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      ‘Generals don’t lead from the back’: New York mayor Eric Adams seeks bold start

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      ‘Generals don’t lead from the back’: New York mayor Eric Adams seeks bold start Significant challenges await the newly sworn-in leader of the most populous US city Eric Adams’s first two days in office would resonate with any weary New York commuter: a subway ride featuring a brawl requiring the attendance of police, then the challenge of negotiating Manhattan traffic on a rented bike.Fauci agrees hospitalization figures a better guide to Omicron than case count Read more“This is an amazing city,” the new mayor told ABC on Sunday. “You know, riding a city bike in, taking the train in, interacting with New Yorkers: generals don’t lead their troops from the back.“They lead their troops from the front. I’m going to lead my city into this victory from the front. And people tell me this is a difficult job. Darn it, I want it to be a difficult job.”Significant challenges await the newly sworn-in leader of the most populous US city, a Democrat who trounced the Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in November to become New York’s second Black mayor after David Dinkins, who was in office from 1990 to 1993.“New York can and should be the center of the universe again,” said Adams in an inaugural address themed largely around getting to grips with an Omicron-fueled coronavirus surge that has slowed parts of the city to a crawl.The police and fire departments are reporting sickness rates of around 20% and three subway lines have been suspended because of staff shortages.Adams succeeds as mayor Bill de Blasio, another Democrat who despite becoming hugely unpopular has signalled a run for governor.The city, the new mayor said, had endured “two years of continuous crisis, and that insults our very nature as New Yorkers”.On Saturday, hours after his midnight swearing-in ceremony in Times Square, the 61-year-old rode the subway to work, greeting residents and calling 911 to report a brawl between three men.By the time officers arrived, the fight – witnessed by reporters accompanying the mayor – was over. Adams, a cop himself for 22 years, said he wished police had stuck around longer.On Sunday he was up early again, cycling to City Hall and an appearance on ABC’s This Week in which he called on New Yorkers to get vaccinated and boosted.“It’s going to prevent you from dying,” he said. “It’s going to alleviate the possibility of you being hospitalised and going on a ventilator.“To those who are not vaccinated: ‘Stop it. It’s time to get vaccinated. It’s time to have the booster shots. You’re endangering yourself and you’re endangering the public and your family as well’.”Adams, who is keeping de Blasio’s vaccine mandate for private employers, said consideration of a booster mandate for city employees including cops, firefighters and sanitation workers was “our next move and decision”.His host, George Stephanopoulos, challenged Adams on his campaign pledge to tackle soaring crime rates, especially gun violence.“The balance is not just heavy-handed policing, it’s public safety and justice,” Adams said.“We’re going to go after gangs, we’re going to take down some of the large gangs in our city. We’re going to zero in on gangs. We’re going to reinstitute a plainclothes anti-gun unit and zero in on those guns.”TopicsNew YorkCoronavirusUS policingUS crimeUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Russia ‘very likely’ to invade Ukraine without ‘enormous sanctions’ – Schiff

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      Russia ‘very likely’ to invade Ukraine without ‘enormous sanctions’ – SchiffHouse intelligence chair: invasion might draw Nato closerSanctions must be ‘at level Russia has never seen’ to deter Putin Russia is “very likely” to invade Ukraine and might only be deterred by “enormous sanctions”, the chair of the US House intelligence committee said on Sunday.Ukraine crisis: how Putin feeds off anger over Nato’s eastward expansion Read moreAdam Schiff also said an invasion could backfire on Moscow, by drawing more countries into the Nato military alliance.“I also think that a powerful deterrent is the understanding that if they do invade, it is going to bring Nato closer to Russia, not push it farther away,” he said.This week, Joe Biden told Vladimir Putin the US would impose serious sanctions if Russia attacked.Talks are scheduled. But amid tensions heightened by both sides’ possession of nuclear weapons, Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that if “the west continues its aggressive line, Russia will be forced to take all necessary measures to ensure strategic balance and eliminate unacceptable threats to our security”.Russia has for years complained about Nato encroachment. Ukraine is not a member of the alliance, which guarantees collective defence, but Nato has expanded eastwards since the fall of the Soviet Union and Kiev is urgently seeking admission.Russia invaded Ukrainian territory in 2014, annexing Crimea.The US has supplied “small” arms to Ukraine.On CBS’s Face the Nation, Schiff was asked what would stop Putin ordering an invasion by Russian troops gathered near the border.“I think that it would require enormous sanctions on Russia to deter what appears to be a very likely Russian invasion of Ukraine again,” Schiff said. “And I think our allies need to be solidly on board with it. Russia needs to understand we are united in this.”Ukraine urges Nato to hasten membership as Russian troops gatherRead moreAn invasion, Schiff said, would see “more Nato assets closer to Russia. [It] will have the opposite impact of what Putin is trying to achieve”.Schiff said he had “no problem” with “going after Putin personally”, but thought “sector-sized sanctions will be the most important”.Asked if he thought scheduled talks had any chance of averting an invasion, he said: “I fear that Putin is very likely to invade. I still frankly don’t understand the full motivation for why now he’s doing this, but he certainly appears intent on it unless we can persuade him otherwise.“And I think nothing other than a level of sanctions that Russia has never seen will deter him, and that’s exactly what we need to do with our allies.”TopicsUkraineRussiaNatoUS foreign policyUS national securityUS CongressUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Capitol attack: Cheney says Republicans must choose between Trump and truth

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      Capitol attack: Cheney says Republicans must choose between Trump and truthRepublican member of the House committee investigating the events of 6 January issues stark warning to her party

      The Steal: stethoscope for a democracy near cardiac arrest
      On a day of alarming polling about attitudes to political violence and fears for US democracy, and as the first anniversary of the Capitol attack approached, a Republican member of the House committee investigating the events of 6 January 2021 had a stark warning for her party.One in three Americans say violence against government justified – pollRead more“Our party has to choose,” Liz Cheney told CBS’s Face the Nation. “We can either be loyal to Donald Trump or we can be loyal to the constitution, but we cannot be both.”Trump supporters attacked Congress in an attempt to stop certification of his defeat by Joe Biden, which Trump maintains without evidence was the result of electoral fraud. Five people died around a riot in which a mob roamed the Capitol, searching for lawmakers to capture and possibly kill.On Sunday, Cheney and Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the committee chairman, again discussed the possibility of a criminal referral for Trump over his failure to attempt to stop the riot or for his obstruction of the investigation.Speaking to ABC’s This Week, Cheney said there were “potential criminal statutes at issue here, but I think that there’s absolutely no question that it was a dereliction of duty. And I think one of the things the committee needs to look at is … a legislative purpose, is whether we need enhanced penalties for that kind of dereliction of duty.”Thompson said subpoenas could be served on Republicans in Congress who refuse to comply with information requests of the kind which have led to a charge of criminal contempt of Congress for Steve Bannon, Trump’s former strategist, and a recommendation of such a charge for Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff.The Democrat told NBC’s Meet the Press the committee was examining whether it could issue subpoenas to members of Congress, immediately Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania.“I think there are some questions of whether we have the authority to do it,” Thompson said. “If the authorities are there, there’ll be no reluctance on our part.”Last month, the committee asked Jordan for testimony about conversations with Trump on 6 January. Jordan told Fox News he had “real concerns” about the credibility of the panel.Perry was asked for testimony about attempts to replace Jeffrey Rosen, acting head of the justice department, with Jeffrey Clark, an official who tried to help overturn Trump’s defeat.Perry called the committee “illegitimate, and not duly constituted”. A court has ruled that the panel is legitimate and entitled to see White House records Trump is trying to shield, an argument that has reached the supreme court.Sunday saw a rash of polls marking the anniversary of 6 January.CBS found that 68% of Americans saw the Capitol attack as a sign of increasing political violence, and that 66% thought democracy itself was threatened.When respondents were asked if violence would be justifiable to achieve various political ends, the poll returned an average of around 30%. A survey by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland said more than a third of Americans said violence against the government could be justified.ABC News and Ipsos found that 52% of Republicans said the Capitol rioters were trying to protect democracy.Other polling has shown clear majorities among Republicans in believing Trump’s lie about electoral fraud and distrust of federal elections.On CNN’s State of the Union, Larry Hogan, Maryland governor and a moderate Republican with an eye on the presidential nomination, said: “Frankly, it’s crazy that that many people believe things that simply aren’t true.“There’s been an amazing amount of disinformation that’s been spread over the past year. And many people are consuming that disinformation and believing it as if it’s fact. To think the violent protesters who attacked the Capitol, our seat of democracy, on 6 January was just tourists looking at statues? It’s insane that anyone could watch that on television and believe that’s what happened.”Cheney told CBS the blame lay squarely with her own party.“Far too many Republicans are trying to enable the former president, embrace the former president or look the other way and hope that the former president goes away, or trying to obstruct the activities of this committee, but we won’t be deterred. At the end of the day, the facts matter, the truth matters.”Her host, Margaret Brennan, pointed out that Republicans across the US, some in states where Trump’s attempt to steal the election was repulsed, are changing election laws to their advantage.“We’ve got to be grounded on the rule of law,” Cheney said. “We’ve got to be grounded on fidelity of the constitution … So I think for people all across the country, they need to recognise how important their vote is for their voices. They’ve got to elect serious people who are going to defend the constitution, not simply do the bidding of Donald Trump.”Trump acolytes vie for key election oversight posts in US midtermsRead moreCheney faces a primary challenger doing Trump’s bidding and enjoying his backing. The other Republican on the 6 January committee, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, will retire in November rather than fight such a battle of his own.Cheney said she was “confident people of Wyoming will not choose loyalty to one man as dangerous as Donald Trump”, and that she will secure re-election.She also notably did not say no when she was asked if she would run against Trump if he sought the nomination next time.On ABC, Cheney was asked if she agreed with Hillary Clinton, who has said a second Trump presidency could end US democracy.“I do,” Cheney said. “I think it is critically important, given everything we know about the lines that he was willing to cross.“… We entrust the survival of our republic into the hands of the chief executive, and when a president refuses to tell the mob to stop, when he refuses to defend any of the co-ordinate branches of government, he cannot be trusted.”TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesRepublicansDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      One in three Americans say violence against government justified – poll

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      One in three Americans say violence against government justified – pollWashington Post releases survey showing ‘considerably higher’ number saying it is sometimes right to take up arms

      The Steal: stethoscope for a democracy near cardiac arrest
      One in three Americans believe violence against the government is sometimes justified, according to a new Washington Post poll.Trump acolytes vie for key election oversight posts in US midtermsRead moreThe survey, with the University of Maryland, was released on New Year’s Day – five days short of a year since rioters attacked the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat by Joe Biden.According to the authors of The Steal, a new book on Republican attempts to fulfill Trump’s aim through legal action in key states, the rioters of 6 January 2021 “had no more chance of overthrowing the US government than hippies in 1967 had trying to levitate the Pentagon”.But it was still by far the most serious attack on the seat of federal government since the British burned Washington in 1814 and the Post poll comes amid a sea of warnings of growing domestic strife, even of a second civil war.The Post reported: “The percentage of Americans who say violent action against the government is justified at times stands at 34%, which is considerably higher than in past polls by the Post or other major news organisations dating back more than two decades.“… The view is partisan: The new survey finds 40% of Republicans, 41% of independents and 23% of Democrats saying violence is sometimes justified.”Other polls have found that more than half of Republicans believe Trump’s lie that Biden won the White House thanks to electoral fraud, and do not trust elections.As pointed out by Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague, authors of new book The Steal: The Attempt to Overturn the 2020 Election and People Who Stopped It, Trump was ultimately stopped by “the integrity of hundreds of obscure Americans from every walk of life, state and local officials, judges and election workers. Many of them … Republicans, some … Trump supporters”.Nonetheless, at a rally near the White House on 6 January, Trump told such supporters to “fight like hell” in his cause.“And if you don’t fight like hell,” he said, “you’re not going to have a country anymore”.Five people died, including a rioter shot by law enforcement and a police officer.The Post poll found that 60% of Americans said Trump bore a “great deal” or a “good amount” of responsibility for the Capitol attack. However, 72% of Republicans and 83% of Trump voters said he bore “just some” responsibility or “none at all”.The Post reported: “A majority continue to say that violence against the government is never justified – but the 62% who hold that view is a new low point, and a stark difference from the 1990s, when as many as 90% said violence was never justified.”The paper interviewed some respondents.Phil Spampinato, 73, from Dover, Delaware, and a political independent, said he first “contemplated the question of whether violence against the government might be justified” as a way of “defending your way of life” after he saw Republicans changing state laws to restrict voting by Democrats and to make it easier to overturn results.US ‘closer to civil war’ than most would like to believe, new book saysRead more“Not too many years ago,” Spampinato said, “I would have said that those conditions are not possible, and that no such violence is really ever appropriate.”Anthea Ward, a Republican 32-year-old mother of two from Michigan, said: “The world we live in now is scary. I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist but sometimes it feels like a movie. It’s no longer a war against Democrats and Republicans. It’s a war between good and evil.”Ward said she did not approve of the Capitol attack. She also said she would not participate in violence over Covid-19 vaccine mandates – another social flashpoint.But, the Post reported, Ward did say other people could be justified in choosing to “express their second amendment right” if the government “infringe[d] their freedom of choice” over vaccines, “and nonviolent action such as protests were unsuccessful”.TopicsUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsDonald TrumpJoe BidenUS press and publishingnewsReuse this content More

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      The Steal review: stethoscope for a democracy close to cardiac arrest

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      The Steal review: stethoscope for a democracy close to cardiac arrest Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague have produced an indispensable and alarming ground-level record of how Donald Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election played out in precincts and ballot-counting centers in key statesIn their terrific new book, the veteran reporters Mark Bowden and Matthew Teague argue that the mob that invaded the Capitol in Washington almost exactly a year ago “had no more chance of overthrowing the US government than hippies in 1967 had trying to levitate the Pentagon”.From Peril to Betrayal: the year in books about Trump and other political animalsRead moreThe “real insurrection” was the one “led by Trump and his coterie of sycophants” in Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona. It “was only slightly better organized than the mob but considerably more calculated and dangerous”.That real insurrection is the subject of this timely and important volume. The authors have used a stethoscope to examine the minutia of the American election process. The result is a thrilling and suspenseful celebration of the survival of democracy.The attempted coup was led by Donald Trump. Its intended denouement, in which the vice-president, Mike Pence, would ignore the votes of the six states above plus Washington DC in order to swing the election to Trump, was outlined in an insane memo written by the lawyer John Eastman, described here as “surely the most seditious document to emerge from the White House in American history”.That final act, of course, never happened. Not even Pence, the most sycophantic vice-president of modern times, could bring himself to violate the constitution so blatantly to keep his boss in the White House.But the genuine heroes, brought to life here, were the “hundreds of obscure Americans from every walk of life, state and local officials, judges and election workers. Many of them were Republicans, some were Trump supporters. They refused to accept his slander of themselves, their communities and their workers, and they refused to betray their sworn duty to their office and their country. They were the real patriots.”Bowden and Teague – the latter a Guardian contributor – take us through six battles that lasted from the night of the election, 3 November 2020, until Joe Biden’s election was finally certified by Congress early on 7 January last year.Their book performs a vital service, demonstrating just how well our tattered democracy managed to function despite vicious partisanship and all the new challenges created by the pandemic. For the first time, I understood how brilliantly new machines used to count the votes performed, the intricacies of opening outer and inner envelopes, capturing the images of both then preserving the vital paper ballots inside, making it possible to confirm electronic results with a hand count in case of any failure in technology.In Arizona, the elections department conducted “the mandatory hand count of election day ballots from 2% of the vote centers and 1% of the early ballots as required by Arizona law and it yielded a 100% match to the results produced by the tabulation equipment”.Scott Jarrett was co-director of elections in the populous Maricopa county, and he is one of the crucial bureaucrats celebrated here: “A pale slender young man … dressed in a plain gray suit, the very picture of an earnest functionary, a man happily engaged in the actual machinery of government and quietly proud of his own unheralded importance and competence.”In a public hearing crowded with crazed conspiracy theorists, Jarrett carefully explained how only one of the two “encrypted memory cards (both with tamper-proof evidence seals)” was transported from various polling centers to the main counting location, “so that the results on one card could be double-checked against the other as well as the precinct ballot report they had generated. Backing up that memory were, of course, the actual ballots that had been run through the machines. The memory cards and the ballots were sealed and delivered by “two members of different parties”, escorted by county sheriffs.Clint Hickman, chairman of the Maricopa county board of supervisors, noted that if the eyes of some in the audience were glazing over, he just wanted “people that are watching this” to understand “we don’t glaze over”.The authors point out that Hickman was touching on a fundamental feature of The Steal, the factitious narrative concocted by Trump and his cronies: conspiracy theorists depend on ignorance.“They begin with distrust: only a sucker believes the official story. They then replace the often tedious, mundane details of an intricate process … with a simpler narrative”: theft.They invent colorful stories about a “deal struck with a late Venezuelan dictator to deliver tainted election machines, or a plot to preprint fake ballots in the dead of night”. This creates what cognitive scientists call “a community of knowledge”.The big problem that didn’t exist even 30 years ago is the speed with which such idiotic stories are spread through the internet and by the Twitter feed of a malevolent president like Trump, exploding the reach of such stories and their power to undermine democratic norms.March of the Trump memoirs: Mark Meadows and other Republican readsRead moreThe book reminds us that democracy itself depends on a modicum of trust. That is why Trump’s ability to persuade so many Americans of the truth of so many lies has had such a disastrous effect on our body politic.Bowden and Teague have performed a singular service by revealing the details that disprove Republicans’ unceasing inventions about voter fraud.The problem is that so many Republicans will continue to ignore the lessons of this book. American democracy could still be destroyed by the torrent of voter suppression laws already passed by Republican-controlled state legislatures, spurred by lies invented by Trump and amplified by insidious “journalists” like Maria Bartiromo and Tucker Carlson, whose perfidy is brilliantly dissected in these pages.If democracy does prevail, it will survive because of the ability of authors like Teague and Bowden to make the truth even more compelling than Fox News fictions.
      The Steal is published in the US by Atlantic Monthly Press
      TopicsBooksUS elections 2020US politicsUS domestic policyUS political financingDonald TrumpTrump administrationreviewsReuse this content More

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      How the politics of prosecco explain what took the fizz out of the Democrats | Mark Blyth

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      How the politics of prosecco explain what took the fizz out of the DemocratsMark BlythJoe Manchin torpedoed his party’s key bill for the same reason Italy protected the sparkling wine – the local growth model If you get a bad taste in your mouth when you hear the name Joe Manchin – the fossil fuel industry-backed senator from West Virginia who torpedoed his own party’s “Build Back Better” bill just before Christmas – you might want to reach for a glass of something to wash it away.Given that it’s New Year’s Eve, there’s a reasonable chance you’re guzzling a glass of prosecco, which now accounts for just under half of all bubbly drunk globally. While this may take the taste away momentarily, there’s also an odd thing about prosecco I want you to consider. How that glass of Italian bubbly came to be in your hand gives us a window into understanding how a Democratic senator can derail a multitrillion dollar climate-focused national programme that promised huge amounts of money for his own state.No, really. Stay with me here.The stories of prosecco wine and West Virginia coal are classic examples of a regional “growth model”. Growth models describe the “how we make money” bit of an economy, plus the political and electoral coalition that supports it. Think of all the social, political and regulatory structures that build up over time around making and selling a certain good, and all the folks whose jobs and incomes depend upon it.Think of Germany and car exports. From workers to unions to production hubs, to supply chains, to institutional investors, there is an entire ecosystem that supports this way of making a living and the identities and interest it supports. When that is challenged, those who benefit from the model do not sit idly by. Now think of Treviso, Italy, where they make prosecco.Last year a sociologist called Stefano Ponteunpacked the growth model behind prosecco. Prosecco was first bottled in 1924, but it was not until the early 2000s that anglo-millennials got a taste for the stuff and global demand blew up. Prosecco was defined at the time by the grape used to make it, glera, and not by its place of origin (like how all “real” champagne must come from Champagne), which meant that the brand was not protected. In fact, the actual village of Prosecco was about 150km away from the main growing areas and had never grown the grape that makes the drink.Dire end to Biden’s first year as Manchin says no on signature billRead moreSome enterprising British importers wanted to stick as much prosecco as they could into bottles, which would have taken control (and value) away from local producers. Rising to defend the “prosecco miracle” as it was called, the then minister of agriculture, Luca Zaia, a member of the rightwing La Lega party, expanded the “denominazione d’origine controllata DOC” to cover the distant village of Prosecco, which gave this rather generic product a claim to geographical exclusivity.That in turn paved the way for a successful Unesco world heritage claim a few years later, further cementing the region’s claim to the product. The result was a major expansion of production, and prosecco hit €500m in sales in 2019. In short, those who benefited from the growth model rose to defend it.But there were other challenges to this success. This massive expansion of production brought challenges from environmentalists – wine is essentially an agribusiness – and from local residents. But those who benefited from the growth model again leapt to defend it, this time by painting the industry as an example of small-scale, pastoral sustainability – part of a high-end wine-making tradition going back centuries.In fact, as the historian Brian Griffith details, this pastoral and authentically local framing of Italian wine was originally a project of the fascist period. After the first world war, Italy was saddled with vast overproduction of low-quality domestic wines and enmeshed in a moral panic over working-class drunkenness. Wine industry interests close to the government of Mussolini sought to make Italian wines articles of middle-class consumption and a source of national unity. And they used state-backed mythmaking to do so.Medical authorities stressed “the advantages of responsible … wine consumption”. National exhibitions of regional wines were sponsored by the state. Indeed, the whole idea of “gastro-tourism” in Italy was invented in the 1930s by the wine lobby. As Griffith puts it, “the roots of today’s … Italian wines stretch back not to antiquity … but … to the interwar years”. The result was the development of an agribusiness growth model. The prosecco story a century later was just one more turn of this wheel.Now what does all that tell us about Manchin and West Virginia?The Democratic party story on Manchin and West Virginia was that coal was a dying industry, it employed few people and Build Back Better provided a way out. It was simply a question of giving Manchin enough “sweeteners” and it would eventually pass. But Manchin first vetoed the “clean electricity” provisions of the bill and then ran down the clock long enough to kill it. Why did he do this? Because his job is to defend the growth model against challengers, just as it was for the folks in Treviso.As Adam Tooze has noted, by some estimates “nearly one-third of [West Virginian] GDP in 2019 can be attributed to fossil fuels [which] makes decarbonisation a mortal threat”. Now add to this the fact that West Virginia has the lowest labour force participation rate in the US and huge healthcare issues stemming from chronic illness and opioid abuse, and you end up with a fiscal nightmare kept afloat by current growth model. Given this, the notion that the best-paid jobs in the state ($77,000 a year) will be traded away by the state’s leading elected official for some promises on “retraining” and a “Green New Deal” is simply not credible.Growth models are hard to change. Those who profit from them fight to defend them. From Alaska to the Dakotas, to Texas and Louisiana, the core of the GOP electoral coalition, all these states have carbon-heavy growth models. Like the Italian wine industry, they are a creation of the state in the 20th century. They are embodied with myths and are supported by powerful coalitions. Few in Treviso are keen to dismantle the prosecco growth model. Why should West Virginia, and with it the other carbon states of the US, be any different?
      Mark Blyth is a political economist at Brown University
      TopicsDemocratsOpinionJoe ManchinUS politicsWest VirginiaWinecommentReuse this content More

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      Harry Reid obituary

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      Harry Reid obituaryVeteran Nevada senator who shepherded and protected Obamacare on its difficult passage into law During a long, combative career in US political life, Harry Reid, who has died aged 82, made his most telling contribution as Democrat majority leader in the Senate. There, in 2010, he pushed through and then vigorously defended President Barack Obama’s groundbreaking healthcare reforms.Given the huge strength of Republican feeling against “Obamacare”, the president needed a streetfighter to drive his measures through to the statute book – and Reid was the man for the job. Quietly spoken but toughened by a hard early life and years spent swimming in the shark-infested waters of Nevada politics, he fought through the deeply polarised atmosphere that surrounded Obama’s health reforms to shepherd the Affordable Care Act through the Democrat-controlled Senate.Just as importantly, he defended that landmark piece of legislation – which aimed to extend health insurance to more than 30 million uninsured people – against repeated attempts at derailment by a Republican-controlled House of Representatives. In particular, he orchestrated Senate resistance to House amendments that would have emasculated Obamacare, and in 2013 brokered a deal that ended a partial government shutdown engineered by Republicans in protest at the legislation. Obamacare aside, in Washington Reid was a centrist Democrat, and for the liberal wing of the party far less dependable than his firebrand counterpart in the House, Nancy Pelosi. He was opposed to abortion, supported the 1991 Gulf war, and at first backed George W Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, although in 2007 he came out against the second conflict there. He also raised more than a few hackles when he observed that Obama had been helped in his presidential campaign because he was “light-skinned”.But Reid survived that problem, as he survived so many others on the road to his elevated position in the Senate, and Obama acknowledged the early encouragement that Reid had given to his presidential aspirations. To the Democrats, he was a usefully blunt, outspoken scrapper who was happy to tackle the Republicans head on – and was prepared to publicly call Bush a “liar” and a “loser”. Although a pragmatist, he would not cut deals with the Republican leadership on what he saw as vital issues. “I know my limitations,” he once said. “I haven’t gotten where I am by my good looks, my aesthetic ability, my great brain or my oratorical skills.” Reid’s strengths were his sheer energy and political shrewdness, honed during a long rise to the top from difficult beginnings. He was born in Searchlight, Nevada, a tiny, searingly hot former gold-mining town in the Mojave desert, in a shack that had no toilet or hot water. Until the 1950s, Searchlight was best known for a notorious brothel called the El Rey, where it was said that Reid’s mother, Inez (nee Jaynes), did the laundry. His father, Harry Sr, was a miner and an alcoholic; in 1972 he shot himself.There was no high school in Searchlight, so Reid had to stay with relatives 40 miles away in Henderson, outside Las Vegas, where he went to high school at Basic Academy. His lucky break came there in the burly shape of Mike O’Callaghan, the school’s football and boxing coach. Young Reid was tough: he boxed as a middleweight and played on the football team. “I’d rather dance than fight, but I know how to fight,” he said later.An ambitious young man, he graduated from Utah State University, where he became a Mormon. He went to Washington DC and found a job with the US Capitol police, who are charged with protecting Congress, while he worked for a law degree at George Washington University. From there he returned to Nevada to become a prosecutor and, shortly after his father’s suicide, married Landra Gould, the daughter of Jewish immigrants.He soon became involved in Democratic politics, first in Henderson and then statewide. By 1968 he was a member of the state assembly and in 1970 was asked by his high school mentor, O’Callaghan, to run with him. O’Callaghan was elected governor of the state and Reid became his lieutenant governor.In 1974 he ran for the Senate, but was narrowly beaten by Ronald Reagan’s friend Paul Laxalt. In 1975 he stood, again unsuccessfully, for mayor of Las Vegas, a city dominated by gambling, tourism and entertainment.From 1977 to 1981 he was chair of the Nevada Gaming Commission, a job that was to be the making of him. When he was offered a bribe of $12,000 by Jack Gordon, the Las Vegas gambling and prostitution operator, Reid tipped off the FBI. At the moment when Gordon produced the money, FBI agents rushed in; he was sentenced to six months in prison. In 1981, a bomb was found under Reid’s car, which he always blamed on Gordon’s heavies. After that, the more respectable elements of the US gambling industry supported Reid, although his opponents repeatedly tried to tar him with suggestions of ethical violations.In 1982 he was elected to the House of Representatives from the Las Vegas district, and served there until 1986, when he entered the Senate for the first time. He was re-elected easily in 1992, but six years later was nearly beaten in a high-spending campaign that his Republican opponent, John Ensign, a man with casino connections, freely conceded was “nasty”. Nonetheless, Reid and Ensign eventually became good friends as Nevada’s two senators.By 2004, when Reid’s time for re-election came around again, Nevada’s population had grown so fast that many of his constituents had never heard of their senior senator. So Reid raised a lot of money for a campaign to make himself known. He became the leader of the Democratic minority in the Senate in 2005 after Tom Daschle failed to be re-elected, and after the 2006 election – when the Democrats benefited from the unpopularity of the Iraq war and the mishandling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina – he was confirmed as the Democrats’ majority leader, serving in that role until 2015.He retired from the Senate as minority leader by not seeking re-election in 2016, following injuries in an accident with exercise equipment in his home. In 2018 he revealed that he had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.Reid was known in Washington for his terse manner. In a tribute to him in 2019, Obama joked: “Even when I was president, he would hang up on me.” Shortly before his death, Las Vegas’s airport was renamed after him.Reid is survived by Landra and by their four sons and one daughter. Harry Mason Reid, politician, born 2 December 1939; died 28 December 2021TopicsUS politicsNevadaUS SenateUS healthcareBarack ObamaobituariesReuse this content More

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      ‘Patriots’ are undermining American democracy | Michael Harriot

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      ‘Patriots’ are undermining American democracyMichael HarriotThe people who stormed the US Capitol on 6 January don’t understand that nationalism is not the same as patriotism There is a more accurate term than insurrectionists to describe the people who stormed the US Capitol building on 6 January, forever smearing the seat of the American republic with fear and fascism.Although their activities inspired terror and were planned in part by members of white supremacist groups, they object to being labeled as “terrorists” or “white supremacists”. Calling them “rioters” doesn’t quite capture the political motivations of the pro-authoritarian mob of Maga fanatics. Perhaps we should view them as historical re-enactors. After all, they were only recreating the effort to undermine democracy, freedom and the US constitution that has repeated itself for centuries. Yet, if you asked them, they would undoubtedly say they were “patriots”.Kyle Rittenhouse wasn’t convicted because, in America, white reasoning rules | Michael HarriotRead moreThroughout the course of American history, whenever this country has found itself standing on the unthinkable precipice of ruin, there has always been a horde pledging their allegiance to the flag while clamoring to push the country into the abyss. To be clear, there is a difference between loving one’s country and the vainglorious virtue-signaling that defines America’s most self-righteously toxic misnomer. But fanaticism does not prove one’s devotion. Nationalism is not the same as patriotism.In his 1861 Cornerstone Speech describing the “revolution” that still stands as the bloodiest war in the history of this continent, Confederate States of America vice-president Alexander H Stephens crowed that he had never met “an abler, wiser, a more conservative, deliberate, determined, resolute, and patriotic body of men” than those who would rather rip their nation in half than discontinue their for-profit human trafficking enterprise. Five years later, the conquered confederacy of traitors would unite to form the Ku Klux Klan, an “institution of chivalry, humanity, mercy and patriotism … noble in sentiment, generous in manhood and patriotic in purpose.”Alabama governor George Wallace defended segregation as a matter of patriotism. When South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond filibustered the Civil Rights Act of 1957, he wondered why the people of the north would pick on the “patriotic” people who simply wanted to preserve white supremacy. After he switched parties in protest of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he was embraced by the new “lilywhite” Republicans as a “patriot”. The Tea Party patriots tossed racial slurs at John Lewis, while at least two people have been killed at rallies organized by the far-right group Patriot Prayer.There is nothing more unpatriotic than someone who calls themself a “patriot”. The flag-waving hypocrites who proudly proclaim their loyalty to their country are determined to kill America. Since the 2020 election, at least 19 states have passed 33 laws that make it harder to vote. These legislative acts of voter suppression are largely introduced and passed by adherents to Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” movement that now includes a considerable share of the GOP’s constituency. Although these “America first” acolytes claim to want to make their country great again, their real end game is to destroy any semblance of a government where white people’s voting power is equal to their share of the electorate. In other words, the principal goal of the so-called Patriot Party is the opposite of democracy.These America-mongers perform patriotism while disregarding the actual values of their country. They will proudly recite the pledge of allegiance while demonizing Black Lives Matter protesters, reform-seekers or any movement that promotes liberty and justice for all. In Arizona, armed members of the Montezuma County Patriots were charged with harassing participants in a Walk for Justice and Peace. The trial begins days after the white supremacist group Patriot Front organized a rally in Washington. At least three deaths are associated with Patriot Prayer, another pro-Trump gang that staged violent demonstrations across the country.They have constructed a parody of a pro-life movement that does everything it can to strip rights and life away from their fellow Americans. Archbishop Timothy P Broglio, head of the US Archdiocese for the Military Services, claimed that forcing women to carry out unwanted pregnancies is an “authentic act of patriotism”. A true lover of democracy would accept stricter gun laws favored by most Americans. Instead, these performance artists made the National Rifle Association the official partner of school shootings by casting their uncompromising support for firearm manufacturers as an act of patriotism. They claim critical race theory makes kids feel bad and hate America. Yet, they are somehow willing to trade the lives of social studies students for gun industry profits. Whether it’s back-alley abortions or the spilled blood of second-graders, patriots have never cared about life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.Besides being unapologetically pro-death, they are unrepentant liars. They spread conspiracy theories and reject the scientific research of climatologists, immunologists and criminologists, ignoring the death and destruction caused by climate change, Covid-19 and the criminal justice system. They push the false notions of illegal immigration, crime and widespread voter fraud, fully knowing the consequences of their fearmongering. Their obstruction of the 6 January House committee proves it. Their text messages prove it. Their own recounts prove it. Math, history, science, and the entire English language prove that they have no use for truth, facts or evidence. This historically inaccurate, mathematically incorrect caricature of patriotism is white nationalism wrapped in a star-spangled banner.If the American empire ever falls – and it will – we can thank the patriots for the demise of democracy. Ultimately, these fanatical jingoists are the least patriotic people in America. They detest democracy and loathe any prospect of a more perfect union. They have pledged their allegiance to the flag, but not the republic for which it stands. Patriotism as performance is their only protection because a country that provides liberty and justice for all is too unbearable a thought.They’d rather kill it first.
      Michael Harriot is a writer and author of the upcoming book Black AF History: The Unwhitewashed Story of America
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