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      in US Politics

      As Modi visits, Indian American lawmakers face balancing act

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      Ahead of Narendra Modi’s state visit to Washington this week, Pramila Jayapal – a progressive Democratic congresswoman – circulated a letter signed by dozens of congressional lawmakers calling for Joe Biden to acknowledge the erosion of human rights and democracy during the Indian prime minister’s nine years in power.“A series of independent, credible reports reflect troubling signs in India toward the shrinking of political space, the rise of religious intolerance, the targeting of civil society organizations and journalists, and growing restrictions on press freedoms and internet access,” it warned.The letter was also signed by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; notable in their absence, however, were several other Indian American politicians and Democrats, including Ro Khanna, Shri Thanedar, Ami Bera and Raja Krishnamoorthi.Modi’s state visit comes at a consequential time for the small but record number of Indian Americans in Congress.Many of these same lawmakers have led some of the country’s most vocal and comprehensive responses to the threats against US democracy, from the bipartisan focus on China to voting rights legislation.But speaking out on India’s crackdown on religious freedoms, press and speech comes with political risk: some lawmakers serve large diaspora constituencies and surveys suggest at least half of Indian Americans remain supportive of Modi. The voting bloc is also only growing in political influence and importance – now 4 million strong and on track to be the largest among Asian Americans.Meanwhile, a growing number of Indian Americans are speaking out against Modi’s brand of Hindu nationalism – Hindutva – and its repercussions in India and abroad.“It’s difficult terrain for Indian American politicians to have to navigate or lead a response to the Modi visit,” said Sara Sadhwani, a politics professor at Pomona College and author and researcher of the Indian American Elections Survey. “It’s one thing to support the relationship of the US and India. It’s another thing to support a leader.”Khanna, a congressman from California, represents the largest Asian American district in the country. The Democratic-majority district is home to some of the most concentrated south Asian communities in the US, and Khanna was recently named co-chair of the Congressional Caucus on India and Indian Americans.But when Khanna has broached the topic of Modi in recent years, he has quickly met backlash from Modi supporters and critics alike. In 2019, he tweeted a call for Hindu American politicians to “stand for pluralism, reject Hindutva, and speak for equal rights for Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Buddhists and Christians”. More than 200 Indian American organizations immediately lodged complaints, and called for him to resign from the Congressional Pakistan Caucus.Last month, when Khanna joined the House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, in inviting Modi to address Congress, advocacy organisations and activists such as the Indian American Muslim Council expressed their own disappointment.“I support very strongly the US-India strategic relationship and I also believe it has to be grounded in a commitment to the rule of law, to pluralism, to human rights – we have to build and strengthen the relationship,” Khanna told the Guardian, adding that the “vast majority” of his constituents felt the same. His office did not immediately comment on Jayapal’s letter.Krishnamoorthi, a congressman from Illinois also acknowledged the complicated issues of democracy in India, but pointed to the country’s role in the context of the US’s tensions with China.“What’s very important is that right now democracy is under threat [in the US and India] and we have to do what it takes to buck up,” he said. “I’ve lived through January 6 – it represents how fragile our own democracy is. At the same time I’m aware of what’s happening in India and concerned.“We have to make sure we leverage each other’s strengths and promote democracy everywhere. Because remember there is an alternative model out there that is being shopped by the Chinese Communist party.”Such qualified acknowledgments of the threats facing democracy in India don’t go far enough for some.“The White House and Congress are making a terrible mistake by celebrating Modi on this trip,” said Arjun Sethi, a Georgetown Law professor and human rights activist. “Human rights abuses continue to worsen under his administration and they should be asking him very difficult questions instead of honoring him.”Sethi pointed to numerous internet blackouts that the Modi government has used to quell dissent and the extreme tactics to stifle the press, whether by blocking accounts on Twitter or deporting journalists. But he said the onus was not just on lawmakers, but on members of the community itself.“There is a well-known phenomenon among south Asians in America who proclaim to be liberal and supporters of human rights – except when it comes to Modi, violence and hate against marginalized communities in India,” he said.Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow focused on south Asian politics at the American Enterprise Institute, said lawmakers like Khanna have to do a “balancing act” to serve both a progressive base and Modi supporters. But he also said the chasm between Indian Americans supporting Modi and those who were either critical or indifferent of him was only expected to grow with the younger population.“Hindu nationalism as an ideology is innately unappealing, and there’s a large proportion of the Indian American community that is not Hindu,” he said. “The ideas espoused by the BJP [Modi’s party] are simply not compatible with liberal democracy as we understand it.”The White House, in the meantime, has done its own balancing act. Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, said the administration will “make our views known” on India’s press and religious freedoms, according to Reuters. “We do so in a way where we don’t seek to lecture or assert that we don’t have challenges ourselves.With all of the careful political calculus, Thursday’s events promise to be contentious. Some members of Congress – including Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib – will boycott Modi’s address to the chambers because of anti-Muslim sentiment. And thousands of Indian Americans, which will probably include influential political donors, invited to Modi’s address could encounter protesters outside the White House complex.But for some Indian American lawmakers, the ability to simultaneously represent the US and strengthen a relationship with India is worth protecting.“I just want to focus on the people of both countries,” said Thanedar, a congressman from Michigan. “I’d like to see a much stronger relationship with India than we’ve seen in the last several decades.” More

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      in Elections

      January 6 rioter who attacked police officer with stun gun jailed for 12 years

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      A California man who drove a stun gun into the police officer Michael Fanone’s neck during one of the most violent clashes of the January 6 riot was sentenced on Wednesday to more than 12 years in prison.Daniel “DJ” Rodriguez yelled, “Trump won!” as he was led out of the courtroom where the US district judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced him to 12 years and seven months behind bars for his role in the attack on Congress.Only two other January 6 defendants have received longer prison terms after hundreds of sentencings for Capitol riot cases.The judge said Rodriguez, 40, was “a one-man army of hate, attacking police and destroying property” at the Capitol.“You showed up in DC spoiling for a fight,” Jackson said. “You can’t blame what you did once you got there on anyone but yourself.”A body camera worn by Fanone captured the Metropolitan police officer screaming after Rodriguez shocked him with a stun gun while he was surrounded by a mob.Another rioter had dragged Fanone into the crowd outside a tunnel on the Lower West Terrace of the Capitol, where police were guarding an entrance. Other rioters began beating Fanone, who lost consciousness and suffered a heart attack after Rodriguez pressed the stun gun against his neck and repeatedly shocked him.Fanone addressed the judge before she imposed the sentence. The former officer described how the January 6 attack prematurely ended his law enforcement career and turned him into a target for Trump supporters who cling to the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election.Fanone left the courtroom in the middle of Rodriguez’s statement to the judge. He did not miss an apology from Rodriguez, who has been jailed for more than two years and will get credit for time served.“I’m hopeful that Michael Fanone will be OK some day,” Rodriguez said. “It sounds like he’s in a great deal of pain.”Fanone said he left the courtroom because he didn’t care to hear his assailant’s “rambling, incoherent” statement.“Nothing he could have said to me today would have made any difference whatsoever,” he said.Prosecutors recommended a 14-year prison sentence for Rodriguez, who pleaded guilty in February to charges including assaulting Fanone. They also sought a fine of nearly $100,000 to offset the cost of Fanone’s medical bills and medical leave.Fanone has written a book and testified in front of a House committee that investigated the insurrection, which disrupted the joint session of Congress for certifying Joe Biden’s victory.“Rodriguez’s criminal conduct on January 6 was the epitome of disrespect for the law; he battled with law enforcement at the US Capitol for hours, nearly costing one officer his life, in order to stop the official proceeding happening inside,” prosecutors wrote.Rodriguez pleaded guilty to four felony charges including conspiracy and assaulting a law enforcement officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon. He entered the guilty plea about two weeks before his trial was scheduled to start.On January 6, Rodriguez attended Donald Trump’s “Save America” rally before joining rioters who attacked police.“Rodriguez made his way to the front of the line of rioters battling the officers, yelling into his bullhorn at the beleaguered line,” prosecutors wrote.Rodriguez deployed a fire extinguisher and shoved a wooden pole at police before another rioter, Kyle Young, handed him what appeared to be a stun gun.Fanone was at the front of the police line when another rioter, Albuquerque Cosper Head, wrapped his arm around the officer’s neck and dragged him on to the terrace steps, then restrained Fanone while other rioters attacked him. Rodriguez shocked Fanone below the left ear of his helmet.Fanone managed to retreat and collapsed before he was taken to a hospital.Rodriguez entered the building and smashed a window with a pole before leaving Capitol grounds.Head was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after pleading guilty to an assault charge.Young also was sentenced to more than seven years. Young grabbed Fanone by the wrist while others yelled, “Kill him!” and “Get his gun!”During an interview with FBI agents after his March 2021 arrest, Rodriguez said he had believed he was doing the “right thing” and that he had been prepared to die to “save the country”. He cried as he spoke to the agents, saying he was “stupid” and ashamed of his actions.In the days leading up to January 6, Rodriguez spewed violent rhetoric in a Telegram group chat called “PATRIOTS 45 MAGA Gang”.“There will be blood. Welcome to the revolution,” Rodriguez wrote a day before the riot.Rodriguez’s attorneys said he idolized Trump, seeing the the former president “as the father he wished he had”, as they sought a prison sentence of five years and five months.The same judge who sentenced Rodriguez convicted a co-defendant, Edward Badalian, of three riot-related charges and acquitted him of a fourth after a trial without a jury. Jackson is scheduled to sentence Badalian on 21 July.More than 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the January 6 riot. More than 700 have pleaded guilty or been convicted. Approximately 550 have been sentenced, more than half receiving terms of imprisonment ranging from seven days to 18 years. More

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      in US Politics

      Increase in Americans planning to vote for candidate who shares abortion view

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      More than a quarter of registered US voters say they will only vote for candidates who share their beliefs on abortion, according to a poll released on Wednesday, a total (28%) one point higher than last year.The survey, from Gallup, was released before the first anniversary of Dobbs v Jackson, by which conservatives on the supreme court removed the right to abortion that had been safeguarded since Roe v Wade in 1973.A majority of Americans think abortion should be legal at least in some form. Since Dobbs, abortion rights has been seen as a vital motivating factor in a succession of Democratic successes.According to another poll released on Wednesday, by NPR/PBS News Hour/Marist, 57% of Americans say the court was wrong to bring down Roe.According to Gallup, for many voters who do not solely base their vote on abortion, the issue is still important: just 14% of respondents said abortion was not a major issue in deciding how they vote. That was down two points on the same survey last year and nine points from the previous low, 23%, in 2007.In the new Gallup survey, 56% said abortion was just one issue out of many when deciding how to vote. In 2022, 54% gave that answer.Primary elections continue to serve as a testing ground for the issue.In Virginia, a state that often indicates national voting trends and where abortion access is shrinking, politicians espousing anti-abortion views are losing popularity.On Tuesday, incumbents in favor of limiting or banning abortion access lost their elections.Amanda Chase, who has been in the state senate since 2016 and describes herself as “Trump in heels”, lost her Republican primary. Chase is in favor of completely banning abortion.Another incumbent Virginia state senator, Joe Morrissey, a centrist Democrat, has pushed for limits on abortion access, trying to pass a bill with Republicans to ban abortion after 20 weeks. He also lost his primary, beaten by a former state legislator, Lashrecse Aird, by an overwhelming 70%.Gallup said the Dobbs decision had a profound impact on voters on both sides of the issue.“Not only did the supreme court’s Dobbs decision cause more Americans to identify as pro-choice than had for the prior quarter-century,” the pollster said, “it also caused that expanded group of pro-choice identifiers to attach greater importance to a candidate’s abortion stance when they vote.“Meanwhile, the diminished pro-life segment of the electorate is less energized on the issue than they have been previously, indicating that the desire to see laws changed is more motivating to voters than wanting current laws maintained.” More

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      in US Politics

      Well-funded Christian group behind US effort to roll back LGBTQ+ rights

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      With the US besieged by a rightwing culture war campaign that aims to strip away rights from LGBTQ+ people and others, blame tends to be focused on Republican politicians and conservative media figures.But lurking behind efforts to roll back abortion rights, to demonize trans people, and to peel back the protections afforded to gay and queer Americans is a shadowy, well-funded rightwing legal organization, experts say.Since it was formed in 1994, Alliance Defending Freedom has been at the center of a nationwide effort to limit the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people, all in the name of Christianity. The Southern Poverty Law Center has termed it an “anti-LGBTQ hate group” that has extended its tentacles into nearly every area of the culture wars.In the process, it has won the ear of some of the most influential people in the US, and become “a danger to every American who values their freedoms”, according to Glaad, the LGBTQ+ advocacy organization.Through “model legislation” and lawsuits filed across the country, ADF aims to overturn same-sex marriage, enact a total ban on abortion, and strip away the already minimal rights that trans people are afforded in the US.Under the Trump administration, the group found its way into the highest echelons of power, advising Jeff Sessions, the then attorney general, before he announced sweeping guidance to protect “religious liberty” which chipped away at LGBTQ+ protections.The organization counts among its sometime associates Amy Coney Barrett, the supreme court justice who the Washington Post reported spoke five times at an ADF training program established to push a “distinctly Christian worldview in every area of law”.ADF is engaged in “a very strong campaign to put a certain type of religious view at the center of American life”, said Rabia Muqaddam, senior staff attorney at the Center for Reproductive Rights.“[The ADF campaign] extends to abortion, it extends to LGBTQ folks, to immigration, to what kind of religion we think is America, what kind of people we think are American,” Muqaddam said.“It’s as dramatic as that. I think we are in a fight to preserve democracy and preserve America as a place where we do tolerate and encourage and empower everyone.”ADF was founded in 1994 by a group of “leaders in the Christian community”, according to its website. Among those leaders was James Dobson, the founder of the anti-LGBTQ+ Focus on the Family organization who has said the 2012 Sandy Hook mass shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed, was a “judgment” from God because of declining church numbers.Its leaders remain involved in niche interpretations of Christianity. Kristen Waggoner, the ADF chief executive, also serves as legal counsel to Assemblies of God, a church which encourages worshippers to speak in tongues and believes in “divine healing” – the power of prayer – as a medical tool.Over the past two decades, ADF has been a main driver in dozens of pieces of rightwing legislation and lawsuits.The organization is currently behind the lawsuit 303 Creative, Inc v Elenis, which the supreme court is expected to decide this month, and which could chip away at LGBTQ+ rights. It’s a case that is classic ADF – a seemingly manufactured issue which the group has managed to chase all the way through the American legal system.The plaintiff, 303 Creative, is a website design company. 303 Creative has never made wedding websites, but its owner, Lorie Smith, claims her first amendment rights are being impinged because, if she were to start making wedding websites, she would not want to make them for same-sex couples – which would violate Colorado’s anti-discrimination laws.Another ADF obsession is abortion. It was involved, Muqaddam said, in crafting a 15-week abortion ban in Mississippi – which prompted a legal case that found its way to the supreme court – eventually resulting in Roe v Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion, being overturned in 2022.“Alliance Defending Freedom has been instrumental in the dismantling of Roe and the ongoing efforts to eliminate abortion nationwide,” Muqaddam said.“They enacted a law that they knew was unconstitutional, they enacted it for the purpose of generating case after case after case to push it out to the supreme court until they found a court that was sympathetic to their argument,” Muqaddam said.She added: “I think that’s exactly what is happening in the LGBTQ context as well. Their goal is to limit individual rights as much as possible.”The ADF website shows the breadth of its involvement in rightwing culture wars. The organization touts its work opposing abortion, on opposing same-sex marriage and opposing trans rights.“We advocate for laws and precedents that promote human flourishing by recognizing the important differences between men and women and honoring God’s design for marriage between one man and one woman,” ADF’s website reads.But Emerson Hodges, a research analyst at the SPLC, said what ADF is really doing is attempting to “undo LGBTQ social and legislative progress”.“They go under the guise of religious liberty, and religious freedom. What that means, though, is this religious liberty to discriminate and the religious freedom to invalidate LGBTQ individuals,” Hodges said.Worryingly, there are signs that ADF, and other groups like it, are growing in influence. As Republican politicians and rightwing media fan the flames of an extremist culture war, NBC reported that donations to ADF, which is a registered non-profit, more than doubled from 2011 to 2021.As it has grown in influence, ADF’s “model legislation” has found its way into state legislatures across the country, as the group attempts to strip away LGBTQ+ rights, and the rights of trans people in particular.“Just about every anti-LGBT legislation that you’ve seen probably in the past decade was probably copied or paraphrased off of a model legislation built by Alliance Defending Freedom,” Hodges said.“They provide legal advocacy support, litigation and policy models for government officials.”An article on ADF’s website states that it is a “biblical truth” that “men and women are physically different”, and the organization has duly worked to prevent trans people taking part in women’s sports.The group sued a school district in Minnesota in 2016, and in 2021 a judge in Connecticut dismissed an ADF lawsuit which sought to prevent transgender athletes competing in high school sports. The same year, ADF backed a lawsuit brought by a teacher in Virginia who had said he would not use a transgender child’s preferred pronouns because that would amount to “sinning against our God”.In April, ADF, which did not respond to a Guardian request for comment, filed in Oregon on behalf of a Christian woman who wanted to foster children, but said she would not agree to “respect, accept, and support … the sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression” of a child placed with her, the Statesman Journal reported.“[ADF’s] obsession with targeting LGBTQ people is unhinged and drastically out of touch with supermajorities of Americans who support LGBTQ people and laws to protect us from discrimination,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president and chief executive of Glaad.“Everyone should understand the truth: the ADF is simply an anti-LGBTQ group trying to abuse levers of government to push discrimination and keep their warped sense of control.“They’ve also worked to ban the right to choose, and are in cahoots with other extremist groups to oppress marginalized people. ADF is a danger to every American who values their freedoms – to be ourselves, live freely, and be welcome to contribute and to succeed in every area of society.” More

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      in US Politics

      Blinken will seek China’s cooperation in curbing fentanyl at high-stakes visit

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      US secretary of state Antony Blinken will seek China’s cooperation in curbing the production of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl during his two-day visit to Beijing, one of several contentious issues that the high-stakes diplomatic outreach will touch on.Aides to Blinken have said the issue will feature prominently in discussions between US and Chinese officials during the trip as the US seeks China’s help in curbing Chinese manufacture of precursor chemicals used to create the drug that helped drive more than two-thirds of 100,000 American overdose deaths in each of the past two years.“Blinken held candid, substantive, and constructive talks today” with China’s foreign minister Qin Gang in Beijing, the state department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, said on Sunday.Fentanyl issues are a test of US-China cooperation outside pressing geopolitical disputes, including China’s threat to unify with Taiwan, technology transfers, China’s relationship with Russia, surveillance disputes and trade imbalances.US law enforcement agencies have repeatedly placed blame on Chinese companies for shipping precursor chemicals to Mexico, where cartels manufacture and ship the deadly drug to the US.In a policy speech in May last year, Blinken said, “We want to work with China to stop international drug trafficking organizations from getting precursor chemicals, many of which originate in China.”But three months later, US officials said China had cut off all talks on the issue after then House speaker Nancy Pelosi made a diplomatically unpopular visit to Taiwan.China trade officials point to US demand for opioid drugs and maintain that fentanyl precursors are ordinary chemicals sold through normal trade channels.A statement that the Chinese embassy in Washington provided to the Wall Street Journal said: “The US needs to do some serious reflections on this.”Two bills are before US lawmakers aimed at requiring China to label the shipment of precursors more clearly and for China to cooperate with the US DEA drug enforcement agency.Democratic congressman David Trone recently introduced a bill requiring customs and border patrol to improve its port inspection policies. A similar bill is before senate lawmakers.Separately, US lawmakers passed the Fentanyl Results Act that requires the state department to work with Mexican, Chinese and other foreign law enforcement “to work on detecting synthetic drugs”, according to the Maryland lawmaker.On the Republican side, Florida US senator Marco Rubio fired off a letter to Blinken last month calling for China to be held accountable for its role in the opioid epidemic.“We cannot rely on a regime that multiple observers and experts believe subordinates its counternarcotics cooperation to its geostrategic goals,” Rubio wrote.In April, the US justice department singled out two Chinese companies for sanctions for allegedly selling chemical ingredients to the notorious Sinaloa cartel that the US says have moved into fentanyl production under the leadership of the “Chapitos”, the sons of former cartel head El Chapo Guzman.The US treasury department’s office of foreign assets control announced last month announced new sanctions against seven entities and six individuals based in China, as well as one entity and three people in Mexico.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChina’s foreign ministry said such actions could create “obstacles” for further cooperation with Washington to tackle the crisis, according to the South China Morning Post.The Mexican president, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, has also put pressure on Beijing to curb exports of both precursors and the drug itself. In a speech last month, Lopez Obrador countered Chinese denials of fentanyl smuggling, saying a container that recently arrived in Mexico from China was found to contain the synthetic opioid.“We already have the evidence,” he said, adding that Mexico would ask “very respectfully” for China to inform it when the contraband leaves its ports – and, if possible, seize it.But former US diplomats say Chinese cooperation on the issue may hinge on range of issues, including the sensitive theory that Covid-19 originated from a Chinese lab leak.The Joe Biden White House set a 90-day deadline in March for US intelligence agencies to report back to him on what they know about the pandemic’s origins.Biden said then that the US would work with allies to continue to press China “to participate in a full, transparent, evidence-based international investigation and to provide access to all relevant data and evidence”. The deadline for the report falls today.But there have also been signs of progress on the fentanyl issue. Last week, the US and China reportedly resumed talks on drug control cooperation.Zhao Junning, deputy director of China’s national medical products administration, met Andi Fristedt, the US Food and Drug Administration’s deputy commissioner for policy, legislation, and international affairs, in Beijing and “exchanged views on cooperation”.“Cooperation between Chinese and US drug regulatory agencies not only helps promote regulatory coordination between the two countries, but also lays a solid foundation for global cooperation in the field of drug regulation,” Zhao was quoted as saying. More

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      in US Politics

      The supreme court made a surprising ruling for Native American rights | Nick Estes

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      A white couple in Texas felt racially discriminated against when facing barriers to adopting a Navajo child. Backed by powerful corporate interests and other non-Native families, the Brackeens brought their grievance to the US supreme court and attempted to overturn the Indian Child Welfare Act, or ICWA. The “rights” of individuals thereby stood against the collective rights of entire nations of people who were here first in a legal system not of their own making. The Brackeens argued that the law privileges Indians as a race over others, including white families, and is, therefore, unconstitutional. The argument reeked of “reverse racism”, a bogus notion that measures taken to protect marginalized people end up harming white people.The ICWA, however, was designed to reverse a sordid history of Native family separation that benefited white families seeking to adopt Native children. More importantly, the law guarantees that federally recognized tribes have a say in their children’s futures by keeping them with Native families. Those determinations are not based on race but on the political status of tribes and the rights of their members.Indian country blew a huge sigh of relief on Thursday when the rightwing-majority court ruled against the Brackeens and upheld the ICWA. A decision otherwise would have had dire consequences for tribes. Beyond removing protections for their children, it could have changed tribes’ status, which precedes the existence of the United States and its constitution, to that of racial minorities whose remaining lands, histories and identities would, without thought, be absorbed into the American melting pot.The 7-2 decision should be celebrated as a clear sign that not only is tribal sovereignty a constitutional reality, but it is also here to stay. Sadly, the supreme court, throughout its history, has more often done harm to Native sovereignty than protected it. “Often, Native American tribes have come to his court seeking justice only to leave with bowed heads and empty hands,” admitted Justice Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, in his concurring majority opinion. His opinion offers a rich history of Indian child removal, examining the transition from federal Indian boarding schools to state welfare systems and adoption agencies that engaged in Native family separation.Gorsuch also writes of a 19th-century court that created the foundations of federal Indian law, upon which today’s justices draw. The court made those decisions during a time of great horror for Native people – often providing legal justification for Indigenous genocide and land seizures. In the 1823 case Johnson v M’Intosh, Chief Justice John Marshall argued that the United States inherited its right to Native lands from previous European powers. “Conquest gives a title which the courts of the conqueror cannot deny,” he wrote. The right to take lands from non-Christians and non-Europeans derived from 15th-century papal bulls known as the “doctrine of discovery”.That principle of racial and civilizational superiority hasn’t gone away and today infects the minds of jurists of all stripes. As recently as 2005, the supreme court invoked the doctrine in a ruling against a land claim by the Oneida Indian Nation. Writing against tribal sovereignty, the liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg warned against “rekindling embers of (tribal) sovereignty that long ago grew cold”.Last March, after the tireless advocacy of Indigenous peoples, the Vatican “repudiat(ed) those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’”. That rejection, however, didn’t undo the centuries of terror against Indigenous peoples and their children taken from them to be “civilized” according to Christian principles. It didn’t return the land or property the Catholic church stole from Indigenous peoples. And it didn’t overturn the fundamental premise upon which federal Indian law still rests – European conquest.In his concurring opinion in Haaland v Brackeen, Gorsuch makes a strong case defending tribal sovereignty against the overbroad powers of Congress to curtail tribal sovereignty and the overreach of states in his concurring opinion. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Sonia Sotomayor joined Gorsuch in his opinion. But they didn’t concur with his assertion that the principle that Congress has “plenary power” to divest tribes of their sovereignty conflicts with the original understanding of the constitution. Gorsuch argues that the constitution doesn’t grant the authority to limit tribal sovereignty. Yet Congress has used its powers to terminate federally recognized tribes and divest tribes of criminal jurisdiction over non-Indians.Gorsuch’s concurring opinion shows he is the most serious about engaging federal Indian law and history. How far his call for aligning Indian law with original understandings of the constitution will go is anyone’s guess. His sympathies with tribal sovereignty also show that getting good legal outcomes for tribal nations is like rolling the dice with unelected judges who hold so much sway over the survival and existence of tribal nations.But the victory in keeping ICWA and upholding tribal sovereignty doesn’t lie with Gorsuch. Leading up to this decision, tribes and activists led an effective political campaign to teach the public. Since ICWA’s passage in 1978, 14 states passed their own state versions of the law. In anticipation of ICWA being overturned, several states (including several Republican-majority state governments) recently passed protections to uphold it.The popular sentiment is on the side of tribal sovereignty. It’s now a question of what actions must be taken to ensure the collective rights of tribes are guarded against the individual and corporate desires to lay claim to Native lands, identities and children.
      Nick Estes is a member of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe and an assistant professer of American Indian Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is a journalist, historian and the host of the Red Nation Podcast. He is the author of Our History Is the Future: Standing Rock Versus the Dakota Access Pipeline, and the Long Tradition of Indigenous Resistance More

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      in US Politics

      Decades of Decadence review: Marco Rubio joins publishing’s motley Republican crew

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      Marco Rubio should have picked a better title. With his new book, the three-term senator echoes a 1991 double-platinum album by none other than Mötley Crüe: Decade of Decadence. The vice-chair of the Senate intelligence committee gives no credit to the bad boys of rock.Rubio is no Tommy Lee. As a presidential candidate, in 2016, the Florida senator preened … with an invisible kick-me sign pinned to his back.Donald Trump gleefully mocked the senator, his finances and personal tics. Rubio’s relationship with credit cards, Trump called a “disaster”. He also laced into his rival for sweating and gulping down water when rebutting Barack Obama’s State of the Union address in 2013.“I need water. Help me. I need water,” Trump sneered.It didn’t matter if Lil’ Marco had larger hands than him.In New Hampshire, Chris Christie fatally blistered Rubio for a robotic debate performance. “Memorized 25-second speech” – the words will forever haunt him. In that moment, Rubio’s grand ambitions went up in smoke.Also in 2015, McKay Coppins of the Atlantic caught Rubio pinching himself over his own good fortune, exclaiming to a friend: “It’s amazing … I can call up a lobbyist at four in the morning and he’ll meet me anywhere with a bag of $40,000 in cash.”So much for the yucks to be derived from Rubio’s title. As a text, Decades of Decadence delivers little. It lacks even the (skewed) intellectual curiosity of recent books by Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, hard-right senators of a generation just after Rubio. Instead, Rubio’s broadside reads like a laundry list of Republican orthodoxies delivered by a legislator scared Trump will upend his career still further. Less than two years ago, remember, the prospect of a primary challenge from Ivanka Trump had Rubio terrified.“I like Ivanka, and we worked very well together on issues, and she’s a US …” Rubio babbled. In the end, she punted. He was spared.But Rubio won’t (or can’t) leave well enough alone. In his new book, he compares himself to Donald Trump.“Watching the Trump campaign in action, I was reminded of my own first campaign for the US Senate in 2010,” he reminisces. “I did have an outsider spirit that allowed me to connect with voters who felt that the government wasn’t working for them.”Not in 2016, he didn’t. In his own state, Rubio lost the presidential primary to Trump by nearly 20 points.Elsewhere, Rubio compares himself to Roger Goodell.“I think of my role as a policymaker as very similar to the role of the commissioner of the National Football League,” he writes.OK. For what it’s worth, Rubio’s wife was once a Miami Dolphins cheerleader. His time as a college football player is a source of personal nostalgia.Dutifully, Rubio bashes the Bushes. He attacks the late George HW Bush and James Baker, his secretary of state, for being soft on China. He castigates Bush, who was ambassador to the United Nations and liaison to China, for referring to a Chinese leader as an “old friend”. He zings Baker as a “career public servant”.Bush served in the second world war. Baker was Bush’s “Velvet Hammer”. On their watch, the Berlin Wall fell and Kuwait was liberated. Rubio never wore a uniform and has spent most of his adult existence on the taxpayers’ dime. He is a career politician.Predictably, Rubio omits any mention of Trump prostrating himself before Xi Jinping and Kim Jong-un. The normally loquacious senator also stayed mum over Trump congratulating Kim on his country’s election to the board of the World Health Organization.On the page, Rubio also takes aim at the over-extension of the US military, financialism and woke corporations. He evidently suffers from amnesia. In a March 2015 interview with Fox News, Rubio rejected the contention the Iraq war was a mistake.“I don’t believe it was,” he said, adding: “The world is a better place because Saddam Hussein doesn’t run Iraq.”Weeks later, he reversed his position.In the same spirit of expediency, Rubio now voices disgust for Wall Street and financialism, upbraids Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan Chase for supporting Black Lives Matter, and zings Ray Dalio of Bridgewater Capital for boosting investment in China.In 2016, such forces drove Rubio’s presidential campaign. Politico blared: “Koch donors give Rubio early nod.” Other major donors included Paul Singer of Elliott Management and Ken Griffin, a billionaire hedge fund mogul and Harvard donor.“I’m really excited to be supporting Marco Rubio,” Griffin said. “He will be the next president.”Not quite. Seven years on, Griffin’s Citadel Securities is increasing its exposure in China. To Rubio, apparently, the role of business is to cough up campaign dollars – then shut up.“The best way to ensure our political system is less reliant on money is not to pass laws which infringe on fundamental rights, but rather to elect leaders who value policy and principles over politics and special interests,” the senator intones.In the race for the Republican nomination, he has not yet endorsed. That has not stopped him bemoaning Trump’s fate at the hands of the law. Last week, moments after news of the former president’s latest indictment, over his retention of classified records, Rubio delivered the following tweet:“There is no limit to what these people will do to protect their power and destroy those who threaten it, even if it means ripping our country apart and shredding public faith in the institutions that hold our republic together.”His disdain for Joe Biden is unvarnished. Trump? Less so – in public, at least.
      Decades of Decadence: How Our Spoiled Elites Blew America’s Inheritance of Liberty, Security, and Prosperity is published in the US by HarperCollins More

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      Biden begins re-relection campaign – does he have what it takes to win again?

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      It became known as the “basement strategy”. As the coronavirus pandemic raged outside, presidential candidate Joe Biden addressed the nation from a makeshift studio under his Delaware home, avoiding off-the-cuff gaffes and allowing rival Donald Trump to self-destruct.But three years on, with lockdowns lifted and America mostly back to a new version of normal, Biden knows that speeches on glitchy Zoom calls or in empty auditoriums will not be enough. The president, who at 80 is the oldest in American history, is facing the final, most gruelling campaign of his life.On Saturday he kicks it off in earnest with the first rally of his 2024 re-election bid in Philadelphia, in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. Biden will address supporters in the trade union movement, a vital part of his coalition, and tout economic achievements, including a manufacturing revival and record jobs numbers.Speaking in the birthplace of American democracy, he can also make the case that he has been a human bulwark against the extremism of Trump’s Make America Great Again (Maga) movement while finding ways to do business with Republicans in Congress. But after the sheltered existence he enjoyed in the pandemic campaign of 2020, he will have to prove his fitness for office all over again.“The principal stumbling block to a second term for Joe Biden is the widespread perception that he is simply too old to serve effectively for a second term,” said Bill Galston, a former policy adviser to President Bill Clinton. “He has to run a vigorous campaign, and there’s no time like the present to be out and about, and to begin pushing back against the perception that he’s going to run another basement campaign because he doesn’t have the energy to do anything else.”Biden will have plenty of opportunity, and obligation, to meet voters on the campaign trail this time, generating spontaneous moments that can be both a blessing and a curse given his history of verbal blunders. In December 2019, when a man in Iowa suggested that he was too old and raised questions about his son’s overseas business dealings, Biden called him a “damned liar” and suggested a pushup contest.Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, added: “That goes with the territory and, all things considered, it’s a risk that the campaign has to take. Because if they keep him as guarded as they have up to now then he has no chance of rebutting the presumption that he’s too old. And that could prove fatal.”Biden was also at his weakest during in-person campaigning early in 2020. Despite joining the race as the perceived frontrunner, he lost the first three Democratic primary contests in Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada and only clinched his party’s nomination after the pandemic took hold.During the presidential election against Trump, Biden did resume in-person campaigning via physically distanced circles, drive-in rallies and other small events in battleground states. But he almost always returned each night to sleep at home in Delaware.As president, he has travelled far and wide, delivered countless speeches and answered doubters with a pugnacious State of the Union address in which he verbally sparred with Republicans and came out on top. But he has given no national newspaper interviews and far fewer solo press conferences than his predecessors – fuelling a perception that his inner circle is trying to shield him from exposure.Saturday’s public rally will start to address one confounding disconnect. Biden has presided over the strongest post-pandemic recovery of any major economy, including the creation of 13m jobs – more than any president has created in an entire four-year term – and the lowest unemployment for half a century.Yet an Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found that just 33% of American adults say they approve of his handling of the economy and only 24% say national economic conditions are in good shape. One explanation might be stubbornly high inflation driving rising prices for consumers. Another is that people are not yet feeling the benefits in their daily lives.Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, said: “The poll numbers may not reflect the work that’s being done because we’ve done the legislation, now we have to move to education and implementation. Part of politics these days are about emotions and, while we’ve accomplished a lot, some of the things that we’ve accomplished Americans may not necessarily feel just yet and that’ll take some time.“Part of that is telling them when it’s coming, how it’s coming, but also highlighting the alternative and what’s on the other side and how in one election all the things that have been accomplished can be taken away.”Biden’s re-election campaign, led by Julie Chávez Rodríguez, granddaughter of the Latino labour activist Cesar Chavez, is convinced that it has a good story to tell. He has spent his presidency combating Covid, rallying western allies against Russia and pushing through major bills such as a bipartisan infrastructure package and legislation to promote hi-tech manufacturing and climate measures. When he formally announced his re-election campaign in an April video, he asked voters for time to “finish this job”.He is also fond of telling critics, “Don’t judge me against the Almighty, judge me against the alternative” – which looks set to be a far-right Republican such as Trump or the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. Biden proved an effective campaigner for Democrats in last year’s midterm elections by picking his venues carefully and highlighting Maga extremism along with abortion rights.Chris Whipple, author of The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, said of the 2024 campaign: “He’ll probably take a page from the playbook of the 2022 midterms. At the time, Biden wanted to go everywhere and talk about everything. He wanted to brag about all of his accomplishments from the first two years and he had plenty to brag about.“But [then chief of staff] Ron Klain and some of his advisers sat him down and said, Mr President, look, you’re going to go to the places where we think you can make a positive difference and you’re going to talk about women’s reproductive rights and the threat to democracy represented by Maga. He followed that script and the rest is history.”Whipple added: “They defied the expectations in the midterms. I suspect he’s getting very similar advice right now: that’s a winning formula. In the 2022 midterms, normal beat crazy, and crazy is even crazier as we speak, given the latest indictment of Trump and the craven obedience of the GOP [Grand Old Party] to Trump.”Despite Trump facing federal criminal charges over his mishandling of classified documents, no one in the Biden campaign is taking victory for granted. Presidential elections are decided by a few percentage points in a few swing states. There are warning signs that Biden will find 2024 tougher going than 2020.The Associated Press-Norc Center for Public Affairs Research poll found that only 26% of Americans – and only about half of Democrats – said they wanted to see Biden run again. Among Black adults, only 41% said they want him to run and 55% said they were likely to support him in the general election.The sagging enthusiasm has been thrown into sharp relief by two fringe candidates making inroads into his support among Democrats. A Quinnipiac University poll released this week found that 70% of Democratic-leaning voters support Biden in a 2024 primary but environment lawyer Robert F Kennedy Jr is drawing 17% and self-help author Marianne Williamson has 8%.Biden has struggled to fulfill key promises to Black voters, perhaps the most loyal group in his political base. While he tapped Ketanji Brown Jackson to become the first Black woman on the supreme court, he has been unable to follow through on pledges to protect voting rights against a wave of Republican-backed restrictions or enact policing reform to help stop violence against people of colour at the hands of law enforcement.Although the Inflation Reduction Act made historic climate investments, critics point to Biden’s recent backsliding on the issue: this year he approved Willow, an $8bn oil drilling project on pristine federal land in Alaska, and agreed to fast-track the $6.6bn Mountain Valley pipeline (MVP) in West Virginia.Michele Weindling, electoral director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth climate advocacy group, criticised Biden for his recent “negative choices” and said: “It is the president’s duty to ensure that he is constantly grappling with the crisis at hand and I don’t think that he’s taking the crisis seriously when he negotiates around fossil fuels and continues to pass drilling permits even after promising not to.”Pushing climate to the margins could damage Biden’s re-election chances, Weindling warned. “There’s a risk of it making our jobs a lot harder in terms of mobilising young people to get out to vote. The proof is in the past two elections where young people turned out in record numbers to elect Democrats who were running on bold progressive platforms, on popular agendas.”Meanwhile, Biden’s toughest critics are calling for him to drop out of the race and make way for another Democrat. Norman Solomon, national director of RootsAction.org, sponsor of the Step Aside Joe! campaign, argues that, whereas Trump was on the defensive in 2020, this time Biden will represent the status quo.“There are many reasons to believe that this Biden campaign is on a collision course with disaster. Nobody knows for sure but there are so many signs from the polling, from his public appearances, from the footage that is catnip for the Fox News world that, literally and figuratively, Biden is stumbling.“Instead of being in denial and being like the crowd in the story The Emperor’s New Clothes, Democrats, including members of Congress and movers and shakers at the Democratic National Committee, still have an opportunity to step up. But instead, with very few exceptions, they’re simply fawning at the president.”If there is one hallmark of the Biden presidency, however, it is that he is constantly underestimated. Ronald Reagan, then the oldest president in US history, had an approval rating of just 35% in early 1983 but went on to win re-election in a landslide the following year.Bob Shrum, a consultant on several Democratic presidential campaigns, said: “Lots of factors matter here. Does the economy continue to stay healthy and to get healthier? What happens overseas? All of those things are contingencies that you have to take into account but, looking at it right now, I not only think Biden wins, I think Republicans are going to get more and more uncomfortable with Trump.” More