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      ‘Tired of broken promises’: climate activists launch hunger strike outside White House

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      Climate crisis‘Tired of broken promises’: climate activists launch hunger strike outside White HouseThe protest comes a day after Joe Biden appeared ready to settle for a smaller environmental proposal ahead of the COP26 summit David Smith in Washington@smithinamericaWed 20 Oct 2021 15.20 EDTLast modified on Wed 20 Oct 2021 16.59 EDTWith little more than sun hats, placards and folding chairs, five young activists have begun a hunger strike in front of the White House urging Joe Biden not to abandon his bold climate agenda.The protest came a day after the US president threatened to water down his $3.5tn social and environmental legislation and with Washington’s commitments about to face scrutiny at the COP26 summit in Glasgow.The five protesters said they will eat no food and drink only water. They intend to gather in Lafayette Park every day from 8am to 8pm until their demands – which include a civilian climate corps, clean energy performance program and funding for environmental justice – are satisfied.The climate disaster is here – this is what the future looks likeRead moreOn Wednesday, in bright autumn sunshine, the quintet stood in a row holding signs including “Hunger striking for my dreams” and “Hunger striking for my future children”. They then sat down in red folding chairs with the words “Hunger strike day one” written in giant letters on the pavement before them.“I’m nervous in that I know that I will go on hunger strike until the demands are met, until I’m absolutely physically unable to,” said Ema Govea, a high school student who turned 18 on Tuesday. “That’s scary and I know my parents are worried and my friends back home are worried.”Biden met privately on Tuesday with nearly 20 moderate and progressive Democrats in separate groups as he appeared ready to ditch an ambitious $3.5tn package in favour of a smaller proposal that can win passage in the closely divided Congress. A provision central to Biden’s climate strategy is among those that could be scaled back or eliminated.Joe Manchin, a conservative senator from coal-rich West Virginia, has made clear that his opposes the Clean Energy Performance Plan, which would see the government impose penalties on electric utilities that fail to meet clean energy benchmarks and provide financial rewards to those that do, in line with Biden’s goal of achieving 80% “clean electricity” by 2030.The hunger strikers, who have worked with the Sunrise Movement youth group, warned that such concessions would be disastrous for the planet.Govea, from Santa Rosa, California, said: “Joe Biden made these campaign promises and we worked really hard on his campaign and to get him elected so that he could stop the climate crisis on these promises that he made.”Abandoning Biden’s commitments would signal to Cop26 that America has failed, Govea added. “I won’t let Joe Biden send a message to the world that he’s willing to give up on climate because I know that the American people, and young people across the country and across the world, are terrified but they’re ready to fight.”The hunger strikers drew TV cameras and curious glances from tourists in an area close to the White House that has reopened after months of security restrictions. As they sat, they spoke to reporters, checked emails and contemplated the long haul ahead.Paul Campion, 24, had skipped his usual breakfast of a bagel with cheese and eggs. He said: “I’m nervous about losing my my body weight, my muscles, about what it will do to my energy, to my brain, but I’m putting my body on the line because I’m here to remind Joe Biden of the promises that he’s made and that the stakes are this high, that young people are out here not eating because it’s this urgent and it’s this important.”Campion, a community organizer from Chicago, and his fellow protesters are “sick and tired of broken promises” from Biden and the Democrats, he continued. “I’m hunger striking because I want to live a full, beautiful life without fear of the climate crisis and I want to have children, I want to play with them in the park and I want to have community dinners where I invite my friends and family over and we sing and we have a bonfire.“That’s the future that we can have if Joe Biden will side with the people and deliver on his own agenda and actually fight for it instead of siding with ExxonMobil executives who are trying to gut his climate agenda and trying to prevent any significant federal action on climate change.”TopicsClimate crisisActivismJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsUS SenateUS CongressnewsReuse this content More

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      Senate Republicans again poised to block sweeping voting rights bill

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      The fight to voteUS voting rightsSenate Republicans again poised to block sweeping voting rights billObstructionist effort to stop Freedom to Vote Act likely to increase pressure on Democrats to do away with filibuster The fight to vote is supported byAbout this contentSam Levine in New YorkWed 20 Oct 2021 05.00 EDTLast modified on Wed 20 Oct 2021 05.02 EDTSenate Republicans are again poised to block a sweeping voting rights bill on Wednesday, a move that will significantly escalate pressure on Democrats to do away with the filibuster, a Senate rule that has stymied the most significant priorities in Congress.Texas Republicans pass voting maps that entrench power of whitesRead moreThe bill, the Freedom to Vote Act, would impose significant new guardrails on the American democratic process and amount to the most significant overhaul of American elections in a generation. It would require every state to automatically register voters at motor vehicle agencies, offer 15 consecutive days of early voting and allow anyone to request a mail-in ballot. It would also set new standards to ensure voters are not wrongfully removed from the voter rolls, protect election officials against partisan interference, and set out clear alternatives people who lack ID to vote can use at the polls.It also included a slew of new campaign finance regulations and outlaws the pervasive practice of manipulating district lines for severe partisan advantage, a process called gerrymandering.The provisions are a pared-back version of an earlier voting rights bill that Republicans blocked from a vote in June. Republican senators are likely to block the bill using the same filibuster rule, which requires 60 votes to advance the legislation to a final vote. Meanwhile, there have been demonstrations outside the White House in recent weeks, and several activists have been arrested while speaking out in favor of the bill, including 25 arrests on Tuesday.Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterWhile most Democrats in the Senate favor getting rid of the filibuster, at least for voting rights legislation, the blockade will put immense pressure on two of the most significant remaining Democratic holdouts, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. There will be particular scrutiny on Manchin, who personally helped write the revised bill and has been seeking GOP support for it. It’s not yet clear if a lack of Republican support for any kind of compromise could force Manchin to finally support some kind of change to the filibuster but activists have been heartened by a letter he issued earlier this year in which he said “inaction is not an option” around voting rights.Democrats are pushing the reforms at a particularly perilous moment for American democracy. Nearly three dozen bills were enacted in 19 states from January until the end of September, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. There have been more than 425 bills introduced with provisions that make it harder to vote. There are also growing concerns about Republican efforts to wield more influence over local election officials in certain states, which could wreak havoc in future elections.There is pressure to immediately pass voting rights legislation because states are currently in the middle of the once-per-decade process of redrawing district maps. Absent new protections, new congressional and state legislative districts across the country could be unfairly tilted towards Republicans for the next decade. The GOP is also well positioned to take control of the US House of Representatives in 2022.The bill is one of two critical pieces of voting rights legislation Democrats have championed. The other is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would set a new formula that would restore federal oversight of elections to certain places and specific practices. That bill has also passed the House and is waiting for a vote in the Senate.Joe Biden has offered full-throated support for both bills, but has not been willing to publicly pressure Manchin or Sinema on the filibuster. The White House is facing pressure from some civil rights groups who believe it is not being aggressive enough in pushing for the bills.The White House released a statement supporting passing the bill on Monday, but said little about what it would do if Republicans blocked it.“The administration is continuing to press for voting rights legislation to safeguard our democracy from these historic threats to constitutional freedoms and the integrity of elections through legislation, executive actions, outreach, the bully pulpit, and all other means available,” the White House said in a statement on Monday.TopicsUS voting rightsThe fight to voteUS CongressUS SenateUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      ‘This is our last chance’: Biden urged to act as climate agenda hangs by a thread

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      Climate crisis‘This is our last chance’: Biden urged to act as climate agenda hangs by a threadFailure to pass legislation to cut emissions before the UN summit in Glasgow could be catastrophic for efforts to curb global heating Oliver Milman in New York and Lauren Gambino in WashingtonMon 18 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Mon 18 Oct 2021 16.25 EDTWith furious environmental activists at the gates of the White House, and congressional Democrats fretting that a priceless opportunity to tackle catastrophic global heating may be slipping away, Joe Biden is facing mounting pressure over a climate agenda that appears to be hanging by a thread.Biden’s allies have warned that time is running perilously short, both politically and scientifically, for the US to enact sweeping measures to slash planet-heating emissions and spur other major countries to do the same. Failure to do so will escalate what scientists have said are “irreversible” climate impacts such as disastrous heatwaves, floods, wildfires and a mass upheaval of displaced people.The climate disaster is here – this is what the future looks likeRead moreThe administration’s multitrillion-dollar social spending package, widely considered the most comprehensive climate legislation ever put forward in the US, must survive razor-thin Democratic majorities in Congress and, the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, has vowed, pass in time for crucial UN climate talks in Scotland that begin in about two weeks.Embedded in the measure are plans to dramatically cut carbon emissions warming the planet and fueling climate disasters, a potentially historic set of policies that Pelosi has said would serve as “a model for the world”. But the 31 October deadline for passing the spending package and a smaller companion infrastructure bill appears increasingly ambitious as negotiations drag on between the White House, Democratic leaders and a pair of centrist holdouts in the Senate.The prospect of the world’s leading economic power arriving in Glasgow with no domestic policy to cut emissions will make it harder to convince other major emitters, primarily China, to do more at a time when governments are collectively failing to avert unlivable global heating.“They will look ridiculous if they show up with nothing,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat, told Guardian. “It would be bad for US leadership, bad for the talks and disastrous for the climate. Just disastrous.“The vast majority of Senate Democrats understand this is our last chance to act,” Whitehouse continued. The bill includes a program of payments and penalties to ensure utilities phase out fossil fuels from America’s electricity supply, a huge expansion in tax credits for clean energy and new restrictions on methane, a potent greenhouse gas that is emitted from oil and gas drilling. The legislation would slash US emissions by about 1bn tons by 2030, bringing Biden within striking distance of his target of cutting America’s emissions in half by this point.Whitehouse also revealed that the president’s administration “will not oppose” a new price on carbon emissions being added to the bill, following negotiations with Senate Democrats. “We have a very good chance of getting that,” he said. The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the talks.The carbon fee, which would initially be set at $15 per ton of emissions before rising rapidly upwards over the course of several years, has long been a favored policy of economists and some moderate Republicans as a way to encourage polluters to switch to cleaner energy but has latterly been disregarded by activists and progressives.However, these measures will have to garner the vote of every Democrat in the Senate to pass, with Joe Manchin, a centrist from West Virginia, skeptical of the size and scope of the $3.5tn spending proposal. Manchin, a major recipient of donations from the coal industry, has said it “makes no sense” to pay utilities to phase in solar and wind power.Manchin is reportedly set to block the clean electricity program, which forms the main muscle of the climate package. This could prove a hugely consequential blow to the effort to constrain dangerous global heating. “This is high on the list of most consequential actions ever taken by an individual senator,” tweeted the climate campaigner Bill McKibben. “You’ll be able to see the impact of this vain man in the geologic record.”Whitehouse admitted it was unclear what Manchin will ultimately do but that he was confident that “there’s a window in which negotiations with Joe can produce a bill to reduce emissions enough so we are not in danger’s way.”Democrats are working feverishly to trim the $3.5tn proposal to about $2tn, in order to win the votes of centrists without losing the support of progressives. Among the many pressing questions Democrats must answer as they hurtle to meet their end-of-the-month deadline is how bold to go on climate.“There’s a lot of talk recently about what progressive lawmakers need to be willing to cut – what we have to be willing to negotiate on?” Senator Ed Markey, a lead proponent of the Green New Deal, said on a call with reporters this week. “Well, we can’t negotiate with deadly wildfires. They don’t negotiate. We cannot negotiate with massive hurricanes. They don’t negotiate. We can’t negotiate with floodwaters, sea level rise and drought and temperature rise. We can’t negotiate how much these climate-fueled disasters are costing us, tens of billions of dollars so far this year.“It’s time for us to stop talking about what is politically feasible, and start talking about what is scientifically necessary – we cannot compromise on science,” he said. Failure to pass the legislation would be disastrous for the US and the global community, the US climate envoy, John Kerry, said in an interview with the Associated Press.“It would be like President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again,” he warned.The Build Back Better plan will put America on track to meet its goals, but it must not be the only action congress takes to combat the climate crisis, said congresswoman Kathy Castor, a Florida Democrat and chair of the House select committee on the climate crisis. More federal action is needed to meet the scale of the emergency, she said.“Even if we pass the Build Back Better Act as it is, that doesn’t get us to net-zero by 2050, which is the goal,” she said in an interview. Pointing to the latest climate research and a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that declared a “code red” for humanity, she added: “We are going to have to do more.”While Biden can do little about the machinations of the Senate, the president has come under growing criticism that his own actions have not matched his rhetoric. Biden, who has said that the “nation and the world are in peril” from a “code red” climate emergency, has reincorporated the US to the Paris climate agreement and sought to restore some of the environmental rules axed by Donald Trump.But his administration has also approved a flurry of new oil and gas drilling permits on public lands, urged oil-producing countries to ramp up production to help lower gasoline prices and declined to stop major fossil fuel projects such as Line 3, an oil pipeline expansion in Minnesota that has sparked violent clashes between police and those protesting against its construction. “I think [the administration] has missed an enormous opportunity to join the battle against those behind the problem – the fossil fuel industry,” said Whitehouse. Simmering resentment at the president exploded outside the White House last week, with four consecutive days of protests resulting in nearly 300 climate activists being arrested and removed by police. On Thursday, a banner was unfurled reading “We need real solutions, not false promises”, with protesters calling on Biden to declare a climate emergency and halt a slew of proposed pipelines and drilling projects – a report released by Oil Change International has found that 21 major fossil fuel projects under review by the administration would cause the emissions equivalent of 316 new coal-fired power plants if they went ahead.“We felt we had someone who had our back and then he [Biden] wavered,” said Joye Braun, a campaigner at the Indigenous Environmental Network who traveled from South Dakota for the protests. “He made a lot of promises to us, as Indigenous people, that he’s not following through on. To allow something like Line 3 makes no damn sense.”Climate scientists have echoed the need for urgency. The world is on course for nearly 3C of heating by the end of the century, which would bring punishing impacts to people around the globe. Precipitously steep emissions cuts need to occur immediately to avoid this turmoil, scientists say.“Unless we have greater progress on CO2 cuts we are faced with a miserable outcome,” said Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at Duke University. “A world above 2C is not a pretty one. This reconciliation bill isn’t enough and it’s discouraging to see the Biden administration still approving fossil fuel projects. That should be very much in our past.”In recent days, the White House and Democrats have sought to temper expectations that Democrats would reach a deal before the summit – and that a failure to meet their deadline would hurt Biden’s credibility as a global leader in the fight against climate change.“None of our objectives for the president’s climate agenda begins or ends on November 1 and 2, or the week after,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters last week. “Whether our agenda has passed or not is not going to be the defining factor.”The stars may not be aligned long to address climate breakdown. Democrats, having waited a decade for this opportunity, could lose control of Congress in midterm elections next year to a Republican party still unwilling to confront, or even acknowledge, the crisis. The prospect of not acting for another decade is almost unthinkable.“We can’t fail again,” said Whitehouse. “We just can’t.”TopicsClimate crisisJoe BidenBiden administrationUS SenateUS CongressUS politicsCop26newsReuse this content More

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      Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’

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      US elections 2020Pressure mounts on ex-DoJ official Jeff Clark over Trump’s ‘election subversion scheme’ Former assistant attorney general faces possible disbarment and charges after report details machinations on Trump’s behalfPeter Stone in WashingtonSun 17 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 17 Oct 2021 02.01 EDTJeffrey Clark, a former top environmental lawyer at the Trump justice department accused of plotting with Trump to undermine the 2020 election results in Georgia and other states, is facing ethics investigations in Washington that could lead to possible disbarment, as well as a watchdog inquiry that might result in a criminal referral.Steve Bannon: Capitol attack panel to consider criminal contempt referralRead moreThe mounting scrutiny of the ex-assistant attorney general, who led the justice department’s environment division for almost two years and then ran its civil division, was provoked by a report from the Senate judiciary committee whose Democratic chairman, Richard Durbin, has asked the DC bar’s disciplinary counsel to examine Clark’s conduct and possibly sanction him.The panel’s exhaustive 394-page report followed an eight-month inquiry, and included voluntary testimony from former acting attorney general Jeffrey Rosen and his deputy, Richard Donoghue, revealing how Clark schemed privately with Trump about ways to pressure Rosen to help launch an inquiry into baseless charges of voting fraud in Georgia and other states that Joe Biden won.The report noted Clark repeatedly tried to “induce Rosen into helping Trump’s election subversion scheme”, including by telling Rosen that if he agreed to join their cabal to overturn election results, Clark would turn down an offer Trump had made him to become attorney general in place of Rosen.Clark was asked by the Senate panel to testify voluntarily in July but declined, according to a source familiar with the matter.The Senate report was shared with the House select committee that has been investigating the 6 January attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters, and Trump’s efforts to overturn the election results. On 13 October, the committee issued a subpoena seeking deposition testimony, and it requested records from Clark on 29 October, after reportedly struggling to get his cooperation.“It’s no mystery why Clark is playing hard to get with Congress,” said former justice department inspector general Michael Bromwich in an interview with the Guardian. “He faces a meaningful threat of criminal liability based on the facts contained in the Senate report.“The Senate report provides overwhelming evidence that Jeffrey Clark became a witting pawn of Trump’s in trying to launch a coup in the justice department, which would then serve as the launching pad for the broader coup whose aim was to overturn the results of the election.”Clark’s covert efforts to help Trump have been under scrutiny by the current inspector general at the justice department, Michael Horowitz, since January, when news reports surfaced about his machinations with Trump to help overturn the election results by spurring an investigation in Georgia focused on baseless claims of voting fraud.It’s unclear when the inspector general inquiry will be concluded, but depending on the findings, a criminal referral could result.The Senate report provided new details about the secretive pressure tactics deployed by Trump and Clark to persuade Rosen to accede to their schemes to help nullify Biden’s win, even after Trump staunch ally, attorney general William Barr, publicly stated on 1 December that the election results were not marred by fraud that “could have effected a different outcome in the election”.Strikingly, the report described a bizarre multi-hour White House meeting on 3 January that was attended by Trump, Rosen, Clark and other top administration lawyers, where Trump initially showed strong interest in ousting Rosen, who had been resisting pressures from Clark to open an inquiry into fraud allegations, and replacing him with Clark.According to Rosen’s testimony, Trump began the meeting by taking an aggressive posture and declaring: “One thing we know is you, Rosen, aren’t going to do anything to overturn the election.”At the end of the meeting, Trump dropped the covert scheme to oust Rosen after Rosen’s deputy Donoghue told Trump that he, Rosen and others, including the two top White House attorneys, would resign in protest.Pat Cipollone, the top White House lawyer, condemned Trump’s plan as a “murder-suicide pact,” according to the Senate report.The Senate report formally recommended that the DC bar’s disciplinary counsel “evaluate Clark’s conduct to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted”.Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a top Democrat on the judiciary panel, in a statement to the Guardian said: “Either Jeffrey Clark was an enterprising sycophant looking to score points with a transactional president, or he was a cog in a much larger election-theft scheme.“Clark’s testimony under oath will be very important to arrive at the full truth, which is why it’s very hard to imagine he avoids testifying – either before Congress or a grand jury.”Before the release of the Senate report, ABC News unearthed emails revealing that Clark tried to get Rosen and his deputy to approve a letter he drafted on 28 December that would have pressed Georgia’s governor Brian Kemp to “convene a special session” of the state legislature to examine unfounded allegations of voting fraud before 6 January, when Congress met to certify the results.The Senate GOP’s minority in a separate report offered a tepid defense for Trump and Clark’s actions, stating that Trump “listened to all data points” at the White House meeting where several resignations were threatened, and “rejected” the path Clark promoted with Trump’s apparent blessings. Grassley also faulted the Democrats for issuing their report before hearing from Clark and receiving more documents.Still, two days before the majority report, about three dozen prominent lawyers and former DoJ officials signed an ethics complaint orchestrated by Lawyers Defending American Democracy which also asked the DC disciplinary counsel to investigate Clark’s conduct with an eye to sanctions.The lawyers wrote that Clark “made false statements about the integrity of the election in a concerted effort to disseminate an official statement of the United States Department of Justice that the election results in multiple states were unreliable”.Trump nominated Clark in mid-2017 to serve as assistant attorney general of the DoJ’s Environment and Natural Resources Division, but he was only narrowly confirmed in October 2018.During his tenure running the division, Clark reportedly often was at odds with veteran lawyers there, because of his narrow reading of the Clean Air and Clean Water acts. By late 2020, Clark had become acting chief of the civil division at the DoJ.Previously, Clark had been a partner at the powerhouse law firm Kirkland & Ellis, where he defended BP in Deepwater Horizon oil spill litigation and represented the US Chamber of Commerce in litigation that challenged the federal government’s power to regulate carbon emissions.Barr and Rosen were also top partners at the firm before their stints leading the Department of Justice.Clark’s distaste for strong environmental rules during his tenure at the department was presaged by some of his earlier comments about climate change in which he derided the need for more regulations to address it.Clark, a member of the conservative Federalist Society, gave a talk at its 2010 convention, where he bitterly denounced the Obama administration’s policies to curb greenhouse gas emissions as “reminiscent of kind of a Leninistic program from the 1920s to seize control of the commanding heights of the economy.”Given Clark’s anti-regulatory background in the private sector and his stint at the DoJ, it’s perhaps not surprising that he landed a top post working for the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a conservative law firm funded by the Charles G Koch Foundation.Clark was tapped in July to be the alliance’s chief of litigation and director of strategy. Two calls to the alliance’s press office to reach Clark and seeking comment about his status there in the wake of the Senate report did not get responses. But on Wednesday Clark’s name had disappeared from its website’s roster of staff.TopicsUS elections 2020Trump administrationUS politicsUS SenateDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Winemaking and marathon running: what Kyrsten Sinema does instead of her job

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      US SenateWinemaking and marathon running: what Kyrsten Sinema does instead of her jobSinema is one of two Democrat holdouts against passing Biden’s Build Back Better agenda – but hasn’t made public why. Here’s what she is public about Luke O’Neil@lukeoneil47Sat 16 Oct 2021 07.00 EDTServing in the US Senate is a pretty good gig if you can get it. You’re paid $174,000 a year, only have to show up around 200 days and you almost always snag an even better-compensated private sector gig when you retire or lose an election.For all these perks, all you have to do is occasionally give a thumbs up or down on matters of serious import. Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema seems to enjoy all of those aspects of her job besides the last one.Sinema, and her fellow conservative lawmaker Joe Manchin, remain the two Democrat holdouts against passing Joe Biden’s would-be sweeping Build Back Better agenda. The duo are effectively holding an array of social spending proposals in limbo – including the parts that would stop people dying, give under-fives a better start in life and meaningfully address climate change. Aid for real people across the country, and the planet itself, is being forestalled. Manchin has been direct in the specifics of his opposition, but Sinema has said she doesn’t want to make public what her opposition to the bill is. She’s far from a private person though – here’s how she seems to prefer spending her time besides doing what her voters ostensibly sent her to Washington to do.Making wineEarlier this year it was reported by Business Insider that Sinema has spent a couple of weeks interning at the Three Sticks winery in Sonoma, California. For her work at the facility she was paid $1,117.40. Sinema’s appreciation for wine has been well documented on her social media accounts, so it’s possible it’s just a coincidence that the owner of the winery in question is William S Price III, a cofounder of TPG Capital, one of the biggest private equity firms in the world, which has spent more than $3m lobbying politicians in the past couple of years.RunningNot that type of running. Sinema has spent the past year training for long-distance runs. An avid athlete, she has competed in the Boston Marathon before, but had to pull out of the contest this month after injuring herself in another race in Washington over the summer.TravelingThis week it was reported that Sinema has traveled to Europe for a fundraising jag. It was unclear whether she, in addition to participating in events to raise money for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, was holding private fundraising events of her own. Sinema’s itinerary for the trip remains a secret but she is believed to be visiting Paris and London.FundraisingAs Democrats scrambled to find a solution to the budget impasse earlier this month, Sinema left Washington abruptly on a Friday for what she said was a medical appointment. Also on the agenda that weekend was a donor’s retreat at a luxury spa in Phoenix. That same week, Sinema held another fundraising meeting with industry groups opposed to Biden’s agenda. During the the 45-minute meeting the groups were invited to write checks for $1,000 to $5,800 to her election fund. All told, Sinema has received at least $750,000 from pharmaceutical interests and $920,000 from other industry lobbies.TeachingSinema has been teaching at Arizona State University since 2003, holding between two and three courses a semester. Among her recurring classes is one called Developing Grants and Fundraising. As the course description explains, the class is designed to teach students “how to cultivate donors” through “opportunistic fundraising.”TopicsUS SenateUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      The Senate’s findings on the last days of Trump’s presidency are grim. Will it matter?

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      OpinionTrump administrationThe Senate’s findings on the last days of Trump’s presidency are grim. Will it matter?Lloyd GreenDon’t expect the report to change minds: for Republicans, fealty to Trump is the acid test Tue 12 Oct 2021 06.00 EDTLast modified on Tue 12 Oct 2021 08.51 EDTLast week, the Senate’s judiciary committee released its staff report on Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election and bend the justice department to his will. Subverting Justice: How the Former President and his Allies Pressured DOJ to Overturn the 2020 Election lays out in grim detail the ex-reality show host’s concerted effort to weaponize the government’s legal machinery in his desperate bid to cling to power.One conclusion reads: “President Trump repeatedly asked DOJ leadership to endorse his false claims that the election was stolen and to assist his efforts to overturn the election results.” Another informs us that “Trump allies with links to the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement and the January 6 insurrection participated in the pressure campaign against DOJ.”As if we didn’t already know. Don’t expect the report to change hearts or minds.On a Saturday night visit to Iowa, Trump told the crowd that he had not conceded defeat. Indeed, one day later, Steve Scalise, the No 2 Republican in the House of Representatives, refused to say that the election wasn’t stolen. Trump has the Republicans in a hammerlock. The impact of the Senate report is likely to be negligible.Since Trump’s backers pillaged Congress back in January, the Republican party has selectively forgiven and forgotten. By the numbers, 57% of Republicans now believe “too much attention” has been paid to the 6 January riot. Only roughly a third of Republicans concede that storming the Capitol was about overturning the election. Too many Republicans still blame it on antifa.The new normal is neither particularly normal nor new. As America’s cold civil war continues, hyper-partisanship is the rule, not the exception. And among Republicans, fealty to Trump is the acid test.Look at Mike Pence, Trump’s hapless vice-president and an aspiring 2024 presidential nominee. Even after having been kicked to the curb by his former boss and targeted for hanging by Capitol rioters, Pence continues to play political lapdog.He is all too aware that Trump remains the Republican party’s boss and that his future rests in Trump’s hands. “I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration’s failed agenda by focusing on one day in January,” Pence told Fox News.“One day in January” – really?Apparently, signs that screamed “Hang Mike Pence” were an illusion, as were the gallows near the Capitol. Then again, Pence’s brother Greg, a congressman from Indiana, voted against certifying the election despite his having seen first-hand what his sibling had endured.Although the report will not change the political landscape, it is likely to have real consequences for Jeffrey Clark, a former assistant attorney general and the most senior justice department official to plot with Trump. The report recommends that the DC bar’s disciplinary counsel “evaluate Clark’s conduct to determine whether disciplinary action is warranted”.Republicans overplayed their hand in California – and Democrats are laughing | Lloyd GreenRead moreIn plain English, the Senate’s Democrats are inviting the DC bar to strip Clark of his law license. Working for Trump frequently comes with a downside.Tellingly, the committee’s Republicans do not offer a particularly full-throated defense of Clark. Instead, Senator Charles Grassley, the committee’s ranking Republican, intimated that Clark had failed to receive sufficient due process. “Committee Democrats opted to release their report having not yet received requested government documents and having not yet heard from Jeffrey Clark,” Grassley said.Substantively, the Republican party appears ready to sacrifice Clark to spare Trump. The president “listened to all data points”, they wrote in a competing report, and the path advocated by Clark “would be rejected”. In all fairness, he wouldn’t be the first person to thrown in a front of the proverbial bus for the sake of a sitting president.Not surprisingly, where there’s a raging dumpster fire, Rudy Giuliani is close by.According to the committee, Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, asked the justice department to investigate a theory pushed by Giuliani known as “Italygate”, which “held that the Central Intelligence Agency and an Italian IT contractor used military satellites to manipulate voting machines and change Trump votes to Biden votes”.Let that sink in.As the Senate report recedes from the voters’ consciousness, expect the House’s investigation to emerge as a focal point for all things Trump, with the ex-president seeking to block the cooperation and testimony of his former aides, including Meadows, all in the run-up to the midterms.Beyond that, Trump is also invoking “executive privilege” to keep Steve Bannon, his 2016 campaign chairman, from testifying. To be sure, Bannon was not a member of the administration when 2021 rolled around. He had left the White House in the summer of 2017.Instead, Bannon was goading Trump, telling him, according to Peril, the latest Bob Woodward book, co-authored with Bob Costa: “People are going to go, What the fuck is going on here? We’re going to bury Biden on January 6th, fucking bury him … We’re going to kill it in the crib, kill the Biden presidency in the crib.”For the record, Bannon had previously suggested that Anthony Fauci’s head be severed from its body. Whether Bannon is found to be in criminal contempt for refusing to testify before Liz Cheney and others is a live question.The bottom line remains that Trump was never going quietly into the political night. Short of his own re-election, he viewed the process as “rigged” and “corrupt”.How the House and the courts handle all this remains to be seen. Right now, the broader public is far from riveted, and the Republicans are either on board with Trump or simply cowed.TopicsTrump administrationOpinionRepublicansUS politicsDonald TrumpUS Capitol attackUS SenatecommentReuse this content More

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      Big pharma has a powerful new shill, Kyrsten Sinema, fighting drug price reform | Andrew Perez and David Sirota

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      OpinionPharmaceuticals industryBig pharma has a powerful new shill, Kyrsten Sinema, fighting drug price reformAndrew Perez and David SirotaIn the 2020 election cycle, pharmaceutical political action committees suddenly funneled more money to her than they did the whole six years she served in the US House Mon 11 Oct 2021 06.18 EDTLast modified on Mon 11 Oct 2021 12.42 EDT“The pharmaceutical lobby is very savvy,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat from California, said earlier this week. “They pick the one or two people they need to block things, on the relevant committees or at the relevant time.”“It may differ from Congress to Congress,” explained Khanna, who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “We try to get 90-95% [of the caucus]. They are focused not on 90% , but the blockers.”In the current Congress, Big Pharma appears to have zeroed in on Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat from Arizona, as one of their lead obstructionists to help kill or gut the Democrats’ drug pricing plan. In the 2020 election cycle, pharmaceutical political action committees suddenly funneled more money to her than they did the whole six years she served in the US House.Pharmaceutical companies can charge up to four times as much in the United States for name-brand pharmaceuticals than in other countries, in part because Congress barred Medicare from using its bulk purchasing power to negotiate lower drug prices. President Joe Biden and most Democrats support lifting that prohibition in their reconciliation legislation, a move that would save hundreds of billions of dollars – but Sinema has emerged as the party’s most prominent opponent to the plan.Her heel turn on drug pricing is a dramatic shift. A one-time progressive activist, Sinema campaigned on lowering drug prices in her 2018 Senate race, and she was still calling on Congress to address rising drug costs as recently as last year, boasting on her Senate website that she was fighting to “ensure life-saving drugs” would be more affordable.But it’s clear now that the pharmaceutical industry has been courting Sinema for some time. Indeed, in March 2021, as pharmaceutical Pac money was flooding into her campaign coffers, drug lobbyists were already bragging to Beltway reporters that they may have found their lead blocker in Sinema.Sinema has studiously avoided giving the public any details about where she stands on virtually any of the policy proposals in Democrats’ reconciliation legislation – refusing to speak with activists, reporters, or even other Democratic lawmakers.We only know Sinema opposes Democrats’ drug pricing plan thanks to a Politico report, which cited anonymous “sources familiar with her thinking”. Sinema reportedly told Biden she opposes the party’s proposal and won’t support a weaker offering from conservative House Democrats either.With the Senate split 50-50, her opposition imperils the whole endeavor.It makes sense that Sinema would be reluctant to publicly explain her opposition to Democrats’ drug pricing plan – because she would sound absolutely ridiculous, like a craven hypocrite straight out of Veep.During her 2018 Democratic primary campaign, Sinema released a direct-to-camera ad noting that her family had struggled with healthcare costs when she was younger. “We need to make healthcare more affordable, with access to the lowest-cost prescriptions, and fix what’s broken in the system,” she said in the ad.Sinema’s 2018 campaign website featured similar language: “Kyrsten is committed to making sure Arizonans have access to more health care choices, low-cost prescription drugs, and high-quality, dependable coverage. As one of the most independent-minded members of Congress, she’s committed to working with anyone – regardless of party – to get it done.”In a 2019 Senate hearing on prescription drug prices, Sinema noted, “The issue I hear about most back home is the cost of health care.” She went on to cite several stories from Arizonans who contacted her office about their sky-high drug costs:
      There’s a gentleman in Mesa, Arizona, who is lucky enough to be insured. But he has seen the price of his medication, to treat a serious lung condition, increase nearly five times in just one year … He’s looked, but there are no generics available that could offer him any financial relief. A woman from Glendale, Arizona, worries about her husband who has a serious heart condition. But his medication costs more than $500 out-of-pocket for a three-month supply. So he refuses to fill his prescription, because he’s worried about how it would impact their family financially. Another Arizona woman struggles to afford her specialty cancer medication. Even though her medication is a generic, she still has to pay thousands of dollars out-of-pocket. And often spends hours on the phone just to understand the unexpected cost increases, and to research payment assistance options. And this, of course, is unacceptable.
      In February last year, Sinema published an op-ed declaring: “Congress must address the cost of prescription drugs. Today, even Arizonans who have insurance sometimes struggle to afford the medicine they need. That’s why I’m pursuing policies to ensure life-saving drugs like EpiPens and insulin are affordable and available to Arizonans, especially our senior citizens.”But by then, drug industry cash was already starting to flood into Sinema’s campaign account.In May 2020, Kaiser Health News wrote that Sinema had recently “emerged as a pharma favorite in Congress”, based on the fact that she had become “a leading recipient of pharma campaign cash even though she’s not up for re-election until 2024 and lacks major committee or subcommittee leadership posts”.According to Kaiser’s pharma contribution tracker, Sinema received $121,000 worth of campaign donations from pharmaceutical company Pacs in 2019 and 2020.For some context, that’s double the amount of drug company Pac money she received during the 2018 election cycle, when she was on the ballot running for Senate. It’s more cash than she had raised from pharmaceutical company Pacs during her entire congressional career to that point.Over the course of her career, Sinema has accepted more than $500,000 from executives and Pacs in the pharmaceutical and health products industries, according to data from OpenSecrets.By March 2021, Big Pharma wasn’t just quietly funneling money to Sinema; the industry was publicly signaling that the senator could be its lead blocker in the fight to prevent the government from negotiating drug prices.“Drug lobbyists see a potential ally in Democratic Sen Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona moderate who has shown a willingness to break with her party,” Politico reported at the time.Then, early last month, a corporate front group called Center Forward bought $600,000 worth of television and radio ads promoting Sinema in Arizona. The ads touted her “independence”, and characterized her as “a bipartisan leader” in the mold of the late Senator John McCain.As The Daily Poster reported, Center Forward has been heavily bankrolled by Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the powerful Washington drug lobby. Two Center Forward board members lobby for PhRMA, as well as drugmakers Amgen, Bayer, Gilead Sciences, Eli Lilly, Merck, Novartis and Sanofi.A few days after the ad campaign started, Sinema informed the White House that she opposed the party’s drug pricing plan.Now, senators are talking behind the scenes about ways they can water down the legislation to appease the drug industry, and a second Democratic holdout – Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, a longtime top recipient of drug industry cash – has emerged to help Sinema and Big Pharma block the way.For his part, Khanna said he has tried to reach out to Sinema. But though she was eagerly making herself available to her business donors opposing the reconciliation bill, she wasn’t interested in talking to the progressive congressman, even though he was one of the lead authors of the Medicare drug pricing bill.“I’ve never met with her,” he said. ‘I’ve offered. She didn’t want to.”
      David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor-at-large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter
      Andrew Perez is a senior editor at the Daily Poster and a cofounder of the Democratic Policy Center
      This article was originally published in the Daily Poster, a grassroots-funded investigative news outlet
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