it. The climate certainly isn’t waiting on them to change: the UN Emissions Gap Report released this week finds that the world is on track to warm by a catastrophic 2.7C degrees.The White House has pegged its Paris Agreement success on being able to pass an ambitious spending package, with plenty of money built in for key climate priorities. In recent weeks the administration pegged its audacious goal, of slashing emission by at least 50 percent below 2005 levels by 2030, to something called a Clean Electricity Payments Program (CEPP). That’s out. And even if the compromise $55bn a year of climate spending the White House promised on Thursday makes it through to legislation, carrots for green spending can only go so far. The US will still not have picked up critical sticks needed to go after the polluting industries driving up temperatures. The dirty dozen: meet America’s top climate villainsRead moreThey’re desperately needed. According to the UN-backed 2021 Production Gap Report, the world’s governments are on track to produce double the amount of fossil fuels than is consistent with capping warming at 1.5C degrees. In the US, oil and gas production are now on track to expand by 17 and 12%, respectively, by 2030.The United States showing up in good faith to Glasgow will require it to step on the third rail of both US and global climate politics: going after fossil fuels. Those words don’t appear in the Paris Agreement itself. But rapidly winding them down is essential to achieving its goals of limiting warming by “well below” 2C degrees, with an aspiration (repeated frequently by the Biden administration) to limit temperature rise to just 1.5C degrees.The Biden administration is also on track to approve more oil and gas drilling on federal lands than any president since George W Bush. Sadly, this is not the first time Democrats have let us down on climate action. It was just days after the Paris Agreement that the Obama administration quietly repealed the 40 year-old crude oil export ban as part of an omnibus, must-pass spending measure in 2015. In the four years after its passage crude oil exports expanded by 750%, allowing the US to eventually cross the threshold to becoming a net oil exporter in the winter of 2020. The same year the United States was the world’s third largest gas exporter.This trajectory is plainly out of step with a liveable planet. Indigenous leaders who converged in Washington under the banner of People v Fossil Fuels earlier this month were joined by 13 members of Congress recently in calling on the administration to use the full extent of its powers to start treating the climate crisis like the emergency it is, putting a stop to fossil fuel expansion. The tools at Biden’s disposal, as they note, are enormous.The EPA has the power to stringently regulate carbon dioxide and methane, which it’s expected to make steps toward soon. By declaring a national emergency, Biden could reinstate the crude oil export ban virtually overnight, stemming the flow of US fossil fuels being burned abroad to make a handful of executives here rich.Such a declaration would unlock the power to finally put the US on a wartime footing to rapidly deploy renewable energy and create millions of union jobs in the process, rather than relying only on piecemeal measures like tax credits. The Department of Energy could reject export permits under the Natural Gas Act. The Department of Interior could stop selling below-market rate leases to drill on public lands, activity that accounts for roughly a quarter of the country’s greenhouse gas emissions.There’s plenty of other low-hanging fruit, too: Biden could move to cancel the Line 3 pipeline, along with the Dakota Access Pipeline, Line 5 and the Mountain Valley Pass Pipeline. A recent analysis by Oil Change International, in fact, found that the White House has to prevent 1.6bn metric tonnes of emissions per year by rejecting those and another 20 fossil fuel projects. Existing laws like the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act grant the executive branch broad authority to do so. Internationally, the administration could join the UK and Italy at the G20 this week in pushing to phase-out coal and formally end overseas financing for all oil and gas projects through the US Export-Import Bank, as well. The State Department could drop its longstanding objections to concrete discussions of loss and damage financing and historical responsibility for rising temperatures at the UN climate talks in Glasgow.Joe Biden and members of his administration have frequently called climate change an “existential threat.” If the White House wanted to act like that’s true – and assert real US leadership at COP 26 – it could.
      Kate Aronoff is a staff writer at The New Republic. She is the co-author of A Planet To Win: Why We Need A Green New Deal (Verso) and the co-editor of We Own The Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style (The New Press)
      TopicsCop26OpinionClimate crisisJoe BidenUS politicsUS foreign policyJoe ManchincommentReuse this content More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump response to Capitol attack can’t be ‘swept under rug’, White House says – live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      Today so far

      4.47pm EDT
      16:47

      Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

      3.33pm EDT
      15:33

      Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

      2.29pm EDT
      14:29

      ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

      2.07pm EDT
      14:07

      Trump’s response to Capitol attack cannot be ‘swept under the rug,’ Psaki says

      12.31pm EDT
      12:31

      Interim summary

      Live feed

      Show

      5.45pm EDT
      17:45

      Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whites

      Sam Levine

      Texas Republicans are on the verge of enacting new voting maps that would entrench the state’s Republican and white majority even as its non-white population grows rapidly.
      Texas Republicans approved the congressional plan on Monday evening, sending it to Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, who is expected to sign the measure.
      The Texas maps offer perhaps the most brazen effort in the USs so far this year to draw new district lines to benefit one political party, a practice called gerrymandering. The proposed congressional map would blunt growing Democratic strength in the Texas suburbs. Texas Republicans already have a 23-13 seat advantage in the state’s congressional delegation and the new maps would double the number of safe GOP congressional seats in the state from 11 to 22, according to the Washington Post.
      Democrats would have 12 safe seats, up from eight. There would be just one competitive congressional district in the state, down from 12.
      Read more:

      5.14pm EDT
      17:14

      The Supreme Court has declined to stop a vaccine requirement for health workers in Maine.
      Justice Stephen Breyer declined to hear an emergency appeal to block a vaccine requirement announced by Maine governor Janet Mills. The policy requires health workers to get vaccinated against Covid-19 by 29 October or risk losing their jobs.
      According to the state’s dashboard tracking vaccinations among health workers, between 84 and 92% of workers are vaccinated in various settings so far.
      This is the first time the Supreme Court has dealt with a statewide vaccine mandate.

      5.02pm EDT
      17:02

      Today so far

      That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
      Here’s where the day stands so far:

      The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection is expected to hold Steve Bannon in contempt for refusing to comply with the panel’s subpoenas. The expected committee vote comes one day after Donald Trump filed a lawsuit seeking to block certain White House documents from the subpoenas by claiming executive privilege, which is considered a dubious legal argument given that he is no longer president.
      The White House said Trump’s response to the insurrection cannot be “swept under the rug”. “Our view, and I think the view of the vast majority of Americans, is that former President Trump abused the office of the presidency and attempted to subvert a peaceful transfer of power,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said when asked about Trump’s lawsuit. “The former president’s actions represented a unique and existential threat to our democracy that we don’t feel can be swept under the rug.”
      FBI agents raided a Washington home linked to Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin who was sanctioned by the treasury department in 2018.
      Progressive lawmakers voiced optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon. The president is now meeting with a group of centrist Democratic lawmakers to continue the negotiations over the reconciliation package and the infrastructure bill. Democrats are still working to reach an agreement on the top-line cost of the reconciliation package, and House progressives are holding up the passage of the infrastructure bill until a deal is struck.

      Maanvi will have more coming up, so stay tuned.

      4.47pm EDT
      16:47

      Progressives voice optimism about reaching deal after meeting with Biden

      Progressive lawmakers expressed optimism about reaching a deal on the reconciliation package after meeting with Joe Biden at the White House this afternoon.
      Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the group had a “really good, productive meeting” with Biden, Vice-President Kamala Harris and treasury secretary Janet Yellen.
      “And I think we all feel still even more optimistic about getting to an agreement on a really transformational bill,” Jayapal told reporters after the meeting.
      Jayapal said she was confident that “a majority” of progressive priorities would be included in the final bill, and she thanked Biden for his engagement in the negotiations.
      When asked if they agreed to a top-line cost of the bill, Jayapal said that Biden has consistently pushed for a price tag between $1.9tn and $2.2tn, after moderates like Joe Manchin indicated they would not support a $3.5tn package.
      “It’s not the number that we want,” Jayapal said. “But at the end of the day, the idea that we can do these programs, a multitude of programs and actually get them going so that they deliver immediate transformational benefits to people is what we’re focused on.”

      4.24pm EDT
      16:24

      Joe Biden’s first meeting with congressional Democrats has now ended after about two hours, according to the White House.
      The president’s first meeting was with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and Vice-president Kamala Harris and Treasury secretary Janet Yellen attended as well.
      Biden will now meet with some of the centrist Democrats in Congress to continue discussions about the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package.

      Updated
      at 4.35pm EDT

      4.04pm EDT
      16:04

      Gloria Oladipo

      In an attempt to recruit more officers, US Capitol police chief Thomas Manger is using the 6 January insurrection as a reason for why more people should join the force.
      As seen in a promotional video titled The US Capitol Police: A Call to Service, Manger describes how the attack, which many have cited as a failure on the part of Capitol law enforcement, made him want to once again join the force.

      U.S. Capitol Police
      (@CapitolPolice)
      One of our top priorities is to hire more officers to protect Congress and the U.S. Capitol: pic.twitter.com/xbKBOhmNpz

      October 19, 2021

      “I wanted to be a police officer again. I wanted to be there to help. We are looking for really good men and women who have that spirit for public service, who want to serve their country,” said Manger in the video.
      Following the insurrection, officers testified during a House committee about the events of 6 January, describing being swarmed and attacked by rioters as well as the trauma they dealt with.

      Updated
      at 4.35pm EDT

      3.33pm EDT
      15:33

      Mayorkas tests positive for coronavirus

      Gloria Oladipo

      US Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has tested positive for Covid-19, according to DHS spokesperson Marsha Espinosa.
      “Secretary Mayorkas tested positive this morning for the Covid-19 virus after taking a test as part of routine pre-travel protocols. Secretary Mayorkas is experiencing only mild congestion; he is fully vaccinated and will isolate and work at home per CDC protocols and medical advice. Contact tracing is underway,” said Espinosa in a statement to CNN.
      Mayorkas will no longer be participating in a planned trip to Colombia with secretary of state Antony Blinken and will be working from home, reports CNN.

      Updated
      at 4.44pm EDT

      3.19pm EDT
      15:19

      Gloria Oladipo

      An FBI spokesperson has said that the agency is conducting law enforcement activity in a New York City building in connection with an investigation into Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch whose Washington, DC home was raided today, according to ABC news.
      Stay tuned as more information emerges.

      3.13pm EDT
      15:13

      Gloria Oladipo

      House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland discussed the best strategy for Democrats to pass the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, arguing that lawmakers should fund fewer programs for longer, reports Politico.
      “My own view is that we ought to do fewer things better. We ought to make sure that which [programs] we include in the bill will have a real impact,” said Hoyer.
      Hoyer added that he wants “sense of permanency to those policies” that make it in the final version of the financial bill.
      Democrats are still working to get the megabill passed before a self-imposed deadline of 31 October but face opposition from key moderates such as Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Lawmakers including House speaker Nancy Pelosi of California have supported the idea of funding fewer programs, but contention remains around which programs will get cut, including threats to key climate change legislation.
      Hoyer added that Democrats are still aiming towards passing the social spending package and the infrastructure bill by the Halloween deadline and that “if [Congress] make significant progress that’ll also be success towards those ends.”

      2.53pm EDT
      14:53

      Gloria Oladipo

      Five people with the climate activist group Sunrise Movement will begin participating in a hunger strike in front of the White House tomorrow at 9am to demand that Congress pass the climate initiatives in the Biden administration’s $3.5tn spending package, a key part of Biden’s “Build Back Better” agenda, reports the New Republic.
      “We’re here to highlight how dire this moment is,” said Kidus Girma, 26, who is participating in the strike. “A couple hundred people in a two-part building in D.C. are deciding the scope of what climate justice can look like—and not just climate justice, but a lot of critical programs that before this pandemic folks did not think were possible.”
      Protestors decided to strike after news broke from the New York Times on Friday that Democrats were considering getting rid of the Clean Energy Payment Program, an initiative that would award utilities who increase their use of renewable energy, because of holdout from Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and other centrists.
      The hunger strike is apart of a longer week of actions targeting key Democrats who have not supported the legislation. Yesterday, Sunrise activists previously protested outside of Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona’s Phoenix office. Protestors have also previously protested by Manchin’s yatch.
      Protestors are asking people to participate in the hunger strike on Thursday, followed by a nationwide strike from school–coined Fridays for Future–that will result in a break in fasting.

      Updated
      at 2.53pm EDT

      2.29pm EDT
      14:29

      ‘Crime scene do not enter’ tape outside home linked to Deripaska, after raid

      Joanna Walters

      In further developments in the story of Russian metals billionaire Oleg Deripaska, FBI agents have raided a mansion in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Washington, DC, that is linked to him.
      Deripaska has ties to the Kremlin and Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former election campaign manager who served time for fraud and was pardoned by the former president. More

    • 163 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Colin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complications

      by

      Colin PowellColin Powell, former US secretary of state, dies at 84 of Covid complicationsPowell helped to build case for 2003 invasion of IraqJoe Biden hails ‘a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity’02:36Ed Pilkington in New York@edpilkingtonMon 18 Oct 2021 17.53 EDTFirst published on Mon 18 Oct 2021 08.17 EDTColin Powell, the former US secretary of state who played a pivotal role in attempting to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, has died from complications from Covid-19 aged 84, it was announced on Monday.Washington mourns death of Colin Powell as first tributes come in – liveRead morePowell, a retired four-star general who served as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff in the early 1990s, had been treated for Covid at Walter Reed national medical center in Bethesda, Maryland, where he died. He was fully vaccinated against coronavirus but had a compromised immune system having been treated for blood cancer.Announcing his death, his family said they had lost a “remarkable and loving husband, father, grandfather and a great American”.Powell was America’s first Black secretary of state, serving in that role under George W Bush from 2001 to 2005. He rose to the heights of military and diplomatic service from relatively disadvantaged beginnings, having been born in New York City to Jamaican parents and raised in the South Bronx where he was educated through public schools before he entered the army via a college officer training program.A statement from Joe Biden and the first lady, Jill Biden, said they were “deeply saddened by the passing of our dear friend and a patriot of unmatched honor and dignity” and referred to Powell having “repeatedly broken racial barriers [and] blazing a trail for others”.Biden further said of Powell: “Over our many years working together – even in disagreement – Colin was always someone who gave you his best and treated you with respect. Colin embodied the highest ideals of both warrior and diplomat … having fought in wars, he understood better than anyone that military might alone was not enough to maintain our peace and prosperity … Colin led with his personal commitment to the democratic values that make our country strong.”Kamala Harris, the first female and first Black and south Asian US vice-president, said Powell was “an incredible American” who “served with dignity and grace” and she praised Powell as a trailblazing inspiration in “what he did and how he did it”.He rose to occupy the top military position in the US government as chairman of the joint chiefs of staff between 1989 and 1993. In that role he presided over military crises including the invasion of Panama in 1989 and the first Gulf war in 1990-91.But it was in the buildup to the contentious invasion of Iraq in 2003 that Powell became a household name. He was the face of the Bush administration’s aggressive attempt to get the world community to back the invasion, based on false claims of Iraq’s possession of weapons of mass destruction.In February 2003, as secretary of state, Powell appeared before the UN security council and made categoric claims that the then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had biological weapons and was developing nuclear weapons. He said his intelligence was based in part on accounts of unidentified Iraqi defectors.The invasion went ahead without UN authorisation. The following year the CIA’s own Iraq Study Group released a report that concluded that Hussein had destroyed the last of the country’s weapons of mass destruction a decade previously.Powell stepped down as secretary of state in November 2004, following Bush’s re-election. He later insisted to reporters that he had tried to warn Bush of the consequences of invading Iraq, but had supported the president when the decision to proceed was taken.In a statement on Monday, Bush called Powell “a great public servant. He was such a favorite of presidents that he earned the Presidential Medal of Freedom – twice. He was highly respected at home and abroad.”Dick Cheney, Bush’s vice-president who was a leading hawk on Iraq, simply said that working with Powell during the first Gulf war had shown him “Powell’s dedication to the United States and his commitment to the brave and selfless men and women who serve our country in uniform. Colin was a trailblazer and role model for so many.”Tony Blair, who as British prime minister also backed the Iraq invasion, called Powell a “towering figure in American military and political leadership over many years. He inspired loyalty and respect … his life stands as a testament not only to dedicated public service but also a strong belief in willingness to work across partisan division in the interests of his country.”01:45After his time in government Powell remained a hugely influential commentator on US politics and public life. He grew increasingly disillusioned by the Republican party’s rightward drift.In 2008, despite party rivalries, he endorsed Barack Obama for president and later became one of Donald Trump’s leading critics.On Monday, Obama said Powell “never denied the role that race played in his own life and in our society more broadly. But he also refused to accept that race would limit his dreams,” adding that he was “deeply appreciative” that Powell had endorsed him.Trump pushed a lie that Obama had not been born in the US and, at a time when conspiracy theorists were suggesting Obama was a Muslim, Powell spoke out and said: “The correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. But the really right answer is, ‘What if he is?’”Powell voted against Trump in 2016 and 2020 and was scathing about Republicans who remained silent or actively embraced Trump’s lies. In January he said he was so disgusted by the insurrection of Trump supporters at the US Capitol that he no longer considered himself a Republican.Powell, a prostate cancer survivor, was undergoing treatment for multiple myeloma, a cancer of plasma cells, when he contracted Covid-19. He was scheduled to receive his Covid booster last week when he first got sick. “He couldn’t go to his appointment,” Peggy Cifrino, his longtime chief of staff, told the Washington Post. “He thought he was just not feeling quite right, and he went to the hospital.”The FDA authorized boosters of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for the immune-compromised and others in September, but the regulatory agency has not yet officially authorized boosters from Moderna or Johnson & Johnson. FDA advisors recommended Moderna boosters for vulnerable groups on Thursday and Johnson & Johnson boosters for those above the age of 18 on Friday.This blood cancer makes it hard to fight infections, putting patients at increased risk for coronavirus, and less likely to respond to vaccines. Dr Derry Segev, a transplant surgeon and professor of surgery and epidemiology at Johns Hopkins, told the Guardian earlier this month that severely immune-compromised patients sometimes don’t respond to additional mRNA vaccines adequately.“About 50% of [transplant] patients have no detectable antibody after two doses, and the ones who do have very low levels of antibody. You add a third dose, you get another few percent ultimately back in – but still even after three doses, and we’ve published even after four doses, there are a lot of transplant patients who don’t have good antibody responses.”“There are extremely rare cases of deaths or hospitalizations among fully vaccinated individuals,” the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said in a press briefing on Monday. But she emphasized that “an unvaccinated person has a more than 10 times greater risk of dying from Covid-19 compared to a fully vaccinated person”.Peggy Cifrino, Powell’s chief of staff, told CNN he also had Parkinson’s disease.Freshman progressive Democratic New York congressman Jamaal Bowman tweeted that Powell was an inspiration to him “as a Black man just trying to figure out the world”.Melody Schreiber contributed reportingTopicsColin PowellUS militaryUS foreign policyUS politicsnewsReuse this content More