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      in US Politics

      Biden must rethink the US migration system, not just reverse Trump’s policies | Daniel Trilling

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      If Donald Trump’s presidency was a lesson in how symbolic acts of cruelty can be used to consolidate power, then his successors are trying to demonstrate that the same is true for benevolence. In just over a month, the Biden-Harris administration has issued a flurry of new directives aimed at reversing some of the worst aspects of the former president’s immigration policy.Biden has declared an end to the travel restrictions imposed on numerous Muslim-majority countries, and committed to both reviving and expanding the US refugee resettlement scheme. The administration has presented sweeping new immigration reforms to Congress, which if passed would offer a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people, promised a moratorium on deportations in most instances, and announced a plan to reunite children and parents torn apart by the grotesque family separation policy. On Friday, the US began allowing asylum seekers to cross its southern border for the first time since Trump’s “remain in Mexico” initiative was launched in January 2019.Will the reforms go further than merely reversing those of the previous president? Some of the measures, such as a request last week that officials use the term “noncitizen” in place of “alien” when referring to immigrants, indicate that this is as much about a shift in tone as about substantial changes in policy. But others could have wide-reaching global effects. On 4 February, Biden ordered a report on the impact of climate migration, including a study of “options for protection and resettlement of individuals displaced directly or indirectly from climate change”.This official acknowledgement that climate change forces people to leave their homes is unprecedented – at least for the US, which is the world’s largest historical polluter. “I never thought that this would be a part of any American president’s priorities, especially within the first 30 days of their administration,” said Kayly Ober of the US-based NGO Refugees International, expressing the surprise shared by many climate policy experts.Calculating the number of people displaced by climate change is tricky, since people can move for a variety of reasons, and the subject is prone to alarmist predictions. Of the estimated 24 million people forced to leave their homes by extreme weather in 2019, most stayed within their country of residence. But there is currently no coherent international framework for protecting those who cross borders due to climate change: refugee law only deals with people fleeing persecution or war.Trump has already shown how the US can drag the rest of the world downwards in terms of humanitarian standards: his choking-off of refugee resettlement, for instance, was part of a wider decline. Last year, according to the UN’s refugee agency (UNHCR), was the worst on record for resettlement. The situation was made worse by the pandemic, but the UN was already warning in 2019 about low resettlement rates. If the US revives such schemes, and expands them to address the realities of the 21st century, then other countries may be encouraged or persuaded to follow suit.Yet the fact that a liberal president currently occupies the White House is no reason to abandon our critical faculties. As the climate migration expert Alex Randall notes, Biden’s report, which is due in six months’ time, is being produced by his national security adviser, Jake Sullivan. Will this security-focused framing dispel or encourage the xenophobic responses to climate change that are emerging in various parts of the world?According to the Center for American Progress, there is already a renewed effort among US conservatives to link environmental damage to immigration, while some prominent far-right parties elsewhere are attempting to give their nationalism a green hue. In 2019, Marine Le Pen launched an election campaign in France by promising that a “Europe of nations” could become the world’s first “ecological civilisation”. Borders, claimed her party’s chief spokesperson, “are the environment’s greatest ally”.This points to a more fundamental question, which is whether to address a migration “crisis” by making a humanitarian exception to the existing system of border control, or by rethinking the principles on which the system exists. Formal refugee resettlement programmes, for instance, make a huge difference to the lives of people who benefit from them, yet less than 1% of those registered by the UNHCR are resettled each year.Many refugees who cross borders do so via informal routes, at risk of death and injury, and often to the displeasure of the governments that receive them. Look, for instance, at the way the British government is creating increasingly harsh conditions for asylum seekers who arrive in the UK under their own initiative. Biden’s proposals contain admirable rhetoric about the need to address “root causes” of migration – but Europe’s recent history shows us how, under xenophobic pressure, this noble-minded language can be used to adorn schemes whose ultimate effect is to keep people out, at considerable human cost.Indeed, so does the recent history of the US, where the new moratorium on deportations has already met judicial resistance. In a new book, Border & Rule, the scholar and activist Harsha Walia reminds us that Trump’s cruelty sat atop foundations laid by previous presidents. From the 1990s onwards, there was an increasing effort to criminalise unwanted migration and accelerate border security measures. In 2014, writes Walia, under Obama’s presidency – in which Biden, of course, served as vice president – about half of all federal arrests were immigration-related. A similar process has been under way in most advanced economies: Walia makes a persuasive argument that we should see this not as a domestic policy issue, but as part of a global system in which border control, alongside military and economic policy, is a way for wealthy countries to maintain their power.There is a risk that this wider context induces a kind of paralysis: what’s the point of changing anything if you can’t change everything? But the reason Biden is able to take these bold-sounding steps now is because of the space created by ordinary people who resisted Trump’s crackdowns and brought their political demands to bear on the Democrats in the run-up to last year’s election. They didn’t wait for a president’s permission to demand better – and, despite the change of leadership, there’s no reason to stop now. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump to tell CPAC he is Republican 'presumptive 2024 nominee' – report

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      Donald Trump will reportedly tell the Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida this week he is Republicans’ “presumptive 2024 nominee” for president.Trump will address CPAC on Sunday, his subject the future of the party he took over in the 2016 primary then led from the White House through four tumultuous years. On Monday, citing anonymous sources, the news site Axios reported his plan to assume the mantle of challenger to Joe Biden – or another Democrat, should the 78-year-old president decide not to run for a second term.An unnamed “longtime adviser” was quoted as saying Trump’s speech to the rightwing event will be a “show of force” with the message: “I may not have Twitter or the Oval Office, but I’m still in charge.”A named source, close adviser Jason Miller, said: “Trump effectively is the Republican party. The only chasm is between Beltway insiders and grass-roots Republicans around the country. When you attack President Trump, you’re attacking the Republican grass roots.”Thousands have left the party since the Capitol riot of 6 January, which Trump incited in his attempt to overturn an election defeat he has not conceded, and in which five people including a police officer died. Trump lost his Twitter account, his favoured means of communication throughout his time in office, and access to other social media over his lies and inflammatory behaviour before, during and after the attack on Congress.Polling of Republicans who have not left the party, however, shows the former president with a clear lead over a range of potential 2024 candidates, supportive of him or not, in a notional primary.Ten members of the House voted to impeach Trump a second time over the Capitol attack and seven senators voted with Democrats to convict. That was short by 10 votes of the majority needed but it made it the most bipartisan impeachment ever.The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, voted to acquit but then turned on Trump, branding him responsible for events at the Capitol. But House leaders have not followed suit, as they deal with vocal extremists in their caucus and the loyal party base.As Trump lashed out at McConnell, calling him “a dour, sullen and unsmiling political hack”, so Republicans in the House and Senate who turned against Trump have been censured by state parties and reported vitriol aimed their way from the grassroots – and even family members.Trump’s grip on his party is clear. New polling from Suffolk University and USA Today showed 46% of Trump voters would follow him if he formed his own party while 42% said his impeachment had strengthened their support. The same poll said 58% of Trump voters subscribed to an outright conspiracy theory: that the Capitol riot was “mostly a [leftwing] antifa-inspired attack that only involved a few Trump supporters”.In reality, many of more than 250 individuals charged over the attack have been found to have links to far-right groups.On Sunday a key member of House leadership, Steve Scalise, repeatedly refused to say Trump lost the election or bore responsibility for the Capitol breach.The former Republican strategist Stuart Stevens said Scalise was “saying that America isn’t a democracy. That’s become the new standard of the Republican party. Not since 1860s has a large part of the country refused to accept election. The Republican party is an anti-democratic force.”Scalise also told ABC News he had visited Trump at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida resort.“I noticed he was a lot more relaxed than in his four years in the White House,” he said. “He still cares a lot about this country and the direction of our country. But, you know, it was a conversation more about how he’s doing now and what he’s … planning on doing and how his family is doing.”Axios cited an unnamed source as saying some potential 2024 contenders have sought Trump’s endorsement. It also noted that the former president, who would be 78 on election day and faces considerable legal threats now he has left office, may be planning to string the party along but ultimately not to run.Funds raised around Trump’s lie about his clear election defeat by Joe Biden being the result of fraud may be ploughed into funding primaries against those who have crossed him.Either way, CPAC has obligingly moved close by, from its usual venue in Maryland. Party moderates and figures who have criticised Trump, among them the Maryland governor, Larry Hogan, and the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, have not been invited to speak. Mike Pence, the vice-president whose life was placed in danger during the Capitol attack, reportedly turned down an invitation.Crowds at the conservative event were initially suspicious of Trump when he emerged on the national Republican scene, but came to embrace his flag-hugging displays with evangelical fervour.Axios’s source reportedly said: “Much like 2016, we’re taking on Washington again.” More

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      in Elections

      Voting machine maker Dominion sues MyPillow CEO over false election claims

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      The voting machine manufacturer Dominion is suing the Donald Trump-supporting chief executive of MyPillow for more than $1.3bn, claiming he damaged the company with his “Big Lie” that it distorted the results of the 2020 election.Dominion delivered on its earlier threat to sue Mike Lindell by lodging the lawsuit on Monday in a federal court in Washington. The complaint alleges that the MyPillow boss used the falsehood that Dominion voting machines had been used to rig the election in favour of Joe Biden as a marketing ploy to sell his product, “because the lie sells pillows”.The suit accuses Lindell and MyPillow of deceptive trade practices and seeking to profit by making false and defamatory statements. It highlights discounts MyPillow offered on its products linked to the rigged-election conspiracy theory, and points out that the company advertised on rightwing media outlets that were pushing the baseless claims and sponsored public rallies that propagated Trump’s lies.After Dominion warned that they were minded to sue, Lindell responded by stepping up attacks on the company. Earlier this month he released a three-hour film, Absolute Proof, devoted to the fantasy that last November’s defeat of Trump at the ballot box amounted to a “communist coup”.His relentless pursuit of the stolen election lie earned Lindell a permanent suspension from Twitter.On Monday, Lindell told the Wall Street Journal he was “very, very happy” that the Dominion lawsuit had gone ahead.“I have all the evidence on them,” he said. “Now this will get disclosed faster, all the machine fraud and the attack on our country.”No credible evidence of fraud on the scale needed to overturn the 2020 presidential election result has ever been presented. Numerous election officials, including prominent Republicans, have rebuffed the idea, as did Trump attorney general William Barr and homeland security secretary Chad Wolf.The Dominion legal action is the latest in a flurry of lawsuits swirling around Trump’s baseless claim that the election was stolen. Last month Dominion sued Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and another pro-Trump attorney, Sidney Powell, over their role in forwarding the conspiracy theory.A rival voting machine company, Smartmatic USA, has sued Fox News for $2.7bn, alleging defamatory comments about its products were broadcast on the network. Fox News has filed to dismiss the case. More

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      in US Politics

      Neera Tanden confirmation seems unlikely after moderate Republicans oppose her

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      Neera Tanden, president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, seemed unlikely to be confirmed as budget director in the Biden administration after Susan Collins and Mitt Romney, two moderate Republican senators, said they would not vote in her favour.In a statement on Monday, Collins said Tanden was unfit to run the Office of Management and Budget, which plays a powerful role in overseeing federal finances and regulation.“Neera Tanden has neither the experience nor the temperament to lead this critical agency,” the Maine senator said.The White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, backed Tanden, who she said was “an accomplished policy expert who would be an excellent budget director”.“We look forward to the committee votes this week and to continuing to work toward her confirmation through engagement with both parties,” Psaki said.But then a spokesperson for Romney said the Utah senator would not back Tanden. Romney had been “critical of extreme rhetoric from prior nominees”, the spokesperson said, “and this is consistent with that position. He believes it’s hard to return to comity and respect with a nominee who has issued a thousand mean tweets.”Such a position might seem paradoxical for a party that just endured four years of Donald Trump’s offensive and intemperate tweets. But much of the Republican attack on Tanden, who has strong links to Hillary Clinton, has focused on her social media record.Collins noted Tanden’s decision quietly to delete more than 1,000 tweets in the days after the election. Several of the tweets attacked Republican members of Congress, including Collins, whom Tanden described as “the worst”. Collins said the deletion of the tweets “raises concerns about her commitment to transparency”.Collins and Romney’s opposition delivered a blow to Joe Biden as he struggles to fill his cabinet. Several other key nominations are lining up for confirmation in the Senate but Collins made her move just three days after the Democratic senator from West Virginia, Joe Manchin, said he would vote against Tanden.With the Senate split 50-50, Manchin’s defection meant the administration already needed to persuade at least one moderate Republican to come on board. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, a possible vote for Tanden, has not yet indicated her intention.The White House is on tenterhooks with its efforts to fill cabinet posts. On Monday one of the most critical positions – that of attorney general, the country’s top prosecutor – went before the Senate judiciary committee.It was an especially poignant moment for the nominee, Merrick Garland, who five years ago was denied a confirmation hearing for a seat on the supreme court by the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell.Beyond Garland, Deb Haaland is up for confirmation hearings as interior secretary and Xavier Becerra as health and human services secretary. More

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      in World Politics

      The US Senate Is a Global Problem

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      Watching the Senate conduct the second impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump brought back a flood of memories from high school. I distinctly remember an earlier incarnation of those Trump-friendly Republican senators taking up their positions at the back of class to snicker, yawn ostentatiously and otherwise disrupt the serious, well-researched presentations of their fellow students. Then, when it was their turn to present, the back-row rowdies were so embarrassingly unprepared that it was hard not to laugh in return.

      The slavish devotion of the Senate miscreants to their imperiled leader and their casual dismissal of the January 6 violence, meanwhile, was like a modern-day replay of that grade-school classic “The Lord of the Flies.” In the Senate version, Trump played the part of the pig’s head, Josh Hawley was the pathological Jack, and Mitt Romney was the hopelessly conflicted Ralph who escaped the violence of the mob only thanks to the timely intervention of Officer Eugene Goodman, who stepped in at the last moment just like the British naval officer at the novel’s conclusion.

      The Texas Crisis: Tilting at Windmills

      READ MORE

      Finally, the acquittal of the former president was like the slap on the hand administered to one of my school’s handsome star athletes for one of his many transgressions. Boys will be boys, Trump will be Trump and, alas, Mitch McConnell will be perpetually “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”

      The display of juvenile behavior during the Senate trial was nauseating, and the verdict was an embarrassment. But the Senate poses a much more serious problem than even this impeachment circus suggests.

      When it comes to global issues, the Senate has been an enormous impediment to achieving peace, justice and environmental sustainability. More so even than the US president, the Senate has been the chief engine of American exceptionalism. It’s grimly fitting, then, that it has struck out twice in its duty to convict the supreme avatar of exceptionalism in modern American politics, a president who believed himself above democracy, above morality and above the law.

      Senate Power

      Senators love to call their chamber the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” It’s where the most seasoned politicians, partially protected from the insane election cycle that their House counterparts must face, can mull over the most important issues of the days.

      It’s also a glaring example of the inequities of US democracy, with the two senators from Wyoming (population: 578,000) wielding the same power as the two senators from California (population: 39 million). Senate elections have tilted US politics in favor of rural, predominantly white and increasingly conservative voters by a factor of two or three over urban voters. Like the Electoral College, the Senate makes a mockery of the “one-person, one-vote” principle by effectively giving some voters much greater power than others.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But the Senate is a far bigger problem because of its oversized role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Presidents have considerable leeway in conducting foreign policy, as the rollout of executive orders over the last years has made plain. Presidents can pull the country in and out of international bodies and multilateral agreements. They can slap tariffs on countries and sanctions on foreign individuals. Despite the limitations of the War Powers Act, they can still wage war for a full two months without any congressional interference.

      But the Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to approve, by a two-thirds majority, any treaties that the United States might be considering. As with the filibuster, however, this treaty power has as much influence in its threatened use as in its actual deployment.

      Consider the example of the 2015 Paris climate accord. The reason why all the national commitments to reduce carbon emissions are voluntary rather than mandatory is the US Senate. Secretary of State John Kerry, the US negotiator in Paris at the time, insisted on voluntary commitments because he knew that any mandatory requirements would need Senate approval. And the climate deniers in the Senate were sure to nix any such agreement.

      The Iran nuclear deal is, similarly, an agreement, not a treaty. This distinction allowed the Obama administration to secure congressional support short of the two-thirds majority required for a treaty. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — also known as the Iran deal — relies on various verification protocols to ensure compliance, not the signatures of the participating parties.

      These workarounds are more the rule than the exception. According to one academic study, US presidents negotiated nearly 4,000 executive agreements between 1977 and 1996 but only 300 treaties. Whether you consider these maneuvers to be an unacceptable short-circuiting of checks and balances or a reasonable method of overcoming the American exceptionalism of the Senate has largely depended on which side of the aisle you sit.

      The Graveyard of International Cooperation

      The Senate is where international treaties go to die. Currently awaiting the “advice and consent” of the body are 37 treaties, beginning with an International Labor Organization convention protecting the right to organize trade unions, which has been hanging out in the Senate for more than 70 years.

      Or consider the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which has been ratified by 162 countries. The United States participated in the international conferences in the 1970s that produced this critical document that covers all aspects of maritime borders, navigation and commerce. US negotiators under three successive administrations — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter — were instrumental in crafting the language of the working text. After Ronald Reagan’s administration balked at some of the provisions, negotiators even amended the final version to reflect some of the US concerns. But the Reagan administration still wouldn’t sign the agreement.

      It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union, certain changes on the ground (actually, on the seabed) and a new administration (Bill Clinton) to bring UNCLOS to the Senate. The late and decidedly not great Jessie Helms said no for he held fast to his position that no foreign entity should impinge on US sovereignty. Lest you think this was a partisan issue, the George W. Bush administration subsequently pushed hard for the Senate to ratify the convention with the support of all living former legal advisers of the State Department. This time, despite the efforts of then-Senator Joe Biden, a different minority of hard-line Republicans, including Jeff Sessions, thwarted the bipartisan campaign.

      The United States generally abides by this important convention, so what’s the big deal? As a non-signatory, however, the US cannot participate in key commissions, such as the one on the limits of the continental shelf, where it could otherwise advance its interests or push a conservation agenda. If that irritates you, don’t send your letters of complaint to the United Nations. Send them to the Senate.

      The Senate has been a crowded graveyard for arms control initiatives. There you can find gravestones for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), various nuclear-weapon-free zones and the Arms Trade Treaty (which Trump dramatically unsigned in 2019). The CTBT has been signed by 185 countries, but it won’t go into effect until eight specific nations ratify it (including the United States). The Arms Trade Treaty has entered into force, so it is only dead to the US, which is problematic since America is the leading arms exporter in the world by a large margin. The resurrection of these treaties is, of course, possible, but only if the composition of the Senate were to change dramatically.

      The Senate also stands in the way of the United States participating in the strengthening of international law and the prosecuting of war criminals — by blocking ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Senate stands in the way of preserving what remains of the world’s precious biodiversity — by blocking ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Senate stands in the way of upholding the human rights of large swathes of the global population — by blocking treaties on disability rights, on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and on a variety of labor rights.

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      The Senate is also not above exercising its power on seemingly trivial matters. It has refused, for instance, to support a treaty that protects albatrosses and petrels. Jeez, hasn’t anyone in the Senate read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

      Of course, the Senate has displayed its remarkable intransigence in ways that go well beyond its advice-and-consent function on treaties. During the previous administration, among the 250 bills that the House passed and that McConnell blocked in the Senate were several immigration bills (the Dream Act, a measure to protect Venezuelans from deportation), several environmental bills (blocking drilling in the Arctic National Refuge, banning offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico), and a measure to provide visas to Kurds who supported US forces in Syria.

      Reform the Senate?

      Those who hope to reform the Senate have focused on changes to the rules. With the exception of certain bills, the threat of filibuster has made the Senate even less reflective of popular will by turning a simple majority into a 60-vote wall into which the Democrats are likely to crash into repeatedly over the next two to four years.

      “Dear centrist Democrats, you couldn’t even get 10 GOP votes to convict the guy who sent a mob to kill you all. You think you can get them to vote on issues like immigration/climate? Come on,” immigrant rights activist Erika Andiola has tweeted. “You have to end the filibuster and use every tool at your disposal to get things done.”

      It’s a good point, but why not think big? What about eliminating the Senate altogether? Roughly half of the world’s sovereign nations have only one legislative body. Plenty of these unicameral systems are democratic, including Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, South Korea, New Zealand and Norway.

      Yes, I know, the smaller US states would put up even more resistance to the elimination of the Senate than they have to the proposed elimination of the Electoral College. Such an upending of the finely balanced compromises of the Founding Fathers would generate yowls of protest from constitutional literalists. Who could ever contemplate such a radical amendment?

      Victor Berger, that’s who. In 1911, the Wisconsin congressman introduced a resolution in the House to abolish the Senate. Berger was also the first socialist elected to Congress, so he was accustomed to taking contrarian positions. His proposed amendment to the Constitution began thus:

      “Whereas the Senate in particular has become an obstructive and useless body, a menace to the liberties of the people, and an obstacle to social growth; a body, many of the Members of which are representatives neither of a State nor of its people, but solely of certain predatory combinations, and a body which, by reason of the corruption often attending the election of its Members, has furnished the gravest public scandals in the history of the nation…”

      Those public scandals have continued all the way up to last weekend’s acquittal of a rogue president. Oh, Victor Berger, who will take up your mantle today?

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      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

      Texas Republican hypocrisy over federal aid is nothing new – ask Flyin' Ted Cruz | Lloyd Green

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      Texas has been hit by a disaster of its own making and its Republican office holders expect the rest of the US to pay to clean up the mess. To quote Dana Bash of CNN questioning Michael McCaul, a veteran GOP congressman, on Sunday: “That’s kind of rich, don’t you think?”
      For all of their bravado and anti-government rhetoric, in the aftermath of calamities like last week’s deep freeze Lone Star Republicans make a habit of passing the plate. Their suffering is ours too.
      But when the shoe is on the other foot, they begrudge kindness to others. Said differently, Ted Cruz is merely a grotesque illustration, not an exception.
      Take a walk down memory lane. In October 2012, Hurricane Sandy hammered New York and New Jersey. As the north-east reeled, Texas Republicans stood back, treating the region as if it were another country. As if the civil war had not ended.
      After the turn of the year, Cruz, his fellow senator John Cornyn and 23 of two-dozen Texas Republicans in the House gave a thumbs down to Sandy aid. Less reflexively hostile heads prevailed. The relief bill cleared Congress. But the GOP’s Texans had left their mark.
      Peter King, then a Republican representative from Long Island, understood malice and stupidity when he saw it. He called for a halt to donations to Republicans who opposed rescuing sister states.
      “These Republicans have no problem finding New York when they’re out raising millions of dollars,” King said. “What they did last night was put a knife in the back of New Yorkers and New Jerseyans. It was an absolute disgrace.”
      But Cruz in particular is nothing if not performative, ever Janus-faced. After Hurricane Harvey slammed Houston in 2017, he offered this explanation for his vote four years earlier: Sandy relief had become “a $50bn bill that was filled with unrelated pork”.
      Cruz also intoned: “What I said then and still believe now is that it’s not right for politicians to exploit a disaster when people are hurting to pay for their own political wish list.”
      Other than possibly Cruz’s long-suffering wife, it is unclear whether anyone believed Flyin’ Ted even then.
      Cruz may have flown home alone, leaving his family in Cancun, but he is not alone among Texas Republicans in hating Blue America. He is just the most notorious. Unlike congressman Louie Gohmert, Cruz went to Princeton and Harvard. He should and likely does know better.
      In 2019, as part of Donald Trump’s overhaul of the tax laws, Kevin Brady, a Texan then chair of the House ways and means committee, virtually eliminated the deductibility of state and local taxes from federal tax returns, in order to pay for an upper-bracket and corporate giveaway. New York and New Jersey are still feeling the bite.
      Under Trump, the economy failed to pass 3% growth annually and a much-touted manufacturing renaissance failed to appear. Covid made a bad situation worse.
      And now, lo and behold, Texas is forced, cap in hand, to pucker up to a Democratic House, Senate and White House. Senator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader and a native of Brooklyn, must be suppressing a smile.
      To be sure, the federal government and Congress must help Texas. No ifs, ands or buts. Joe Biden is treating the state a whole better than Trump did Puerto Rico. That’s a good thing.
      Innocent lives have been lost and upended in the name of retrograde ideology masked as policy. Real people, families and business have been destroyed. Climate change denial comes with a high human cost. Standing apart from the national electric grid isn’t independence. It is a death wish by another name.
      Confederacy 2.0.
      Alexander Stephens, vice-president of the breakaway states, summed up this attitude in 1861: “If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah River has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden.”
      Sounds familiar?
      Other than when it came to repelling Abraham Lincoln, the Confederacy was not a mutual assistance pact. Before this latest man-made debacle, Republicans were dreaming of drowning government in a bathtub. Hopefully, in Texas that may change. More

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      in US Politics

      Andrew Cuomo and the Lincoln Project were media-created debacles. What now? | David Sirota and Andrew Perez

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      In the chaos of 2020, the national press corps used all of its magical myth-making and storytelling powers to conjure two towering political heroes for a country in crisis. From the maw of the media machine, the New York governor, Andrew Cuomo, and the Lincoln Project emerged as our alleged sentinels bravely battling a deadly pandemic and an authoritarian president – and supposedly leading us with principles and morality into a new era of accountability and integrity.For millions of credulous liberals already bingeing on West Wing reruns, the twin tales conjured some more of that good old-fashioned hope-and-change nostalgia, and seemed to serve as a cheeky reminder that not all heroes wear capes. But in the last week, the facade has collapsed, revealing that those bravely trying to sound the alarm for months were right all along – and those benefiting from the media-driven fraud were attempting to evade accountability and self-servingly cover up a grotesquerie of mismanagement, corruption and abuse.Will the wrongdoers face any consequences or accountability? Or will they be treated like the purveyors of previous frauds, like the Iraq war and the financial crisis, and continue to be platformed and valorized by the press corps? And will our media overlords engage in any self-reflection about the monsters they manufactured?The details of the two tales vary, but the narrative arcs are eerily similar. That they crescendoed in the same single news cycle makes their cautionary tales all the more poignant.In Cuomo’s case, the Democratic governor’s aides were caught on tape effectively admitting that they “froze” and did not release the details of thousands of nursing home deaths from Covid-19 because they feared consequences from federal law enforcement officials.“We were in a position where we weren’t sure if what we were going to give to the Department of Justice, or what we give to you guys, and what we start saying, was going to be used against us,” Cuomo’s top aide told New York legislators on Wednesday. The comments were first reported by the New York Post.No doubt, Trump’s justice department was as highly politicized as Cuomo advisers feared – but that is hardly a legitimate justification for hiding details of thousands of deaths. And the framing of it as some innocent, unplanned, deer-in-the-headlights slip-up is absurd, considering the context.Cuomo’s administration hid the nursing home casualty data after his administration slipped provisions into the state budget that helped the governor’s largest healthcare industry donors obtain legal immunity for nursing home executives.At the time, New York legislators like Assemblyman Ron Kim were arguing that such liability shields were endangering nursing home residents by removing the threat of lawsuits against nursing home companies that tried to maximize profits by cutting corners. Kim and his allies were successful in repealing and limiting some aspects of those liability shields in August, but later that month it became clear the Cuomo administration had not been adequately disclosing details of the ongoing decimation occurring in nursing homes.As the nursing home death toll mounted, the media campaign to valorize the governor intensifiedIn effect, burying the casualty information constructed two liability shields: one for a healthcare industry that dumped millions into New York Democratic party coffers, and another for Cuomo himself. It deprived Kim and other legislators of real-time data buttressing their arguments to halt the corporate immunity law (which was being replicated by other states and by Republicans in Congress). It also shielded the governor from political blowback for both his mismanagement of the crisis and his fealty to donors.That said, Cuomo’s political liability shield could only exist because the media built it for him. As the death toll mounted in New York, whistleblowers like Kim were all but ignored by a press corps giving Cuomo largely uncritical wall-to-wall coverage, depicting him as a swashbuckling lionheart saving his state from certain doom.CNN granted Cuomo a recurring primetime segment with his own brother, which was predictably used to pump up the governor. In one particularly noxious segment weeks after Cuomo helped his hospital-industry donors insert the corporate immunity provisions into the state budget, his brother remarked on all of the governor’s fawning press coverage, declaring: “You’re feeling pretty good about yourself these days, aren’t you?”As the nursing home death toll mounted, the media campaign to valorize the governor intensified, based on Cuomo’s press conferences. “Help, I Think I’m In Love With Andrew Cuomo?” Jezebel wrote. Vogue filed a similar piece, headlined: “Why We Are Crushing on Andrew Cuomo Right Now.”“The governor of New York found himself at the center of a deadly crisis,” Rolling Stone wrote. “His response has helped guide the nation.”Ultimately, as New York racked up the nation’s highest body count, and the press ignored Cuomo’s Democratic critics in the legislature, this deification all culminated in a macabre scene: standing in the shadow of his own Mount Covid, Cuomo received a six-figure deal to write a book about his leadership, and he was awarded an Emmy for his television performances.Meanwhile, more than 13,000 nursing home residents in the state have died.While the disaster in New York was unfolding, the Lincoln Project was busy launching one of the most self-enriching political enterprises in history.Here was a group of top Republican operatives who had spent their entire careers building the arch-conservative foundations of the modern Republican party. This rogues’ gallery is led by none other than Steve Schmidt, the operative who helped lift Sarah Palin out of obscurity and turn her into the precursor of Trump himself, and who still to this day openly brags about having run the campaigns to install rightwing justices on the US supreme court.But in 2020, the group saw a lucrative opportunity to suddenly pretend to be offended by the Republican party they had built, producing cheesy anti-Trump YouTube videos designed to separate liberal cable news viewers from their money and funnel it into their political consulting firms.This gambit could not have succeeded without the national press corps. Indeed, the entire project was created by a media that granted these Republican operatives laudatory headlines and cable TV news sinecures, billing them as earnest warriors for truth, justice and the American way – and hardly ever asking them about either their own own culpability in creating the Republican party or about the merit of their new ads.As a political project, the plan bombed. Data proved the group’s spots were largely ineffective in swaying voters against Trump, and Trump won more Republican votes than he did in 2016.But in other respects, the Lincoln Project was wildly successful. In one emblematic segment, fabulist Brian Williams used his cable TV platform to pretend the group swung the entire 2020 election, and most news outlets never mentioned how lucrative it all was. The Associated Press recently reported that “of the $90m Lincoln Project has raised, more than $50m has gone to firms controlled by the group’s leaders.”Thanks to the pundits’ reputation-laundering of the Lincoln Project’s leaders, they appeared to be positioned to launch their own media outlet.Only now do we learn that while the group was vacuuming up those tens of millions dollars and its leaders were being promoted on TV, Lincoln Project team members were reportedly hearing allegations that one of its co-founders, John Weaver, had been sexually harassing young men and pitching them on job opportunities at the Lincoln Project.The Lincoln Project offered a statement late last month saying it was “shocked” by the claims against Weaver, but according to New York Magazine, “the allegations against Weaver were an open secret in the company.” The magazine spoke to one person who recalled Schmidt and consultant Rick Wilson joking with other staff over drinks about how Weaver was “twisted” and “depraved”.While struggling to contain the fallout from the Weaver story, the Lincoln Project has reverted to Republican form, deploying the same ugly, authoritarian tactics it had purported to stand against as it pitched itself to liberal donors during the 2020 election.On Thursday, the Lincoln Project sought to spike a story by a reporter talking to one of its former consultants, Jennifer Horn. The group had already tried to smear Horn as greedy on her way out and significantly escalated their attacks by posting apparent screenshots from Horn’s private Twitter messages with the journalist.The group deleted its tweets after former co-founder George Conway wrote: “This looks on its face to be a violation of federal law and should be taken down immediately.”The Cuomo and Lincoln Project debacles are about different things, but they are both examples of the pervasive culture of impunity. America likes to tell itself it is about law and order, but its political religion promotes lawlessness and chaos. That religion is supported by an entire political and media infrastructure that typically rewards perpetrators and punishes whistleblowers.With the end of the Trump presidency, we’ve been told that we are entering a new era of accountability: one of Biden’s own speechwriters has asserted that “there must be accountability for lies and lawbreaking and we must learn from our mistakes … You cannot heal wounds you choose to ignore.”Cuomo and the Lincoln Project offer an opportunity to finally make that pivot – but it isn’t clear that will happen.In the former case, New York legislators can strip Cuomo of his emergency powers and impeach him and the state’s Democratic-controlled law enforcement apparatus can fully investigate the situation – as can the Biden justice department. At the same time, the national press corps can stop genuflecting to the governor and start listening to the warnings of his critics.In the case of the Lincoln Project, the press response is even more significant. The group isn’t an elected official in a public office with inherent relevance and authority. It is instead a pure creation of the media itself – meaning that the press corps effectively gets to decide if the organization faces accountability or not.So far, it looks like “not”. The Fox News media critic Howard Kurtz alleged that MSNBC put Lincoln Project members on its airwaves 17 times after the Weaver allegations first surfaced. In fact, even as details of the scandal exploded in the last 24 hours, MSNBC today opted to continue providing a platform to the group to continue to present itself as a legitimate, forthright and credible political player in the post-Trump era.To be sure, Cuomo’s Republican critics and the Lincoln Project’s Trump-aligned critics are hardly acting in good faith without an agenda. They have axes to grind, and they don’t have much credibility themselves.But that doesn’t negate the deeper questions here.Will this be a moment of accountability?Or will it go the other way? Will it be a moment when media organizations permanently establish that infrastructure of impunity, to the point where a governor can now get away with hiding a death toll and a GOP political group can retain its megaphone amid a sordid harassment scandal?We’re about to find out. More

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      Texas freeze shows a chilling truth – how the rich use climate change to divide us | Robert Reich

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      Texas has long represented a wild west individualism that elevates personal freedom – this week, the freedom to freeze – above all else.The state’s prevailing social Darwinism was expressed most succinctly by the mayor of Colorado City, who accused his constituents – trapped in near sub-zero temperatures and complaining about lack of heat, electricity and drinkable water – of being the “lazy” products of a “socialist government”, adding “I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout!” and predicting “only the strong will survive and the weak will perish”.Texas has the third-highest number of billionaires in America, most of them oil tycoons. Last week, the laissez-faire state energy market delivered a bonanza to oil and gas producers that managed to keep production going during the freeze. It was “like hitting the jackpot”, boasted the president of Comstock Resources on an earnings call. Jerry Jones, billionaire owner of the Dallas Cowboys, holds a majority of Comstock’s shares.But most other Texans were marooned. Some did perish.The white working class has been seduced by conservative Republicans and Trump cultists, of which Texas has an abundanceThe Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which manages the flow of electric power, exempted affluent downtowns from outages, leaving thriving parts of Austin, Dallas and Houston brightly lit while pushing less affluent precincts into the dark and cold.Like the poor across America and much of the world, poor Texans are getting hammered by climate change. Many inhabit substandard homes, lacking proper insulation. The very poor occupy trailers or tents, or camp out in their cars. Lower-income communities are located close to refineries and other industrial sites that release added pollutants when they shut or restart.In Texas, for-profit energy companies have no incentive to prepare for extreme weather or maintain spare capacity. Even if they’re able to handle surges in demand, prices go through the roof and poorer households are hit hard. If they can’t pay, they’re cut off.Rich Texans take spikes in energy prices in their stride. If the electric grid goes down, private generators kick in. In a pinch – as last week – they check into hotels or leave town. On Wednesday night, as millions of his constituents remained without power and heat, Senator Ted Cruz flew to Cancún, Mexico for a family vacation. Their Houston home was “FREEZING” – as his wife put it.Climate change, Covid-19 and jobs are together splitting Americans by class more profoundly than Americans are split by politics. The white working class is taking as much of a beating as most Black and Latino people.Yet the white working class has been seduced by conservative Republicans and Trump cultists, of which Texas has an abundance, into believing that what’s good for Black and Latino people is bad for them, and that whites are, or should be, on the winning side of the social Darwinian contest.White grievance helps keep Republicans in power, protecting their rich patrons from a majority that might otherwise join to demand what they need – such as heat, electricity, water and reliable sources of power.Lower-income Texans, white as well as Black and Latino, are taking it on the chin in many other ways. Texas is one of the few states that hasn’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, leaving the share of Texans without health insurance twice the national average, the largest uninsured population of any state. Texas has double the national average of children in poverty and a higher rate of unemployment than the nation’s average.And although Texans have suffered multiple natural disasters stemming from climate change, Texas Republicans are dead set against a Green New Deal that would help reduce the horrific impacts.Last Wednesday, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, went on Fox News to proclaim, absurdly, that what happened to his state “shows how the Green New Deal would be a deadly deal for the United States”. Abbott blamed the power failure on the fact that “wind and solar got shut down”.Rubbish. The loss of power from frozen coal-fired and natural gas plants was six times larger than the dent caused by frozen wind turbines. Texans froze because deregulation and a profit-driven free market created an electric grid utterly unprepared for climate change.In Texas, oil tycoons are the only winners from climate change. Everyone else is losing badly. Adapting to extreme weather is necessary but it’s no substitute for cutting emissions, which Texas is loath to do. Not even the Lone Star state should protect the freedom to freeze. More