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      Biden urges gun reform after Colorado shooting: 'Don't wait another minute'

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      After recording a year with the lowest level of public mass shootings in more than a decade, the US suffered its second such incident in less than a week on Monday night with a shooting at a Colorado grocery store that killed 10, including one police officer.Joe Biden addressed the shooting on Tuesday, calling for swift legislation to be passed, and once again lowering the White House flag to half-staff after he had called for it to be lowered after last week’s mass shooting in Atlanta.The president called on Congress to close the loopholes in the background checks system and to once again ban assault weapons. He specifically urged the Senate to pass the two background checks bills that the House approved earlier this month.“I don’t need to wait another minute, let alone an hour, to take commonsense steps that will save lives in the future,” Biden said. “This is not and should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue.”It is unclear whether the bills can make it through the evenly divided Senate, given Republicans’ general opposition to gun restrictions.Asked whether Biden was considering executive action to address gun violence, the White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, said the president was considering a number of options.“There’s an ongoing process, and I think we feel we have to work on multiple channels at the same time,” Psaki said.Gun safety advocates including Barack Obama also called for immediate action by Congress to address the resurgent national epidemic as the country emerges from a year of lockdowns and social distancing sparked by the coronavirus pandemics.In remarks at the White House, Biden called for a new ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and said the Senate “should immediately pass” legislation to close loopholes in the background checks system for the purchase of guns.The Republican minority in the Senate is highly likely to block any action on gun control. Nonetheless, senators on the Democratic side echoed Biden’s call to action.This is not and should not be a partisan issue. It is an American issue“This is the moment to make our stand. NOW,” tweeted Senator Chris Murphy from Connecticut, where a shooter killed 26 people at an elementary school in 2012.A male suspect was arrested at the scene, a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. He was named on Tuesday, as were the 10 victims.“This is a tragedy and a nightmare for Boulder county, and in response, we have cooperation and assistance from local, state and federal authorities,” said the Boulder county district attorney, Michael Dougherty.The Colorado attack brought the week’s death toll from mass public shootings to 18, after a gunman killed eight people at three Atlanta-area spas last Tuesday. Six of those victims were women of Asian descent, and that attack produced a national demand for reckoning with discrimination and violence directed at Asian Americans.While racist scapegoating by Donald Trump and others sparked thousands of attacks against Asian Americans during America’s pandemic year, 2020 was an unusually quiet one for mass public shootings, according to a database maintained by the Associated Press, USA Today and Northeastern University.There were 10 such shootings in 2018 and nine in 2019, according to the database, which tracks public incidents in which at least four people died, not including the shooter.The US suffered only two such incidents in 2020 – both at the start of the year, before the spread of the coronavirus led to local economic and school shutdowns and related restrictions.Gun sales surged during the pandemic, leading to fears of a return of mass gun violence after coronavirus restrictions eased. Those fears appear to have been fulfilled already.“We have had a horrific year as a country, as a world,” Colorado’s state senate majority leader, Stephen Fenberg, a Democrat, told MSNBC. “It had finally started to feel like things are getting back to ‘normal’. And, unfortunately, we are reminded that that includes mass shootings.”The police officer killed in the Colorado store attack, Eric Talley, 51, the father of seven children, was the first to respond to reports of shots fired at the store, authorities said.The attack came just days after a judge blocked Boulder from enforcing a two-year-old ban on assault weapons and large-capacity magazines in the city.“The court has determined that only Colorado state (or federal) law can prohibit the possession, sale and transfer of assault weapons and large-capacity magazines,” wrote the county judge, Andrew Hartman, according to the Denver Post.While no state is untouched by mass shootings, Colorado has had an especially difficult history of such incidents, beginning with an attack on students at a high school in Columbine in 1999 that killed 13. In Aurora in 2012, a gunman fired at a crowd watching a Batman movie, killing 12 and wounding 58.As previously scheduled, the Senate judiciary committee held a hearing Tuesday on “constitutional and common sense steps to reduce gun violence”. Gun safety legislation has failed to gain traction in Congress despite wide public agreement about certain safeguards such as universal background checks.“To save lives and end these senseless killings, we need more than thoughts and prayers – we need federal action on gun safety from the Senate, and we need it now,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “That work begins with this hearing, and we cannot rest until we pass background checks into law.”Murphy, who does not sit on that committee but who mounted a nearly 15-hour filibuster on the Senate floor in 2016 to advance gun safety legislation after 49 people died in a mass shooting at a gay nightclub in Florida, called on colleagues to finally address gun violence.Murphy invoked Monday’s shooting in Boulder, a mass shooting at a Florida high school in 2018 that killed 17 and the mass shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut.“No more Newtowns. No more Parklands. No more Boulders,” he tweeted. “Now – we make our stand.” More

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      in World Politics

      How Stable Is Antony Blinken’s Idea of Stability?

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      We recently observed in this column that US President Joe Biden’s embrace of an anti-Russia, Cold War mentality may have been guided by the desire to comfort media outlets such as MSNBC and The New York Times, which over the past five years have staked their reputations on that same commitment. For the Democrats, Russia serves as the incarnation of political evil. Calling Russian President Vladimir Putin a killer devoid of a soul fit the script of hyperreal melodrama to which Democrats seem addicted. Without a named person to play the role of incarnate evil, Democrats feel the American public may stop believing in the nation’s predestined goodness.

      Biden’s America Is the New “Middle Kingdom”

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      Like most powerful leaders, Chinese President Xi Jinping leads a government that has had people killed and routinely does things contrary to the taste of American politicians. But the image of Xi, a calm, rational bureaucrat, does not resemble the kind of theatrical villain the American public loves to hate. He lacks the character traits, the posture, the gestures, the gait and the sheer stage presence that defined leaders like Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Fidel Castro, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden and even Hugo Chavez. Perhaps this lack of a recognizable villainous foil to the heroic US president explains why Biden’s bureaucratic secretary of state, Antony Blinken — rather than Biden himself — has assumed the task of defining the terms of the new Cold War with China that is brewing.

      Here is how Blinken makes his case for a warlike posture: “China is the only country with the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to seriously challenge the stable and open international system — all the rules, values, and relationships that make the world work the way we want it to, because it ultimately serves the interests and reflects the values of the American people.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Open international system:

      In the 21st century, a rulebook of geopolitical relationships, whose doors can be closed and locked only by the United States of America

      Contextual Note

      Blinken succinctly describes what is meant by American exceptionalism. He distinguishes it from former President Donald Trump’s policy of “America First,” which focused on domestic issues, such as closing off the southern border to immigration and allowing real Americans to concentrate on the essential business of “winning” as they compete against their rivals and neighbors. Blinken feels that Trump’s idea that every nation should pursue its particular interest without regard for the others was a recipe for instability. In contrast, America’s imposition of leadership on dependent allies will ensure stability.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Blinken and Biden apparently believe in international solidarity — provided, of course, that it is structured around themes the US chooses. “Another enduring principle,” Blinken intones, “is that we need countries to cooperate, now more than ever. Not a single global challenge that affects your lives can be met by any one nation acting alone.” But a closer look at his idea of cooperation reveals an idea closer to former President George W. Bush’s “coalition of the willing” than open concertation. He also makes it clear that even though Russia, Iran and North Korea stand out as a vague equivalent of Bush’s “axis of evil,” China is the real threat against which an effective coalition must be assembled.

      The Biden administration simply refuses to acknowledge that China’s rise, which has effectively lifted more than 800 million people out of poverty, should be considered as having any redeeming factors that might lead the US to promote a policy of cooperation with China rather than confrontation. It may be the administration’s belief in the theory of the “Thucydides trap,” which, if taken seriously, fatalistically supposes that a waning power and a rising power must not seek to cooperate, but must be resigned to confronting each other, forcing the weaker to submit.

      In his speech, Blinken made this intriguing comment about cooperation: “That requires working with allies and partners, not denigrating them, because our combined weight is much harder for China to ignore.” He is undoubtedly thinking about Trump’s propensity to lambaste US allies in Europe and elsewhere. This may also explain why the Biden administration has avoided reproaching Saudi Arabia with its crimes and blatantly undemocratic behavior.

      Blinken asserts that “as the President has promised, diplomacy — not military action — will always come first.” But, contrary to most expectations, there has been no diplomacy with Iran, and the attempt at diplomacy with China last week in Alaska turned to the kind of confrontation that precedes military action. At the same time, Admiral Philip Davidson has indicated that he believes war with China will be inevitable because of the US commitment to defending Taiwan’s independence. The Financial Times notes that “Biden has taken a tough rhetorical posture towards China over its military activity around Taiwan and in the South and East China Seas.” The tone in Washington seems closer to preparation for war than an intensification of diplomacy.

      The Chinese have expanded their geopolitical activity with a focus on infrastructure rather than military presence. The US sees this as an assault on its global hegemony. Underlying this feeling is the reality that since the beginning of the century, the US has seen a decline in its influence across the globe. The rise of China means that any new president of the United States must feel that getting tough with China will be electorally advantageous. But posturing with an eye to seducing the electorate can sometimes lead to actions that severely undermine the very stability Blinken believes must be ensured through American leadership.

      Historical Note

      Antony Blinken’s logic can be seen as the application of John Mearsheimer’s notion of US hegemony as the central feature of a “realist” foreign policy. That realism reflects a binary vision of the world, as a choice between hegemony and anarchy. Hegemony is the lesser of the two evils and is therefore deemed good. No great power should renounce its quest for hegemony. For the US, ever since the Monroe Doctrine established in 1823, regional hegemony has become the reigning orthodoxy.

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      As a realist, Mearsheimer opposes the “neo-liberal” idea that US hegemony should be guided by the belief in a moral mission. Because hegemony is good, its abuses will always be tolerable as conditions for maintaining the good. Mearsheimer even had a soft spot for Trump’s “America First” approach. Secretary Blinken and President Joe Biden have chosen to deviate from Mearsheimer by promoting a version of hegemony that relies on a return to the moralism of the neo-liberal agenda. They paint the US as a force for promoting democracy and human rights across the globe. Biden called it leading by the force of example rather than the example of force.

      Blinken offers some examples. “It requires standing up for our values when human rights are abused in Xinjiang or when democracy is trampled in Hong Kong, because if we don’t, China will act with even greater impunity.” Does “standing up for” mean envisioning war? The absurdity of his statement becomes clearer when one imagines the way the Chinese might reformulate it to criticize the US: It requires standing up for our values when human rights are abused among the black population in America’s inner cities or when democracy is denied and trampled in Puerto Rico, because if we don’t, the US will act with even greater impunity. Only a global hegemon “stands up” in that manner.

      The realists correctly point out that the attitude that consists of feeling justified to use force on the grounds that another nation is not living up to one’s own rigorous moral or political standards is at best a distraction and at worst an invitation to chaos. Realists, like Mearsheimer or Henry Kissinger, respect power alone rather than any abstract notion of virtue. They see moral considerations as irrelevant, though they tend to think that, according to some mysterious metaphysical principle, the values of the US are more valid or trustworthy than those of other nations.

      Power will always assert itself. Superior power will usually win every spontaneous contest. That is the reality of politics. But is that a recipe for stability? The real question that every honest human being must consider is this: Should politics and political thinking alone rule human society? Is there a place for morality and not just as a feature of political rhetoric?

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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      in US Politics

      Pro-Trump lawyer says ‘no reasonable person’ would believe her election lies

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      A key member of the legal team that sought to steal the 2020 election for Donald Trump is defending herself against a billion-dollar defamation lawsuit by arguing that “no reasonable person” could have mistaken her wild claims about election fraud last November as statements of fact.In a motion to dismiss a complaint by the large US-based voting machine company Dominion, lawyers for Sidney Powell argued that elaborate conspiracies she laid out on television and radio last November while simultaneously suing to overturn election results in four states constituted legally protected first amendment speech.“No reasonable person would conclude that the statements were truly statements of fact,” argued lawyers for Powell, a former federal prosecutor from Texas who caught Trump’s attention through her involvement in the defense of his former national security adviser Michael Flynn.Powell falsely stated on television and in legal briefs that Dominion machines ran on technology that could switch votes away from Trump, technology she said had been invented in Venezuela to help steal elections for the late Hugo Chávez.Those lies were built on empty claims that apparently originated in anonymous comments on a pro-Trump blog, only to be amplified on a global scale by Trump himself in a 12 November tweet in which he wrote in part “REPORT: DOMINION DELETED 2.7 MILLION TRUMP VOTES NATIONWIDE.”Citing lost business and reputational damage, Dominion filed a $1.3bn defamation lawsuit against Powell and her colleague on Trump’s legal team, Rudy Giuliani. A Dominion employee separately sued the Trump campaign after receiving death threats.Thousands of Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January in an effort to stop the certification of an election they considered invalid, killing a police officer in violent clashes in which four others died.But lawyers for Powell argued her false statements about election fraud in the months preceding the Capitol insurrection were unmistakably not presented as true facts.“It was clear to reasonable persons that Powell’s claims were her opinions and legal theories on a matter of utmost public concern,” her legal motion says. “Those members of the public who were interested in the controversy were free to, and did, review that evidence and reached their own conclusions – or awaited resolution of the matter by the courts before making up their minds.”The filing brought expressions of disbelief from Trump critics.“This is her defense. Wow,” tweeted the Republican representative Adam Kinzinger.“Bad argument!” tweeted Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen. “[Powell] should have gone with an insanity defense due to #TrumpDerangementSyndrome.”“Shorter Sidney Powell: suckers!” tweeted Charlie Sykes, an editor of the anti-Trump conservative publication the Bulwark.As Trump fought to reverse his election loss in November, the former president himself reportedly supported Powell’s claims in private – and trumpeted them in public, touting Powell two weeks after the election as a key part of “the legal effort to defend OUR RIGHT to FREE and FAIR ELECTIONS”.Powell was publicly exiled from the Trump camp a week after that tweet, after she appeared at a news conference hosted by the Republican National Committee alongside Giuliani, whose hair dye memorably ran down his face, and Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis.The group was “an elite strike force team that is working on behalf of the president and the campaign”, Ellis announced.Then Powell faced the cameras and claimed to have identified “massive influence of communist money through Venezuela, Cuba and likely China in the interference with our elections here in the United States”.Aides reportedly told Trump that Powell was not helping, and Giuliani and Ellis issued a subsequent statement announcing, “Sidney Powell is practicing law on her own. She is not a member of the Trump legal team. She is also not a lawyer for the president in his personal capacity.”But that did not prevent Powell from filing lawsuits the next week on Trump’s behalf in Georgia, Michigan, Arizona and Wisconsin.In her defense against the Dominion defamation lawsuit, Powell argued that whatever “reasonable persons” thought of her wild claims, Dominion had failed to demonstrate that she herself thought them to be false as she spoke them – a key distinction in defamation cases.“In fact,” Powell’s motion reads, “she believed the allegations then and she believes them now.” More

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      in US Politics

      Polish writer charged for calling president a 'moron'

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      A Polish writer faces a possible prison sentence for insulting President Andrzej Duda by calling him a “moron” over comments the latter made about Joe Biden’s US election victory.Jakub Żulczyk, the screenwriter behind the popular TV series Blinded by the Lights and Belfer, said prosecutors had charged him under an article in the criminal code for insulting the head of state in a Facebook post.“I am, I suspect, the first writer in this country in a very long time to be tried for what he wrote,” he said on Facebook.In his post on 7 November last year, Żulczyk commented on a curiously worded tweet in which Duda congratulated Biden for his “successful presidential campaign” but said he was waiting for “the nomination by the electoral college”.Duda, who is supported by the populist rightwing Law and Justice (Pis) party, was a close ally of Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who unsuccessfully contested the election result.Aleksandra Skrzyniarz, a spokeswoman for Warsaw district prosecutors, told Polish news agency PAP on Monday that charges had been filed against a man, naming him only as “Jakub Z”.“The defendant was accused of committing an act of public insult on 7 November last year on a social networking website against the president of the Republic of Poland, by using a term commonly recognised as insulting,” the spokeswoman said.She added that the charge had been filed earlier this month and that the suspect had been questioned but “did not admit to committing the alleged act and gave explanations”.“He indicated that the statement constituted a critical assessment of the president’s actions,” she said.In his post, published in the days immediately after the 3 November election, Żulczyk said that “there is no such thing as ’nomination by the electoral college’”, adding that Biden’s confirmation as US president was “a mere formality”.“Andrzej Duda is a moron”, the post said.Poland has been criticised repeatedly over its different insult laws, including one law on offending religious feeling and another on insulting the flags of Poland or other countries. More

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      in World Politics

      Biden’s America Is the New “Middle Kingdom”

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      For decades, The New York Times has tried to manage the image it once created for itself as a “progressive” newspaper. On various occasions, its ineptness at this game has been so patent that its reputation as the “paper of record” appeared irreparably tarnished. Its support of George W. Bush’s campaign to invade Iraq in 2003 is just one prominent example. Nevertheless, since no other US newspaper can compete with its brand, The Times not only holds pole position in reporting the news but is also assured of winning the race on most headline political stories in the US news cycle.

      Thanks to its stable of high-profile editorialists, its specially cultivated relationship with government insiders and the intelligence community, and its occasionally thought-provoking in-depth features, The Times commands the respect of an elite, “politically-aware” class of readers. Even when the paper’s editorial stance appears totally skewed on a major issue, its position will be deemed worthy of attention. Despite multiple failures, this particularly applies to US foreign policy.

      Influence Has Become Democracy’s Influenza

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      The key to The Times maintaining its image as a voice of progressive values lies less in its willingness to air progressive ideas than in the persistent belief Americans have that the Democratic Party is more progressive than the Republican Party. In other words, because Democrats read The Times, it has no need to sound progressive. Like the Democratic Party itself, The Times’ editorial policy over at least the past three decades has increasingly distanced itself from most traditional progressive themes, particularly on foreign policy.

      Still, the newspaper feels the need to at least seem progressive. It finds itself faced the difficult task of navigating very real pressures within the Democratic Party. With the arrival of a new Democratic administration and the continued suspense concerning what its policies will actually look like, The New York Times is now making an effort to assess the trends.

      In an article on March 11, Michael D. Shear, Carl Hulse and Jonathan Martin provide an example of tracking the trends. “Even as Mr. Biden’s stimulus victory lap will be embraced by the left,” they write, “he remains in the cautious middle so far on foreign policy, easing off on punishing the crown prince of Saudi Arabia for ordering the killing of a Washington Post journalist and imposing only modest sanctions on Russia for the poisoning and jailing of Aleksei A. Navalny, the opposition leader there.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Cautious middle:

      The position that defines how Democratic politicians may hold onto power and mainstream journalists hold onto their jobs. Only Republicans politicians and journalists may be allowed to deviate from it.

      Contextual Note

      Citing the notion of cautious middle would seem to imply that, in contrast, there may also be an incautious middle. But the concept is difficult to imagine. The expression sounds like a pleonasm. The whole point of placing oneself in the middle is to avoid being conspicuous. This raises the question of what The Times means by “cautious.” Does caution mean using one’s rational faculties to steer clear of danger, or does it signify abandoning one’s own principles and beliefs for the sake of survival?

      The two cases cited leave the reader wondering. President Joe Biden has promised no punishment for Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), whom the CIA blames as the man directly responsible for the murder of US resident Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist who worked for The Washington Post. In contrast, Biden has imposed “modest sanctions” on President Vladimir Putin’s government and directly maligned Putin himself for the poisoning of a Russian citizen with no connections to the US. Does Biden think MBS has a soul? How afraid is Biden of Saudi Arabia? Should this really be called caution?

      Then there is the question of defining what The Times means by “the middle”? When polls show that a significant majority of Americans wish to see single-payer health care, the withdrawal of US troops from the Middle East, a $15 minimum wage and increased taxes on the wealthy, does it have any meaning to call Biden’s position — who appears to oppose all of these issues — “the cautious middle”? Perhaps The Times imagines Biden’s foreign policy position should be called “the cautious middle” because it sits somewhere between MBS and Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu, or between India’s Narendra Modi and the UK’s Boris Johnson.

      Historical Note

      The independent journalist Matt Taibbi, who has never sought the middle but always taken seriously the notion that the media’s first responsibility in a democracy is to stand up to power and challenge its orientations, has noticed how, with the arrival of Joe Biden in the White House, most of the press — and in particular The New York Times and the Washington Post — have abandoned any pretense of critical appraisal of the sometimes incomprehensible caution of the new administration. He compares their reporting to “embarrassing, Soviet-style contortions,” bordering on hagiography.

      He notes how Biden and his Democratic colleagues are not alone in seeking shelter within the “cautious middle.” So are most journalists, even Republican stalwarts working for the media. He cites the case of New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks who, as a philosophically-focused Republican, “spent his career penning paeans to ‘personal responsibility’ and the ‘culture of thrift,’ but is now writing stories about how ‘Joe Biden is a transformational president’ for casting aside fiscal restraints in the massive Covid-19 bill.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Taibbi speculates that Brooks may be undergoing the same “evolution” as Biden, leading him to some kind of safe haven where those who have some power over his future — his employer, The New York Times — want to be sure he will not deviate from the party line. Taibbi compares Brooks to a lot of people in the corporate press “who are searching out the safest places on the op-ed page, the middle of the newsroom middle, in desperate efforts to stay on the masthead.”

      Being in the cautious middle is now perceived by many to be the key to survival in the new political-media complex, even if being in the middle rhymes with irrelevance, inefficacy and refusal to implement or even take into account the will of people. The political middle is no longer the position in the center of people’s real interests or even of the spectrum of popular opinion. The middle appears to exist as a theoretical point of absolute stasis in which changing as little as possible while finding ways to reassure the discontents by acts of verbal bravado defines a decent strategy of governance.

      In 2008, Barack Obama ran as the anti-George W. Bush candidate. Once in office, Obama maintained most of Bush’s heritage, from disastrous tax cuts for the rich to maintaining and prolonging the Bush wars that he had railed against. Biden has come into office as the anti-Donald Trump, ready to bring things back to a middling “normal” presumably defined by the status quo of the Obama period. Just like Obama, President Biden appears to have accepted the new “middle” defined by his predecessor rather than realizing his own stated ambition during the 2020 campaign to become a “new FDR,” the Democratic president, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who in the 1930s decisively overturned the policies of his Republican predecessors.

      For the moment, Biden is showing no signs of listening to the needs of the populace beyond offering a quick fix of injected cash ($1,400). And, apart from the symbolic move of rejoining the 2015 Paris climate accord, Biden has maintained nearly all of Trump’s foreign policy legacy, including refusing to cancel Trump’s sanctions on Iran that followed the US withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with the Iranians. A mere reduction of those sanctions might have modestly pointed toward a return to the status quo ante-Trump. In his various actions concerning China, Iran and Saudi Arabia and even Venezuela, Biden appears to be paying homage to Trump’s leadership rather than blazing a new path in international diplomacy.

      In a famous moment during a vice-presidential debate in 1988, Democrat Lloyd Bentsen cut his young opponent, Dan Quayle, down to size with a remark that followed Quayle’s attempt to compare himself to President John F. Kennedy. Bentsen reminded Quayle that he had served under the assassinated president before concluding, “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.” Bentsen was a child of 12 when Roosevelt began the first of his four terms as president. If he were alive today, Bentsen might have the gall to say to Biden: You’re no FDR.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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      in US Politics

      Mayorkas blames Trump for border woes as Republicans attack Biden

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      The Biden administration is facing mounting pressure over a surge of unaccompanied migrant children crossing into the US, with the numbers seeking asylum at a 20-year high that is placing federal facilities and shelters under immense strain.The homeland security secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, took to the political talk show circuit on Sunday to press the administration’s case that it is doing all it can. He continued to refer to the problem as a “challenge” not a “crisis”, attempting to put blame squarely on the previous incumbent of the White House, Donald Trump.“It is taking time and it is difficult because the entire system was dismantled by the prior administration,” Mayorkas told CNN’s State of the Union. “There was a system in place that was torn down by the Trump administration.”On ABC’s This Week, Mayorkas highlighted the tougher aspects of Joe Biden’s border policy, stressing that the administration was still expelling families and single adults under a regulation known as Title 42. He insisted largely Central American migrants arriving in increasing numbers were being given a clear message: “Do not come. The border is closed. The border is secure.”But prominent Republicans have seized on the border difficulties as an opportunity to attack Biden for being soft on immigration.There was a system in place that was torn down by the Trump administration“This is a crisis,” Mitch McConnell, the top Republican in the Senate, has said. “I don’t care what the administration wants to call it – it is a crisis.”Tom Cotton, a senator from Arkansas and ardent Trump loyalist, lambasted the secretary’s position as “nonsense”.In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Cotton characterized the Biden administration’s stance as “basically saying the United States will not secure the border, and that’s a big welcome sign to migrants from across the world [saying] the border is wide open”.He went on to make lurid allegations, backed up with no evidence, that the focus on unaccompanied children at the border was allowing criminals smuggling fentanyl and other drugs as well as people on “terrorist watch lists” to slip into the US undetected.Political steam over border affairs has been building for two months. In one of his first acts as president, Biden scrapped Trump’s hardline policy of sending unaccompanied children seeking asylum back to Mexico.Under Biden’s guidelines, unaccompanied minors were exempted from the Title 42 rules and shielded from expulsion. That was deemed in line with the president’s pledge to achieve a “fair, safe and orderly” immigration system.On Sunday, Mayorkas said the new approach addressed the humanitarian needs of migrant children “in a way that reflects our values and principles as a country”. But in the past few weeks, the numbers of minors seeking asylum has grown so rapidly that it has outpaced capacity to process the children in line with immigration laws.He is basically saying the United States will not secure the borderMore than 5,000 unaccompanied migrant children are being detained in Custom and Border Protection (CBP) facilities in Texas and Arizona. As a backlog of cases has built up, more than 500 have been kept in custody for more than 10 days, well beyond the 72 hours allowed under immigration law.There have been reports of overcrowding and harsh conditions in federal facilities in Texas. The Associated Press reported that some children were said by immigration lawyers to be sleeping on the floor after bedding ran out.The government has tried to move as many children as possible into shelters run by the US Refugee Office, but they in turn have become stressed. There are now more than 9,500 children in shelters and short-term housing along the border. Non-governmental groups working with migrants and refugees have been forced to scramble to deal with the sudden demand for shelter.As the administration struggles to keep a grip on events, it is also coming under criticism from Republicans and media outlets for refusing to allow reporters inside the beleaguered CBP facilities where children are being held. On Friday, Mayorkas visited El Paso in Texas with a bipartisan congressional delegation. Reporters were not allowed to follow them.The Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz, called the move “outrageous and unacceptable”. In a tweet, he said: “No press. No cameras. What is Biden hiding?”Quizzed by Fox News Sunday about the apparent lack of accountability, despite Biden’s promise to bring “trust and transparency” back to public affairs, Mayorkas said the administration was “working on providing access” to border patrol stations.But he added: “First things first – we are focused on operations and executing our plans.”While the political heat is rising at the border, moves are under way in Washington to try and find a longer-term fix to the age-old immigration conundrum. Last week the House of Representatives passed a bill that would give “Dreamers”, undocumented migrants brought to the US as children, a pathway to citizenship.The legislation has an uncertain future in the Senate, given its 50-50 split and the need to reach 60 votes to pass most major legislation.Dick Durbin, a Democratic senator from Illinois who has introduced a similar Dream Act to the Senate five times in the past 20 years, told CNN that he thought he was close to securing the necessary 60 votes. He also decried the current debate about whether there was a “crisis” or “challenge” at the border.“We need to address our immigration laws in this country that are broken,” he said. “What you see at the border is one piece of evidence of that, but there’s much more.” More

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      Republican Julia Letlow takes Louisiana seat husband won before dying of Covid

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      The Republican Julia Letlow easily won a Saturday special election for a north-east Louisiana-based US House seat her husband, Luke, won before his death from complications related to Covid-19.Julia Letlow becomes the third woman ever elected to the US House from Louisiana, the first Republican woman elected to Congress from the state and the only woman among its current congressional delegation. She trounced 11 contenders.“This is an incredible moment, and it is truly hard to put into words,” she said. “What was born out of the terrible tragedy of losing my husband, Luke, has become my mission in his honor to carry the torch and serve the good people of Louisiana’s fifth district.”Further south, the race to fill a second vacant congressional seat for Louisiana was headed to an 24 April run-off, the seat certain to stay in Democratic hands.Two state senators from New Orleans – Troy Carter and Karen Carter Peterson – secured spots in the runoff after leading among 15 candidates. The New Orleans-based second district is open because Cedric Richmond took a job as a special adviser to Joe Biden.In Louisiana, all candidates regardless of party compete in the primary. If no candidate tops 50% of the vote, a runoff is held between the top two vote-getters.Julia Letlow ran in her deep red district with the backing of Donald Trump, the endorsement of the state GOP and more money than all her competitors combined. She ran on issues similar to those her husband discussed during his campaign, supporting agriculture in the largely rural district, expanding broadband internet access and supporting conservative values.Governor John Bel Edwards offered congratulations.“She has continued to exemplify strength, determination and tenacity in the wake of a terrible tragedy. I know that these same characteristics that got her through the last few months will make her an excellent advocate for Louisiana in Washington,” the Democrat said.Luke Letlow died on 29 December, days before he was to be sworn into office. His wife announced her candidacy in January, sidelining high-profile Republicans.In the second district, Carter received Richmond’s backing and ended the primary as top vote-getter in the majority minority district along the Mississippi river.Peterson squeaked into the runoff, edging out Gary Chambers Jr, a Baton Rouge community activist and publisher who focused on social media outreach. Peterson would be the first Black woman elected to Congress from Louisiana. More

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      How Democrats can use Biden's $1.9tn Covid relief to win the midterms

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      Just days after signing the $1.9tn coronavirus relief package into law, Joe Biden was on the road selling the benefits of the bill to the American people – and also to his own party’s political prospects.The president kicked off his “Help is Here” tour last Tuesday, visiting a Black-owned flooring business in Chester, Pennsylvania. “We’re in a position where it’s going to bring immediate relief – $1,400 – to 85% of the American public,” Biden said as he toured Smith Flooring. “And I think you should be aware: more help is on the way, for real.”Democrats have been eager to trumpet the message that Biden has followed through on his campaign promise to deliver another round of stimulus checks and an extension of federal unemployment benefits to Americans who have financially struggled because of the coronavirus pandemic.But the passage of the relief bill may also be the Democratic party’s best chance of keeping control of both chambers of Congress after next year’s midterm elections. Democrats are hoping that the aid it brings can help them avoid the historical trend of the president’s party losing congressional seats in the midterms following his election.There is little room for error too, given Democrats’ narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress. Republicans need to flip just five seats to take control of the House, and a loss of a single Senate seat would cost Democrats their majority in the upper chamber. Such losses would seriously hobble Biden’s ability to enact his agenda.With those high stakes in mind, the president and Vice-President Kamala Harris have been traveling across the country to advertise the relief bill in swing states that will hold key Senate races next year. Biden told House Democrats earlier this month that he was determined to learn from 2009, when Barack Obama was hesitant to take a “victory lap” after the passage of the stimulus bill.“We didn’t adequately explain what we had done,” Biden told lawmakers. “And we paid a price for it, ironically, for that humility.”Democratic groups are helping with Biden’s victory tour, flooding the airwaves to remind voters in battleground states where those $1,400 direct payments came from. American Bridge 21st Century, a progressive political action committee, has announced a six-figure ad buy focusing on the impact of the relief package. The first ad, which featured a special education teacher talking about how the legislation would help schools reopen, started airing in Pennsylvania as Biden visited the state on Tuesday.“This is a law that is going to help people’s lives across the board, and something that is this holistically comprehensive on the policy side is also going to be holistically popular for the midterms,” said Jessica Floyd, the president of American Bridge. Echoing many Democratic lawmakers and strategists in recent weeks, Floyd made a point to cite polling showing the relief bill enjoyed the support of a broad majority of Americans.But Republicans, who unanimously voted against the relief bill in Congress, are not sitting on the sidelines as Democrats make their marketing pitch. Republican party leaders have been busy attacking the legislation as a liberal “wishlist” that does nothing to confront the crises facing the nation.“Americans deserve targeted legislation that will accelerate vaccine distribution, get Americans back to work, and safely reopen our schools – not hyperpartisan and wasteful pork spending,” Ronna McDaniel, the chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, said in a statement after the passage of the bill.The National Republican Senatorial Committee has already launched its own digital ads against two vulnerable Democratic incumbents, Mark Kelly of Arizona and Raphael Warnock of Georgia, accusing them of “bailing out” New York and California by approving the state aid in the relief package.“Packed in the bill are provisions that will really hurt vulnerable senators in tough states,” a Republican operative focused on Senate races said. The operative predicted that Republicans’ criticism of “bailout” money to Democratic-controlled states and stimulus payments to undocumented immigrants would linger longer in voters’ memories than the $1,400 checks they received.There is still time for both parties to shape how Americans view the relief package. Despite the positive polling about the bill, a recent survey from the progressive firm Navigator Research showed a majority of voters say they know little to nothing about the legislation.So the challenge for Democrats and Republicans will be to both convince voters of the merit – or lack thereof – of the relief bill and then keep that issue at the forefront of voters’ minds as they start to consider which candidates to support next November.In that sense, these competing messaging campaigns from the two parties represent the start of a months-long competition to define the beginning of Biden’s presidency in the court of public opinion. The winner of that competition will probably walk away with control of Congress.“Part of our job is not to let people forget that Democrats put together a bill that is hugely popular now,” Floyd said. “Our job is to keep it popular and also point out for the coming months that every single Republican in Congress voted against it. I think keeping both of those facts top of mind starts today.” More