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      New York attorney general says ‘no one is above’ the law as Trump sued for fraud – as it happened

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      The New York attorney general, Letitia James, just announced a lawsuit against Donald Trump and his family, accusing them of fraudulently inflating their net worth by billions of dollars to get better terms on bank loans and other financial benefits.Here’s more fromthe Guardian’s Martin Pengelly on the suit, which presents the latest in the many legal threats facing the former president:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The attorney general of New York state has filed a civil lawsuit against Donald Trump and members of his family, the culmination of a years-long investigation of financial practices at the Trump Organization.
      Letitia James announced the suit in New York on Wednesday.
      In a statement, the attorney general said the suit was filed “against Donald Trump, the Trump Organization, senior management and involved entities for engaging in years of financial fraud to obtain a host of economic benefits.
      “The lawsuit alleges that Donald Trump, with the help of his children Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump, and senior executives of the Trump Organization, falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to induce banks to lend money to the Trump Organization on more favorable terms than would otherwise have been available to the company, to satisfy continuing loan covenants, induce insurers to provide insurance coverage for higher limits and lower premiums, and to gain tax benefits, among other things.”New York attorney general announces civil lawsuit against Trump and familyRead moreDonald Trump is in even more legal trouble after the New York attorney general announced a civil suit against him and his children on fraud charges. Elsewhere in the Empire State, president Joe Biden spoke to the United Nations and accused Russia of trying to “erase a sovereign state from the map” by invading Ukraine, in a call for global unity against Moscow.Here’s what else happened today:
      The Federal Reserve made a big interest rate hike to fight inflation while trying to avoid putting the US economy into a recession.
      We could hear from Trump this evening on Fox News, according to CBS News, though he may opt to post on social media instead.
      Top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell came close to voting to convict Trump following the January 6 insurrection, while calling the former president “crazy,” a new book said.
      A bill to amend America’s election law and prevent another January 6 is expected to pass the House today.
      Election officials nationwide are being deluged with public records requests, apparently at the behest of Trump ally and conspiracy theorist Mike Lindell.
      The New York attorney general’s lawsuit isn’t the only one Trump is facing in the state. A writer plans to sue the former president under a recently signed law, accusing him of battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress.E Jean Carroll, the writer who accused Donald Trump of raping her more than two decades ago, plans to file a new lawsuit against the former US president.In a letter made public on Tuesday, a lawyer for the former Elle magazine columnist said she planned to sue Trump for battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress under New York state’s Adult Survivors Act.That law, recently signed by the governor, Kathy Hochul, gives adult accusers a one-year window to bring civil claims over alleged sexual misconduct regardless of how long ago it occurred.Trump has denied raping Carroll and accused her of concocting the rape claim to sell her book.Writer E Jean Carroll to file new lawsuit after accusing Trump of rapeRead moreThe House is currently debating the Presidential Election Reform Act, which would tweak the procedures for counting votes to prevent the type of legal schemes that occurred around of the time of the January 6 insurrection from taking place again.A vote to approve the measure could come later today, but the Democrats controlling the chamber have plans for more bills in the weeks before the midterms. The Associated Press reports that a deal between the party’s progressive and centrist faction has been reached to increase funding for police departments:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}The breakthrough came after intense negotiations in recent days between Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a leader of the centrist coalition, and Rep. Ilhan Omar D-Minn., one of the leaders of the progressive faction. Their deal, reached with little time to spare on the House calendar, could help unite the party on a public safety platform more than two years after the police killing of George Floyd.
      “I’m proud to have worked closely with Republicans, Democrats, and a broad spectrum of stakeholders to make real progress for public safety,” Gottheimer said in a statement Wednesday.
      The package includes reforms to ensure police funding is used to support smaller police departments, along with investments in de-escalation training and mental health resources for officers to reduce fatal encounters between police and people with mental illness.
      “With this package, House Democrats have the opportunity to model a holistic, inclusive approach to public safety, and keep our promise to families across the country to address this issue at the federal level,” Omar and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said in a statement.The bills have the backing of policing groups, but it’s unclear if they will be able to clear the much higher bar for passage in the Senate, where the Democratic majority would need the support of at least 10 Republicans.Last year, Julie Rikelman argued on behalf of abortion rights in front of the supreme court. This year, she has pledged to uphold the court’s decision overturning abortion rights nationwide if confirmed as a federal appellate judge.Bloomberg Law reports on the exchange that took place during Rikelman’s confirmation hearing for the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which covers the northeastern United States. Rikelman argued before the supreme court on behalf of the Center for Reproductive Rights as they considered Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. When it decided that case, the conservative-dominated court not only upheld a Mississippi law curbing abortion access, it also overturned Roe v Wade entirely, allowing states to ban the procedure.“Our legal system and the rule of law itself depends on lower courts following Supreme Court precedent and as you said Dobbs is now the law of the land and I will follow it as I will follow all Supreme Court precedent,” Rikelman said in her confirmation hearing before the Senate judiciary committee.A candidate embellishing their background isn’t unheard of on the campaign trail, but CNN has a story today on something unique and far more troubling going on at election offices across the country.Administrators nationwide are being hit with a deluge of public records requests for massive amounts of election data, CNN reports, including the little-known cast vote records generated by voting machines. The concern is that the requests will complicate the work of voting officials nationwide ahead of the November midterms. The requests appear to be traced back to Mike Lindell, a prominent Trump ally and conspiracy theorist who encouraged people to make such requests a month ago:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}In a telephone interview with CNN, Lindell said he first learned of the cast vote records in June and views them as a way to “detect machine manipulation” of the 2020 election.
      Asked how they would, he said: “You’d have to talk to a cyber guy… It’s the sequence and the patterns.”
      Lindell has spent nearly two years spreading falsehoods about the 2020 election. Dominion Voting Systems, the frequent target of his attacks, has sued Lindell and his company for defamation.
      Lindell said the records would bolster his effort to rid the election system of machines. Some of the requesters, he said, are taking what they found to local county officials and sheriffs to demand the removal of machines in their counties.
      “I want computers and voting machines gone,” he said.Voting officials have had to bring on new staff to handle them, but according to CNN, many people making the requests act as if they are just following orders. “‘I don’t know what this is. I don’t know what it does. I just know I’m supposed to ask for it,’” is what one official said the requesters often say.The pitch to voters made by J.R. Majewski, who is running to unseat a long-serving Democrat in an Ohio district redrawn in the GOP’s favor, is this: elect a Donald Trump-backed conservative who served his country in Afghanistan.The only problem being that the last part isn’t true, according to an investigation just released by the Associated Press.The article says it all:.css-knbk2a{height:1em;width:1.5em;margin-right:3px;vertical-align:baseline;fill:#C70000;}Campaigning for a northwestern Ohio congressional seat, Republican J.R. Majewski presents himself as an Air Force combat veteran who deployed to Afghanistan after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, once describing “tough” conditions including a lack of running water that forced him to go more than 40 days without a shower.
      Military documents obtained by The Associated Press through a public records request tell a different story.
      They indicate Majewski never deployed to Afghanistan but instead completed a six-month stint helping to load planes at an air base in Qatar, a longtime U.S. ally that is a safe distance from the fighting.
      Majewski’s account of his time in the military is just one aspect of his biography that is suspect. His post-military career has been defined by exaggerations, conspiracy theories, talk of violent action against the U.S. government and occasional financial duress.The Federal Reserve made yet another aggressive interest rate hike at the conclusion of its meeting today as it looks to cut into the rapid price growth that’s beset the US economy without causing a recession.The three-quarter percentage point increase in the central bank’s funds rate approved by the Federal Open Market Committee is the third straight hike of that size, and comes after data released earlier this month showed inflation declining by less than expected in August.Led by Jerome Powell, a Republican whom president Joe Biden nominated for a second term last year, the American central bank ended the easy money policies it rolled out during the Covid-19 pandemic and earlier this year started raising rates and running down its massive holdings of debt. The catalyst was price pressures that rose throughout 2021, prompting the Fed to abruptly pivot from a strategy of spurring growth by keeping borrowing costs low to rapidly increasing rates as inflation hit levels not seen since the 1980s.However, analysts say the Fed waited too long to begin hiking, allowing inflation to get far worse than necessary as it was being driven higher by factors like Russia’s war in Ukraine and supply shocks caused by the pandemic. The concern now is that the central bank – which uses interest rates as a powerful but blunt tool to stabilize employment and prices in the world’s largest economy – could cause a recession that undermines the recovery made by American workers and businesses over the past two years.Liberal pundits and Twitter accounts are cheering the investigation into Donald Trump for holding classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate. What they may not know is that they are also throwing their support behind one of the most pernicious and terrible laws that exists: the Espionage Act. Holding Trump accountable doesn’t mean we should all become cheerleaders for an often-abused law primarily used to prosecute whistleblowers and threaten journalists.Ever since the 100-year old Espionage Act was cited in the warrant for the search of Trump’s Florida residence, Twitter and cable news have been rife with misinformation about the law and what it means. Those clamoring for Trump to be prosecuted under the act are spreading a ton of misleading statements in the process.First, let’s get this out of the way: just because the law is called “the Espionage Act” doesn’t mean there is any evidence Trump committed “espionage”. MSNBC hosts and their former CIA guests are even baselessly speculating that because Trump had these documents at his house, it is connected to the spate of deaths of CIA assets around the world.What a convenient excuse for the CIA! There’s not one hint of evidence that Trump having some classified docs at this compound led to any deaths, and it lets the CIA completely off the hook for continually getting people killed, which – by the way – has been happening for decades. There was a New York Times investigation from several years ago about CIA asset networks in China and Iran being rounded up and executed, which dated back to 2010. Or go read Tim Weiner’s classic history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes, which details how that has happened over and over again throughout the agency’s history, with little or no public accountability.Read more:Don’t cheer for the Espionage Act being used against Donald Trump. It will backfire | Trevor TimmRead moreThe Federal Reserve chair, Jerome Powell, warned last month that there would be “pain” ahead as the US central bank struggles to contain a surge in inflation unseen in 40 years. Powell will offer some indication of how much pain he expects at 2pm today.The Fed is expected to announce another sharp rise in interest rates after the conclusion of its latest meeting. It will also update its economic forecasts for the US economy.Economists are predicting the Fed will raise its benchmark interest rate by 0.75 percentage points, the third such rise in a row, and signal plans to raise rates again in the coming months.Full preview:Federal Reserve warns of ‘pain’ ahead as inflation surges Read moreThe Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted the network to withdraw its famous call of Arizona for Joe Biden on election night in 2020, citing pressure from Donald Trump’s campaign and saying the swing state should be “put back in his column”, a new book says.The news is contained in The Divider: Trump in the White House 2017-2021, published in the US on Tuesday.The authors, Peter Baker of the New York Times and Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, call Baier’s request “stunning”, as Arizona “was never in Trump’s column. While the margin of his defeat in the state had narrowed since election night, he still trailed by more than 10,000 votes.”In a statement emailed to the Guardian by a Fox News spokesperson, Baier responded to the report.He said: “The full context of the e-mail is not reported in this book.“I never said the Trump campaign ‘was really pissed’ – that was from an external email that I referenced within my note. This was an email sent after election night.“In the immediate days following the election, the vote margins in Arizona narrowed significantly and I communicated these changes to our team along with what people on the ground were saying and predicting district by district. I wanted to analyse at what point (what vote margin) would we have to consider pulling the call for Biden. I also noted that I fully supported our Decision Desk’s call and would defend it on air.”Full story:Fox News anchor Bret Baier wanted Arizona ‘put back’ in Trump’s column, book saysRead more More

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      As the US-led Postwar System Crumbles, a New World Order Emerges

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Putin is banking on a failure of political will in the west before Russia runs out of firepower | Timothy Garton Ash

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      Putin is banking on a failure of political will in the west before Russia runs out of firepowerTimothy Garton AshDemocratic leaders need to prepare their citizens for a long struggle over Ukraine – and a hard winter The Russo-Ukrainian war is coming down to a race between the weakening political will of western democracies and the deteriorating military means of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship. But this race will be a marathon, not a sprint. Sustaining that political will requires the kind of farsighted leadership which most democracies are missing. It calls for a recognition that our own countries are also, in some important sense, at war – and a corresponding politics of the long haul.Is this what you hear when you turn on your television in the United States (where I am now), Germany, Italy, Britain or France? Is this a leading topic in the Conservative party contest to decide Britain’s next prime minister, or the run-up to the Italian election on 25 September, or the campaign for the US midterm elections on 8 November? No, no and no. “We are at war,” I heard someone say recently on the radio; but he was an energy analyst, not a politician.The rouble is soaring and Putin is stronger than ever – our sanctions have backfired | Simon JenkinsRead moreThe fact that Ukrainian forces are preparing for a big counter-offensive to recapture the strategically vital city of Kherson shows what a combination of western arms and Ukrainian courage could achieve. US-supplied High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (Himars) – long-range multiple-launch rocket systems – have enabled the Ukrainians to hit artillery depots, bridges and command posts far behind Russian lines. Russian forces have been redeployed from Donbas to defend against the expected offensive, thus further slowing the Russian advance in the east. Richard Moore, the head of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), observed recently that Russia might be “about to run out of steam” in Ukraine because of shortages of material and adequately trained troops. So Ukraine has a good chance of winning an important battle this autumn; but it’s still a long way from winning the war.In his campaign to defeat not only Ukraine but also the west, Putin is counting on Russia’s two traditional wartime allies: Field Marshal Time and General Winter. The Russian leader is weaponising energy, reducing gas flows through the Nordstream 1 pipeline so Germany can’t fully replenish its gas storage before the weather turns cold. Then he will have the option of turning off the gas entirely, plunging Germany and other dependent European countries into a desperate winter. High energy prices as a result of the war continue to turbocharge inflation in the west while keeping Putin’s own war chest filled with the billions of euros Germany and others are still paying for Russian gas and oil. Although a few grain ships are now leaving Odesa, his blockade of Ukrainian ports has caused a food price crisis across parts of the Middle East and Africa, resulting in much human misery and potentially in refugee flows and political chaos. Those, too, are Putin’s friends. Better still: the global south seems to blame this at least as much on the west as on Russia.Putin’s cultural and political analysis of the west leads him to believe that time is on his side. In his view, the west is decadent, weakened by multiculturalism, immigration, the post-nationalism of the EU, LGBTQ+ rights, atheism, pacifism and democracy. No match, therefore, for carnivorous, martial great powers which still cleave to the old trinity of God, family and nation.There are people in the west who agree with him, subverting western and European unity from within. Just read Viktor Orbán’s scandalous recent speech to an ethnic Hungarian audience in Romania, with its insistence that Hungarians should not become “mixed race”, its sweeping critique of the west’s policy on Ukraine and its conclusion that “Hungary needs to make a new agreement with the Russians”.Although the party likely to emerge victorious from next month’s Italian elections, the Fratelli d’Italia, is the indirect successor of a neo-fascist party founded in 1946, it does at least support the western position on the war in Ukraine. But the leaders of the Fratelli’s probable coalition partners, the Lega’s Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia’s Silvio Berlusconi have a pro-Putin past and cannot be relied on to stand firm on Ukraine, as the current Italian prime minister, Mario Draghi, has done. In Germany, a plurality of those asked in a recent opinion poll (47%) said Ukraine should give up its eastern territories in return for “peace”. European voices calling on Ukraine to “settle” along those lines will only get louder as the war grinds on. (Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn recently joined them, although his intervention won’t affect the strong cross-party consensus in Britain on support for Ukraine.)Most important are the midterm elections in the US. If Donald Trump announces his presidential candidacy off the back of midterm election successes for his partisans, this could spell big trouble for what has so far been rare bipartisan consensus in the US on large-scale economic and military support for Ukraine. Notoriously reluctant to criticise Putin, Trump has told his supporters that “the Democrats are sending another $40bn to Ukraine, yet America’s parents are struggling to even feed their children”.What would it take to prove the Russian leader wrong about the intrinsic weakness of western democracies? Rather a lot. The two largest armies in Europe are going to be slogging it out in Ukraine for months and quite probably years to come. Neither side is giving up; neither has a clear path to victory. All the current peace scenarios are unrealistic. When you can’t begin to see how something is going to end, it’s unlikely to end soon.To sustain Ukraine’s resistance and enable its army to recover lost territory requires weapon supplies on a scale that is large even for America’s military-industrial complex. For example, the US has reportedly already sent one-third of its entire stock of Javelin anti-tank missiles. According to a former deputy governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, the country needs a further $5bn a month in macroeconomic support just to ensure that its economy does not collapse – close to double what it is currently getting. That’s before you even get to the challenge of postwar reconstruction, which may cost as much as $1tn.If we stay the course, at scale, then Field Marshal Time will be on Ukraine’s side. Putin’s stocks of his most modern weapons and best trained troops have already been depleted. Keep up the pressure and – military experts tell us – he will be reaching back to 40-year-old tanks, and raw recruits. Western sanctions are hitting the hi-tech parts of his economy, needed for resupply. Could he compensate for the loss of skilled troops by a general mobilisation? Will China come to his aid with modern weapons supplies? Can he escalate? These questions have to be asked, of course, but the pressure would be back on him.In democracies, leaders must justify and explain to voters this kind of large-scale, strategic commitment, otherwise they will not support it in the long run. Putin would then be proved right in his diagnosis of the weakness of democracy. Estonia’s Kaja Kallas is giving an example of such leadership, but then her people know all too much about Russia already. At the moment I don’t see any leader of a major western democracy doing the same, except perhaps for Mario Draghi – and he’s leaving.
      Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist
      TopicsUkraineOpinionVladimir PutinRussiaEuropeUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      Putin’s reported girlfriend Alina Kabaeva hit with US sanctions

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      Putin’s reported girlfriend Alina Kabaeva hit with US sanctions Kabaeva, 39, former rhythmic gymnast the Kremlin denies is romantically involved with Putin, has assets frozen by US treasury Vladimir Putin’s purported lover has been hit with sanctions from the US government’s treasury department over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.Alina Kabaeva, 39, landed on the latest update to the federal Office of Foreign Assets Control’s specially designated nationals list, freezing any of her assets in the US and generally prohibiting Americans from dealing with her.Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan trip puts US analysts and Democrats on edgeRead moreThe move came a little more than three months after the White House said Kabaeva, a famed former rhythmic gymnast, nor anyone else was safe from sanctions, even after her last-minute removal from a round of such penalties in April.United Kingdom officials had similarly sanctioned Kabaeva – who now is chairperson of Russia’s New Media Group, the country’s largest private media company – in May.Western countries have levied economic penalties at associates and loved ones of Putin to punish the Russian president, 69, for his decision to invade Ukraine in February. The US has avoided a direct confrontation with Russia over the invasion, though it has provided billions of dollars in weapons and other resources to help Ukraine.The Kremlin has long denied that Putin, who is divorced, is romantically involved with Kabaeva, but various published reports suggest that she is the mother of at least some of his children. A Moscow newspaper which, in 2008, reported that Putin and Kabaeva were involved despite his still being married at the time was shut down soon after for unclear reasons.Kabaeva, who is originally from Uzbekistan, won gold in the 2004 Olympics in Athens. She later spent more than six years as a lawmaker in Putin’s United Russia party before taking over the National Media Group in 2014, with her only prior experience in the company’s industry being her hosting of a TV talkshow.TopicsVladimir PutinUS politicsRussiaUkraineEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      China Will Decide Who Wins the Fight: Russia or the West

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      Making Sense of the Political Consequences of the Russia-Ukraine War

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      The Fair Observer website uses digital cookies so it can collect statistics on how many visitors come to the site, what content is viewed and for how long, and the general location of the computer network of the visitor. These statistics are collected and processed using the Google Analytics service. Fair Observer uses these aggregate statistics from website visits to help improve the content of the website and to provide regular reports to our current and future donors and funding organizations. The type of digital cookie information collected during your visit and any derived data cannot be used or combined with other information to personally identify you. Fair Observer does not use personal data collected from its website for advertising purposes or to market to you.As a convenience to you, Fair Observer provides buttons that link to popular social media sites, called social sharing buttons, to help you share Fair Observer content and your comments and opinions about it on these social media sites. These social sharing buttons are provided by and are part of these social media sites. They may collect and use personal data as described in their respective policies. Fair Observer does not receive personal data from your use of these social sharing buttons. It is not necessary that you use these buttons to read Fair Observer content or to share on social media. More

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      We must fight powerful bullies, whether they are Putin, Trump, or tech billionaires | Robert Reich

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      We must fight powerful bullies, whether they are Putin, Trump, or tech billionairesRobert ReichThroughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality by the powerful. Civil society doesn’t let might make right I keep running into people who feel overwhelmed by so many seemingly unrelated but terrifying things occurring all at once. “How can all this be happening?” they ask.But these things are connected. They are reinforcing each other. As such, they pose a clear challenge to a decent society.Putin invades Ukraine. Trump refuses to concede and promotes his big lie. Rightwing politicians in America and Europe inflame white Christian nationalism. Television pundits spur bigotry toward immigrants. Politicians target LGBTQ+ youth.Powerful men sexually harass and abuse women. Abortion bans harm women unable to obtain safe abortions. Police kill innocent Black people with impunity.CEOs rake in record profits and compensation but give workers meager wages and fire them for unionizing. The richest men in the world own the most influential media platforms. Billionaires make large campaign donations (read: legal bribes) so lawmakers won’t raise their taxes.What connects these? All are abuses of power. All are occurring at a time when power and wealth are concentrated in few hands.It is important to see the overall pattern because each of these sorts of abuses encourages other abuses. Stopping them – standing up against all forms of bullying and brutality – is essential to preserving a civil society.Throughout history, the central struggle of civilization has been against brutality by the powerful. The state of nature is a continuous war in which only the fittest survive – where lives are “nasty, brutish, and short,” in the words of the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes.Without norms, rules, and laws preventing the stronger from attacking or oppressing the weaker, none of us is safe. We all live in fear. Even the most powerful live in fear of being attacked or deposed.Civilization is the opposite of a state of nature. A civil society doesn’t allow the strong to brutalize the weak. The responsibility of all who seek a decent society is to move as far from a state of nature as possible.Certain inequalities of power are expected, even in a civil society. Some people are bigger and stronger than others. Some are quicker of mind and body. Some have more forceful personalities. Some have fewer scruples.Some inequalities of income and wealth may be necessary to encourage hard work and inventiveness, from which everyone benefits.But when inequalities become too wide, they invite abuses. Such abuses invite further abuses until society degenerates into a Hobbesian survival of the most powerful. An entire society – even the world – can descend into chaos.Every time the stronger bully the weaker, the social fabric is tested. If bullying is not contained, the fabric unwinds.Some posit a moral equivalence between those who seek social justice and those who want to protect individual liberty, between “left” and “right.”But there is no moral equivalence between bullies and the bullied, between tyranny and democracy, between brutality and decency – no “balance” between social justice and individual liberty.No individual can be free in a society devoid of justice. There can be no liberty where brutality reigns.The struggle for social justice is the most basic struggle of all because it defines how far a civilization has come from a Hobbesian survival of the most powerful.A civil society stops brutality, holds the powerful accountable, and protects the vulnerable.Putin must be stopped. Trump must be held accountable. Rightwing politicians who encourage white Christian nationalism must be condemned and voted out of office. Celebrity pundits who fuel racism and xenophobia must be denounced and defunded.Powerful men who sexually harass or abuse women must be prosecuted. Women must have safe means of ending pregnancies they don’t want. Police who kill innocent Black people must be brought to justice.CEOs who treat their employees badly must be exposed and penalized. Billionaires who bribe lawmakers to cut their taxes or exempt them from regulations must be sanctioned, as should lawmakers who accept such bribes.This is what civilization demands. This is what the struggle is all about. This is why that struggle is so critical.
      Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is professor of public policy at the University of California at Berkeley and the author of Saving Capitalism: For the Many, Not the Few and The Common Good. His new book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It, is out now. He is a Guardian US columnist. His newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDonald TrumpVladimir PutinRoe v WadeThe far rightcommentReuse this content More