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      'Talk to me': Molly Jong-Fast on podcasting in the new abnormal

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      Molly Jong-Fast has known great success as a writer but over the last year on The New Abnormal, her podcast on politics in the time of Covid, she has become both half of a crackling double act and an interviewer with a habit of making news.The double act formed with Rick Wilson, a former Republican strategist and the co-founder of the Lincoln Project who is now taking a spell off-air. The producer Jesse Cannon has stepped in but the interviews remain largely the realm of Jong-Fast.Years ago, Molly and her mother, the author Erica Jong, gave a joint interview of their own. Molly, the Guardian wrote, was “loud, arch and snappishly funny [with] the mien of a runaway train, words hurtling forth, helter-skelter.”It remains the case. Before the pandemic, she threw famous dinner parties which brought unlikely people together. Now a contributing editor for the Daily Beast, she throws politicians, scientists, policy wonks and comedians together on a podcast, a form of broadcasting well suited to pandemic life. Down the phone – or up it – from Wall Street to the Upper East Side, appropriately socially distanced, I appropriate one of her own ways to start any interview. A few introductory remarks, then …“Talk to me about that.”And she does.I had wanted to do a podcast. Everybody has a podcast. It’s a thing“As you know, as someone who lives in New York, our lockdown came fast, and it came very profoundly, and we were locked down. Actually, it was this time last year. I had just come back from [the Conservative Political Action Conference] in Washington DC. As I was coming home, I got an email that said, ‘If you were at CPAC, you may have been exposed to a super-spreader, and you need to quarantine.’ So I actually called the school nurses at all my kids’ schools and I said, ‘You guys, what I do?’“Since nobody really knew anything about the virus, they said, ‘Look, you can do whatever you want, but we would really appreciate if you would just keep your kids home for two weeks.’ I was like, ‘Absolutely. We don’t know anything.’ As someone who is not a doctor but who is completely obsessed with my own physical health in a totally deranged and neurotic way, I’m proud to say I’ve worried about every pandemic that comes. I was worried about H1N1 before.“And you could see this coming. I have friends in Milan … You saw these stories about Milan, and you knew we were a week behind or we were two weeks behind. I had a friend in London … her mother had a fancy private doctor and the fancy private doctor would send her these letters about who was going to get treatment in the hospital and who was going to be left at home to die.“So I had a sense that that stuff was coming, so I really made sure that everybody locked down way early in my house. Then I had nothing to do.“So I said, ‘Let’s start a podcast.’ I had sort of been the driver behind it because I had wanted to do a podcast. Everybody has a podcast. It’s a thing. But I’m always interested in what other people have to tell me. So … I get a lot from it.“Another thing about me is, besides being dyslexic and a horrible student, I have terrible, terrible ADHD, which has never been medicated. I don’t take medicine for it because I’m 23 years sober, so it just would be too complicated for me. And I’m a person who was, in my heyday, a terrible cocaine addict, so I would not trust myself for a minute with ADHD drugs.”I’m super ADHD, so I get very bored very easily. So we ge people and if they don’t say interesting stuff, I’m like, ‘Eh’Jong-Fast chronicled those wild years in two novels and a memoir about being the daughter of a writer who wrote a lot about sex. In the 1970s, her mum invented “the zipless fuck”. But I digress. As Jong-Fast likes to say to interviewees: “Continue.”“But I’m super ADHD, so I get very bored very easily. So we get these people, and if they don’t say interesting stuff, I’m like, ‘Eh.’ I’m like, ‘This is very boring.’ So I think that has made the pod good, because I do these interviews and I get very bored. Then I’m like, ‘Come on. Get going here, people.’”New Abnormal interviews are fascinating and often hilarious. That’s down to a mix of the ethics of podcasting, looser than for talk radio – as Cannon says, “FCC guidelines would never be able to handle what we do” – and the ethics of the Daily Beast, a New York tabloid in website form, pugilistic and intelligent, taking the fight to the man.Another Jong-Fast interview technique, very much in the vein of the podcast’s one beloved regular segment, Fuck That Guy, is to ask key questions in the bluntest way possible. Take two recent examples. To the White House Covid adviser Andy Slavitt: “Can you explain to me what’s happening with AstraZeneca, because that seems to me very much a clusterfuck.” To Ian Dunt of politics.co.uk, there to discuss Brexit: “What the fuck is wrong with your country?”What the fuck is that all about?“Well, as someone who was interviewed a lot when I was young and would sit through endless mother being interviewed, grandfather [the novelist Howard Fast, who wrote Spartacus] being interviewed, always watching, I always think that the worst questions are the questions where you tell the person what you want them to say.“Look, I get it. I write things all the time where I want people to say stuff, but you can’t really get them to say it anyway … Part of it is I always think you should make it so they’re comfortable enough to really tell you what’s going on and to let you in. Also, I think they know that I don’t have a malicious intent. I just want people to see who they are.”What they are, in many cases after a year of lockdown, is suffering.“I had Mary Trump on the pod again today,” Jong-Fast says, of the former president’s niece. “She’s a psychiatrist, so she and I always talk about mental health because I’m just a sober person, and when you’re sober you’re always in your head thinking about mental health. We were talking about how we really are in the middle of this terrible mental health crisis, and everyone is just in denial about it.”Donald Trump has left the White House. The Biden administration is flooding the zone with vaccines. But we are still in the new abnormal.“I’m always surprised no one sees that. So it’s like, ‘Well, I don’t understand why I have a terrible headache. It can’t be because hundreds of thousands of Americans have died.’ So it is weird.”‘I wish we could get more Republicans’The New Abnormal has featured Democrats – senators, representatives, candidates – and bureaucrats and technocrats too. But in both the very strange election year in which the pod was born and in the brave new world of Biden, few Republicans have followed.“I wish we could get more,” Jong-Fast says. “I think I got one Republican guy who was running for Congress, but it’s not so easy.”That was John Cowan, from Georgia, who ran against Marjorie Taylor Greene and her racially charged conspiracy theories – and lost.“Yes, and he’s going to run again. He’s a neurosurgeon. I was thrilled to get him. But they’re not so interested in coming on, even the sort of moderates.”She does the booking herself, so perhaps Congressman Adam Kinzinger or Senator Mitt Romney might one day pick up the phone to find Jong-Fast full blast.“‘You are a fucking genius. Why are you so brilliant?’ I’m very good at schnorring people into doing things for me. I’m very able to just endlessly schnorr people. I think that’s key to getting the guests.”I don’t know what schnorr means.“It means you sort of just put the arm on people to get them to come on the pod. The guests are the big thing because the people who want to come on are often not people you really want.”A lot of listeners want Wilson to return. Jong-Fast, formerly an unpaid adviser to the Lincoln Project, calls him “a very good friend” but is uncomfortable talking about his absence from the podcast – which was prompted by allegations of sexual harassment against another Lincoln Project co-founder and reporting on fundraising and internal politics.Cannon calls Wilson “one of the most politically astute people in America” and “a genius”. And he may well be back, one day, to reconstitute the double act, the Florida Republican and the Upper East Side liberal lobbing spiralling profanity at the extremity, inanity and insanity of Trumpism and life under Covid-19.But it’s not all about fighting back.“I wish there were a little bit more good-faith want for people to interact with the other side,” Jong-Fast says. “Look, there are people on the other side, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who are not good-faith actors, and you can’t even try. But there are people like Mitt Romney who, while I don’t agree with him on a lot of things, he’s a very good-faith actor. So I think there’s a real chance.”If you’re reading, Mitt, if Molly calls … pick up the phone. More

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      'It's a moral decision': Dr Seuss books are being 'recalled' not cancelled, expert says

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      A leading expert on racism in children’s literature has said the decision by the Dr Seuss Foundation to withdraw six books should be viewed as a “product recall” and not, as many claim, an example of cancel culture. Philip Nel, a professor of English at Kansas State University, is the author of Was The Cat in the Hat Black? The Hidden Racism of Children’s Literature and the Need for Diverse Books. He told the Guardian the six titles by Theodor Geisel published between 1937 and 1976 that Dr Seuss Enterprises said it would cease printing contained stereotypes of a clearly racist nature.“Dr Seuss Enterprises has made a moral decision of choosing not to profit from work with racist caricature in it and they have taken responsibility for the art they are putting into the world and I would support that,” Nel said.The titles in question are And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street, If I Ran the Zoo, McElligot’s Pool, On Beyond Zebra!, Scrambled Eggs Super! and The Cat’s Quizzer. Dr Seuss books have sold some 700m copies globally.They’re not being banned. They’re not being cancelled. It’s just a decision to no longer sell themAfter this week’s announcement, amid uproar eagerly stoked by conservatives in the media and Congress, Dr Seuss books swiftly dominated sales charts. On Friday, the House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, went so far as to share a video of himself reading from Green Eggs and Ham, a perennial strong seller.“I still like Dr Seuss, so I decided to read Green Eggs and Ham,” McCarthy said, inviting viewers to respond “if you still like him too!”Geisel’s stepdaughter, Lark Grey Dimond-Cates, told the New York Post there “wasn’t a racist bone in that man’s body”, but also said suspending publication of the six titles was “a wise decision”. But the controversy left many perplexed, since the decision was made by Dr Seuss Enterprises and not as a result of public pressure that has preceded other such decisions.Nel said the decision to no longer publish titles including caricatures of people of African, Asian and Arab descent showed just one way to address problematic material.“[The books are] not going to disappear,” he said. “They’re not being banned. They’re not being cancelled. It’s just a decision to no longer sell them.”Geisel died in 1991. Later in life, he made efforts to tone down racial stereotypes in some of his books. Such revisions “were imperfect but will-intentioned efforts that softened but did not erase the stereotyping”, Nel said, noting that Geisel also made a joke of the changes, “which served only to trivialise the importance of the alterations”.Moves to correct dated or offensive cultural material take different forms. Turner Classic Movies, for example, has introduced Reframed: Classic Films in the Rearview Mirror, a series devoted to “problematic” films. TCM identified 17 films that five hosts will discuss, among them Gone With the Wind, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, Tarzan, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, The Searchers and Psycho.“We are hearing more and more from audiences about moments they are really puzzling over, if not downright offended by, in light of all of the broader cultural and political conversations we are having,” the University of Chicago cinema studies professor Jacqueline Stewart, a Reframed host, told Variety.TCM’s decision to seek to contextualise the films but not alter or drop them may reflect the importance of the works and a more mature target audience. Nel said placing contentious work in a larger context and inviting discussion can be risky when the work is directed at a younger consumers.“Children understand more than they can articulate,” he said. “If you inflict racist images on them before they can express what they’re articulating they may endure a harm they cannot process.”In the case of Dr Seuss, Nel said, that “is itself a reason to withdraw the books or to bring in books or art that counter stereotypes with truth.”He pointed to statistics that show the publishing industry still has a way to go. According to a recent Diversity in Children’s Books study, only 22% of children’s books published in 2018 featured non-white characters.Nel pointed to The Indian in the Cupboard series by Lynne Reid Banks, Penguin Random House titles about a toy figure of a Native American that comes alive, first published in 1980, as an example of a book that remains in print without comment or apology.“There’s a lot of examples of contemporary as well as older work that the publishing industry should address,” he said, “and there are different ways to do that. There’s a debate on what the response should be but there should be a response.”Merely putting the question of what a child can or cannot see to parents would not be an adequate solution, Nel said.“Parents may not have training in anti-racist education,” he said, “or may not know how to have these conversations. So in the case of Dr Seuss it’s a way of addressing the gap in what one might hope a responsible adult would know and what we can expect a responsible adult to know.“Either way, children’s book publishing is facing a reckoning, as indeed it has been for some time. This decision, and all the attention it has received, I hope will create a broader reckoning in the publishing industry – the need for more diverse books and to address the problems in current books being published.” More

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      Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary

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      Seven million votes more was almost not enough. Had 45,000 gone the other way in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would still be president. Calls to defund the police nearly cost Joe Biden victory and led to a more than a dozen-seat loss for House Democrats.
      Biden had “separated himself from the orthodoxies of his party’s base” but “had no coattails” to spare, Jonathan Allen and Amie Parnes write. As always, culture counts – even amid a pandemic.
      But “Unwoke Joe”, as the authors call him, was the one Democrat whose empathy and instincts matched the demands of the times. Lucky is an apt title for Allen and Parnes’s third book.
      “In 2016, Trump had needed everything to go wrong for Hillary Clinton to win,” they write. “This time, Biden caught every imaginable break.”
      Their joint take on Biden is a prism and scorecard that gives added understanding to the seemingly never-ending war of 2020. Allen is a veteran political writer at NBC News digital, Parnes reports for the Hill. They deliver.
      Subtitled How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, Lucky is the first full-length campaign postmortem. It makes the silent parts of the conversation audible and reminds the reader the past is always with us.
      The authors convey the cultural dimensions of Biden’s win. He was an old-time north-eastern pol who repeatedly bore witness to personal tragedy. So long in the Senate, he prided himself on his capacity to compromise and reach across the aisle, a trait that Allen and Parnes report elicited scorn from Elizabeth Warren.
      Biden also sought to maintain a “close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”, in his own words. It was no accident South Carolina emerged as Biden’s firewall in the primary, or that James Clyburn, a 15-term congressman and the most senior Black member of the House, was pivotal in digging Biden out of a deep hole.
      In the election’s aftermath, Clyburn attributed Democratic underperformance to the move to defund the police and the mantras of the left.
      “I’ve always said that these headlines can kill a political effort,” he told NBC. For good measure, Clyburn added: “Sometimes I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means.”
      On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come across as out of sync. We are told that Clinton, the “vampire in the bullpen”, harbored thoughts of another run – until late 2019.
      Embed
      The fact Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016 had not totally dulled her capacity to believe she could unify party and country. Lucky captures Biden in 2016, calling the former secretary of state a “horrible candidate” who failed to communicate what she actually stood for.
      Unlike Clinton, Biden understood that simply drawing a contrast with Trump would not be sufficient. Yet Clinton did see that the 2020 Democratic nominee, whoever it was, would be in a fight for “the very soul of the nation”. Charlottesville provided that epiphany to Biden.
      Obama too does not fare too well, a fair-weather friend to his vice-president on several occasions, overly concerned with protecting his own legacy. He got some very important stuff wrong. Biden was more attractive and viable than the 44th president and his coterie thought.
      In the authors’ telling, Obama was temporarily enamored with Beto O’Rourke. Like Kamala Harris, the former Texas congressman’s candidacy was over before the first primary. For both, stardom did not translate into staying power.
      Then, at an event with Black corporate leaders in the fall of 2019, Obama amplified Warren’s chances and trash-talked Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Obama reportedly said: “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.” Unlike Buttigieg, Warren never won a primary. She also finished third in Massachusetts – her own state.
      As for Biden, one source describes Obama’s support as “tepid at best”. Obama tacitly backed Biden just days before Super Tuesday in March. Months later, he took his time congratulating Biden on his election win.
      Biden’s so-called “brother” failed to call him “on election day, or the next day, or the next, or the next”, according to Allen and Parnes. Obama waited until Saturday 7 November, “the day the networks had finally called the election”. The audacity of caution. More

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      Biden's no LBJ but he must protect voting rights. What else is the presidency for? | Robert Reich

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      In 1963, when the newly sworn in Lyndon Baines Johnson was advised against using his limited political capital on the controversial issue of civil and voting rights for Black Americans, he responded: “Well, what the hell’s the presidency for?”The US is again approaching a crucial decision point on the most fundamental right of all in a democracy: the right to vote. The result will either be the biggest advance since LBJ’s landmark civil rights and voting rights acts of 1964 and 1965, or the biggest setback since the end of Reconstruction and start of Jim Crow in the 1870s.The decisive factor will be President Joe Biden.On one side are Republicans, who control most state legislatures and are using false claims of election fraud to enact an avalanche of voting restrictions on everything from early voting and voting by mail to voter IDs. They also plan to gerrymander their way back to a US House of Representatives majority.After losing the Senate and the presidency, they’re determined to win back power by rigging the rules against Democrats, disproportionately Black and brown voters. As a lawyer for the Arizona Republican party put it baldly before the supreme court, without such restrictions Republicans are “at a competitive disadvantage relative to Democrats”.On the other side are congressional Democrats, advancing the most significant democracy reform legislation since LBJ – a sprawling 791-page For the People Act, establishing national standards for federal elections.The proposed law mandates automatic registration of new voters, voting by mail and at least 15 days of early voting. It bans restrictive voter ID laws and purges of voter rolls, changes studies suggest would increase voter participation, especially by racial minorities. It also requires that congressional redistricting be done by independent commissions and creates a system of public financing for congressional campaigns.The legislation sailed through the House last week, on a party line vote. The showdown will occur in the Senate, where Republicans are determined to kill it. Although Democrats possess a razor-thin majority, the bill doesn’t stand a chance unless Democrats can overcome two big obstacles.The first is the filibuster, requiring 60 votes to pass regular legislation. Notably, the filibuster is not in the constitution and not even in law. It’s a rule that has historically been used against civil rights and voting rights bills, as it was in the 1960s when LBJ narrowly overcame it.Democrats can – and must – finally end the filibuster now, with their 51-vote majority.But if they try, they face a second obstacle. Two Democrats – Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona – have said they won’t vote to end the filibuster, presumably because they want to preserve their centrist image and appeal to Republicans in their states. A few other Democrats are lukewarm to the idea.Well, I’m sorry. The stakes are too high. If Democrats fail to enact the For the People Act, Republicans will send voting rights into retreat for decades. There’s no excuse for Manchin and Sinema or any other Senate Democrat letting Republicans pull America backwards towards Jim Crow.And no reason Biden should let them. It’s time for him to assert the kind of leadership LBJ asserted more than a half-century ago on civil and voting rights.Johnson used every tool at his disposal, described by the journalist Mary McGrory as “an incredible, potent mixture of persuasion, badgering, flattery, threats, reminders of past favors and future advantages”.He warned the Georgia senator Richard Russell, a dedicated segregationist: “Dick, I love you and I owe you. But … I’m going to run over you if you challenge me on this civil rights bill.” He demanded his allies join him in pressuring holdouts. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota, later Johnson’s vice-president, recalled: “The president grabbed me by my shoulder and damn near broke my arm.”Historians say Johnson’s importuning, bribing and threatening may have shifted the votes of close to a dozen senators, breaking the longest filibuster in history and clearing the way for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965.We are once again at a crucial juncture for civil rights and voting rights that could shape America for a half-century or more. Joe Biden is not LBJ, and the times are different from the mid-1960s. But the stakes are as high.Biden must wield the power of the presidency to make senators fall in line with the larger goals of the nation. Otherwise, as LBJ asked, “what the hell’s the presidency for?” More

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      Biden hails 'giant step' as Senate passes $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill

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      Joe Biden hailed “one more giant step forward on delivering on that promise that help is on the way”, after Democrats took a critical step towards a first major legislative victory since assuming control of Congress and the White House, with a party-line vote in the Senate to approve a $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill.After a marathon voting session through the night on Friday and into Saturday afternoon, Democrats overcame unified Republican opposition to approve the sweeping stimulus package. The final tally was 50-49, with one Republican senator absent.One of the largest emergency aid packages in US history now returns to the House for final approval before being signed into law by Biden. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, has said she expects to approve the measure before 14 March, when tens of millions of Americans risk losing unemployment benefits if no action is taken.The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said the Senate version of the American Rescue Plan would be considered “on Tuesday … so that we can send this bill to President Biden for his signature early next week”.Biden and Democrats will look to move on to other priorities, including voting rights reform and an ambitious infrastructure package.The bill aimed at combating the Covid-19 pandemic and reviving the US economy will provide direct payments of up to $1,400 to most Americans; extend federal unemployment benefits; rush money to state, local and tribal governments; and allot significant funding to vaccine distribution and testing.Republicans attacked the bill as a “liberal wishlist” mismatched with an improving economic and public health outlook as more are vaccinated and infections plateau.“Our country is already set for a roaring recovery,” said Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, on Friday, citing a jobs report that showed 379,000 jobs added in February. “Democrats inherited a tide that was already turning.”But Democrats and the White House were quick to push back, pointing to more than 9 million Americans out of work and millions more struggling to pay for rent and food.On Saturday, with Vice-President Kamala Harris looking on, Biden spoke to reporters at the White House.“I want to thank all of the senators who worked so hard to do the right thing for the American people during this crisis and voting to pass the American rescue plan,” he said. “It obviously wasn’t easy, wasn’t always pretty, but it was so desperately needed. Urgently needed.”Biden has been criticised for not holding a press conference since taking office. On Saturday he attempted to leave without taking questions. To shouted questions, he avoided direct criticism of Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia or Republicans.The marathon “vote-a-rama” session on amendments that preceded the final vote featured the longest vote in Senate history, just shy of 12 hours, on Friday, as Democrats scrambled to strike a deal with Manchin, a moderate who mounted a last-minute push to scale back unemployment benefits.Bowing to Manchin, a compromise kept benefits at $300 a week instead of $400, as proposed by Biden and approved by the House. However, the benefits will be extended until October rather than August, and Democrats added a provision to provide up to $10,200 in tax relief for unemployed Americans.Speaking to reporters on Saturday, the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, repeatedly hailed his caucus and deflected invitations to criticise Manchin, the target of anger among House progressives.“People have new differences all the time,” he said, when asked why Manchin had not levelled his demand earlier, adding: “Unity, unity, unity. That’s how we got this done.”Schumer was asked if another bill might be needed.“It’s a very strong bill,” he said, “part of it will depend on Covid. How long will it last, will there be a new strain.”Experts have warned of a potential fourth surge as variants emerge and predominantly Republican states reopen their economies and abandon basic public health measures.“Part of it will depend on the economy,” said Schumer. “It has some underlying weaknesses that need bolstering. How deep and weak are those. Our No 1 lodestar is going to be helping the American people and if they need more help, we’ll do another bill. If this bill is sufficient, and I think it’s going to help in a big way, then we won’t.”At the White House, Biden praised Schumer: “When the country needed you most you lead, Chuck, and you delivered.”Despite deep political polarization and staunch Republican opposition, the legislation has broad public appeal. A poll by Monmouth University found that 62% of Americans approve of the stimulus package, including more than three in 10 Republicans.In tweets on Saturday, former president Barack Obama said: “Elections matter … this is the kind of progress that’s possible when we elect leaders across government who are devoted to making people’s lives better.”Yet the endeavor tested the fragile alliance between progressives and moderates as Democrats attempt to wield their power with only the barest control of Congress.Early on Friday, the Senate rejected a proposal by the Vermont senator Bernie Sanders to include a $15-an-hour minimum wage increase, a top liberal priority and a key plank of Biden’s economic agenda. The Senate parliamentarian had deemed the provision inadmissible under the rules of a special budget process Democrats are using to bypass Republican opposition.Despite widespread public support for raising the federal minimum wage, Democrats remain divided. On Friday, eight joined Republicans in blocking the amendment, which would have required 60 votes to pass.“Let me be very clear: we are not giving up on this,” Sanders said. “We are going to come back with vote after vote. And one way or the other we are going to pass a $15 minimum wage. That is what the American people want and that is what the American people need.”The approval of the bill in the Senate came after hours upon hours of voting on a torrent of amendments, most offered by Republicans with the goal of forcing Democrats to take a position on measures designed to be politically troublesome.Proceedings had already been much delayed on Thursday, when the Republican Ron Johnson, of Wisconsin, forced Senate clerks to read the 628-page bill in its entirety – a task that took nearly 11 hours.At the White House, Biden quoted Sanders as he hailed the bill as “progressive” and delivered a familiar appeal for national – and party – unity, if with a shot at his predecessor, Donald Trump.“When I was elected,” Biden said, “I said we’re going to get the government out of the business of battling on Twitter and back in the business of delivering for the American people, of making a difference in their lives, giving everyone a fighting chance, of showing the American people that their government can work for them, and passing the American Rescue Plan, we’ll do that.“You know it may sound strange but … I really want to thank the American people … quite frankly, without the overwhelming bipartisan support of the American people this would not have happened.“… Every public opinion poll shows that people want this, they believe it is needed. And they believe it’s urgent.” More

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      Biden's FDR moment? President in New Deal-like push that could cement his legacy

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      Joe Biden came to power promising a New Deal-like economic agenda that would not only combat the Covid-19 pandemic, which has now claimed more than half a million lives in the US and caused unemployment not seen since the Great Depression, but also confront the deep-rooted disparities it has exposed.After a blitz of executive orders in the opening days of his presidency, Biden is on the verge of achieving the first major piece of his multi-pronged relief and recovery plan, a $1.9tn coronavirus stimulus package expected to reach his desk by the end of next week.But the partisan tightrope Biden has walked to advance the sweeping pandemic relief bill – which enjoys broad public support – likely foreshadows even greater challenges that lie ahead as he pivots from “rescue” mode to his next and possibly biggest legislative act: a multi-trillion dollar plan to rebuild the country’s ailing infrastructure.“The American Rescue Plan is largely about relief – for the millions of people unemployed, for distributing vaccines, for opening schools safely,” said Virginia congressman Don Beyers, the Democratic vice-chairman of the joint economic committee.“This next bill can be almost completely characterized as investment in the future.”Even more so than the stimulus plan, a wide-ranging jobs and infrastructure bill would weigh the president’s desire for bipartisanship against his promise to enact progressive economic policies that could forge his legacy. With the barest of majorities in Congress, Biden has little room for error if he hopes to succeed in a policy quest that bedeviled his predecessors.In theory, infrastructure is an area where Democrats and Republicans can find common ground. Fixing bridges, roads and broadband networks has long unified Americans and elected leaders. Yet there is little bipartisan agreement over the size and scale of such a package.“He wants to move as quickly as possible,” Peter DeFazio, an Oregon Democrat and the chairman of the House transportation and infrastructure committee, said after a bipartisan meeting with Biden on Thursday. “He wants it to be very big and he feels that this is the key to the recovery package.”Emerging from the same meeting, Missouri congressman Sam Graves, the top Republican on the transportation committee, tempered expectations of a deal.“A highway bill cannot grow into a multi-trillion dollar catch-all bill, or it will lose Republican support,” he warned in a statement. “Republicans won’t support another Green New Deal disguising itself as a transportation bill.”During his presidential campaign, Biden cast the infrastructure effort as an economic road map to create jobs and revitalize industry, saying it would be the “largest mobilization of public investment since” the second world war.As proposed, his “Build Back Better” infrastructure plan would spend trillions of dollars to make the US economy more sustainable, more equitable and more competitive, particularly with China, with ambitious investment in public transportation, sustainable housing, electric vehicles and upgrading the power grid to be carbon pollution-free by 2035. Funded by a mix of tax increases on corporations and the wealthy, his agenda promises to create millions of union jobs and direct significant resources to communities of color disproportionately affected by the consequences of climate change.As talks intensify between the White House and Congress, progressives and environmental groups are contemplating even bigger proposals, pointing to the recent crisis in Texas that left millions without water and electricity during a severe winter storm, as a reason to act urgently – and unilaterally, if necessary. Some moderate Democrats are angling for a more cautious, bipartisan approach, while Republicans and business groups are setting conditions for their cooperation, as fights brew over how to pay.The White House has said it is premature to talk about the shape of an infrastructure package, at least until Congress passes the relief bill. But this week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Democrats were already proceeding with the “recovery” part of Biden’s agenda.“Its’ an exciting time,” she said.Haunted by the slow-paced recovery that followed the financial collapse of 2008, when the Obama administration enacted a slimmed-down stimulus package amid fears of inflation and Republican objections to rising national debt, only to suffer major defeats in midterm elections, Democrats are eager to act boldly while they have unified control of Congress.“If you have an opportunity to go big, go big,” Beyer said. “You’re going to pay a political cost one way or the other, so you might as well get as much as you possibly can when you get the opportunity to do it.”Sean McElwee, co-founder and head of the progressive polling firm, Data for Progress, said it was good policy and good politics to pursue an ambitious economic agenda. Voters prioritize results over bipartisanship, he said, arguing that Democrats could defy political history in the 2022 congressional midterms if they act boldly on the economy.“Joe Biden understands that Democrats will be judged in 2022 by how he has handled the economy and the pandemic,” McElwee said, citing broad public support for the president’s relief plan and the enduring appeal of infrastructure spending. “The political benefits of going small just aren’t there any more.”Biden has held several high-profile meetings to build support for a bipartisan package, including with top officials, labor leaders and lawmakers involved in drafting infrastructure legislation.Ahead of his meeting with lawmakers on Thursday, Biden said the group, which included transportation secretary Pete Buttigieg, planned to discuss “what we’re going to do to make sure we, once again, lead the world across the board on infrastructure”.After spending decades in the Senate and eight years as vice-president to Barack Obama, Biden is plainly aware of the complex matrix of political and ideological considerations that have felled previous attempts to pass a major infrastructure bill.Yet since the onset of the pandemic, and the ensuing economic crisis, Biden has embraced a far more aspirational agenda that intentionally echoes the vision of Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal programs helped lift the country out of the Great Depression and transformed the role of government in American life.Despite his reputation for compromise and preference for bipartisanship, Biden largely rejected appeals from Republicans to dramatically shrink his $1.9tn stimulus package, which includes $1,400 payments to tens of millions of families, extended unemployment benefits as well as tens of billions of dollars for vaccine distribution and coronavirus testing.In pitching his relief plan, Biden has insisted that now is time to “go big,” and that the greater risk is doing too little, not too much. But as he looks beyond the immediate crisis, it remains unclear how the president will choose to proceed with the rest of his agenda.Progressives, largely encouraged by the opening weeks of his presidency, are now pressuring Biden to adopt the same go-it-alone approach for the rest of his agenda. Attempting to forge a consensus with Republicans, they warn, would almost certainly result in a bill that falls short of his campaign promises to address the deep-seated, structural inequalities in the economy exacerbated by the pandemic.“I think Biden understands that there is a real opportunity here to deliver lasting, legacy-defining improvements to America that otherwise would never get done,” said Faiz Shakir, who was the campaign manager for Bernie Sanders’ 2020 presidential run. “He wanted an FDR-modeled presidency and this would be a huge, huge investment in working people on a scale that we have not seen since FDR.”The urgency of the pandemic has helped fuse public opinion – and a factious Democratic caucus – around the need for a massive stimulus bill. But spending trillions more on infrastructure with initiatives that reach far beyond the present emergency is a different battle entirely, said Bill Galston, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Biden campaigned on his plans to control the pandemic – and a promise to end hyper-partisanship in Washington. A plan that achieves neither goal could risk a “huge political backlash” beginning with the midterms next year, Galston said.“History is full of administrations who came to power, over-read their mandate and then went too far and evoked a reaction,” he said. More

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      Trump reportedly told Republican party to stop using his name for fundraising

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      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterDonald Trump has told the Republican National Committee and other party bodies to stop using his name and likeness in fundraising efforts, it was reported on Saturday.“President Trump remains committed to the Republican party and electing America First conservatives,” Politico quoted an unnamed adviser to the former president as saying about the legal cease-and-desist notice, “but that doesn’t give anyone – friend or foe – permission to use his likeness without explicit approval.”The website previously reported that Trump’s ire was stoked by bodies including the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) and the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) using his name while fundraising for Republicans who voted for his impeachment.The former president felt “burned and abused”, Politico said, detailing the House minority leader Kevin McCarthy’s struggles to manage the former president, even after a January trip to kiss the ring in Florida.Liz Cheney, the House No 3 Republican, was the most senior of 10 Republican representatives to back Trump’s second impeachment, for inciting the Capitol riot on 6 January. She has faced protests stoked by elected officials and will be challenged for her seat from the right. Others who voted for impeachment are also facing primary fights.Seven senators voted to convict Trump at trial. That meant he was acquitted a second time, as the 57 guilty votes fell 10 short of the necessary super-majority.The verdict left Trump, 74, free to run for office again. Though he continues to baselessly claim his defeat by Joe Biden was the result of massive voter fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court and now the subject of legal investigations, he has toyed with running in 2024. He remains the clear favourite in party polls.His own fundraising based on the “big lie” about electoral fraud proved lucrative, raking in at least $175m. At the Conservative Political Action Conference last week, Trump told attendees they should only donate to his own political action committee, Save America. In the CPAC straw poll, 55% backed Trump to be the next nominee.The Republican National Committee is led by Ronna McDaniel, a niece of the Utah senator Mitt Romney who dropped Romney from her name after Trump won the White House, reportedly at Trump’s request. Mitt Romney, the 2012 nominee for president, is the only Republican who voted to impeach Trump twice.Politico said the RNC sent out two emails on Friday, asking donors to put their name on a “thank you card” for Trump.On Saturday morning, an email trumpeting a “March Fundraising Blitz” claimed “we’ve NEVER been the Party of Elite Billionaires and we NEVER will be” and asked “hard working everyday Americans” to “continue to DEFEND President Trump’s ‘America FIRST’ policies”.Forbes rates Trump’s net worth at $2.5bn.“Privately,” Politico reported, “GOP campaign types say it’s impossible not to use Trump’s name, as his policies are so popular with the base. If Trump really wants to help flip Congress, they argue he should be more generous. His team, however, sees this differently.”Later on Saturday, the New York Daily News reported that Trump would on Sunday return to the city he called home until 2016 for the first time since losing power. The former president planned to stay till Tuesday, the paper said, though Trump adviser Jason Miller refused to confirm or deny the plans. More

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      Fox News host Tucker Carlson calls QAnon followers 'gentle' patriots

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      Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory are “gentle people waving American flags”, Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed on Friday night – two months since many joined a mob that stormed the US Capitol seeking to overturn Donald Trump’s election defeat, a riot in which five people died.“Do you ever notice,” Carlson asked his primetime audience, “how all the scary internet conspiracy theorists – the radical QAnon people – when you actually see them on camera or in jail cells, as a lot of them now are, are maybe kind of confused with the wrong ideas, but they’re all kind of gentle people now waving American flags? They like this country.”Five people died as a direct result of the Capitol attack, one a police officer struck with a fire extinguisher, one a Trump supporter shot by law enforcement. The Trump supporter, Ashli Babbitt, was reported to have followed internet conspiracy theories including QAnon.Another rioter, Roseanne Boyland, was trampled by the mob while holding a Gadsden flag, a revolutionary era symbol of a snake and the legend “Don’t tread on me”. A friend said she had “watched her decline and go on these rabbit trails … this all really fucked with her head – the QAnon conspiracy theories, the elections, the unrest, the violence”.The QAnon conspiracy theory holds that Trump is America’s true leader against a cabal of satanic liberal child-killers and paedophiles. He is not. No such cabal exists. Nonetheless, the theory has proliferated – even finding a sympathiser in Congress, the Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene.On 6 January, before the Capitol riot, Trump told supporters to “fight like hell” to overturn the election, which he claims was the result of massive electoral fraud, a lie repeatedly thrown out of court. He escaped conviction in an impeachment trial, on a charge of inciting the riot. But federal authorities have made more than 300 arrests.Carlson spoke a day after the US Capitol was closed, as law enforcement agencies warned of a threat from rightwing groups around the QAnon theory that Trump would return to power on 4 March. He did not. No attack materialised.Carlson mocked reactions by Democrats and media coverage of the closure, adding familiar racially loaded provocation.“By the time night fell and the city remained quiet,” he said, “except, of course, in the poor neighbourhoods where people are still shooting one another in ever-growing numbers and no one is noticing, MSNBC had decided that, in fact, they had saved the day.”Carlson also said QAnon followers were “not torching Wendy’s. They’re not looting retail stores. They’re not shooting cops. No, that’s not them, it’s the other people doing that.”Last summer, protests against police brutality and institutional racism sometimes produced civil unrest. A Wendy’s fast food restaurant burned in Atlanta; looting occurred in some cities. Police officers have been shot and sometimes killed amid tension and protest over police killings mostly of African American men.The protests of 2020, which spread internationally after officers in Minneapolis killed an African American man, George Floyd, were multi-racial. Carlson’s other racially loaded comments on his prime time show include that immigration makes the US “dirtier”, a remark which prompted some advertisers to withdraw.In some quarters, the Fox News host is seen as a contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, if Trump does not run again. Carlson’s comments about QAnon believers echoed remarks by Trump, who last August told reporters: “I’ve heard these are people that love our country. So I don’t know really anything about it other than they do supposedly like me.”At last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida, Carlson scored 3% in a straw poll regarding the next presidential pick – way behind Trump but ahead of Mike Pence, the former vice-president some in the Capitol mob said they wanted to hang. QAnon followers promise that fate for many of Trump’s opponents. More