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  • A GOP Lawmaker Wants to Ban Critical Race Theory — Without Knowing What It Is

    The Alabama State Capitol building is seen on May 14, 2019, in Montgomery, Alabama.

    Following a wave of Republican bills across the country against the teaching of critical race theory in schools and universities, Alabama Republican state Rep. Chris Pringle recently pre-filed a bill of his own to ban its teaching in his own state.

    But Pringle, much like many of the other Republican lawmakers across the country who are fixated on the concept, doesn’t appear to have a grasp on what critical race theory is.

    In a phone interview with AL.com writer Kyle Whitmire, Pringle repeated the false notion that critical race theory teaches “that certain children are inherently bad people because of the color of their skin.” However, when asked to cite any critical race scholars who are advancing that bogus version of the concept, Pringle was naturally at a loss.

    “Yeah, uh, well — I can assure you — I’ll have to read a lot more,” Pringle told Whitmire.

    As it happens, Pringle’s version of critical race theory is completely detached from the reality of what the academic concept actually is. Rather, his version, in fact, is closer to what Republicans have distorted the concept to mean seemingly in order to fearmonger and keep students from being educated about the racist roots of the U.S.

    In reality, critical race theory is an academic concept born in the 1970s that studies and educates on racism’s pervasive and widespread systemic impact on the United States. It has been a force for liberation, as its scholars hold.

    Over the past months, however, Republicans, inspired by Donald Trump, have launched attack after attack on the concept — attacks that they now seek to codify into law. The GOP has transformed critical race theory into a catch-all for any form of anti-racism or teaching about racism and has been using it to demonize people and institutions to their base.

    Pringle, for instance, falsely told AL.com that critical race theory scholars were putting white men into reeducation camps. When asked to provide evidence of that claim, Pringle mentioned an article he had read but was unable to name the source or provide a link when pressed by Whitmire.

    There is, of course, no evidence of any white men in the U.S. being sent en masse to reeducation camps other than a viral clip from Fox claiming that the debunked conspiracy theory concerning the camps was true.

    After rambling back and forth about what he believes the theory is, Whitmer reports, Pringle said he’s simply interested in starting a conversation about it. However, banning the teaching of the topic in schools and colleges, as the Republican state representative is proposing, would stymie future conversations.

    As many political commentators have pointed out, that appears to be the true goal for Republicans as they lash out against the movement for Black lives that was reignited in 2020. Regardless of how tenuous of a grasp they have on the real definition of critical race theory, Republican state legislators are continuing to file — and pass — bill after bill banning its teaching.

    “In the conservative telling, critical race theory is a loosely defined but awesomely omnipresent phantasmagoric threat that’s infecting schools and institutions across the country,” wrote Alex Shephard for The New Republic. “Anyone who speaks up against it is heralded as a hero, fighting on behalf of children who would otherwise be brainwashed into learning about racism and privilege.”

    That heroism is translating into dollars for many Republicans, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, whose state recently banned the theory from classrooms and who has been fundraising off that effort.

    “It’s just politicians trying to manipulate people to garner campaign contributions and votes, whipping them up with something that has no basis in merit or fact,” Alabama Democratic chair and state Rep. Chris England told Whitmire. “All anybody really wants to be taught in their schools is the accurate and true representation of American and world history, and that includes America’s sordid history with race.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • McConnell Says He’ll Block SCOTUS Nominations If GOP Regains the Senate in 2022

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell conducts a news conference after the Senate Republican Policy luncheon in Russell Building on April 20, 2021.

    Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said on Monday that, if Republicans took the majority in Congress in 2022, he will mobilize his party members to block a Supreme Court nominee made by President Joe Biden during the presidential election season, which will likely begin in earnest in 2023.

    In an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, McConnell suggested that he would block a Democratic nominee if he had the majority “in the middle of [a presidential] election” the same way that he blocked former President Barack Obama’s pick, Merrick Garland, in 2016, months before the election that year. The senator said that act was “the single most consequential thing I’ve done in my time as majority leader of the Senate.”

    McConnell went on to say that Republicans were justified in rushing Donald Trump’s nomination of conservative Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court in 2020 because the ruling party in the Senate was the same party as the president. That contradicts his justification for blocking Obama’s nomination in 2016, which at the time he claimed was about checks and balances.

    As Democrats and progressives have pointed out, these explanations are a farce. McConnell’s true motives are clear: he will manipulate the rules of Congress as much as he can to keep his party in power and use that power to extend the GOP’s influence wherever possible. This is made clear, political commentators say, by the inherent hypocrisy of his actions.

    “Mitch McConnell blocked Merrick Garland 8 months before [the 2016] election but confirmed Amy Coney Barrett 8 days before [the 2020] election when 65 million had already voted,” wrote Mother Jones’s Ari Berman on Twitter. “And now he’s saying he’d do it again.”

    McConnell’s comments add fuel to the fire for progressives and Democrats who are beginning to call for liberal Justice Stephen Breyer, who is 82, to retire so that Democrats can replace him while they have a majority.

    McConnell’s comments are also fueling yet more calls for Senators Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) and other like-minded centrist Democrats to support abolishing the filibuster in order to advance the Democratic agenda to stop McConnell from implementing minority rule, as he’s threatening to do — and currently doing with the help of the centrist Democrats.

    Progressives are frustrated with Democrats for failing to use their majority in Congress, saying that it’s time for them to retaliate against Republicans. “This is what it looks like when you understand the rules of the game,” said reporter Eoin Higgins on Twitter,” in response to McConnell’s Monday statements. “McConnell is playing the game by the rules. Schumer et al just don’t get it. It’s that simple.”

    Political reporter for NBC Sahil Kapur explained that, indeed, Democrats often capitulate to Republican demands while the GOP just plays hardball and forces its proposals through. “The way to understand Mitch McConnell’s actions on blocking Garland in ‘16, to reversing that standard for Barrett in ‘20, to suggesting he’d block Biden in ‘23/‘24: He is betting that Democrats won’t do anything to retaliate when they have power. So far that bet is paying off,” tweeted Kapur.

    But progressives in office and in advocacy have recognized this pattern and have been using their limited but growing power to fight back. Progressive and Democratic lawmakers are encouraging the party to play by the rules and expand the Supreme Court, which Congress is allowed to do. Lawmakers have introduced legislation to expand the Supreme Court by four seats for a total of 13, which the bill’s sponsors say are an effort to “unpack” the institution.

    Sen. Ed Markey (D-Massachusetts), one of the bill’s sponsors, tweeted on Monday that the expansion is necessary to combat partisan manipulation by Republicans over the years. “Mitch McConnell is already foreshadowing that he’ll steal a 3rd Supreme Court seat if he gets the chance. He’s done it before, and he’ll do it again. We need to expand the Supreme Court.”

    Meanwhile, people like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) are warning Democrats: if they spend too long trying to work across the aisle with people like McConnell who are only interested in obstruction and manipulation, they could end up losing seats and risking their majority in 2022. That could happen either because the public gets fed up with the party, he says, or because Republicans pass enough voter suppression bills that the Democrats become a “permanent minority party.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Only 3 Percent of Jobs on Tennessee Government Website Pay Over $20,000

    Help Wanted sign

    Earlier this month, Tennessee’s Republican Gov. Bill Lee announced that he, like many other Republican governors across the country, would be ending extra unemployment benefits for workers as provided by the federal government. The spurious justification given by Lee and other GOP governors was that people were making too much money off unemployment to want to return to work.

    But new findings from Tennessee Senate Democrats shows that the real reason for people not being able to or wanting to return to work may be because the available jobs pay far too little.

    Lee, the Democrats point out, often points to the 250,000 jobs that are listed on Tennessee’s job portal as reasoning for ending the extra unemployment benefits. “When we have 250,000 job openings in the state and we are paying people to stay home, that needs to change,” he said earlier in June.

    Of those jobs, however, only about 8,500 list paying a salary of over $20,000 — which amounts to only about 3 percent of the available jobs that Lee so likes to tout.

    It’s possible that many of these job listings simply don’t publicize the salary in the post. However, the Democrats also point out that a majority of the jobs are older than a month, meaning some of them may no longer be available. Meanwhile, the number of new job postings are far less than the number of people unemployed.

    Meanwhile, as the Tennessee Democrats and many Democrats and progressives across the country have pointed out, ending unemployment benefits does more to hurt workers than it does to help the economy. The U.S. Congressional Joint Economic Committee found early in June that Republican governors ending extra unemployment benefits could cause their states to lose out on $12 billion in revenue.

    Workers are not only hurt in the short term by this decision, but potentially also the long term. “Cutting benefits early in order to push people into jobs that don’t work for them (e.g. pay too little, endanger their health, are not geographically proximate, etc.) risks reducing demand in local economies, foregoing [sic] the potential for future better earnings, and ultimately constricting the economic recovery from the coronavirus recession,” the report found.

    Indeed, as employers complain about a supposed worker shortage, reports and some businesses have found that the real issue is the unreasonable wages being offered by employers. A May report on the food industry found that the most common reason for restaurant employees to quit or leave the industry altogether is low wages.

    Some business owners have even found that when they offer starting wages of $15 an hour or higher, they have more applicants than they can hire.

    Still, Republicans have stuck with the now disproven talking point that unemployment benefits stop people from seeking work, much to the detriment of workers across the country.

    Nationwide, food banks are reportedly bracing for a surge in demand as the GOP governors end extra unemployment benefits, the Guardian reports. The Census Bureau reported in May that 19.3 million Americans haven’t felt they’ve had enough to eat at some point in the past week, which is about 2.5 times the number of Americans who felt the same in 2019.

    That number could increase when nearly 4 million people lose their unemployment benefits as states with Republican governors follow through on their threat to end the benefits early.

    “We are still distributing about a million to a million and a half more meals each month than we did pre Covid,” Teresa Schryver, advocacy manager for a St. Louis food bank, told the Guardian. “We might see a spike again in July and August as we’re losing the unemployment benefits here in Missouri, so we might be doing 2m meals again for a couple of months.” Schryver added that it took food insecurity rates 10 years to bounce back from the 2008 recession and that the fallout from the pandemic will likely follow the same path.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Senate demands evidence on data seizure from Trump-era law chiefs

    Senate Democratic leaders are demanding that Trump-era attorneys general Bill Barr and Jeff Sessions give evidence about the secret seizure of House Democrats’ data in 2018. They’ve called it “shocking” and a “gross abuse of power”.

    Barr and Sessions

    Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and Illinois senator Dick Durbin said in a statement that Barr and Sessions “must testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee” and are subject to a subpoena if they refuse. The demands came after Democratic representatives Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell were notified that the Justice Department, under Donald Trump, seized their metadata from Apple three years ago.

    The records of at least 12 people connected to the House Intelligence Committee were eventually shared by Apple. The 12 included Schiff, then the top Democrat on the committee and now its chairman.

    Adam Schiff
    Adam Schiff (J Scott Applewhite/AP)

    The Justice Department routinely investigates leaked information, including classified intelligence. But opening such an investigation into members of Congress is extraordinarily rare. The disclosures reveal one branch of the government using its powers of investigation and prosecution to spy on another.

    Schiff said the seizures suggest “the weaponisation of law enforcement by a corrupt president”.

    Apple informed the committee in May that it shared records and the investigation had been closed. But it did not give extensive detail. Also seized were the records of aides, former aides, and family members – one of them a minor according to the committee official.

    The Justice Department obtained metadata — probably records of calls, texts, and locations — but not other content from the devices, such as photos, messages, or emails, according to one of the people. Another said Apple complied with the subpoena, providing the information to the Justice Department. And it did not immediately notify the members of Congress or the committee about the disclosure.

    Eric Swalwell
    Eric Swalwell, right (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP)

    In public and private

    The Trump administration’s attempt to secretly gain access to the data came as the then-president was fuming publicly and privately over investigations into his campaign’s ties to Russia. These were being carried out in Congress and by then special counsel Robert Mueller.

    Trump called the probes a “witch hunt”. He also regularly criticised Democrats and Mueller on Twitter and repeatedly dismissed as “fake news” leaks he found harmful to his agenda. As the investigations swirled around him, he demanded loyalty from a Justice Department he often regarded as his personal law firm.

    Schiff and Swalwell were two of the most visible Democrats on the committee, then led by Republicans, during the Russia investigation. Schiff called for an investigation on the seizures by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

    House speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement that the data seizures “appear to be yet another egregious assault on our democracy” by the former president. She added:

    The news about the politicisation of the Trump administration Justice Department is harrowing

    By The Canary

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • For Trump, Cruelty Was the Point. Now It’s a Major GOP Fundraising Strategy

    Former President Donald Trump addresses the NCGOP State Convention on June 5, 2021, in Greenville, North Carolina.

    Do you remember the first year of the Trump administration? A daunting question; among Trump’s many grim accomplishments was the way he made time elastic. So much has happened since, so it’s a bit like asking if you remember the first year of the Boxer Rebellion.

    The mind deals with trauma in part by deleting or obscuring traumatic memories — the oft-maligned “memory hole,” which may help us more than we appreciate — and there have been so many shocks to our mental and spiritual underpinnings that it becomes impossible to keep track. Your mileage may vary, but for me, trying to recall the eon that was 2017 to 2018 is akin to peering into deep space with a dollar store flashlight.

    It’s all there, though, if I concentrate. The Muslim ban, the mocking of sexual assault survivors, the public embrace of white supremacists, the separation of children from their parents at the southern border, the disdain shown to Puerto Rico after it was flattened by a hurricane, the scorn for the rule of law, the constant inescapable media presence like a cultural migraine that won’t abate, the attacks on students who survived school shootings, a trillion-dollar tax giveaway to corporations and the wealthy, the singling out of individuals and groups as “enemies of the people,” the vivid racism expressed toward nations described by Trump as “shithole countries,” the coddling of violence at the rallies, the brazen broad-daylight corruption, the daily drumbeat of malicious and petty acts whose only purpose was to “own the libs”… an abridged accounting, and that was just the first year.

    Donald Trump is out of office and deplatformed from social media, so he is a bit like the Deepwater Horizon of former presidents. The blowout has been capped, but the enormous mass of poison he spewed will be in the Gulf of Mexico forever.

    Adam Serwer, staff writer at The Atlantic, captured the essence of what we were all trying to figure out back then: “What the hell is all this? Why?” Serwer’s masterpiece October 2018 article, “The Cruelty Is the Point,” crystallized the raw truth of the moment better than anyone has before or since, as far as I’m concerned:

    Trump’s only true skill is the con; his only fundamental belief is that the United States is the birthright of straight, white, Christian men, and his only real, authentic pleasure is in cruelty. It is that cruelty, and the delight it brings them, that binds his most ardent supporters to him, in shared scorn for those they hate and fear: immigrants, black voters, feminists, and treasonous white men who empathize with any of those who would steal their birthright.

    The president’s ability to execute that cruelty through word and deed makes them euphoric. It makes them feel good, it makes them feel proud, it makes them feel happy, it makes them feel united. And as long as he makes them feel that way, they will let him get away with anything, no matter what it costs them.

    I’d wager most who read the article when it came out said, “Oh, OK, right” afterward, and moved into the following years with something of a framework to operate from, a baseline context that made it all ever so slightly more manageable. It certainly had this effect on me. Why did Trump do that? Because it was cruel. Box checked.

    Of course, there was also the money.

    The dazzling graft of the Inaugural Committee, the rampant nepotism, the self-dealing that led to millions of tax dollars arriving in Trump’s bank accounts because he and his entire entourage stayed at his hotels wherever they went, and the endless frenzy of doom-swaddled fundraising aimed at a deliberately provoked and near-frantic base, all served a simple purpose: He was looting the Treasury, and his own supporters, to hose money onto the bonfire of his massive debt.

    The havoc Trump promoted and the two-fisted cash grab that defined his administration were entirely symbiotic, and he hasn’t stopped just because he moved to New Jersey. The fundraising pattern in particular is altogether clear by now: Make an extravagant and entirely impossible promise or prediction (“Stop the steal,” “overthrow the election,” “Trump will be inaugurated on March 4,” etc.) and fundraise off it, and when it fails to come to pass, fundraise off that, too.

    Trump has made millions playing the martyr to his base since November, and recently deployed a new version of the old trick. Several reports had him speaking recently with deep confidence about being “reinstated” as president come August. It does not matter that no mechanism exists to make this happen, absent a national conflagration that would make January 6 look like an episode of Barney the Dinosaur. A large portion of his base believe it, because he said it.

    Make the claim and fundraise off it. When it fails to come to pass, fundraise off that (“See? See?! The deep state did it to us again! Trump needs your help to defeat this evil! We’re all in this together!!!”). In the immortal words of hippie Homer Simpson, “Lather, rinse and repeat. Always repeat.”

    The seamless success of this pattern has not been lost on the wobbling Jell-O mold of Republican officeholders whose political existence has been digested by the Trump phenomenon they helped create.

    Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene may seem like some wild-eyed flake with an obnoxious face mask and too much time on her hands, but don’t be fooled: Every one of her bizarre proclamations about Jewish-controlled space lasers or “false flag” school shootings, all her seemingly erratic behavior, is not merely the byproduct of a racist QAnon devotee from Georgia.

    I’m confident Greene believes at least some of the stuff she spews, but by fundraising relentlessly off of it, she cleared more than $3 million in three months. By comparison, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez banked less than $800,000 in the same time frame. Batshit sells in the right marketplace, and the GOP base is buying hand over fist, because they know she is a devoted pilot fish to Trump’s hammerhead shark.

    Perhaps a more egregious example is another to-the-knife Trump supporter, Rep. Matt Gaetz. In the throes of allegations that he raped teenage girls, Gaetz proclaimed he would run for president in 2024 if Trump does not. This elicited a mighty “Huh?!” from many, but Gaetz knows exactly what he was about: He pulled down about $1.8 million over the same three months as Greene by fundraising on his own self-proclaimed martyrdom and devotion to Trump. When the fundraising reports for quarter two come in next month, we’ll see how handsomely Trump’s base rewarded him for trolling the ’24 presidential race.

    Some days ago, the wife of Rep. Mo Brooks — also a champion of all things Trump — was served a subpoena for her husband as part of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s allegation that he helped foment the 1/6 Capitol breach. Brooks’s wife got it because Brooks himself has been hiding from Swalwell’s process servers for weeks. Yesterday, Brooks transitioned the event into a fundraising email to the base titled, “They Came After My Wife.”

    Lather, rinse and repeat. Always repeat.

    The mystery of why so many Republicans have stapled themselves to Trump, even as they fear his antics may cost them a recapture of the senate in 2022, isn’t a mystery at all. Sure, they fear getting on the wrong side of Trump’s base, but they have also learned that playing to that base is the equivalent of having a bottomless ATM in the office closet.

    Trump has created a near-frictionless fascist fundraising juggernaut that relies entirely on the greed of the Republican politicians he has captured, and the evangelical credulity of his closest supporters. Feed the base and the base will feed you, and you get to keep your job, too. Step out of line and you’re not only a political fistful of Thanos infinity dust, but the plug on the ATM is pulled forever. Rep. Liz Cheney is the rare exception; most of the rest got the gilded memo in triplicate, and will play along until the music stops. If having their offices sacked by Trump supporters did not dissuade them from this course, I imagine nothing can.

    Remember this whenever you see a Republican rolling in the slime of conspiracy theory and abject racism with more alacrity than has been the norm. The GOP has found a new platform, the only plank Trump left them: Cruelty pays. It will all end badly, but for the foreseeable future, the madness is the method. “It’s a hustle,” Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said on Wednesday. Indeed, and a damned effective one. “Owning the libs” and fleecing the base is the new Republican gold rush. It will be a wonder if the nation survives it.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Ohio GOP’s “Expert Witness” Bizarrely Claims COVID Vaccines Magnetize People

    Prominent anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist Sherri Tenpenny testifies on the Ohio House floor on June 8, 2021.

    In a bizarre testimony riddled with easily and roundly disproved falsehoods, an anti-vaccine doctor somewhat prominent in conspiracy circles testified on the Ohio House floor on Tuesday, saying without any legitimate evidence, that COVID vaccines cause people to develop a strong magnetic field and attract metals.

    Sherri Tenpenny, identified by anti-disinformation advocates as one of the most prominent anti-vaccine disinformation spreaders in the U.S., falsely told Ohio House Health Committee members that vaccinated people can make keys, spoons and forks stick to their bodies because, according to her, the vaccine contains metal (presumably magnetized). This conspiracy theory is, of course, patently false and incomprehensible, coming from someone supposedly in the medical profession. Scientists and medical professionals have said that there are no metals in COVID vaccines, and even if there were, they would not cause a person to become magnetic.

    Tenpenny’s evidence for her bizarre theory? Pictures she’s seen on the internet. “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures all over the internet of people who have had these shots and now they’re magnetized,” she said, referring to a debunked series of viral videos from social media platforms like Facebook.

    She also claimed, without providing sources, that thousands of people have died because of the vaccine. In reality, public health experts have found no links between deaths and receiving a COVID vaccine. If anything, the opposite is true: vaccines save lives by preventing spread of the novel coronavirus, which has killed almost 600,000 people in the U.S. so far.

    Concerningly, Tenpenny was spreading dangerous conspiracy theories in the Ohio legislature to help Republicans bolster the case for their bill, which prohibits hospitals, nursing homes, businesses, colleges, and a number of other institutions from requiring vaccinations. Ohio Capital Journal, which was the first to cover Tenpenny’s testimony, has reported that public health professionals have warned that the policy could worsen public health outcomes and potentially cause outbreaks of COVID-19. The bill has been cosponsored by 16 Republicans in the Ohio House.

    Despite the fact that nearly the entirety of Tenpenny’s testimony was false, Republican lawmakers thanked her for testifying. One Republican representative, who previously grotesquely compared requiring vaccine proof to the Holocaust, said it was an “honor” to have Tenpenny testify.

    Notwithstanding the absurd claims in Tenpenny’s testimony, it may still help Republicans pass the harmful legislation. Ohio’s House Health Committee chair Republican Scott Lipps said, “I hope that didn’t harm [Tenpenny’s] credibility, but I think some committee members walked away with big questions.” It’s unclear what credibility Lipps thought she had to begin with.

    The committee also heard from other anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists offering more bizarre testimonies. At another point during the hearing on the bill, an anti-vaccine nurse attempted to “prove” the magnetism theory, trying and failing to stick a key to her neck. Lawyer Tom Renz spoke in favor of the bill as a legislative alternative to his lawsuit — which was panned by a judge for being “incomprehensible” — against the “tyranny” of the Ohio Health Department.

    However offbeat and easily disproved the conspiracies offered to Ohio House representatives are, however, the anti-vaccine movement is gaining traction among Republicans across the country. Lawmakers in over 40 states have filed bills to bar vaccine mandates in various institutions, much to the alarm of public health experts and medical professionals.

    But there have not been any reports of widespread vaccine mandates. Rather, Republicans are likely using this opportunity to fearmonger about Democrats and the government while uplifting dangerous voices like Tenpenny’s — voices that have the potential to kill.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Wisconsin Republican Compares Children’s Museum Mask Policy to Gestapo Rules

    A Republican state lawmaker in Wisconsin is facing criticism for comparing a nonprofit museum’s policies on masking to Nazism. And judging by his latest comments, he is showing no sign of taking back his comments.

    Assembly Rep. Shae Sortwell, a Republican from Two Rivers, Wisconsin, shared a Facebook post from the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum at Stevens Point, regarding their policies on masks. The museum requires anyone over the age of five to wear a mask if they are not vaccinated against COVID-19. Those who are vaccinated and wish not to wear a mask must provide proof of their inoculation before being allowed to enter, the museum stipulates.

    According to museum director Cory Rusch, the policy is aimed at protecting the health and safety of vulnerable grandparents who come to the museum with their grandchildren.

    Sortwell took issue with the policy of the museum, which is situated more than 100 miles away from his home. “The Gestapo wants to see your papers, please,” the Republican lawmaker wrote in his post.

    According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the Gestapo was Nazi Germany’s infamous political police force” that “was a reliably brutal tool that enforced Nazism’s most radical impulses” against certain groups while the Nazis were in power.

    “One of the Gestapo’s main responsibilities,” the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum adds, “was coordinating the deportation of Jews to ghettos, concentration camps, killing sites, and killing centers.”

    Sortwell’s comments resulted in hundreds of responses on his Facebook page, many of them condemning his words and demanding an apology. But his post also had a negative impact on the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum, which was inundated with comments on its own social media site from those against masking policies and those against getting vaccinations.

    Stevens Point Mayor Mike Wiza blasted Sortwell for attacking the museum’s policies, and questioned why he had targeted an institution he had no affiliation with.

    “To the best of my knowledge, [Sortwell has] never been to the children’s museum…. I’m wondering what personal beef he has with Stevens Point or the children’s museum in making a comment relating to the Gestapo,” Wiza said.

    Rather than stepping back on his comments, however, Sortwell doubled down on them, stating in a Facebook video post on Tuesday that he “absolutely” stands by what he said.

    The Nazis and the Gestapo “collected records from people,” Sortwell tried to explain in his message. “And if you couldn’t provide proper records, the proper documentation to prove that in fact you were not a ‘filthy Jew,’ as they would put them out … if you couldn’t do it, all the sudden you had to put on something that declared to the world, declared to the German people anyways, that you were somehow subservient, you were somehow not as good.”

    Democratic lawmakers in the State Assembly denounced Sortwell for his ignorance on the issue.

    “At a time when antisemitic incidents continue to rise, hyperbolic rhetoric by Republican elected officials about the Holocaust needs to end now,” said Rep. Lisa Subeck, a Democrat from Madison, Wisconsin, who is also a board member of the National Association of Jewish Legislators. “These types of statements pile onto ever-increasing antisemitic incidents in our state, and continue to create divisions in an already ultra-divided country.”

    Comments about mask-wearing similar to Sortwell’s were made last month by U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), who went on a tirade against a policy in the House of Representatives, wrongly comparing the rules to the Holocaust. A petition calling for Greene to be expelled from the House over her comments and other behavior has since amassed hundreds of thousands of signatures.

    Holocaust remembrance organizations have decried comparing mask-wearing to Nazism or the Holocaust before. The Auschwitz Memorial, for instance, responded to testimony from a woman at a city council meeting in Springfield, Missouri, for making a similar claim.

    “Wearing a mask is a sign of our responsibility for the safety of us all. It protects health & lives,” the Auschwitz Memorial wrote on its Twitter page. “A mask is not a yellow star. Such a comparison is disrespectful to Jews humiliated by it during the Holocaust.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Texas AG Says He Helped Trump Win State With His Lawsuit Against Mail-In Ballots

    Ken Paxton, Texas Attorney General, speaks during a panel discussion during the Conservative Political Action Conference on February 27, 2021 in Orlando, Florida.

    Conservative Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said on Friday that, had his office not blocked Harris County from sending out mail-in ballot applications to all of its registered voters, Donald Trump would have lost the state.

    Paxton told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon in a podcast that blocking the applications was instrumental to Trump’s win, because otherwise the state “would’ve been one of those battleground states that they were counting votes in Harris County for three days and Donald Trump would’ve lost the election.”

    “If we’d lost Harris County—Trump won by 620,000 votes in Texas,” Paxton said. “Harris County mail-in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2.5 million, those were all illegal and we were able to stop every one of them,” he continued, falsely conflating ballot applications with ballots.

    Harris County officials announced last August that they planned to send mail-in ballot applications to all 2.4 million of its registered voters. The county houses Houston and is the third most populous county in the U.S.

    A lawsuit brought by Paxton on behalf of the Republicans to block the plan succeeded, however, and the county was barred by the courts from sending the unsolicited applications. The effort to widen voting access, Paxton’s office argued, would confuse voters. (Several states sent out not ballot applications but actual mail-in ballots automatically to voters last year without causing widespread fraud or confusion.)

    Meanwhile, Texas and its largely Republican state officials had changed many voting rules several times before the 2020 election. Paxton led the charge in the state against no-excuse absentee voting and enacted a policy that was “a recipe for disaster,” as Slate wrote, when Texas disallowed people from filing for an absentee ballot if they were not considered at high-risk for complications from COVID-19 — just months before the election.

    It’s unclear if Trump would have actually won the state if Harris County had been allowed to follow through on its plan to make voting more accessible. While President Joe Biden won the county by a 13-point margin or nearly 220,000 votes, with record-breaking voter turnout, Trump carried the state with over 600,000 votes.

    Regardless of whether the results would have been any different for Biden had Harris County been able to send out mail-in ballot applications, Paxton’s statement about the election results seven months after the fact is revealing of how conservatives view elections and voting rights. Rather than ensuring that elections are conducted fairly, they openly support blocking access to the ballot by any means necessary, especially among voters in more Democratic leaning and nonwhite areas. Paxton, after all, is the same person who sued to disenfranchise millions of voters in battleground states following Biden’s victory in the 2020 elections.

    Regardless of whether Paxton’s lawsuit against the mail-in ballot applications handed Trump his victory in Texas, it was certainly one more tool in the GOP’s voter-suppression toolbox for the state. Analyses have shown that Texas is the hardest state to vote in, with restrictions like strict voter ID laws, limits on ballot drop-off locations, and mail-in ballot eligibility requirements. Moreover, Republican-led gerrymandering has worked to further suppress Democratic voters in the state.

    Recently, Texas Democrats walked off the legislative floor in an attempt to block yet another voter suppression bill that their Republican colleagues tried to ram through the legislature. In the wake of widespread outrage over provisions in the bill that will affect the voting rights of millions — such as limits on voting on Sunday mornings, which critics point out is a clear attempt to restrict the Black vote — Republicans have made the absurd claim that it was just a typo.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • FBI Probes Allegation That DeJoy Used Illegal Scheme to Rise as GOP Megadonor

    United States Postal Service Postmaster General Louis DeJoy departs following a House Oversight and Reform Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on February 24, 2021 in Washington, DC.

    The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is investigating Republican campaign donations in connection to Postmaster General Louis DeJoy and his former company.

    As first reported by The Washington Post, FBI agents have been looking into campaign contributions potentially made by people currently and formerly employed by DeJoy. Sources told the publication that investigators have also issued a subpoena to the embattled postmaster general in connection with the donations.

    The investigation follows another Washington Post report from September that, if true, could mean that DeJoy used potentially illegal methods to fuel his rise as a GOP fundraiser. Former employees of New Breed Logistics, which was bought by XPO Logistics and which DeJoy led for over 30 years, told The Post that DeJoy’s aides and sometimes DeJoy himself would pressure employees to donate to Republican candidates. They would then be reimbursed in the form of bonuses, the former employees said.

    “He would ask employees to make contributions at the same time that he would say, ‘I’ll get it back to you down the road,’” one former employee told The Washington Post.

    Such a donation and reimbursement scheme would be illegal, according to laws prohibiting the use of “straw donors.”

    The former employees also reported being urged to attend fundraisers DeJoy held at his mansion in Greensboro, North Carolina, where GOP candidates running for federal office sometimes raised $100,000 or more.

    A spokesperson for DeJoy denies the allegations, and the postmaster general has previously denied them himself in one of the many congressional hearings in front of which he’s been called to testify, calling the allegations “outrageous.”

    House Oversight Committee Chair Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-New York) has said, however, that if he did participate in the straw donor scheme, he may have lied to Congress in that testimony. “If these allegations are true, Mr. DeJoy could face criminal exposure — not only for his actions in North Carolina, but also for lying to our committee under oath,” said Maloney in a statement in September.

    The Campaign Legal Center (CLC) filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission against DeJoy after the allegations came out last year on the supposed straw donation scheme, saying that “DeJoy appears to have violated federal campaign finance law by obscuring from the public the true source of more than $1 million in campaign contributions.”

    CLC says it found several cases in which XPO Logistics employees and DeJoy’s family members donated large sums of money to the same candidate or committee in the same period of time between 2015 and 2018. $50,000 went to Donald Trump’s fundraising committee, Trump Victory.

    “These are serious violations, and we are pleased that CLC’s research and complaint triggered the Department of Justice to investigate,” Brendan Fischer, CLC’s director of federal reform, said in a statement, per USA Today. “We need a stronger FEC to enforce campaign finance laws and hold political candidates and their donors accountable.”

    In DeJoy’s short tenure at the head of the United States Postal Service (USPS), reporters have uncovered a number of questionable actions taken by the postmaster general. Last year, he faced scrutiny over his continued stake in XPO Logistics, which is a contractor with the USPS. He’s also faced accusations of shady dealings over a $54 million stock purchase into a company that, just hours later, DeJoy announced would be manufacturing trucks for the USPS over the next decade.

    DeJoy has faced calls for resignation for a year, ever since he began gutting the postal service from the inside out, seemingly in an attempt to help President Donald Trump cast doubt into the legitimacy of mail-in voting. Some commentators renewed that resignation call after news of the FBI investigation broke.

    Yet although President Joe Biden’s Democratic nominees to the postal board have been confirmed and Democrats theoretically have enough votes to remove DeJoy, there are doubts as to whether the postal board will vote to do so. The chairman of the board is a Trump-appointed Democrat who has recently expressed strong support for the postmaster general.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Sunrise Movement Calls on Biden to Stop Compromising With Republicans on Climate

    Protesters with the Sunrise Movement block a vehicle entrance at the White House as they demonstrate against what they say is slow action on infrastructure legislation, job creation and addressing climate change, as well as against attempts to compromise with Senate Republicans in Washington, D.C., on June 4, 2021.

    As President Joe Biden looks to cut an infrastructure deal with Senate Republicans by dramatically curtailing the size and scope of his American Jobs Plan, activists with the youth-led Sunrise Movement gathered outside the White House Friday morning to make clear that compromising on climate action to appease the GOP is unacceptable.

    Varshini Prakash, Sunrise’s executive director, said in a statement that by rolling back his infrastructure ambitions to cater to Republican lawmakers, Biden is betraying the young people who helped him win the presidency.

    “I was invited to the Biden-Sanders Unity Task Force to help Biden craft policy that was in line with what is necessary to meet the crises facing our nation,” Prakash said. “Biden moved towards us, promising us a future, and in exchange, we worked tirelessly to get him elected. We held up our side of the deal, but now that Biden is in power, that promise of co-governance with progressives and young people has disappeared.”

    The president has “spent more of his time meeting with a Republican Party who to this day contests he is the democratically elected president,” Prakash continued. “It’s time to meet with us, the young organizers that elected him, instead. This moment demands an infrastructure package that will stop climate change and create millions of good jobs in the process, and we won’t stop until he delivers.”

    Sunrise activists arrived at the White House with a series of demands, including:

    • No compromise, no excuses. Democrats must take their power seriously and stop negotiating with a GOP who is not serious about climate action or delivering for the American people.
    • Meet with the people who elected you. We demand that Biden sets up a meeting with Varshini Prakash and other youth organizers to hear our demands on infrastructure. Negotiate with us, not the GOP.
    • Pass the boldest jobs and climate package with a fully funded Civilian Climate Corps. Coming out of a global pandemic where we are facing massive unemployment and the constant threat of the climate crisis, we need an infrastructure package that includes a CCC that would put over 1.5 million Americans to work in good paying jobs while combating climate change and building a sustainable future for our generation.

    Friday’s action marks Sunrise’s first White House protest directly targeting Biden since he took office in January, but the group vowed in a press release that it “will not be the last.” The organization has previously called on the president to support $10 trillion in spending over the next decade to combat the climate emergency and create millions of good-paying union jobs.

    “Sunrise Movement is using this protest as a call to action, recruiting young people from across the country to join them for an even larger rally in late June,” the group said Friday.

    The demonstration came amid growing progressive backlash against Biden’s compromise offer to Senate Republicans, an infrastructure proposal that would slash the president’s initial American Jobs Plan in half and leave in place the 21% corporate tax rate established during the Trump administration.

    Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.) warned Thursday that he “would have a very difficult time voting yes” on Biden’s latest proposal, which Senate GOP negotiators are expected to counter as early as Friday.

    “No Republican vote in favor of an infrastructure package should supersede our mission: to build an America that works for the people, not for massive corporations,” said Bowman. “Getting Republicans on board is not necessary. Getting the American people back on their feet is.”

    Progressives have long feared that any bipartisan deal Biden reaches with the GOP would come at the expense of ambitious climate action, which Republicans oppose. In their latest offer to the White House, a group of Senate Republicans led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) called for just $257 billion in new spending over eight years, slashing Biden’s proposed investments in renewable energy and other priorities.

    “If we learned anything from this year alone, the GOP is not the party that I think Biden idealizes,” Ellen Sciales, Sunrise’s press secretary, told Politico on Thursday. “Voters in 2022 and 2024, young people, are not going to ask whether or not Joe Biden was kind to Shelley Moore Capito — they don’t even know who that is. They’re going to see whether or not he dealt with the climate crisis and created millions of good jobs.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Party of “Abortion” in Texas

    It’s ironic that Republicans in Texas are so committed to abolishing abortion.

    Abortion is their primary modus operandi.

    Abortion is basically their chief reason for being.

    Every election season, Republicans try to abort voting rights, especially for Texans of a different complexion. And as much weeping and gnashing of teeth Republicans do about late-term abortion, they would gleefully abort the results of the last presidential election. An inordinate number of Texas Republicans tried on January 6. They can’t help themselves.

    While the United States of America was established by the descendants of immigrants, the Republic of Texas was largely founded by actual immigrants. The only two native Texans who signed the Texas Declaration of Independence were Jose Francisco Ruiz and Jose Antonio Navarro; so, besides the original founders without Spanish surnames, Republicans are fierce opponents of immigration and naturalization. Republicans would abort immigration altogether if they could, but, in recent years they’ve had to settle for separating immigrant children from their parents and placing them in cages along our border. It’s sad, but at least the victims are brown.

    Texas Republicans aren’t real keen on persons of color in general—immigrant or no—unless they’re carrying a football. Which brings to mind another white conservative conundrum. It’s difficult for Texas Republicans to think highly of themselves and their forebears if the facts about Texas independence and the countless atrocities committed against persons of color are widely propagated. Truth-telling, therefore, must be aborted. It’s a constant priority. But—to their tremendous benefit—the only thing more powerful than white fragility in Texas these days is conservative white political agility.

    When Texas Republicans aren’t obsessing over ways to disenfranchise persons of color, they go after women. Texas Republicans have a perpetual, Viagra-charged hard-on for aborting women’s reproductive rights, and also fight against fair pay for Texas women. It’s no wonder there are less and less Republican babies around.

    And there’s the real rub.

    White women have the most abortions. If women of color were the largest demographic utilizing birth control or terminating their pregnancies, Texas Republicans would make birth control and abortion kits available at the drive-thru of every Whataburger in the state.

    I’m not trying to be funny.

    There’s no reason to mince words. Their record is clear.

    Texas Republicans initially aborted the insurance exchange clause of Obamacare here in the Lone Star State to poison the proverbial well. It denied millions of folks affordable health care and, ultimately, killed Texans just to score political points. More recently, Texas Republicans aborted the right to protest Big Oil and regularly abort clean air and clean water measures, poisoning millions of Texans, destroying animal habitats and restricting access to precious natural resources. And Texas Republicans are currently working to abort reasonable gun control efforts, abort real reforms of the Texas power grid (which killed Texans during the ice storm this last February) and abort the homeless (instead of mitigating the conditions that create them).

    Oh, and they get away with all this because Republicans aborted the FCC Fairness Doctrine back in 1987, ushering in a media environment where a propaganda machine like Fox News could brainwash conservative voters, convincing them to self-abort theretofore long-standing notions of honesty, conscience and human decency.

    In a word, Texas Republicans are more of a miscarriage than an abortion—of justice, of intellect, of forethought and of reasonable governance. But abortion is the means by which they simultaneously make Texas a laughingstock and a menace.

    The post The Party of “Abortion” in Texas first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 100+ Democracy Scholars Issue Dire Warning About Threats to Voting Rights in US

    A man stands partially obscured behind sineage denoting the entrance of a U.S. polling place

    I cannot write computer code, and I have no idea how to make a decent rue. The engine block on a standard-issue Honda may as well be a Rubik’s Cube to me. I don’t know how to serve drinks to 25 people simultaneously from behind the bar on a busy game day. I couldn’t begin to conduct an autopsy, or a symphony. In a million years I would not try to drive an 18-wheeler through a Colorado snowstorm, because I would die explosively for lack of experience. I do what I do, and am thrilled on the daily to be surrounded by people who know how to do all the things I cannot do.

    These we call “experts,” and lately they’ve been getting treated like clay ducks at target practice. You have specialized knowledge? Ha! Clearly you are a mole for evil forces. Tell me to wear a mask during a pandemic? Communism. Argue for equal rights based on the law? Terrorism. Deliver an ocean of evidence that the ocean is coming because the climate is changing? Communist terrorist socialism, and why? Because feelings and opinions, and the tripe I heard on the radio yesterday. So there.

    On June 1, the mechanics of democracy fired a warning flare that lit the sky. These experts on social entropy run the ideological gamut from Francis Fukuyama to Michael Latner. They are professors, deans, activists, scholars, experts. More than 100 of them have drafted and signed a “statement of concern” regarding what they view as the imminent collapse of democracy in the United States, and they pulled no punches in the process.

    “Specifically,” begins the statement, “we have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election. Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk.”

    Over the weekend, a bold walkout by Democratic state legislators in Texas thwarted a Republican attempt to pass a raft of the most draconian anti-voter laws in the country. Like as not, the Republican majority will find a way to jam these laws through, and it is precisely this behavior that motivated the publication of this statement.

    Much of it boils down to broad Republican refusal to accept the legitimate outcome of the 2020 presidential election, and that refusal is due to Donald Trump’s ongoing insistence that he won. The furor he has inspired over the ’20 election is directly responsible for the lethal January 6 attack on the Capitol building in Washington D.C., which was nothing less than an attempted coup d’état. When that failed, more than a dozen Republican-controlled state legislatures began churning out voting laws that would make George Wallace wince.

    “Every citizen who is qualified must have an equal right to vote, unhindered by obstruction,” continues the Statement. “And when they lose elections, political parties and their candidates and supporters must be willing to accept defeat and acknowledge the legitimacy of the outcome. The refusal of prominent Republicans to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, and the anti-democratic laws adopted (or approaching adoption) in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Montana and Texas — and under serious consideration in other Republican-controlled states — violate these principles. More profoundly, these actions call into question whether the United States will remain a democracy. As scholars of democracy, we condemn these actions in the strongest possible terms as a betrayal of our precious democratic heritage.”

    The phenomenon of shunning experts and expertise has been vividly on display within public conservative circles in recent years. Prideful ignorance is nothing new on the right, but as hard data on climate disruption, gender, racism, economics and lately COVID-19 has advanced, those seeking to protect their fortunes and feelings from facts have paid handsomely to inject doubt into areas where experts have put doubt to bed.

    This has, in the intervening years, gone from being a clever way to disrupt debate and transformed into something akin to gospel among the adherents of Republican ideology. Knowing things is scary for those who crave near horizons and the absence of doubt, and if you have all the money in the world, you can shout down experts from million-megawatt microphones like Fox News all day long. We live today in the aftermath of that effort, and it already has a body count from the pandemic. We must not allow our democracy to suffer a similar fate.

    “We urge members of Congress to do whatever is necessary — including suspending the filibuster — in order to pass national voting and election administration standards that both guarantee the vote to all Americans equally, and prevent state legislatures from manipulating the rules in order to manufacture the result they want,” concludes the democracy scholars’ statement. “Our democracy is fundamentally at stake. History will judge what we do at this moment.”

    These experts must be heeded, and soon.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Jayapal Presses Biden to Cut Off Infrastructure Talks With Republicans

    Rep. Pramila Jayapal

    As President Joe Biden prepared to continue talks with the Senate GOP’s lead infrastructure negotiator on Wednesday, progressive Democrats in Congress implored the White House to stop wasting precious time wrangling with a party that has repeatedly shown it is uninterested in pursuing an adequate legislative package.

    “It’s time to go big, bold, and fast on an infrastructure plan that repairs bridges and roads — but also guarantees paid leave and child care,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said late Tuesday. “The GOP isn’t going to meet us halfway. It’s time to go alone — and get this done.”

    Last week, a group of Republican senators unveiled the outlines of an infrastructure proposal that called for just $257 billion in new spending over eight years — a far cry from the $1.7 trillion in above-baseline spending Biden offered as a compromise proposal. Republicans flatly rejected that offer as excessive, even though the president lopped roughly $500 billion off his initial American Jobs Plan.

    Progressive lawmakers, and even some centrists, have grown increasingly frustrated in recent weeks as Biden’s talks with the GOP have predictably moved toward less spending as Republican negotiators attempt to strip out key climate proposals and other measures they consider extraneous, including elder care.

    “Time is tick, tick, ticking past. Every day spent on hopeless bipartisanship is a day not spent on climate,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) said Tuesday. “We can survive bumpy roads; a ruined planet is for eons.”

    And yet, as Politico reported Tuesday, “the White House continues to see upside to infrastructure negotiations with Republicans, even as the talks run on longer than President Joe Biden initially planned.”

    “The president still has faith in his ability to win over reluctant Senate Republicans and advisers see benefits — reputationally and politically — in working across the aisle,” according to Politico.

    But leading progressives, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), have warned of the potentially disastrous consequences of dragging out negotiations with Republicans, both for the climate and for Democrats’ chances of holding on to their slim congressional majorities.

    The Vermont senator and other progressives in Congress have proposed spending $10 trillion over the next decade on rebuilding the United States’ core infrastructure, combating the climate crisis by expanding renewable energy, and tackling economic and racial inequities.

    “What happens if they spend week after week, month after month ‘negotiating’ with Republicans who have little intention of addressing the serious crises facing the working families of this country?” Sanders wrote in a CNN op-ed last week. “What happens if, after the passage of the vitally important American Rescue Plan — the Covid-19 rescue package signed into law by President Biden in March — the momentum stops and we accomplish little or nothing?”

    Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has said he is prepared to move forward on infrastructure and other priorities using budget reconciliation, a filibuster-proof process that allows lawmakers to pass spending bills with a simple majority.

    But Biden and conservative Senate Democrats, most prominently Joe Manchin of West Virginia, have balked at using reconciliation without first attempting to attract Republican support. Manchin, whose vote Senate Democrats need to move forward with their agenda, indicated last week that he would be willing to let infrastructure talks with the GOP continue until the end of the year in the hopes of eventually reaching a bipartisan deal.

    As The Hill reported Tuesday, “The White House and congressional Democrats have said they want to get an infrastructure deal passed before the August recess.”

    “But the more time lawmakers devote to infrastructure,” the outlet noted, “the more uncertain it becomes whether Biden can get other priorities passed before the midterms.”

    With pressing agenda items such as voting rights expansion, immigration reform, and a major safety net boost at risk of dying in the Senate, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) echoed Jayapal’s call for Democrats to move ahead with their policy priorities unilaterally.

    “Instead of wasting our energy negotiating against ourselves for an infrastructure package that Republicans clearly have no interest in passing,” Bush tweeted, “let’s put our energy into abolishing the filibuster, passing the policy we were elected to deliver, and getting ish done for our people.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Outspoken Republican Who Opposes Legalization Owns Quite a Lot of Stock in Pot

    View of hemp flowers at Empire Standard, a hemp extract processing and distribution plant, on April 13, 2021, in Binghamton, New York.

    Rep. Virginia Foxx, a North Carolina Republican with an influential post on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, has spent her Congressional career advocating against the legalization of marijuana — while also loading up on hundreds of thousands of dollars in marijuana-industry stocks ahead of crucial votes on key federal decriminalization measures, Salon has learned.

    Foxx, 77, has made at least six investments in Altria, one of the world’s largest tobacco companies and a leader in the burgeoning U.S. cannabis industry, since September of last year, according to financial disclosure reports.

    The purchases, which have not previously been reported, likely make her the largest holder of marijuana-related stocks in Congress, according to a report from Unusual Whales, a market research firm. It’s impossible to say for certain, however, because members of Congress are not required to disclose the exact amounts of their investments.

    The trades are especially newsworthy for their timing: beginning just a few months before the U.S. House of Representatives passed the the Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment & Expungement Act (MORE) in December, which would serve to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level — a key goal of advocates who say the drug’s current status as a controlled substance represents a key roadblock to full legalization. Foxx voted against the measure.

    Her investments raise concerns over the ethical problems members of Congress create when trading individual stocks within an industry their actions have the potential to influence.

    “This is so obviously a conflict of interest, I’m just not sure what else I can say, really,” Richard Painter, a former White House ethics attorney under President George W. Bush and University of Minnesota law professor, told Salon. “It brings into question her credibility as a lawmaker.”

    Rep. Foxx’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

    The MORE Act ultimately wasn’t taken up for a vote in the then-Republican-controlled Senate, effectively killing the measure. It was reintroduced in the House Friday by Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-New York, and has a greater chance of success given the Senate’s new Democratic majority.

    At least four of Foxx’s investments in marijuana-industry stock came between the initial MORE Act vote in December and Friday. In all, records show she has purchased somewhere between $79,000 and $210,000 in Altria stock. It remains unclear whether she is currently holding these investments — though no sales have been reported.

    Legalization has been a hot-button issue for the North Carolina representative, whose inflammatory public statements on the matter have been staunchly against several initiatives spearheaded by House Democrats.

    “Democrats can’t get their minds off pot bills, and they think it’s more important than: Supporting small businesses, Safely reopening schools, Protecting the livelihoods of Americans,” she wrote on Twitter. “No wonder their majority is shrinking. They’re so far removed from reality.”

    “What are Republicans fighting to protect? Jobs,” she wrote in another tweet on President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 relief bill. “What are Democrats fighting to protect? Pot. What a joke.”

    Though her marijuana-related investments likely surpass other members, she is far from the only Congressperson to cash in on the budding sector — at least 20 House members and six Senators have reported either purchases or sales of industry stocks since 2020, records show.

    Two other representatives are notable for their significant investments in cannabis over the past year: Rep. John Yarmuth, D-Kentucky, and Rep. Brian Mast, R-Florida.

    Rep. Yarmuth, a co-sponsor of the MORE Act with a powerful post as chairman of the House Budget Committee, takes the record for most diversified marijuana industry portfolio in Congress — with November investments in Canopy Growth Corporation, Aurora Cannabis, and Tilray, as well as February pickups in the same three companies, public disclosures show. He has also reported past investments in at least three other industry stocks, according to Unusual Whales: Cronos Group, Altria and Anheuser-Busch, whose primary business is not in marijuana but has made several recent high-profile ventures into the arena. Yarmuth remains one of the staunchest defenders of legalization in Congress.

    Rep Mast was one of only five Republicans who voted to approve the MORE Act — but not before purchasing between $15,000 and and $50,000 in Tilray, the Canadian cannabis giant, disclosure reports reveal. Mast is a U.S. Army veteran who lost both his legs during an explosion in Afghanistan. He has generally supported more research into the effects of legalization and said during a town hall in 2016 that he is a “proponent for alternative forms of medicine.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Texas Advances Voter Suppression Law That Makes It Easier to Overturn Elections

    Governor of Texas Greg Abbott looks on prior to Game One of the 2020 MLB World Series at Globe Life Field between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays on October 20, 2020, in Arlington, Texas.

    After reaching a deal less than a day earlier, overnight Sunday Texas state senators debated then passed along party lines a GOP voter suppression bill that was condemned by rights advocates and political figures across the United States — including President Joe Biden — and has sparked calls for Congress to urgently combat Republican attacks on democracy.

    “Today, Texas legislators put forth a bill that joins Georgia and Florida in advancing a state law that attacks the sacred right to vote,” Biden said Saturday. “It’s part of an assault on democracy that we’ve seen far too often this year — and often disproportionately targeting Black and Brown Americans. It’s wrong and un-American. In the 21st century, we should be making it easier, not harder, for every eligible voter to vote.”

    Sarah Labowitz, policy and advocacy director of the ACLU of Texas, also slammed the state GOP’s Senate Bill 7 in a statement Saturday, declaring that “S.B. 7 is a ruthless piece of legislation.”

    “It targets voters of color and voters with disabilities, in a state that’s already the most difficult place to vote in the country. The defining message of the 2021 Texas Legislature is clear: Political leaders chose to punish their constituents instead of fixing the electrical grid or providing pandemic or blackout relief,” said Labowitz, referencing power issues that impacted the state earlier this year.

    “The bill, which was hashed out in a closed-door panel of lawmakers over the past week, was rushed to the State Senate floor late Saturday. In a legislative power play orchestrated by Republican lawmakers and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the Senate moved to suspend rules that required a bill to be public for 24 hours before a final vote,” the New York Times reported. “The Texas House did not move to suspend the rules, and is likely to vote on the bill on Sunday.”

    The Republican-controlled Texas Legislature is set to adjourn on Monday. The Washington Post noted that GOP Gov. Greg Abbott “threatened lawmakers with a special session if they did not pass a voting bill this week” and is expected to sign S.B. 7. Abbott is a potential 2024 presidential candidate and a major supporter of former President Trump — who, despite his definitive loss, claimed repeatedly that the 2020 election was “stolen” from him, which a majority of recently polled Republicans still believe.

    Critics have called S.B. 7 a clear effort to limit electoral participation in the largely Democratic Harris County because it would outlaw drive-thru and 24-hour voting, which nearly 140,000 county voters used in the 2020 election. Other provisions include barring election officials from sending absentee ballots to all voters, implementing new identification requirements for Texans who request mail ballots, allowing partisan poll watchers additional access, and imposing harsher punishments on election officials who violate state rules.

    According to the Post, “In a last-minute addition, language was inserted in the bill making it easier to overturn an election, no longer requiring evidence that fraud actually altered an outcome of a race — but rather only that enough ballots were illegally cast that could have made a difference.”

    “S.B. 7 remains a racist voter suppression bill that belongs in the Jim Crow era,” Common Cause Texas executive director Anthony Gutierrez said Saturday after a conference committee of state House and Senate members released the final version.

    “The choice to push this legislation forward in the dark, despite overwhelming opposition from the people of Texas, is about the politicians in power doing everything they can to manipulate the outcome of future elections to keep themselves in power,” he continued.

    MOVE Texas communications director Charlie Bonner echoed that critique Saturday in comments to The Texas Tribune.

    “It is fitting that the final push to get anti-voter Senate Bill 7 to the governor’s desk would take place behind closed doors, hidden from public scrutiny,” said Bonner. “This bill does nothing to improve the security of our elections — it only makes our democracy weaker by limiting access for young, disabled, Black, and Brown Texans.”

    Gutierrez asserted that “the intent of this bill is now and has always been to make it harder for certain Texans to vote or simply discourage others from even trying to take part in our democracy. Nowhere is that made more clear than in this version that cruelly removes an amendment that would have simply made it easier for high schools to register students. There is literally no reason to do that other than the politicians in power being afraid of too many young people voting.”

    “New voting procedures implemented by innovative county officials like drive-thru voting and after-hours voting were a resounding success and deserve to be celebrated,” he added. “Instead, supporters of S.B. 7 decided to end those practices simply because they enabled more people to make their voices heard in our elections.”

    The NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund on Saturday sent a letter to Texas legislators urging them to vote down the final version of S.B. 7, writing that the bill “includes out-of-bound amendments and was surrounded by procedural irregularities,” and “may evince the Legislature’s intent to discriminate against Black voters, in violation of the U.S. Constitution and federal law.”

    The developments in Texas fueled fresh calls for the U.S. Senate to pass the For the People Act, a sweeping House-approved election reform package that voting rights advocates say would thwart many of the hundreds of state bills that Republicans across the country have introduced — and, in some cases, enacted — this year.

    “I call again on Congress to pass the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act,” said Biden. “And I continue to call on all Americans, of every party and persuasion, to stand up for our democracy and protect the right to vote and the integrity of our elections.”

    Former Democratic Congressman Beto O’Rourke — who battled Biden in the 2020 presidential primary and is reportedly considering a run to serve as the Lone Star State’s governor — tweeted Saturday that “Texas lawmakers would dismantle our democracy in order to keep themselves in power. We’re doing all we can to stop this bill from becoming law. But we can’t do it alone. We need help. The U.S. Senate must pass the For the People Act.”

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) on Friday committed to forcing a vote on the For the People Act next month. In a letter to the Democratic caucus, he said the bill is “essential to defending our democracy, reducing the influence of dark money and powerful special interests, and stopping the wave of Republican voter suppression happening in the states across the country in service of President Trump’s Big Lie.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • GOP-Led Legislatures May Pass Voter Suppression Laws With Help of Trump Judges

    The State Capitol Building in downtown Austin, Texas.

    Republican-led legislatures in Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Texas, and other states are passing laws that make it harder to vote. Many of these bills, which have been drafted with help from an offshoot of the conservative Heritage Foundation, will have a disproportionate impact on voters of color and are being challenged in court.

    While judges could strike down some provisions for violating a state constitution or discriminating against voters with disabilities, the appellate courts that will make the final decision include mostly Republican appointees.

    The GOP is defending the legislation as a response to voter fraud, though there is no evidence of widespread fraud. Jessica Anderson of Heritage Action, which helped with the drafting, said the bills would help “right the wrongs of November.” Heritage has long advocated voting restrictions, such as voter ID laws; as founder Paul Weyrich said in 1980, “Our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.” The group has pledged to spend millions defending the new laws in court.

    Voter suppression laws have faced difficulty passing the scrutiny of courts in recent years. For example, North Carolina’s 2013 voting law, which included a strict voter ID mandate, cuts to early voting, and the end of Election Day registration, was struck down by the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia in 2016. The court found that legislators had targeted Black voters “with almost surgical precision.”

    North Carolina went on to pass another voter ID law that was also blocked by a federal judge in late 2019. The 4th Circuit overturned that decision, but in February 2020 the state Court of Appeals blocked the law after finding it likely violated the state constitution by disenfranchising Black voters. The case went to trial last month. The North Carolina Supreme Court, which has the final say on state law, has a 4-3 Democratic majority, but Republicans could take control after next year’s election.

    In Texas, Florida, and Georgia, the state supreme courts are composed entirely of Republican justices. Most of them are affiliated with the conservative Federalist Society, which helped both former President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis choose appointees.

    Trump appointed more than a quarter of active federal judges, and last year his appointees shot down efforts to ease voting rules during the pandemic. The U.S. Supreme Court, which now has a 6-3 majority of Republican appointees including three put there by Trump, is unlikely to rule that the new Southern voter suppression laws discriminate against voters of color. In the run-up to last year’s election, the high court ruled against voters several times, including a ruling in favor of Alabama officials who were seeking to bar local election boards from offering curbside voting during the COVID-19 pandemic.

    These judges are unlikely to rule that the new voter suppression bills are racially discriminatory, but some courts could strike them down for violating the state constitution or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

    Citing the ADA in Georgia

    Georgia’s new voting law incorporated several recommendations from Heritage, including strict limits on ballot drop boxes and mail-in ballot request forms, as well as bans on counties raising money from nonprofits for election administration. It also allows state officials to overturn decisions by local elections officials.

    Civil rights groups immediately filed lawsuits challenging the new rules. A federal lawsuit from several voting rights groups argues the law will have a greater impact on voters of color, who face much longer wait times.

    Any ruling to strike down the law would be reviewed by the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. Republicans have radically reshaped the court in recent years, and Trump’s appointees included lawyers who had defended voter suppression. For example, Judge Andrew Brasher in his previous role as Alabama’s solicitor general had filed a brief defending a Florida law that had been struck down as an unconstitutional “poll tax.” The court agreed and restored the restrictive Florida law.

    Though federal courts probably won’t strike down the new Georgia voter suppression bill as racially discriminatory, the lawsuits argue that some provisions — including the ban on giving food and water to voters waiting in line — violate the ADA. The 11th Circuit previously issued groundbreaking rulings that broadly interpreted the ADA. But last year, in addition to upholding Alabama’s restrictions on curbside voting, the court ruled that a grocery store’s website wasn’t subject to the ADA.

    The law could eventually face challenges in state court as well, because the Georgia Constitution includes strict limits on the legislature’s power. The state Supreme Court has had a conservative majority since the legislature packed the court in 2016. Six of the seven justices are Republican appointees.

    Multiple Challenges in Florida

    Gov. DeSantis signed a bill on May 3 that also bans giving food and water to waiting voters and sharply limits drop boxes for mail-in ballots. After last year’s election, DeSantis praised election administration in his state and held it up as a model. But the bill he signed makes big changes and was opposed by local election administrators.

    The new law makes it nearly impossible for voter registration groups to help voters return their ballots, and it requires those groups to recite a misleading “warning” to people they help register to vote. Now election boards must post an employee to constantly monitor drop boxes, which can be open only during early voting hours.

    Civil rights groups immediately filed multiple challenges against the law in federal court. They argued, among other things, that it violates the ADA by making voting inaccessible to many voters with limited mobility, who are more likely to use drop boxes that are “placed outdoors and are easily accessible.” One lawsuit argues the penalties for giving voters food and water “exposes family members, caregivers, and volunteers to potential criminal liability.”

    Another federal lawsuit says the bill “purports to solve problems that do not exist” and “caters to a dangerous lie about the 2020 election that threatens our most basic democratic values.” It argues the bill was intended to keep senior citizens, young people, and voters of color from casting their ballots.

    Like Georgia’s, Florida’s new voter suppression law would likely be reviewed by the conservative 11th Circuit. And any state case would be headed for the Florida Supreme Court, which is one of the most conservative courts in the country. All of the justices are Republican appointees.

    A Pledge to Sue in Texas

    The Texas House passed a bill on May 7 that bans election officials from sending out unsolicited mail-in ballot request forms, empowers partisan poll watchers, and creates criminal penalties for election officials who violate limits on helping voters. A similar measure had already passed the Senate and the bill is now being finalized in conference.

    Republicans removed some of the bill’s more onerous restrictions last week, as well as controversial “purity of the ballot box” language that was added to the state constitution when white supremacist politicians established Jim Crow.

    Democrats said they would sue over the law in federal court, but the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which hears cases from Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas, is arguably the most conservative appellate court in the country. Trump’s appointees included Judge Kyle Duncan, who signed a brief defending the 2013 North Carolina voter suppression bill.

    The 5th Circuit struck down a Texas voter ID law as violating the Voting Rights Act in 2016. But the court upheld a subsequent voter ID bill two years later. The court has also issued several rulings to throw out ADA lawsuits in recent years.

    If the new law is challenged under the state constitution, the case would be tried in the state capital of Austin. Most of the judges there are Democrats, but the legislature is considering a bill that would take the decision out of the hands of Austin’s appellate judges. The bill would create a new appellate court, elected in statewide partisan races, to review rulings in cases challenging state laws.

    In 2020, the all-GOP Texas Supreme Court sided with state officials seeking to block a county official from sending mail-in ballot request forms to all registered voters.

    Arkansas Sued in State Court

    Unlike in the other states, Arkansas’ legislature didn’t pass a single bill with multiple restrictions on voting rights. But it did pass a series of bills that included many of the same Heritage Foundation suggestions. Legislators also toughened Arkansas’ voter ID law and gave county commissioners authority over polling places. Holly Dixon of the state ACLU said this legislative session saw “the most dangerous assault on the right to vote since the Jim Crow era.”

    The state League of Women Voters and Arkansas United, an immigrant advocacy group, challenged the bills in state court. The groups argue that the new voting restrictions violate the rights to equal protection, a “free and equal election,” and free speech guaranteed by the Arkansas Constitution.

    Lawmakers defended the bills as a response to fraud. But the lawsuit argues that “if there is a threat to the integrity of Arkansas’s elections, it is the state’s consistently low voter turnout, particularly among Black voters.”

    The Arkansas Supreme Court struck down a voter ID law in 2014, construing it as a new “qualification” for voters, beyond those laid out in the state constitution. In 2018, though, the court upheld a similar law.

    Voters elected a conservative justice to the state Supreme Court last year, after a GOP group in Washington, D.C., spent big in the nonpartisan race. The new justice created a narrow conservative majority. Recent conservative high court candidates have been closely tied to the Republican Party.

    A bill introduced in the Arkansas legislature in February would have shifted the state to partisan judicial races, a move that only one state — North Carolina — has made in the past century. However, that bill stalled in committee.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Arizona Republicans Move to Strip Powers From Democratic Secretary of State

    View of the Arizona State Capitol building on January 17, 2021, in Phoenix, Arizona.

    Republicans in Arizona’s state legislature approved a bill on Tuesday designed to prevent Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, from influencing election lawsuits. The apparent goal of this latest Republican power grab is to keep the unofficial “audit” of 2020 votes in Maricopa County — the state’s major population center — intact following bitter criticism from Hobbs.

    The bill, HB 2891, strips all authority to act on behalf of state governments in election lawsuits from the secretary of state and transfers it to the attorney general, who is currently Mark Brnovich, a Republican. Notably, this measure, passed by the Appropriations committees in both houses of the Arizona legislature, is not permanent, but would apply only through Jan. 2, 2023 — the beginning of new terms for both officials.

    “The legislature intends that the attorney general make all strategic decisions regarding election litigation and be allowed to intervene on behalf of this state if the attorney general determines, in the attorney general’s sole discretion, that the intervention is appropriate,” the bill reads.

    It also adds that “the attorney general has sole authority in all election litigation to direct the defense of election laws, to appeal or petition any decision and to intervene on behalf of this state at any stage, regardless of whether any state agency, any political subdivision or any officer or employee of this state or any state agency or political subdivision is, or seeks to become, a party.”

    The bill would bar Brnovich from providing legal advice to Hobbs until June 20, 2023. While the bill grants Hobbs the option of hiring one full-time legal adviser to represent both them, she would be prohibited from “spending or incurring indebtedness to employ outside or private attorneys to provide representation or services.” These provisions are meant to remain in force through the end of Brnovich and Hobbs’ current terms in office.

    Arizona Democrats have described the Republican-backed bill as a blatant “power-grab” in the context of the agonizingly slow Maricopa County audit ordered by the state Senate, which is widely viewed as an effort to boost Donald Trump’s false claims that Arizona’s election system is flawed or corrupt.

    “It’s troubling and disturbing,” Democratic state Rep. Randy Friese told The Arizona Republic. “It’s quite nefarious that it only lasts through 2022.”

    Hobbs herself called the measure a clear effort to undermine confidence in Arizona’s election system. “All year our legislature has worked to undermine our elections — from a wave of bills to make it harder to vote to the ridiculous ‘audit’ taking place at the Coliseum,” she tweeted. “It appears the next step is an attempt to undermine Arizona’s Chief Elections Officer and prevent me from doing the job Arizonans elected me to do.”

    Hobbs specifically singled out Brnovich, saying he had “engaged in a pattern of behavior … that violated his duties as an attorney.” Hobbs also revealed that she had filed a confidential complaint against Brnovich in October.

    “He frequently sought to substitute his judgment for my own and allowed his political preferences to interfere with this obligation to represent me as a client, in my pursuit of the best interests of Arizona voters,” Hobbs said.

    Though the bill has yet to pass a full vote in the state legislature, Gov. Doug Ducey, a Republican who has tried to straddle pro- and anti-Trump forces within his party, has indicated he is likely to sign it.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • January 6 Commission Vote Likely to be Blocked by Senate Republicans Thursday

    Pro-Trump supporters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with then-President Donald Trump on January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Republicans in the Senate are expected to block a bill that would create a bipartisan commission to examine the January 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building.

    The House passed a bill last week to create the commission, with 35 Republican members joining every Democratic lawmaker in support of its formation. But even with some Republican support in the Senate (Senators Mitt Romney of Utah and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska), Democrats are unlikely to pass it due to the filibuster.

    On January 6, hundreds of supporters of former President Donald Trump broke into the Capitol and forced their way to the floor of the Senate, disrupting the certification of the Electoral College. Dozens chanted for lawmakers to be harmed, and at the end of the day five individuals had lost their lives.

    With 50 senators in the Democratic Party caucus, at least 10 Republicans would be needed to force cloture of a filibuster. Some Democrats have called for the filibuster to be abolished in order to create the commission.

    “There are Democrats in the Senate who say that we need the filibuster for ‘bipartisanship’ while Republicans are literally filibustering an investigation into the insurrection that could have killed them,” said Rep. Cori Bush (D-Missouri). “We don’t compromise with white supremacy. End the filibuster.”

    Centrist Democrats who favor keeping the filibuster intact have voiced deep dissatisfaction with Republicans blocking the formation of the commission.

    “There is no excuse for any Republican to vote against this commission since Democrats have agreed to everything [Republicans] asked for,” said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia). “[Mitch] McConnell has made this his political position, thinking it will help his 2022 elections. They do not believe the truth will set you free, so they continue to live in fear.”

    Debate on the formation of the commission has been ongoing for several months, but a bipartisan deal in the House led to an agreement this month. The proposed commission would have both parties represented equally, with congressional leaders from both sides choosing five members each to serve on a 10-member commission.

    The commission would also have subpoena power to conduct its investigation, which could only be used if a majority of the commission or the co-chairs (one Democrat and one Republican) agrees to it.

    Polls show most Americans support the creation of a commission. An Axios/SurveyMonkey poll conducted last week found that nearly two-thirds of voters (65 percent) think a bipartisan commission to investigate the events of January 6 should be formed, while only 29 percent oppose it being created.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • GOP Took Weeks to Create an Infrastructure Plan That’s Mostly Baseline Spending

    Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, left, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell attend the Senate Rules and Administration Committee markup of the For the People Act in Russell Building on May 11, 2021.

    Senate Republicans have officially released their infrastructure proposal that they’ve been teasing for the past weeks — but it’s less than the $1 trillion they had pledged, and the amount of new spending is nowhere near that of the Democrats’ proposal.

    The Republicans released their $928 billion counteroffer Thursday. But buried in the fine print is the fact that the vast majority of their plan is baseline spending; the new spending in their offer totals to only $257 billion, which falls far short of President Joe Biden’s proposal.

    Biden’s proposal, by contrast, is entirely new spending on top of the baseline that advocates say is sorely needed for repairing and upgrading the country’s poorly-rated, crumbling infrastructure. The president had originally proposed a $2.25 trillion plan, but downgraded it to $1.7 trillion to the chagrin of many Democrats and progressives.

    Still, a $1.7 trillion investment is far larger than the paltry Republican offer, which is funded with leftover coronavirus spending. Even Biden’s roughly $600 billion cut to his original offer is more than two times larger than the Republicans’ entire new spending proposal.

    The Republican plan is limited to funding what many Democrats have said is an antiquated definition of infrastructure, with more than half of the spending going towards roads and bridges and the rest going towards projects like water infrastructure and trains.

    The counteroffer notably doesn’t include any of the critical climate investments that the White House has included in its plan. The GOP’s proposal also doesn’t have elder care provisions that Biden had proposed.

    Democrats immediately dismissed the Republican’s plan.

    “I don’t really think this is a serious counteroffer,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) on MSNBC. “First of all, they don’t have pay-fors for this. It’s not real. They have this illusory notion of how we’re going to take money that’s already been committed to other places and other spending. Second part is I’m not hearing about the green infrastructure.”

    Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pennsylvania) said on CNN that the offer was a “non-starter.”

    The fact that the GOP offer is this small after weeks of negotiations is proof to some Democrats that they should forge ahead with passing Biden’s plan without Republican support.

    “This is not a serious counter-proposal,” wrote MSNBC’s Steve Benen. “When a group of lawmakers effectively declare that they’re not serious about reaching a compromise, perhaps it’s best to believe them.”

    The Biden administration, meanwhile, has been insistent on continuing to negotiate with conservatives. White House officials have suggested that Biden is willing to give up on a previous Memorial Day deadline for talks on the bill, meaning that the talks could drag on ever longer.

    Democrats and progressives have warned Biden against trying too hard for bipartisanship with Republicans. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) said earlier this month that he doesn’t think that Democrats should prioritize reaching an agreement with the GOP on infrastructure. “The bottom line is the American people want results,” he said.

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) said earlier this month the GOP’s only goal on infrastructure is to stop Biden — so even if Biden cuts his plan further, it’s unclear if Democrats could ever get 10 Republicans in the Senate to vote for it.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Talks Between Biden, GOP on Infrastructure Could Go Past Memorial Day Deadline

    President Joe Biden answers questions from members of the press before departing from the White House on May 25, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    The Biden administration has abandoned its deadline of Memorial Day weekend to finish negotiations on an infrastructure package in the hopes of reaching a bipartisan deal with Republicans.

    Citing three sources in the White House, Politico reported on Thursday that Biden is willing to allow another week or two of negotiations and counter proposals from Republicans on the American Jobs Plan. The original plan provided $2 trillion in funding for the country’s infrastructure needs, but Biden has already dropped that price tag by around $600 billion in an effort to court Republican support — to no avail.

    If the two sides cannot reach a deal, the White House will move forward without GOP support, those sources indicated, and focus on passing the bill with a little-known Senate reconciliation rule that allows lawmakers to bypass the filibuster.

    Republicans presented a new proposal on Thursday, which offered less than $1 trillion in spending and funds infrastructure projects by redirecting money intended for COVID-19 relief. Biden and the Democrats have insisted on funding the American Jobs Plan by raising taxes on corporations.

    But many Democrats are getting impatient, recalling how negotiations over the Affordable Care Act led to several months of delay and weaker legislation but no Republican support.

    A growing number of Democrats, including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), have signaled that they are willing to pass an infrastructure package on their own if necessary.

    “We always hope that our Republican friends will work with us on things. … We hope to move forward with Republicans, but we’re not going to let them, saying no, stand in our way,” Schumer said earlier this week.

    Biden may not have to worry too much about political fallout for not working with Republicans. A Data for Progress poll conducted from May 14-17 found that 58 percent of Americans want the American Jobs Plan (and the American Families Plan) to pass through the reconciliation process, which would allow the Democrats to pass both bills without Republican support and suffer very little politically for doing so.

    The same poll found that most Americans rejected the Republicans proposal for funding infrastructure projects. Only 22 percent in the Data for Progress survey said they wanted projects funded by using unspent pandemic relief, while 63 percent agreed the best way to fund infrastructure was through raising taxes and cutting tax loopholes for corporations.

    The poll also indicated that Republicans should be more cooperative when it comes to negotiations, with 55 percent of respondents saying Republicans should “find ways to work” with the president, versus just 40 percent that said they wanted GOP lawmakers to “keep Biden in check.”

    “The American Jobs Plan and American Families Plan are overwhelmingly popular and voters support passing both, together through reconciliation,” Ethan Winter, a senior analyst at Data for Progress, told Truthout. “A majority of voters also want Republicans to work with Biden on passing these bills, rather than simply trying to impede the Democratic Party’s legislative agenda.

    “From a public opinion standpoint, there’s little reason for Democrats to jettison some of the most popular provisions of the American Jobs Plan,” like extending high-speed internet to all Americans, Winter added.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Environmentalists Warn Biden Not to Abandon Climate Plans to Appease Republicans

    Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, lead Republican negotiator with the Biden administration on infrastructure, speaks during a news conference with Sen. Pat Toomey, left, and Sen. John Barrasso at the U.S. Capitol on May 27, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Environmentalists are warning President Joe Biden against ditching critical green energy investments and other climate policies in his effort to strike an infrastructure deal with congressional Republicans, many of whom continue to deny the scientific reality of human-caused planetary heating.

    The Washington Post reported Wednesday that “in multiple rounds of talks, Republican lawmakers have held firm in opposition against key White House plans to address the changing climate, add $400 billion in funding for elder care, and a slew of other domestic priorities the administration is pushing for families and children.”

    “A second bipartisan group of lawmakers, meanwhile, is readying its own backup plan that is also likely to jettison some key climate and elder-care policies pushed by the White House,” the Post continued. “If centrists in both parties strike a deal, Biden probably would be forced to choose between accepting a compromise that leaves out these proposals, or rejecting a bipartisan infrastructure deal aides have long sought as a political triumph.”

    Likely left on the cutting room floor under such a scenario, according to the Post’s Jeff Stein, would be Biden’s proposals to end federal fossil fuel subsidies, fund the retrofitting of buildings and homes, establish hundreds of thousands of new electric vehicle charging stations, bolster the aging U.S. electric grid, and invest in climate resilience.

    Progressive activists were quick to argue that abandoning such commitments in the interest of reaching a deal with the GOP would be both politically disastrous and damaging to the fight against the global climate crisis, which Biden has dubbed an “existential threat” that requires immediate and bold action.

    “This right here is how the White House loses the majority, gives up on progress, forfeits the midterms, and abandons all hope and change,” said Drew Hudson, an organizer with Friends of the Earth Action.

    Evan Weber, political director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, pointed to a survey conducted just prior to the 2020 election showing that Democratic voters view climate change as the “most important” issue.

    Led by Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) — an ally of the fossil fuel industry — Republicans are set Thursday to send the White House an infrastructure counteroffer that is expected to confirm the GOP’s opposition to including key climate plans in the package. The Republican proposal is likely to be around $1 trillion in size, down from the roughly $2.2 trillion in spending Biden proposed in the initial version of his American Jobs Plan.

    “Our future depends on immediate and aggressive climate action,” tweeted NextGen America, a climate-focused advocacy organization. “We again urge the president to move ahead with the original American Jobs Plan. We can’t afford to wait on science-denying Republicans.”

    Imploring Democrats to use their control of Congress and the White House to press ahead on infrastructure and climate, Devyn Powell of Evergreen Action argued that “Republicans aren’t going to vote for this bill in any form” and are not “negotiating in good faith.”

    “Why are Dems trying to give up what could be our last and only chance to go big on climate?” Powell asked. “What is wrong with you?”

    The Post reported Wednesday that some top Democrats believe they will be able to “come back after the bipartisan deal and pass an additional package with the remaining priorities” left out of the infrastructure package. But one unnamed White House adviser warned that is a risky strategy given time constraints, Democrats’ vanishingly narrow majority, and other factors.

    “They’re going to try to sell us on the idea that they’ll do the leftovers as part of a bigger package, but the truth is that there’s an enormous amount of speculation and nobody really knows what they’ll be able to do,” the adviser said.

    Duncan Meisel, campaign director at Clean Creatives, noted on Twitter that “Democrats were elected on a wave of energy from young people demanding climate action.”

    “If Democrats decide that climate priorities can be put off for later,” Meisel added, “don’t be surprised if young people put off voting for them again.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Fed Up With GOP Games, Democrats Say They’re Ready to Move Ahead on Legislation

    Democrats are getting more vocal about their disdain for Republicans, especially with regards to GOP lawmakers’ demands for bipartisanship, the absurdity of the conditions they have laid down and the constantly moving goalpost in negotiations.

    If Republicans don’t get serious about making deals soon, several Democratic leaders have said, the party will go it alone on a number of legislative goals.

    “We always hope that our Republican friends will work with us on things,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York) said on Tuesday, referencing President Joe Biden’s “build back better” agenda and the formation of a commission to study the January 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol building.

    But Schumer also noted that the GOP’s refusal to negotiate may just be another means to obstruct the legislative process.

    “We hope to move forward with Republicans, but we’re not going to let them, saying no, stand in our way.”

    Several other Democrats have voiced similar sentiments. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Connecticut) said it’s “close” to time for Democrats to move away from attempts at bipartisanship, while Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Illinois), the party whip in the Senate, said he’s “not happy with the progress that we’ve made.”

    “I think we need to do better,” Durbin said.

    Weeks of talks have so far resulted in zero agreements on a number of issues, including on infrastructure. On that topic, Schumer said that Democrats plan to “move forward in July,” with or without the support of Republicans on a final bill.

    The Biden administration has already dropped the price tag on their own infrastructure proposal by around $600 billion in an effort to court more Republican support for the plan. But a group of Republicans, proposing their own counteroffers on the issue, refused to budge, and expressed dismay after meeting with officials in the administration on Friday.

    In fact, it appears that the meeting on Friday may have had the opposite effect of what was intended by a bipartisanship-seeking President Biden.

    “Based on [Friday’s] meeting, the groups seem further apart after two meetings with White House staff than they were after one meeting with President Biden,” said Kelley Moore, communications director for Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-West Virginia).

    The insistence that Democrats negotiate with Republicans has been criticized by several progressive organizations. Rahna Epting, executive director of MoveOn, encouraged the administration to stop trying to create deals when Republicans are clearly not interested in doing so.

    “Republicans are not a serious governing party,” Epting recently said, “and the Biden administration should stop treating them like one…. Republicans have shown they are more interested in lying about the last election than in solving today’s crises.”

    William Rivers Pitt, senior editor and lead columnist at Truthout, wrote on Tuesday that believing Republican lawmakers will somehow decide that they are going to change their intention of 100 percent obstruction is not a worthwhile endeavor.

    “[Senate Minority Leader Mitch] McConnell (R-Kentucky) will never allow his Senate caucus to support a major Biden initiative,” Pitt wrote. “If the Democrats returned to the table with an offer to cut the spending on that bill down to 19 cents and an eraserless pencil, McConnell would take to the floor and announce he was studying the proposal. Days would go by as he laughed into his sleeve, until he’d finally fling the whole thing back at the Democrats because the 19 cents weren’t budget-neutral and the pencil was made in China.”

    Instead, Democrats should move forward on bills, without Republicans intent on obstructing them, using a little-known device called Senate Rule 304, which allows lawmakers to use amendments on reconciliation-passed laws to bypass potential filibusters.

    “The Senate parliamentarian has approved the use of Rule 304 on as many as six additional pieces of legislation,” Pitt noted, “all of which can be amendments to the [American Rescue Plan]. Not one single Republican vote would be required.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Democrats Call for End of Filibuster as GOP Threatens to Block Jan. 6 Commission

    Security forces clash with Trump supporters after they breached the U.S. Capitol security in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021.

    As top Senate Republicans are indicating that they’ll employ their first filibuster of this Congress on the proposal to form a commission to investigate the January 6 Capitol breach, progressives and Democrats are re-upping calls to abolish the filibuster.

    Republicans like Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-South Dakota) and Minority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) have come out against the commission, and others have indicated a general distaste for the idea, fearing it would hurt their party. Meanwhile, Mitt Romney (R-Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) are the only GOP senators who have said they’d vote to end a filibuster on the issue.

    In other words, all signs point toward an oncoming filibuster, which would effectively kill the legislation. It’s incredibly unlikely that Democrats would be able to get nine more Republicans on board with the commission to end the filibuster; even Sen. Richard Burr (R-North Carolina), who voted to convict former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial, has come out against the idea. The legislation could get a vote as early as this week.

    To some Democrats and progressives, the fact that Republicans — the party responsible for the Capitol attack in January — could stop the proposal despite being the minority in the Senate is further proof that the filibuster needs to be abolished.

    Filibustering the bipartisan commission on the attack, tweeted Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), “is a three dimensional way to make the point that the filibuster is primarily a destructive force in American politics.”

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Massachusetts) told HuffPost that the potential filibuster is “one more reminder that McConnell thinks he has a veto over anything that he wants to stop. That’s not what the founders thought when they wrote the constitution and it’s sure not what a Democratic majority should go along with now.”

    Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin told Politico that he thinks the very use of the filibuster is an example of how archaic the procedure is. “When the filibuster is actually used, it becomes an exhibit in the case against continuing it,” he said. Durbin has previously come out in favor of filibuster reform.

    The legislation establishing the commission, which passed the House last week, would create a bipartisan body of 10 — five members from each major party — tasked with investigating the January 6 Capitol attack. Both party members would have equal subpoena power, and its bipartisan setup is already a Democratic compromise from the previous Democrat-favoring structure.

    Progressive House Rep. Cori Bush (Missouri) joined Democratic colleagues in calls for the end to the filibuster, saying, “There are Democrats in the Senate who say that we need the filibuster for ‘bipartisanship’ while Republicans are literally filibustering an investigation into the insurrection that could have killed them. We don’t compromise with white supremacy. End the filibuster.”

    Progressive advocates also echoed the calls for ending the outdated practice. Berkeley professor and former Labor Secretary Robert Reich said, “Does anyone seriously think the Framers would be okay with a minority of senators using the filibuster to block an investigation into a deadly attack on the U.S. government?”

    The potential filibuster even got the ire of Sen. Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia), who is one of the Democrats’ biggest roadblocks to filibuster abolition. “So disheartening. It makes you really concerned about our country,” he told Politico.

    Still, despite his disappointment with the GOP, Manchin is reportedly holding strong to his support of the filibuster. CNN’s Manu Raju reported on Tuesday that Manchin said he wouldn’t favor abolishing the practice even if it means that it would kill the January 6 commission. “I can’t take the fallout,” said Manchin.

    He instead put out a statement with fellow filibuster proponent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Arizona) asking his Republican colleagues to support the commission — though a statement is unlikely to change the minds of the party dead set on sabotaging the Democratic agenda.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • It’s Time for Democrats to Go It Alone on Infrastructure

    Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell makes his way to a Senate Republican Policy luncheon at the U.S. Capitol on May 18, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    Come, friends, let us step inside the moldy brain bucket of Addison Mitchell McConnell Jr. Here in the gloom is a table, and upon that table a single sheet of paper carrying three short words: GIVE BIDEN NOTHING.

    Nothing shocking, really — merely the 2.0 upgrade of the plan McConnell established after President Barack Obama was sworn into office twelve years ago. This age of unreason was not born then, but it fed well on the years of lies and distortions necessarily conjured to obstruct and derail all progress for anyone not included in the GOP’s priorities. Our modern crop of “theories” about stolen elections, phantom Capitol riots and satanic pedophilic Democrats and their Hollywood allies in the pizza shops was well fertilized by McConnell’s fueling of anti-Obama rumors and conspiracies on the right.

    There is nothing, absolutely nothing new here. The press kept waiting for Donald Trump to “grow” into the job of president, failing time and again to realize this was it: He did it like this yesterday, he did it again today, and he will do it again tomorrow. McConnell is a parallel phenomenon.

    The minority leader, as majority leader, was institutionally devoted to elevating the fringe and violent right if it disrupted Democratic governance. He helped turn the mayhem of the Tea Party into a congressional caucus that could throw weight, assisted in several government shutdowns and other acts of disastrous political disruption, and made the use of the filibuster a permanent daily event.

    It didn’t take four years to realize Trump wasn’t going to change. What in the last 13 years, has McConnell done to disabuse anyone of the notion that he is precisely the same wrecker he was in 2008, and even well before? Answer: Nothing. Yet here sit the Democrats, “negotiating” with a man who sees negotiation only as an opportunity to run down the clock … and to fundraise on how he and his people are standing against socialism, or whatever the slogan happens to be this week.

    McConnell will never allow his Senate caucus to support a major Biden initiative. If the Democrats returned to the table with an offer to cut the spending on that bill down to 19 cents and an eraserless pencil, McConnell would take to the floor and announce he was studying the proposal. Days would go by as he laughed into his sleeve, until he’d finally the whole thing back at the Democrats because the 19 cents weren’t budget-neutral and the pencil was made in China.

    The cost doesn’t matter. McConnell will not permit Biden any further victories after the American Rescue Plan if he can possibly help it, and so long as the filibuster exists, he has a powerful tool to thwart it.

    Bundled up in all this, as ever, is Trump. McConnell wants his majority seat back, and he wants a compliant GOP majority in the House. He cannot have these things without Trump, or more specifically, if he gets crossways with Trump and becomes the newest target for the 45th president’s sustained wrath. After January 6, McConnell was about as harsh as he could manage regarding Trump’s complicity, and was called “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack” for his trouble, before being warned by Trump that “they will not win again” without him.

    McConnell heard that loud and clear, and while the Cold War between the minority leader and the 45th president continues, it has not gotten worse. If McConnell starts cutting deals with Biden and the Democrats, Trump will come down the mountain to make war on “Republicans In Name Only,” and a great many people will follow him. It will be Gettysburg and Krakatoa at once, but louder, for the GOP.

    Signs that the Biden administration realizes McConnell is merely playing out the string have begun to emerge. “We’re too far apart. Because I think Mitch’s ultimate purpose is not compromise but delay and mischief,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse this week. The Democratic senator from Rhode Island went on to say that the president is “entitled to his judgment on this. but if I were in a room with him, I’d say it’s time to move on.”

    “White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that the next move is up to Republicans and the White House is ‘not quite there’ at bailing on the talks,” reports Politico. “The main holdups are moderate Democrats, who are signaling they still aren’t quite ready to go it alone on a massive new spending bill, ensuring the plodding talks continue for at least a few more days.”

    A few days. OK, then, that should leave Biden and the Democrats plenty of time to brush up on Rule 304, which I described in detail back in early April:

    President Biden and Schumer got the first one across the goal line — the American Rescue Plan — and going forward, so long as they affect the budget somehow and stay within parliamentary lines, vast new pieces of legislation can be passed simply by labeling them as “amendments” to the bill that’s already done.

    Take Biden’s pending massive multitrillion-dollar proposal for infrastructure reform and repair, called Build Back Better (BBB). Before the advent of Rule 304, and after the passage of the American Rescue Plan, getting infrastructure through this Senate was going to be like rolling blood up a sandy hill in the rain pretty much forever.

    Beyond the fact that 10 Republicans would leap from the Capitol dome before voting to give Biden a legislative win, “centrist” Democrats like Joe Manchin would be ever circling, like sharks looking to take bites out of the prize. With 304? All they have to worry about is Manchin and his cohort, and they are manageable.

    I love theater as much as anyone else, and these infrastructure “negotiations” have been fine grist for the press mill. The clock is running, however, and President Biden’s dance card is filling rapidly with issues far more dire and pressing than how grateful everyone is that he isn’t Trump. So long as the minority leader is allowed to keep “negotiating,” the American people and the country will keep losing.

    “Senate Ds are now unlikely to try using the FY 2021 budget resolution to put together another reconciliation package, according to three sources close to the issue,” the Punchbowl political blog reported on Tuesday morning. According to InfoWire, “Democratic leaders privately say they don’t believe they can finish work by the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30.”

    That is not “a few more days,” and would represent yet another calamitous retreat on the part of Democrats. The Senate parliamentarian has approved the use of Rule 304 on as many as six additional pieces of legislation, all of which can be amendments to the ARP. Not one single Republican vote would be required, and if even some of Biden’s major agenda pieces are realized, the tea leaves for 2022 would be blowin’ in the wind. It’s time to step on the gas.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Florida Becomes 23rd GOP-Led State to Slash Jobless Benefits

    Protesters join together asking senators to support the continuation of unemployment benefits on July 16, 2020, in Miami Springs, Florida.

    Florida’s Republican-led government announced Monday that it will soon cut off a $300-per-week federal boost to unemployment benefits, the 23rd GOP state to take such a step in recent weeks as the Biden Labor Department faces pressure to ensure the lifeline continues reaching jobless workers.

    The Century Foundation, a progressive think tank, estimates that four million people across the nation will be harmed by the Republican benefit cuts, which GOP leaders have falsely claimed are necessary to push people back into the labor force.

    But economists and Democratic lawmakers have argued there is no good evidence behind the narrative that enhanced jobless aid — which, in states such as Florida, is notoriously difficult to obtain — is dissuading people from seeking or accepting work. Progressive analysts and members of Congress have pointed to the myriad other factors at play, such as lack of child care, low wages, and pandemic-related health fears.

    “There’s no worker shortage — just an excess of corporate greed,” tweeted Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “Florida is the 23rd state to cut the unemployment lifeline, forcing people to go without or go back to minimum wage jobs without child care. This callousness is why we need an urgent investment in the care economy.”

    While Florida — unlike 19 other Republican states — is not ending its participation in two federal programs that provide unemployment aid to jobless gig workers and those who have exhausted their eligibility for state-level benefits, critics warned that halting the $300 weekly plus-up alone will have a major impact on Floridians struggling to cover basic expenses amid the ongoing economic downturn.

    Observers have also stressed the damage that slashing unemployment benefits will do to the still-ailing U.S. economy. According to The Century Foundation, cutting off the aid will deprive the economy of $23.3 billion.

    “Florida is the latest state to pull the rug out from under jobless workers as Republican governors nationwide sabotage the economic recovery,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, said in a statement Monday. “By design, Florida has one of the stingiest unemployment insurance systems in the country. Jobless workers will receive just $235 per week on average, and it’s impossible to make ends meet with $235 per week.”

    “No one should face financial ruin for living in states run by Republicans,” added Wyden, who has called on the Biden administration to “explore all options” to prevent workers from losing the key benefits.

    The Labor Department, however, has insisted it is powerless to stop the GOP cuts, claiming there is no legal way to compel states to keep distributing the benefits or to send the assistance itself.

    “There is nothing we can do,” one anonymous administration official told CNN last week.

    But the National Employment Law Project — a worker advocacy group — and Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) have argued that under the terms of a coronavirus relief law enacted last March, the Biden administration has a legal obligation to continue providing the unemployment aid regardless of GOP governors’ actions.

    “Workers who lack access to childcare, have lost employer-sponsored health insurance, and fear for their health and safety as we work to get every American vaccinated are entitled to these benefits,” Sanders wrote in a letter (pdf) to Labor Secretary Marty Walsh earlier this month.

    In recent interviews with media outlets, jobless workers who have relied on the emergency unemployment aid to weather the nationwide economic crisis have voiced fear that they soon won’t be able to afford adequate food, medication, rent, and other needs. The benefit cuts are set to begin taking effect next month.

    “I’m definitely getting less on unemployment compared to when I was working. I’ve had to cut back a lot and just make do with what we got,” Gabrielle Mcginnis, a San Antonio resident, told the Texas Tribune last week. “We’re not starving, but our quality of life has gone down for sure. Next month, it’s gonna be really bad because my partner just got laid off from his job, too. I’m not really sure what we’re gonna do.”

    As HuffPost’s Arthur Delaney reported Monday, “Florida, Ohio, Alaska, and Arizona are only dropping the $300 benefit, while the other states taking action are also canceling federal benefits for gig workers and the long-term jobless.”

    “About half of the four million workers will continue receiving state benefits, which average less than $400 per week,” Delaney noted. “The other half will be left with nothing.”

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney and the Rule of Law

    One could not accuse US Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming of having a sense of irony. For some time, she has felt her party to be the hostage of a ghoulish monster who refuses to be slayed.  And she fears her party has fallen out of love for the rule of law.

    In being ousted from the third spot in the leadership of the Republican Conference in the House, Cheney has found a new morality. In her floor speech, she called Donald Trump’s canard of a stolen election a “threat America has never seen before.”  Opposing Trump’s interpretation of the result was a “duty”. “I will not sit back and watch in silence, while others lead our party down a path that abandons the rule of law and joins in the former president’s crusade to undermine our democracy.”  After her speech, she told reporters that she would “do everything” she could “to ensure that the former president never gets anywhere near the Oval Office.”

    Cheney’s seemingly shabby treatment led such papers as the Washington Post to remark that truth was again under assault. “Truth is the issue upon which Cheney has made her stand – truth and her unwillingness to be silent for the supposed good of the team.”  Peter Wehner, who served in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and the two Bushes, saw the event as a “confirmation that the Republican party is diseased and dangerous, increasingly subversive and illiberal”.  Eric Lutz, writing in Vanity Fair, called the Cheney display “defiant”, laying “bare the cowardice of her colleagues who, with their vote on Wednesday, affirmed what had long been clear: The GOP is the cult of Trump now, and fealty the price of admission.”

    This is gruesomely fascinating on a few levels, given that Cheney comes from a family rather snotty about such concepts as the rule of law, verisimilitude and the Constitution.  Her father Dick Cheney, the Vice Presidential dark operator in the administration of George W. Bush, was not exactly strong on such ideas, and proved rather subversive and illiberal in a number of ways. Old Dick, along with his lawyer David Addington and John Yoo of the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, did much to read executive power in a manner most imperial in nature.

    For Dick Cheney, US executive power needed to be restored after the damaging effects of Watergate and the Vietnam War.  The time that followed, he lamented to reporters on Air Force Two in 2005, proved to be “the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy”.

    It is true to say that Trump also preferred a broad reading of executive power, one all too readily articulated by former Attorney General William Barr. But Cheney, Addington and Yoo were responsible for views that justified the bypassing and defanging of Congress, wiretapping of US citizens, torture of terrorist suspects, the establishment of military commissions, the breaching of international treaties and the waging of illegal wars.  Such conduct has caused more than a smattering of commentary urging the prosecution of both Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush for a range of offences in both domestic and international law.

    It would be churlish to claim that a father’s blackened record should somehow compromise that of his daughter’s.  But the co-authored father and daughter work Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America repeats the old neoconservative interventionist sins that were so important in laying the ground for a Trump victory in 2016.  Father Dick and Daughter Liz supply an apologia for such murderous disasters as Iraq while piling into President Barack Obama whom they stop short of accusing of treason.  “The touchstone of his ideology – that America is to blame, and her power must be restrained – requires a wilful blindness about what America has done in the world.”

    In 2009, Liz Cheney, along with fellow neoconservative Bill Kristol, co-founded Keep America Safe, an outfit steeped in a tattered worldview that proceeded to leave many Americans behind.  As Conor Friedersdorf of The Atlantic noted in a battering piece on Liz Cheney in 2013, “Most Americans understand that investing trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives in Iraq was a historic blunder.”  Not for Liz, who finds wars stirringly necessary.

    Over the years, Rep. Cheney barely warranted a mention after securing the seat her father once occupied. As the third-ranking member of minority party leadership, she was a middleweight power with exaggerated expectations.  Then came President Trump.  The neoconservatives were outflanked.  Fires were lit, casting light upon her cause.  That cause, simple as ever, was an anti-Trump, using truth and democracy as crutches of polemical convenience.

    To date, Rep. Cheney is pursuing a cause of martyrdom that is, like many such causes, futile.  It was a martyrdom that was “well-planned”, as Republican political consultant Keith Naughton noted in The Hill.  “There are no reports she actually worked the GOP caucus, canvassing and counting heads.  Cheney didn’t fight back, she planned to lose.”  In losing, she hopes to rebuild a neoconservative base that has withered into oblivion.

    The post Liz Cheney, Dick Cheney and the Rule of Law first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Only half of rural voters know that Democrats voted to send them stimulus checks, new poll finds

    While not a single Republican voted in favor of the third stimulus check, only half of rural voters in a new poll gave Democrats any credit.

    By: Ayelet Sheffey | Business Insider

    Americans have so far received three direct payments from the federal government in response to the coronavirus. The first two were distributed under President Donald Trump’s watch, but while not a single Republican voted in favor of the third round, only half of rural voters in a new poll gave Democrats any credit.

    A poll conducted by Rural Objective PAC — a super PAC that works to build support for Democrats in rural areas — found that 50% of voters in rural areas associated providing COVID-19 stimulus checks to American families with the Democratic Party, while 32% associated the payments with Republicans, 11% associated them with neither party, and 7% weren’t sure.

    “We’re not connecting with these voters, even if we have great policy,” JD Scholten, the executive director of the Rural Objective PAC, told Greg Sargent and Paul Waldman of The Washington Post, which previously reported on the poll’s findings.

    The poll surveyed 2,149 voters in nine battleground states — Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kansas, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Wisconsin — and while 68% of those voters supported stimulus checks, it’s clear Democrats weren’t getting credit for a cornerstone of President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan.

    Most rural voters did associate Democrats with extended unemployment benefits and state aid, though. Biden’s $1.9 trillion stimulus plan passed using a mechanism known as budget reconciliation without a single Republican vote.

    The first two payments occurred under Trump, who signed payments topping out at $1,400 and $600 into law during the pandemic, but even then Democrats controlled the House under Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

    Some Democratic lawmakers are also calling to make stimulus checks permanent — something that has received broad support from both Republican and Democratic voters and by some estimates would cut the number of Americans in poverty in 2021 to 16 million from 44 million.

    Twenty-one Democratic senators urged Biden in a letter to include recurring direct payments in his $4 trillion infrastructure plan and said “a single direct payment will not last long for most families, and we are worried about the cliff facing unemployed workers when the unemployment insurance extensions expire on September 6.”

    But voters not knowing whom to credit for certain policies is nothing new.

    When President Barack Obama was attempting to expand healthcare access over a decade ago, many voters didn’t want the government to interfere with their Medicare when Medicare was already a government-run program.

    “I got a letter the other day from a woman. She said: ‘I don’t want government-run healthcare. I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare,’” President Barack Obama said at an AARP-hosted town hall on healthcare in 2009. “I wanted to say, you know, that’s what Medicare is: a government-run healthcare plan that people are very happy with.”

    The Washington Post separately reported in 2009 that a rural voter told Rep. Robert Inglis of South Carolina to “keep your government hands off my Medicare,” prompting Inglis to explain that the voter’s healthcare was already provided by the government.

    Scholten, of the Rural Objective PAC, told The Post that if there’s one thing Democrats could use to win support of rural America, it would be direct payments.

    “This was one of the biggest investments we’ve seen in rural America since the New Deal,” Scholten told Sargent and Waldman. “It’s good policy. It should be good politics, too, but right now Democrats aren’t taking advantage of it.”

    The post Only half of rural voters know that Democrats voted to send them stimulus checks, new poll finds appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • New Texas Bill Reduces Polling Locations in Blue and Nonwhite Districts

    With an hour left to vote, people wait in line at Manor ISD Administration building on November 3, 2020, in Manor, Texas.

    A voter suppression bill currently being considered by the Texas legislature would decrease the number of polling locations in districts that are traditionally Democratic and nonwhite while increasing the locations in Republican and predominantly white districts.

    The state experienced high turnout for the 2020 election, especially in more heavily populated areas like Houston. Now, Republicans are targeting those very places in an elections bill, SB 7, applying a formula to redistribute polling locations in the state’s five most populous counties that the Texas Tribune has found would disproportionately affect voters in Democratic communities.

    In Harris county, which houses Houston, all but two of the area’s 15 Democratic districts would see a decrease in polling locations thanks to the new formula. District 141, which is also home to the largest portion of nonwhite people of voting age of any other district in the county — white people make up only 10.6 percent of the population of voting age there — would be hit the hardest, losing 11 polling places.

    All of the districts in Harris county that would be losing polling places are represented by Democrats. Meanwhile, every district represented by a Republican would either not see a change or would gain polling locations. All of those districts have white voting age populations of 45 percent or more, according to census data.

    The Texas Tribune analysis also finds similar trends in other counties. In Tarrant County’s district 90, which is represented by a Democrat and where 77 percent of the population is either Latino or Black, voters would lose half of the polling locations they had in 2020.

    SB 7 would also implement a number of other voting restrictions, such as limiting the distribution of absentee ballots, allowing for more voter roll purges, and limiting early voting with provisions like banning drive-through voting. The bill, if signed into law, would make Texas one of the hardest states in the country for citizens to exercise their right to vote.

    State lawmakers are currently ironing out the final details of the bill, after which it will have to clear a vote again in the Senate and the House. The GOP controls both chambers of the legislature and the governor, Greg Abbott, is a Republican.

    Though the election bill will affect millions of voters in the state, Republicans have shrouded the process of writing and amending the bill in secrecy. The committee currently making amendments to the bill is doing so behind closed doors, much to the dismay of many voting rights advocates.

    Republican Rep. Briscoe Cain also previously tried to rush the voting restriction bill out of committee without listing it on the committee’s agenda, giving journalists no notice of the bill’s movement and the public no chance to comment on it.

    Cain has said that the bill isn’t about voter suppression in his opinion. “I believe it is voter enhancement,” he said this month of the bill that would make it harder for people of color to vote. The bill, which Cain has sponsored, also has language plucked straight out of Jim Crow, including phrases that suggest it is necessary to “preserve the purity of the ballot box.”

    Republicans have been quite open with their goals in this year’s wave of voter suppression laws: they are trying to engineer situations so that Republicans can’t lose elections again. In March, an Arizona lawmaker said that the GOP is passing such laws because “everybody shouldn’t be voting.”

    The GOP has been passing voter suppression laws at record pace, introducing hundreds over the course of just a few months. Democrats — both at the state and federal level — have been trying to stem the tide, but Republicans are forging ahead, especially in states where they control the governorship and the legislature.

    Before the Texas House passed a version of SB 7 earlier this month, Democrats fought the legislation through the night, introducing 130 amendments to the bill. And, at the federal level, Democrats are trying to pass the For the People Act, which would drastically expand voting access — but the Senate filibuster stands in its way.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • GOP States Spurn Unemployment Funding to Force Workers Back Into Low-Paying Jobs

    A man exits a store with a "NOW HIRING" sign in front of it

    As the pandemic raged in 2020, tens of millions of U.S. families were kept economically afloat by expanded unemployment benefits — which lasted longer, were of higher value, and were accessible by more categories of workers (in particular freelancers or independent contractors) than was the case in non-pandemic moments.

    In the first terrifying days of the pandemic and the accompanying public health-informed shutdowns, the economy nose-dived, seemingly with no bottom in sight. Within a month of the initial shut-down orders, unemployment had increased to roughly 15 percent. In states like California, with particularly strict shutdowns, that number was far higher still. Moreover, millions more were likely jobless but statistically invisible, as unemployment offices around the country struggled to keep up with the surge of applicants.

    Going into the summer of 2020, even as some parts of the economy began to cautiously reopen, and even as new business models — such as DoorDash and other delivery services — started to pick up some of the employment slack, unemployment remained at over 11 percent, three times what it had been before COVID.

    Now, however, as we head into another summer, with the pandemic in the U.S. receding in the face of the country’s largely successful vaccination rollout, and with the economy growing again, the GOP has come out swinging against keeping those expanded benefits in place.

    The economy is still 2.8 million jobs south of where it was prior to COVID, the official unemployment rate is still 6.1 percent, and the tepid April jobs report showed the economy only added 266,000 jobs. But Republicans are now arguing those numbers are mediocre because generous benefits are providing a disincentive for people to work. Conservative economists and politicians on the right argue that sufficient quantities of jobs aren’t being generated, and a portion of those that are being generated aren’t being filled, largely because many of the out-of-work are perfectly happy sitting at home and living high off the hog on government assistance. It’s an updated but equally unpleasant version of the 1980s “welfare queens” cliché.

    Even as President Joe Biden’s administration seeks to dramatically expand the federal social safety net, and even as many Democratic-run states have embarked on largescale expansions and reimagining of their own programs, nine GOP-led states, starting with Montana, Arkansas and South Carolina, and followed in quick succession by Iowa, Missouri, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama and North Dakota, have recently rejected federal funds for $300 per week supplemental benefits. In this, they join South Dakota, which as early as last summer rejected the expanded benefits for unemployed workers and instead opted to fully open its economy in the face of escalating COVID numbers. (By November of last year, South Dakota had one of the highest rates of infection in the world.)

    The GOP’s alleged rationale, building on anti-benefits arguments that go back as far as President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, is that high-value government benefits lead to sloth and thus artificially keep a lid on economic expansion. As state-level political leaders fall into line with this ideological policy stance, it looks increasingly likely that in the coming weeks many more GOP states will also opt to reject billions of dollars in unemployment assistance from the federal government. In doing so, they will essentially be signing off on the consolidation of two entirely different employment social safety nets in the country, one a minimalist red state version based around low wages and deeply inadequate safety net protections; the other an expansionist blue state model.

    Last year, anti-immigrant voices in the GOP, such as Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley, urged ever more restrictions on the numbers of immigrants legally admitted into the U.S., arguing that the labor market was so weak that all available jobs should be kept for red-blooded Americans. Now, just months later, they are arguing, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that the labor market is currently so strong that benefits should be slashed for those same red-blooded Americans.

    Each argument is disingenuous. Admitting large numbers of immigrants has always helped rather than hindered U.S. job creation. Restricting benefits doesn’t turbo-charge the labor market; rather it immiserates those already struggling to find a place within that market, and creates a huge incentive for unscrupulous employers to pay bargain-basement wages, knowing that workers don’t have any safety-net alternatives to fall back on.

    If the GOP were serious about drawing people back into the workforce, the party would support living wage legislation. But instead, it has consistently opposed raising the minimum wage, including most recently when Biden made his rather half-hearted, and rapidly abandoned, effort to include the $15 per hour minimum wage in the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan.

    The Republican position on all of this is quintessentially Victorian: Keep wages low at the bottom of the economy, but keep benefits even lower. Force people into the workforce, even if wages are no better than subsistence, and make the process of accessing benefits as humiliating as possible (think of the 19th-century Work House).

    For the GOP base, this might make for good “red-meat politics,” pandering to the views and the biases of dyed-in-the-wool Republican voters. But red-meat politics doesn’t often make for good public policy making. Before limiting benefits to people who are out of work, the GOP should think carefully about the ongoing economic misery unleashed by the public health calamity.

    The peculiarities of the pandemic, and the scale of the economic dislocation it resulted in, have made it particularly difficult to get a comprehensive read on the scale of joblessness and unemployment in the United States; but estimates in recent months have ranged from a low of just over 10 million to a high of about 18 million.

    That’s an awful lot of workers — and their families — still reliant on government assistance to keep above water. And, in consequence, notwithstanding self-serving rhetoric about how tight the labor market is, that’s an awful lot of stacked-up pain waiting to be unleashed on those workers as the GOP uses its state-level power to curtail unemployment benefits over the coming weeks and months.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Pelosi Says Masks to Remain, Since Most GOP Lawmakers Aren’t Vaccinated

    Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi checks out the mask of Rep. Jason Crow during a news conference outside the Capitol on May 13, 2021.

    Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced new guidelines on Thursday that gave fully vaccinated Americans the go-ahead to remove masks in almost every situation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-California) said that the House of Representatives would not be relaxing its rules anytime soon due to Republican members’ refusal to get vaccinated.

    The new guidance from the CDC states that individuals who are fully vaccinated — that is, they have received two shots of either the Pfizer-BioNTech or Moderna vaccines, or the single shot of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, and it has been two weeks since their final injection — do not have to wear masks outdoors or indoors, except when they are in highly-crowded areas.

    “If you are fully vaccinated, you can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic,” the CDC website says, while noting that people still have to follow rules and regulations that are in place within their local jurisdictions.

    After the CDC issued the updated guidance, reporters asked Pelosi whether mask rules would be eased within the House of Representatives. “No,” Pelosi said. House members are currently required to wear a mask on the House floor.

    “Are they all vaccinated?” she added, referring to lawmakers in the House.

    Seventy-two percent of House members are currently vaccinated, but there is a wide discrepancy between both parties on their separate rates of vaccination. While every member of the Democratic Party’s 219-member delegation is fully vaccinated, only 95 out of 212 Republicans are the same, amounting to just 44.8 percent of their caucus.

    It isn’t as if lawmakers aren’t at risk of the virus. Earlier this year, Rep. Ron Wright, a Republican from Texas, passed away after being diagnosed with coronavirus. Wright was not vaccinated.

    The rate at which Republicans have received their vaccinations is comparable to the number of Americans overall who have received at least one shot (47 percent) to protect against the virus. But while lawmakers in Washington D.C. have been able to get vaccinated for several months now, most adults in the U.S. have only been eligible to get their shots since mid-April.

    The vaccinations so far appear to be effective in suppressing the virus. Since April 14, a month ago, the seven-day average of new cases of coronavirus being reported per day has dropped by around 45.3 percent. The seven-day average death rate has also decreased by close to 18.4 percent.

    Most Americans have either received one or two doses of vaccines, but there remains a large segment that says they will absolutely not get vaccinated (17 percent), and a comparable portion who aren’t sure yet (14 percent), according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll.

    Much like in Congress, hesitancy against the vaccines in the U.S. is strongest among those on the right. Within that same poll, 42 percent who identify as conservatives said they are either unsure about getting their shots or won’t do so, compared to just 13 percent of self-identified liberals and 26 percent of moderates who say the same.

    Conservatives are less likely to get vaccinated, some medical observers have opined, because they view it as a way to show their loyalty to former President Donald Trump. Indeed, data appears to show that states with higher rates of Trump voters also have lower vaccination rates.

    While the vast majority of Americans have received or are planning to get vaccinated, the rate at which people are refusing to get their shots is troubling. It’s estimated that between 70 to 90 percent of the population must gain antibody resistance to COVID-19 in order to reach herd immunity. If every person who is hesitant in the Economist/YouGov poll’s findings decided against getting the vaccine, that would mean the U.S. would be on the lower end of or slightly below that suggested threshold.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.