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      Republican Tom Cotton refuses four times to condemn Trump on Ukraine

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      Republican Tom Cotton refuses four times to condemn Trump on Ukraine
      Stephanopoulos tries repeatedly to prise comment from him
      Trump hints at 2024 presidential bid in CPAC speech
      The Republican senator Tom Cotton refused four times on Sunday to condemn or even comment on Donald Trump’s repeated praise for Vladimir Putin, the Russian president who ordered the invasion of Ukraine.Vladimir Putin sits atop a crumbling pyramid of power | Vladimir SorokinRead more“If you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about Vladimir Putin or any other topic,” Cotton told ABC’s This Week, “I’d encourage you to invite him on your show. I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can speak for themselves.”The former president’s views are clear. Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and though at CPAC on Saturday he condemned the invasion, he again called the Russian leader “smart”.Cotton, from Arkansas, is a military veteran and foreign policy hawk with reputed presidential ambitions from the hard Republican right. His host on ABC, George Stephanopoulos, tried repeatedly to prise comment from him. Cotton was happy to condemn Putin and praise Ukrainian bravery – and to criticise US allies in Europe.“I know that they say they sanctioned 80% of the banks in Russia,” he said. “Well, Vladimir Putin controls 100% of the banks in Russia. He can use the other 20% to continue to finance his war machine.“It’s time to remove all Russian financial institutions from the international payment system. It’s time to impose sanctions on his oil and gas exports, which he uses as his primary means of financial support.”Stephanopoulos cited Trump calling Putin “smart” and “savvy” and “say[ing] Nato and the US are dumb”, and asked: “Are you prepared to condemn that kind of rhetoric from the leader of your party?”Cotton said: “George, you heard what I had to say about Vladimir Putin. That he is a ruthless dictator who’s launched a naked, unprovoked war of aggression.“Thankfully, the Ukrainian army has anti-tank missiles that President Obama would not supply, that we did supply last time Republicans were in charge in Washington. That’s why it’s so urgent that we continue to supply those weapons to Ukraine.”Stephanopoulos asked: “Why can’t you condemn Donald Trump for those comments?”Cotton said: “George, if you want to know what Donald Trump thinks about Vladimir Putin or any other topic, I’d encourage you to invite him on your show. I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can speak for themselves.“I speak on behalf of Arkansans, who I talked to this week and who are appalled at what they saw in Ukraine and they want me right now to fight in Washington to support those brave Ukrainians.”Stephanopoulos said: “You’re a senior member of the Republican party. Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican party. He said last night again, suggested that he’d be running for president. When Fox News asked him if he had a message for Vladimir Putin, he said he has no message.“Why can’t you condemn that? I feel quite confident that if … a Barack Obama or Joe Biden said something like that, you’d be first in line to criticise him.”Cotton said: “Again, George, if you want to talk to the former president about his views or his message, you can have him on your show.“My message to Vladimir Putin is quite clear. He needs to leave Ukraine unless he wants to face moms and teenagers with Molotov cocktails and grandmothers and grandfathers with AK-47s for years to come.”Stephanopoulos varied his line of attack, asking: “If Donald Trump runs again, can you support him?”But Cotton wasn’t for picking.‘Leaders lead during crises’ – but Biden’s approval rating hits new low, poll findsRead more“George,” he said, “I’m not worried about this fall’s elections right now, much less an election two years from now. I’m focused on the naked war of aggression that Vladimir Putin has launched in Ukraine right now. There’s not a moment to lose. We can worry about electoral politics down the road.”Stephanopoulos tried once more.“Former President Trump was out there talking about it last night. I simply don’t understand why you can’t condemn his praise of Vladimir Putin.”“George,” said Cotton, “again, I don’t speak on behalf of other politicians. They can all speak for themselves.”Cotton’s refusal to criticise Trump – who has few critics in Congress and retains control of the Republican party – was not unique among Republicans but it was widely noted online.Reed Galen, a former Republican strategist now part of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project, wrote: “Tom Cotton is wily, like a Fennec fox. He’ll come up, look around, listen, then skitter back into his hole until the time is right.”TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpVladimir PutinRussiaUkraineUS politicsEuropenewsReuse this content More

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schools

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      Toni Morrison novel The Bluest Eye off banned list in St Louis schoolsNobel laureate’s classic debut was removed from libraries but backlash and lawsuits prompted vote to restore

      Books bans and ‘gag orders’: the crackdown no one asked for
      A banned book by the Nobel laureate Toni Morrison will be available again to high school students in a district in St Louis, Missouri, after the Wentzville school board reversed its decision to ban The Bluest Eye, in the face of criticism and a class-action lawsuit.‘Adults are banning books, but they’re not asking our opinions’: meet the teens of the Banned Book ClubRead moreThe board made national news last month when it voted 4-3 to removed the book from school libraries, citing themes of racism, incest and child molestation.Morrison’s 1970 debut novel is one of several titles, including Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe and L8R, G8R by Lauren Myracle, to have gained the attention of school boards in conservative US areas.The Wentzville ban was imposed after a challenge by a parent exercising the right to request titles not be available to their children. Backlash was swift, critics saying the board had violated first amendment rights.In a letter of protest, the Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Missouri Library Association said: “We encourage you to reexamine the depth of your commitment to education in the truest sense, and to find your courage in the face of baseless political grandstanding at the expense of educators and students in your district.”The American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri sued the district on behalf of two students. According to the St Louis Post-Dispatch, the board accepted a review committee’s recommendation to retain Morrison’s book, voting 5-2 on Friday to rescind the ban. An ACLU official, Anthony Rothert, welcomed the news but warned that books remain suppressed including All Boys Aren’t Blue by George M Johnson, Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Heavy by Kiese Laymon and Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison. Challenges against two other books had been withdrawn, the Post-Dispatch reported.The board also approved the retention of Gabi, a Girl in Pieces by Isabel Quintero, which faced challenges regarding language and depiction of rape.“Wentzville’s policies still make it easy for any community member to force any book from the shelves even when they shamelessly target books by and about communities of color, LGBTQ people and other marginalized groups,” said Rothert. “Access to The Bluest Eye was taken from students for three months just because a community member did not think they should have access to Toni Morrison’s story.”Many library associations argue that parents of minors should be able to control their children’s reading but should not make books unavailable to others.Opponents of Morrison’s book, including conservative lawmakers, urged the school board to maintain its ban. After the decision, board member Sandy Garber maintained that The Bluest Eye “doesn’t offer anything to our children”.According to the American Library Association, which monitors challenges to books, calls for bans are increasing.“It’s a volume of challenges I’ve never seen in my time at the ALA – the last 20 years,” the director of the ALA office of intellectual freedom, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, told the Guardian in November. “We’ve never had a time when we’ve gotten four or five reports a day for days on end, sometimes as many as eight in a day.Reuse this content More

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      Donald Trump defends calling Putin ‘smart’, hints at 2024 presidential bid

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      Donald Trump defends calling Putin ‘smart’, hints at 2024 presidential bidEx-president tells CPAC he could have stopped ‘appalling’ Russian invasion of Ukraine before giving strongest indication he will run again Donald Trump, the former US president, has defended his description of Russia’s Vladimir Putin as “smart” while seeking to blunt accusations that he admires the invasion of Ukraine.Trump reiterated his false claim that the 2020 election was stolen by voter fraud as he argued that the invasion of Ukraine would never have happened if he was still in the White House.“The Russian attack on Ukraine is appalling,” he told the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on Saturday night. “It’s an outrage and an atrocity that should never have been allowed to occur.“We are praying for the proud people of Ukraine. God bless them all. As everyone understands, this horrific disaster would never have happened if our election was not rigged and if I was the president.”The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracyRead moreElection officials, numerous judges and Trump’s own attorney general found no evidence that the election was rigged. Having retold “the big lie”, he went on to compare himself favourably with other presidents’ handling of Putin.“Under Bush, Russia invaded Georgia. Under Obama, Russia took Crimea. Under Biden, Russia invaded Ukraine. I stand as the only president of the 21st century on whose watch Russia did not invade another country.”Democrats dismissed the speech and condemned Trump for still cosying up to Putin. Adonna Biel, a spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee, said: “After spending four years selling out Ukraine, the defeated former president took the stage at CPAC to double down on his shameless praise for Putin as innocent Ukrainians shelter from bombs and missiles at the hands of Russia.“This has been the theme of the Republican party all week, making clear that their party is beholden to a defeated former president who lost them the White House, House, and Senate.”An audience of about 5,000 people at CPAC, the biggest annual gathering of grassroots conservatives, roared and whistled their approval. Some chanted: “USA! USA!”Trump, whose “America first” approach rattled Nato allies, claimed that Russia and other countries respected the US when he was president and blamed Joe Biden for displaying weakness on the global stage.“I have no doubt that President Putin made his decision to ruthlessly attack Ukraine only after watching the pathetic withdrawal from Afghanistan, where the military was taken out first, our soldiers were killed and American hostages, plus $85bn worth of the finest equipment anywhere in the world were left behind,” he said.Trump, who notoriously deferred to autocrats, also responded to criticism over his description this week of Putin’s invasion of separatist areas of Ukraine as “genius”, “savvy” and “smart”.He asserted that Putin has suffered no repercussions beyond sanctions, which he has shrugged off for 25 years. “The problem is not that Putin is smart – which of course, he’s smart – but the real problem is that our leaders are dumb. They’ve so far allowed him to get away with this travesty and an assault on humanity.”He added: “So sad. Putin is playing Biden like a drum and it’s not a pretty thing as somebody that loves our country to watch.”Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign had more than 100 contacts with Russia, prompting a special counsel investigation that stopped short of alleging direct collusion. As president, Trump was notoriously reluctant to condemn Putin and, at a summit in Helsinki, took the Russian leader’s word over that of his own intelligence agencies. His administration did impose some sanctions on Moscow, however.Trump recalled on Saturday: “I was with Putin a lot. I spent a lot of time with him. I got along with him … I did a lot of things that were very tough on Russia. No president was ever as tough on Russia as I was.“But with respect to what’s going on now, it would have been so easy for me to stop this travesty from happening. He understood me and he understood that I didn’t play games. This would not have happened. Someday, I’ll tell you exactly what we talked about. And he did have an affinity, there’s no question about it, for Ukraine. I said, never let it happen, better not let it happen.”He added: “I also warned Nato about the danger of Russia and look at the consequences. On foreign policy, the world rightly had a healthy fear that as president I would stand strong for Americans’ priorities.”During an 85-minute speech to a packed ballroom at CPAC, Trump, who contested the 2016 and 2020 elections, also gave his strongest hint yet that he will run for president in 2024. “We did it twice, and we’ll do it again,” he said. “We’re going to be doing it again a third time.”Kremlin papers appear to show Putin’s plot to put Trump in White HouseRead moreThere were loud cheers from the crowd, many of whom wore “Make America great again” caps and “Trump 2024” regalia. There were shouts of “Four more years!” and “We want Trump!”The former president went on to rail against “leftwing tyranny” and “crackdowns, censorship and cancel culture”, praise protesting Canadian truckers and brand Biden’s supreme court nominee, Ketanji Brown Jackson, “a radical left zealot”. He claimed that the court’s existing justices, including conservative Brett Kavanaugh, are “terrified of the radical left” and “afraid to do the right thing”.Trump pushed the baseless conspiracy theory that his 2016 election rival, “Crooked” Hillary Clinton, spied on him, prompting chants of “Lock her up!” And he accused Democrats of caring more about Ukraine’s borders than America’s own.He declared: “You could take the five worst presidents in American history and put them together and they would not do the damage that Joe Biden’s administration has done in just a very short period.”TopicsDonald TrumpCPACUS politicsUkraineVladimir PutinReuse this content More

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      Poll: US majority believes no Russian invasion with Trump as president

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      Poll: US majority believes no Russian invasion with Trump as presidentCaps-Harris poll shows 62% of respondents believe Putin would not have ordered troops into Ukraine with Trump in White House A clear majority of Americans think Vladimir Putin would not have ordered the Russian invasion of Ukraine had Donald Trump still been in the White House, according to a new poll.Tucker Carlson leads rightwing charge to blame everyone but PutinRead moreThe poll, by the Harvard Center for American Political Studies (Caps)-Harris, found that 62% of those surveyed believed Putin would not have sent troops into Ukraine with Trump in the White House.In partisan terms, the survey found that 85% of Republicans and 38% of Democrats held the view.The poll, conducted on Wednesday and Thursday this week among 2,026 registered voters, found that 59% said Putin only ordered the invasion because he saw weakness in Joe Biden. Forty-one percent said the US president was not a factor in Putin’s decision.Republicans in Congress have attacked Biden for perceived weakness in the face of autocratic leaders abroad. Party figures have been less keen to discuss Trump’s expressions of admiration for Putin during the Ukraine crisis.The Harvard study’s findings broadly buttressed a Fox News poll, carried out before Russia invaded, that found more Republicans had a negative view of Biden than of Putin and more Democrats had a negative view of Trump than of the Russian leader.That study said 92% of Republicans had a negative view of Biden while 81% had a negative view of Putin. Among Democrats, 87% had a negative view of Trump and 85% a negative view of Putin.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreA third poll, released by NPR/PBS/Marist College, will add concern for a Biden administration battling low approval ratings generated by public dissatisfaction on fronts including handling of the pandemic, the Afghanistan withdrawal, a stalled legislative agenda and inflation.The NPR-Marist poll found that 56% of Americans said Biden’s first year in office was a “failure”. Just 39% called it a success.Two-thirds of independents said Biden’s first year was a failure, while 91% of Republicans said so. Among Democrats, 80% called Biden’s first year a success – but 15% said it had been a failure.TopicsUS newsUS politicsVladimir PutinRussianewsReuse this content More

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a superb addition to the US supreme court | Moira Donegan

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      Ketanji Brown Jackson will be a superb addition to the US supreme courtMoira DoneganUnlike most people nominated to the court, Jackson’s career has included advocating for the rights of criminal defendants and the poor She has always wanted this. Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to fill the supreme court seat left vacant by the retirement of Stephen Breyer at the end of this term, said that she wanted to become a judge one day in the yearbook from her Miami high school. By then she was already a champion in national oratory competitions, sharpening the skills of rhetoric and cadence that are the stock and trade of ambitious lawyers. Her parents – an attorney and a school principal – saw their daughter’s potential, and helped her to hoist herself from her middle-class origins onto the path followed by ambitious lawyers from more patrician backgrounds. She went to Harvard for undergrad and then to Harvard Law, eventually clerking on the court for Breyer himself – a justice known to be particularly picky with his clerkships.She seems to have pursued the law with single-minded devotion since she was very young, committing herself to the profession with all the passion and devotion of a vocation.Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreBut her legal career took her to places most supreme court justices’ careers have not: In addition to her standard bona fides in private practice and later on the federal bench, she served on the United States Sentencing Commission, working to assess federal criminal sentencing practices and advocating for reduced sentences for drug offenders. Later, she served as a federal public defender in Washington. This makes her the first former public defender nominated to the court, and the first since Thurgood Marshall with extensive criminal defense experience. Her nomination signals a respect for a field of legal practice with great moral authority but little respect from the legal establishment: advocating for the rights of criminal defendants and the poor.When Biden nominated Jackson to a seat on the DC circuit court just last summer, the post was widely seen as a stepping-stone to the supreme court itself: Jackson had already been all but anointed as Breyer’s successor. She sailed through that confirmation, even bagging three Republican votes. The ease of her last appointment, even amid the backdrop of her future one, suggested that Senate Republicans had not been able to manufacture controversy from her record, a failure on their part that suggests remarkable discipline on Jackson’s. She seems to have behaved in a manner becoming a federal judge her whole life. It’s as if she was born wearing a black robe.And yet for much of the nation’s history, Judge Jackson’s story would have been impossible. Jackson is the first Black woman to be nominated to the supreme court, fulfilling a Biden campaign promise, and she has made her way in a legal profession – and indeed, in a country – that is accustomed to discarding Black women’s talent. In many ways she represents America’s great, if usually thwarted, promise: that hard work by individuals, combined with a moral arc of national history that bends toward justice, can deliver talented and worthy people to success despite the injustices imposed on them for their race, their sex, or their origins. That there has never been a Black woman on the court before is testament to how rarely this promise is kept: Jackson is not the first Black female legal mind worthy of the court, and if she is confirmed, she will serve alongside more than one white man of lesser intellect and character. But though she is the first, she will not be the last.When Jackson joins the court, all of the Democratic appointees will be women. Two will be women of color. That gender disparity is likely to be especially stark in abortion and LGBT rights cases the coming years, as the conservative legal movement builds off its expected success in Dobbs v Jackson, the case that will overturn Roe v Wade this summer, and sets its sights undoing the privacy right that the court has used to protect sexual freedoms. Over its coming terms, the court – whose extreme right bent will not be changed by Jackson’s addition – is likely to approve further abortion bans and restrictions, cut off contraception access, and roll back marriage equality, trans rights, and the legality of gay sex.Dissenting will be three women who stand for the rights of Americans to live lives free of the notion that biology must be destiny, and unencumbered by sex role stereotypes. These women will stand for these freedoms, and others, while a majority of six conservative justices enshrine male supremacy and forced birth into federal law. Jackson’s opinions will likely be oriented more towards young lawyers and the general public than towards her conservative colleagues, who have shown themselves petulant and unwilling to engage in good faith with the arguments of the liberals. It is not an enviable task that Jackson will face on the court, but we can be grateful that she is willing to take it.Nor will her confirmation be easy. Though Jackson has long been the favorite to replace Breyer, in recent weeks a group of conservative Democrats, led by the influential congressman Jim Clyburn, made a concerted push to encourage Biden to nominate Judge Michelle Childs, a federal district court judge from South Carolina. Childs’ nomination would have been a favor to Clyburn, whose endorsement of Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential primary is widely credited with reviving Biden’s faltering campaign. But Childs had sparked weariness from the left for her past decisions regarding criminal sentencing and her private practice work on labor disputes. Perhaps it was this criticism that endeared her to Senate Republicans, who issues warm words about Childs and dangled a bipartisan confirmation vote in front of Biden. Now that their preferred candidate has been rejected in favor of one more amenable to progressives, conservatives have endeavored to paint Jackson has an extreme leftist.“If media reports are accurate, and Judge Jackson has been chosen as the supreme court nominee to replace Justice Breyer, it means the radical left has won President Biden over yet again,” tweeted Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican on the Senate judiciary committee who voted to confirm Judge Jackson to the DC circuit last summer.Jackson’s actual jurisprudence reflects scrupulousness more than radicality. While on the DC circuit this past year, Judge Jackson presided over a case called Committee on the Judiciary v McGahn, a lawsuit concerning the Trump administration’s attempt to sabotage a congressional investigation. It’s the kind of case that ambitious judges pray to avoid: high-profile and politically charged, with one party that would declare any unfavorable outcome a process violation.Knowing she was under a microscope, Jackson delivered a measured, thorough, and lengthy ruling declaring that former White House counsel Don McGahn could be compelled to testify before Congress. It was the kind of point-by-point argument meant to be ironclad even to the least sympathetic of readers. But the opinion also contained memorable flashes of rhetoric. “Presidents are not kings,” Jackson wrote. “They do not have subjects, bound by loyalty or blood, whose destiny they are entitled to control.” It was the kind of writing that would represent the pinnacle of many judges’ careers. For Jackson, it may be only the beginning.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      TopicsUS newsOpinionUS politicsUS supreme courtLaw (US)Biden administrationcommentReuse this content More

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      The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracy

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      The strange Republican world where the big lie lives on and Trump is fighting to save democracy Welcome to the the grassroots CPAC summit, where conservatives see themselves not as dismantlers of democracy, but as saviorsOn stage in a hotel ballroom glowing red, white and blue, Ron DeSantis was recalling his days in Congress and a book he wrote about America’s troubles. It was “read by about a dozen people,” the Florida governor said with rare self-deprecation.DeSantis then told a gathering of grassroots conservatives on Thursday: “I look back at that time, it almost seems a little quaint to me because the threats we face to freedom, the threats we face to a just society, are much more pervasive than they were just 10 years ago.”Tucker Carlson condemned for Ketanji Brown Jackson ‘Rwanda’ commentsRead moreMany Americans across the political spectrum would agree that something has gone terribly wrong over the past decade. Liberals might point to deepening inequality, a rise of white nationalism and an existential threat to democracy from the authoritarian right.But DeSantis and fellow travellers at this week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, see themselves not as dismantlers of democracy but its saviours. In their worldview, the true danger comes not from former president Donald Trump’s “big lie” of a stolen election but a radical left minority imposing socialism, cancel culture and “woke” ideology on the majority.Welcome to a parallel universe where it is common cause that Trump was spied on by rival Hillary Clinton, the January 6 insurrection was a heroic stand by patriots, and names such as Anthony Fauci, Justin Trudeau and Black Lives Matter are guaranteed to elicit loud boos.It is a universe where Wayne LaPierre of the National Rifle Association, an organisation accused of illegally diverting tens of millions of dollars for lavish personal trips, and which tried and failed to file for bankruptcy, can still be feted when he boasts of a record 5.4 million first-time gun buyers last year.And it is universe where Trump still reigns supreme, his face emblazoned on toy money and Superman images, his name stitched into souvenir badges, hats, hammocks and T-shirts that proclaim “Trump 2024”. Bids for a 5x5in painting by Michael Shellis depicting the former president kissing the Stars and Stripes opened at $3,000.The big lie lives onTrump is due to be the headline speaker at CPAC on Saturday night. A familiar line at his recent campaign rallies has been, “I am not the one trying to undermine American democracy. I’m the one who is trying to save it.” It is an argument that many at CPAC seem to sincerely believe, based on three justifications.First, they amplify Trump’s baseless claim of widespread election rigging. Interviews with CPAC attendees found it is taken as gospel. For example, Tom Freeman, 66, a retailer from Jupiter, Florida, insisted: “The fraud in 2020 is real, it’s huge, it’s millions of fraudulent votes. Democracy in the United States is under assault due to illegal immigration and voter fraud and manipulation that’s done on a systemic level.”The assertion, rejected by election officials and courts, is used to justify sweeping voter suppression laws in Republican-led states.Josh Mandel, an aggressively pro-Trump candidate for the US Senate in Ohio, won cheers when he told the CPAC audience: “We have Democrats who think it’s OK to cheat in elections, and I would submit to you that one of the most important fights of our day is to stop the cheating from the left… I want to say it very clearly and very directly. I believe this election was stolen from Donald J Trump.”Mandel described Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, Republican members of a House of Representative select committee investigating the January 6 riot, as “traitors”, adding: “We should abolish the January commission and replace it with a November 3 commission” – a reference to the date of the 2020 election.An parallel view of the Capitol attackRewriting the history of the insurrection is the second component of this inverted universe. At a CPAC session on Friday entitled, “The Truth about January 6th”, Julie Kelly, author of a book on the subject, accused the government of persecuting innocent demonstrators and hiding 14,000 hours of surveillance video. “We deserve to know how many FBI undercover agents and informants were involved,” she said, airing another bogus conspiracy theory.Kelly added that if Republicans gain control of the House, they should “turn the January 6 committee 180 degrees” to investigate how Democrats and the justice department “have abused their power to punish Trump supporters to criminalise political dissent because that’s not what this country is about”.The comments earned enthusiastic applause at CPAC, where few attendees share the conventional view of January 6 as a seditious assault on democracy. They are more likely to say it was morally justified, or that a few protesters went too far, or that it was a false flag operation by the FBI intended to discredit Trump supporters.Lisa Forsyth, 54, from Tampa, Florida, said she was in Washington that day but did not go inside the Capitol building. “To see the amount of bad press for just being there is out of line. Some of us didn’t do anything wrong but we’re lumped in with the infiltrators. There’s video footage of these people changing into Trump gear from their black stuff. There’s video footage out there but it’s a total denial.”Asked if she feels democracy is under threat, Forsyth, who is retired from a family pharmaceutical company, replied: “No, I wouldn’t use that phrase, I’m sorry, but that’s a line that I hear the liberals use all the time and I’m obviously not one of them. Our freedom is definitely under threat.”But standing nearby, Rachel Sheley, a chief information security officer from northern Kentucky, disagreed. “Democracy is under threat because they’re trying to infiltrate us with communism,” the 53-year-old said. “First amendment, second amendment – they want to strip them all away. If they are successful in doing so one at time all undercover, they’re stealing away the rights of our democracy.”Defending America from ‘wokeness’Third, the movement goes on the offensive by accusing Democrats of being the true anti-democratic party. This narrative holds that an unelected, leftist minority controls schools and universities, the mainstream media and the big tech giants of Silicon Valley, pushing politically correct “wokeness” on transgender, race and other cultural issues.It therefore follows that the conservative rank and file is fighting a righteous cause in defence of the “real America”. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas told CPAC: “We are taking this country back from the lunatic socialist left that is trying to destroy our freedom.”Warning that major institutions have become infected with the “woke virus”, DeSantis urged courage. “We have an opportunity to make 2020 to the year that America fought back. We’re going to lead the charge here in Florida but we need people all over the country to be willing to put on that full armour of God, to stand firm against the left’s schemes.”Mike Pompeo, the former secretary of state, added: “There is no threat greater to the United States than that which emanates inside our republic, emanates inside our school system. If we do not teach our children, the next generation, that we are not a racist nation, then surely the bad guys will come to be right about an America in decline.”Such speeches cast the struggle in heroic terms so that criticism is only likely to harden the siege mentality and resolve of the foot soldiers. Those wandering the corridors of CPAC seemed to share Joe Biden’s view that a struggle for the soul of America is under way – but were convinced that the president is on the wrong side.Lauren Lamp, 22, who works in corporate bankruptcy in New York, said: “Clearly, we can see from the past year Biden is a larger threat than Trump ever was. Trump was trying to restore the American dream. Biden: nobody knows what he’s doing because he does not address the American people. We don’t even know if it’s him working behind the scenes.”Sam Leiter, 56, insisted that democracy is under threat from cancel culture. “You can’t say what you want. There’s no free speech. If you don’t agree with the radical left you lose your job, you can get tarred and feathered, smeared. They’ll go after you and destroy you.”But what does Leiter make of the argument that Trump’s increasingly authoritarian Republican party is the threat to democracy? “It’s a classic case in psychology of projection,” said the speech therapist from Baltimore, Maryland. “Project on your spouse or some other person or people what you’re doing yourself.“It’s always been around in human relationships but in American political circles Bill Clinton was a master at that and it’s gotten worse, It’s now been proven that it was a complete hoax and yet for years they were accusing Trump of Russia collusion. And it was it was Hillary that was colluding with the Russians. She literally was.”Trump’s 2016 election campaign had dozens of contacts with Russia. There is no evidence that Hillary Clinton colluded with Russia – literally or otherwise.TopicsRepublicansDonald TrumpUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      US fossil fuel industry leaps on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to argue for more drilling

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      US fossil fuel industry leaps on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to argue for more drillingPetroleum lobby calls for looser regulation and drilling on public lands to ‘ensure energy security’ The US oil and gas industry is using Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to pressure the Biden administration to throw open more land and ocean for domestic drilling and to loosen regulations for large companies attempting to ramp up their fossil fuel extraction.Just hours before Russian troops began their unprovoked assault on Ukraine, the American Petroleum Institute (API) posted a string of tweets calling for the White House to “ensure energy security at home and abroad” by allowing more oil and gas drilling on public lands, extend drilling in US waters and slash regulations faced by fossil fuel firms.API, which represents oil giants including Exxon, Chevron and Shell, has called on Biden to allow an expansion of drilling and to drop regulations that impede new gas pipelines in order to help reduce fuel costs for Americans and support European countries that have seen gas costs spiral due to concerns over supply from Russia, which provides Europe with around a third of its gas.“At a time of geopolitical strife, America should deploy its ample energy abundance – not restrict it,” said Mike Sommers, the chief executive of API. Sommers added that Biden was “needlessly choking our own plentiful supply” of fossil fuels.Some leading Republicans have joined the calls. “No administration should defend a Russian pipeline instead of refilling ours,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, an Alaska Republican, told her state’s legislature this week. “Every day, I remind the Biden administration of the immense benefits of Alaska production, energy and minerals alike, and every day I remind them that refusing to permit those activities can have harmful consequences.”Environmental groups were quick to criticize the renewed push for more drilling, accusing proponents of cynically using the deadly Ukrainian crisis to benefit large corporations and worsen the climate crisis.“Expanding oil and gas production now would do nothing to impact short term prices and would only accelerate the climate crisis, which already poses a major threat to our national security,” said Lena Moffitt, chief of staff at Evergreen Action, a climate group. “We stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, and stand opposed to actions by leaders of the fossil fuel industry that attempt to profit off of these harrowing atrocities.”Russia has faced a barrage of sanctions from the US and the European Union, although the western allies have so far largely steered clear of targeting the country’s vast oil and gas industry. Biden has said the sanctions will “end up costing Russia dearly, economically and strategically” but has not applied punitive measures to Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company.The US president faces the opposing pressures of dealing with the climate crisis while avoiding the political headache of rising gasoline prices for American drivers. On Thursday, the price of a barrel of crude oil rose to more than $100 on the global market for the first time since 2014, amid fears over Russia’s supply.A group of 10 congressional Democrats wrote to Biden on Thursday to urge the president to release more oil from the US’s strategic petroleum reserve in order to lower fuel costs for consumers in the short term. “We know that in the long-term, eliminating US dependence on oil will provide the stability we need to keep energy costs low for American households,” the lawmakers acknowledged.The European bloc is thrashing out a plan for a long-term shift away from dependence on the fluctuating fossil fuel markets, with Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, outlining the need for “strategic independence on energy”. Europe is “doubling down on renewables”, she added.The Ukraine crisis could prove to be a “turning point” in global energy consumption, said Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency. “There will be a transition to clean energy… it will be a difficult one, but I believe the governments will have to manage a transition if we want a planet that is safe and clean in the future,” he said.The development of solar and wind power has grown strongly in the US in recent years, although fossil fuels still account for about 80% of domestic energy consumption. Scientists have warned that emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas must be rapidly and drastically slashed if the world is to avoid catastrophic climate impacts such as heatwaves, floods, food insecurity and societal unrest.“Clean energy is affordable and reliable; we can’t afford to wait any longer to free ourselves from the volatility of the fossil fuel market and the dictators and violence it enables,” said Moffitt.TopicsUkraineOilEuropeUS politicsBiden administrationFossil fuelsReuse this content More

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      The Politics Behind the Hijab Ban

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      Political discourse in India is currently focused on the denial of some Muslim female students to their constitutional right of choosing to wear a hijab in classrooms at pre-university colleges — the equivalent to high schools.

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      The ruling dispensation in the Indian state of Karnataka has invoked Section 133(2) of the Karnataka Education Act, 1983. This section says that the “State Government may give such directions to any educational institution or tutorial institution as in its opinion are necessary or expedient for carrying out the purposes of this Act … [and] such institution shall comply with every such direction.”

      Claims

      On February 5, the ruling dispensation in Karnataka led to a letter being issued by Padmini S.N., under-secretary of the Education Department of Karnataka, requiring institutions to enforce particular provisions.

      First, as per the letter, students must wear a uniform that has been selected by an authority, such as college committees or administrative boards. Second, if the administrative committee has not issued a mandatory dress code, then “clothes which disturb equality, integrity and public law and order should not be worn.” Third, the letter cites the case of Asha Ranjan vs. State of Bihar and Ors in 2017. It claims that the Supreme Court “accepted the balance test where competing interests are involved and has taken a view that individual interest must yield to the larger public interest.” Fourth, the letter says that the ban on wearing a hijab inside educational institutions is not in violation of Article 25 of the constitution.

      Contesting the Claims

      Yet these claims are contestable. First, school management could introduce a uniform for students that is guided by the needs of education and the constitution. Education is concerned with the teaching-learning process. The sartorial choices of students or even teachers do not have any relevance to this process. In fact, preventing students from choosing what they want to wear may impede the fundamental right to education. Further, it cannot be logically argued that the sartorial choice of students impedes the integrity of the teaching-learning process.

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      Second, it is absurd to claim that clothes can impact equality, integrity and public order. Education is concerned with enhancing the ability of students to participate in social life after they graduate. This includes joining the labor force, participating in the political process, and building and sustaining communities. Inclusive development does not require all people to be part of sartorial (or any other type of) homogeneity, but it does need their participation in socially productive activities. Homogeneity is antithetical to equality with diversity. After all, the motto of India is “unity in diversity,” not unity before diversity.

      Furthermore, claiming that sartorial choices such as wearing a hijab will disrupt public law and order effectively serves as a dog whistle for vigilantes. When these vigilantes engage in actions that undermine public law and order, the original claim is thereby validated.

      Third, the Supreme Court, in the case of Asha Ranjan vs. State of Bihar and Ors, argued that there could be conflict between the legal rights of two individuals. In such an event, the interest of the wider community would be used to determine whose rights are prioritized. Yet the individual sartorial choices of students or teachers neither undermine the rights of others nor affect the public. Thus, in this case, the balance test is not applicable since there are no conflicts between individuals with regard to their rights as guaranteed by Article 21 of the constitution.

      Fourth, seeking to relate the ban on wearing a hijab (or the clothing choices of students or teachers) solely with Article 25 is legally untenable. In fact, if this standalone appeal to Article 25 of the constitution is made, then it leaves the door open to define religious or cultural practices as being more or less essential to the definition of a religion or culture. Doing so in this current case would directly impact the right to education of some Muslim female students.

      The key issue is whether the sartorial choices of students undermine the integrity of the teaching-learning process. The only logical answer is no. The choices of students and teachers are connected to the right to seek education under Article 21-A and the right to dignity under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. The right to practice religion or culture, as guaranteed by Article 25 in the present case regarding sartorial choice, does not subvert the teaching-learning process. Therefore, Article 25, when read with Articles 21 and 21-A, demonstrates the legal untenability of the ruling dispensation in Karnataka.

      Why Now?

      But there is a fundamental question that arises from the ban on wearing a hijab. Why are such issues being raised in the first place? On the one hand, it is undeniable that the ruling dispensation in Karnataka seeks to trigger political debate over social issues, since it may deflect public attention from evaluating the state government’s record over other matters.

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      On the other hand, we believe there is a broader background to such moves. Policy initiatives that favor elites and put others at a disadvantage require the latter to provide at least implicit “consent.” This may be problematic if the interests of elites are equated with “national interests” through the deployment of ultra-nationalism. This process of “consent” may be reinforced if divisions emerge among non-elites by stigmatizing and labeling a section of non-elites as the “other.” In India, this process of stigmatization involves the furthering of communalism, which is the political manufacturing of social divides along religious lines.

      This manufactured rise in social divides, coupled with other factors such as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, has led to an economic crisis. Rising unemployment, inequality and inflation cannot be overcome with the “toolkit” available to the government. This policy toolkit involves the use of ultra-nationalism and communalism where the pot is always set to boil, causing social tension. The repeated use of such measures has started yielding diminishing results for the government, but it appears to have no alternative policy available.

      The way out of this impasse requires a different framework. This needs to involve public investment, fiscal policy undergirded by progressive taxation, and industry policy backed by mobilization and allocation of resources by the government. Such policies of inclusive development must be part of a process of recentering the constitutional imperatives of secularism, gender and social justice, and democracy.

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More