newrepublic--2020-06-11--The Police’s “Sheepdog” Problem

The Police’s “Sheepdog” Problem

Derek Chauvin learned how to be a cop from the Department of Defense .
For eight years , Chauvin served as a military police officer in the Army Reserve , and though he never rose above the rank of E-4—a junior pay grade granted to most entry-level soldiers within a year or two—he played up his military credentials on his application to be a Minneapolis police officer in 2001 , according to Stars and Stripes .
In his time on the force , he accrued at least 17 misconduct complaints .
Then , on May 25 , he put a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for eight minutes , strangling him to death .
In April 2015 , in North Charleston , South Carolina , police officer Michael Slager shot a fleeing Walter Scott five times in the back , killing him , then told dispatchers that Scott had “ grabbed my Taser.
” A bystander ’ s video showed otherwise , and Slager was ultimately convicted of a federal civil rights violation and sent to jail for 20 years .
Slager , who was white , was a veteran of the Coast Guard , just like Scott @ @ @ @ @ @ @ killed .
Two weeks later , in Virginia , William Chapman , a black teen suspected of shoplifting at a Walmart , was shot dead by Portsmouth police officer Stephen Rankin—a white former Navy master-at-arms who , in 2011 , had also shot an unarmed 26-year-old Kazakh cook 11 times in the line of duty .
“ What ’ s the difference if it was one round or 11 rounds or 111 rounds ?
” Rankin had written under a pseudonym on his local paper ’ s comment board .
“ When I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been a good shoot .
In fact , nobody would have really given it a second thought.
” ( Rankin , who was convicted in Chapman ’ s death and served two years in prison , deployed to Kuwait during his Navy career , but not Iraq , records show . )
There is no direct throughline connecting military service and brutal policing .
For generations , the trope of the troubled ( male ) veteran who can ’ t turn off the violence and displaces his traumas has been a hackneyed stereotype @ @ @ @ @ @ @ past decade , as American wars wind down and domestic impatience with police violence has grown—by one estimate , U.S. cops killed three people per day last year—some commentators have argued that military units now exercise more restraint and discipline than police forces .

And while former service members have long been hailed as prototypical cops, the available data disagrees. The Marshall Project found that veteran cops in Miami and Boston were more likely than nonserving officers to have faced use-of-force complaints. The news nonprofit also calculated that one-third of fatal police shootings in Albuquerque, New Mexico, between 2010 and 2014 involved military veterans. A 2018 study of the Dallas police department found that veteran cops were more likely to fire their guns, regardless of their deployment history.
“Policing is not combat, it’s not a war. It’s an entirely different world, an entirely different mindset. Yet the preparation is parallel to the military.”
In addition to a slew of recent high-profile killings of black Americans by cops with prior military service, the Marshall Project report concludes, “Veterans who work as police are more vulnerable to self-destructive behavior,” with little mental health screening or assistance; veterans preference in law enforcement recruiting also translates to adding more white cops out of proportion to most of the populations that they police. “Policing is not combat, it’s not a war,” said Joe Smarro, a Marine veteran of Iraq and San Antonio police officer who is now working to train fellow cops in de-escalation, crisis intervention, and suicide prevention. “It’s an entirely different world, an entirely different mindset. Yet the preparation is parallel to the military.”
When the September 11, 2001, attacks led the United States to declare war on terror, the logistics of American policing changed radically. Initially, law enforcement agencies had to manage the loss of a significant part of their workforces to reserve military deployments; as military engagements in Afghanistan and then Iraq dragged on, they sought to leverage “the valuable skills returning veterans possess and the unique recruiting opportunity” they offered police forces, according to “Employing Returning Combat Veterans as Law Enforcement Officers,” a 2009 Department of Justice report.


newrepublic--2020-06-11--The Black Wage Gap Matters

The Black Wage Gap Matters

The police killing of George Floyd has prompted a stunning increase in the public ’ s receptivity to the Black Lives Matter movement ( which has picked up up 8 percentage points in public approval since Memorial Day ) .
Just as noteworthy , though , is a parallel rise in support for more wide-ranging policy solutions to address the broader problem of racial and ethnic discrimination , as The New York Times has recently reported .
So while this underlying range of issues has our attention , let ’ s consider the striking , but seldom discussed , gap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not to suggest that economics plays any significant role in the problem of police brutality toward African Americans .
( I made that mistake , I was troubled to realize last week , in a front-page Wall Street Journal story that I wrote 28 years ago , after the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles . )
But if we ’ re going to think about the broader problem of white racism , let ’ s think seriously , from a racial point of view , about what ’ s been happening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if you know about it , you probably don ’ t know how bad it ’ s gotten .
As recently as 2012 , when I published a book about income inequality , the consensus was that the pay gap between African Americans and whites was the same as it had been in 1979 .
That itself was a pretty depressing conclusion , given the bright hopes that society had held through the 1960s and much of the ’ 70s that a visibly more racially tolerant American consensus on race would erase , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that were understood to be an artifact of the bad old days .
This decidedly dismal rebuke to past dreams of progress was bad enough–but it turned out that even that assessment wasn ’ t dismal enough .
By 2016 , research by economists Kerwin K. Charles ( then at the University of Chicago ; now at Yale ) and Patrick Bayer ( Duke ) , and by Valerie Wilson ( the Economic Policy Institute ) and William M. Rodgers III ( then at EPI , now at Rutgers ) , indicated that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2000 .
Indeed , Charles and Bayer concluded that the gap had been widening since 1980 ; as a result , the median black-white earning gap stood—in 2016 !
—where it was all the way back in 1950 , when the southern Jim Crow regime still affixed “ White ” and “ Colored ” signs above drinking fountains .

Now the lengthy economic expansion that followed the Great Recession is over, and there’s every reason to believe that the black-white wage gap is accelerating even more quickly than before. That’s because the layoffs hit African Americans worse than the broader population, and the uptick in employment that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday did not include any corresponding uptick in employment for African Americans. Even if an economic recovery has begun, it won’t likely feel like one, with the Fed predicting that unemployment will remain above 9 percent through the rest of 2020.
Another mystery I can’t explain is why the growth in black-white income inequality doesn’t get more attention. Perhaps the public is distracted by black-white wealth disparity and the even more lurid story of how that came into being. For what it’s worth, I don’t find the wealth story all that interesting. After all, even most white Americans don’t have much wealth to speak of. Since the shift away from an agriculture-based economy in the late nineteenth century, the soundest measure of economic well-being has been not how many acres of land you possess, or how many shares you own in financial instruments that nobody understands, but how many zeros you can see on your monthly paycheck. In this realm, the color of your skin makes just about as much of a difference as it did 70 years ago—long before the nation even pretended to care about racial equality.


newrepublic--2020-06-11--Twilight of the Cop Consensus

Twilight of the Cop Consensus

This is the most brutal and expensive way to maintain a stalemate , but as with counterinsurgency abroad it ’ s one that ’ s reassuring to its administrators .
Indeed , this approach ’ s sole virtue is that it is not difficult to imagine .
There ’ s an acid satire in the realization that the leaders of both major parties only know one way to govern , and that it does not work , and that everyone knows it does not really work—but it nevertheless prevails again and again because institutions at least know how to do @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ineffective police state that advances nightly through plumes of tear gas is the dreary and inevitable outcome of the unspoken and unexamined political consensus that the job of the state is to make sure both that the right people are protected and the right people get hurt .
Conservatives actively work to enhance it ; liberals have accepted that their job is to try and mitigate it .
Actually remaking it was , until very recently , not part of the conversation .
It was just not realistic , and so not really @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right elites—right up until the moment it abruptly became the only alternative to an untenable status quo .
“ We have been stuck in this war for so long that we don ’ t know what Baltimore would look like if the war units weren ’ t out there , ” Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg wrote in The New York Times last week ; the two co-wrote a book about how Baltimore ’ s metastatic police department came to victimize the city it was supposed to protect .
“ We can ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our money on hiring more teachers or creating more after school programs or increasing wages—things that address the root causes of violence instead of waging war on our own citizens.
” The work of unwinding dysfunctional policing and imagining a different and more peaceful future will be tremendous ; police unions are powerful and unyielding , and the last few generations of reactionary political drift inculcated a tragic fatalism and passivity among the elected officials who notionally control the police .
At the same time , the failures of the current approach and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clearer by the day .
Everything connects more clearly to everything else ; changes once seen as too radical to consider start to look like the only practical response .
The politicians in charge , at every level , mostly seem overwhelmed , out of touch and behind the curve , and their words and deeds have reflected that .
The police operate as if they work only for themselves— “ Your first responsibility is the safety of your own family and your fellow officers , ” the head of New York City @ @ @ @ @ @ @ letter on the PBA ’ s Facebook page , “ your second responsibility is to New Yorkers in distress ” —and they ’ ve made good on that pledge in words and actions alike .
The conflict of this moment comes down to the willingness to confront a broad and brutal failure as what it is—to accept not only that the state could and should do something more than punish its people where policing is concerned , but that there is another way to be .
Even after well-meaning governmental interventions , police @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to claim unaccountable violence as a right .
Technocratic fixes in terms of training and rule-making have had no real effect on any of this ; last week , an officer of the manifestly overmatched San Jose Police Department fired a rubber bullet into the groin of the 27-year-old community activist who had been running the department ’ s implicit bias training at a protest .
It ’ s embarrassing to behold—the last fully funded institution in the country still can ’ t manage either its excesses or its simple day-to-day duties .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ teeth , clueless and in a blind panic , luridly overfunded and manifestly overmatched—and then proceeds to shit the bed with extreme prejudice .

The flabby, violent, ineffective police state that advances nightly through plumes of tear gas is the dreary and inevitable outcome of the unspoken and unexamined political consensus.
This is the most brutal and expensive way to maintain a stalemate, but as with counterinsurgency abroad, it’s one that’s reassuring to its administrators. Indeed, this approach’s sole virtue is that it is not difficult to imagine. There’s an acid satire in the realization that the leaders of both major parties only know one way to govern, and that it does not work, and that everyone knows it does not really work—but it nevertheless prevails again and again because institutions at least know how to do it. The flabby, violent, ineffective police state that advances nightly through plumes of tear gas is the dreary and inevitable outcome of the unspoken and unexamined political consensus that the job of the state is to make sure both that the right people are protected and the right people get hurt. Conservatives actively work to enhance it; liberals have accepted that their job is to try and mitigate it. Actually remaking it was, until very recently, not part of the conversation. It was just not realistic, and so not really interesting in the ways that interest the right elites—right up until the moment it abruptly became the only alternative to an untenable status quo.
“We have been stuck in this war for so long that we don’t know what Baltimore would look like if the war units weren’t out there,” Baynard Woods and Brandon Soderberg wrote in The New York Times last week; the two co-wrote a book about how Baltimore’s metastatic police department came to victimize the city it was supposed to protect. “We can’t imagine a city where we spent our money on hiring more teachers or creating more after school programs or increasing wages—things that address the root causes of violence instead of waging war on our own citizens.” The work of unwinding dysfunctional policing and imagining a different and more peaceful future will be tremendous; police unions are powerful and unyielding, and the last few generations of reactionary political drift inculcated a tragic fatalism and passivity among the elected officials who notionally control the police. At the same time, the failures of the current approach and the need for something very different become clearer by the day. Everything connects more clearly to everything else; changes once seen as too radical to consider start to look like the only practical response.
The politicians in charge, at every level, mostly seem overwhelmed, out of touch and behind the curve, and their words and deeds have reflected that. The police operate as if they work only for themselves—“Your first responsibility is the safety of your own family and your fellow officers,” the head of New York City’s police union wrote in a letter on the PBA’s Facebook page, “your second responsibility is to New Yorkers in distress”—and they’ve made good on that pledge in words and actions alike. The conflict of this moment comes down to the willingness to confront a broad and brutal failure as what it is—to accept not only that the state could and should do something more than punish its people, where policing is concerned, but that there is another way to be. Even after well-meaning governmental interventions, police lie incorrigibly and egregiously and continue to claim unaccountable violence as a right.


newrepublic--2020-06-11--Reactionary Unions Don’t Just Back Police. They Also Back Fossil Fuels.

Labor unions throughout history have worked toward multiple goals .
While striving to represent and protect workers through collective bargaining , they also function as part of a broader movement aiming to build a world that ’ s better for workers .
Influenced in part by rising socialism—and often socialists themselves—early and mid-twentieth-century labor leaders including A. Philip Randolph and Walter Reuther talked in visionary terms about what an ideal society should look like .
But building an ideal society has always been tricky work .
Today , in a world wracked by compounding crises , labor leaders are attempting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for , what its non-negotiables are , and who it includes .
One point of conflict at present concerns the struggle to build an anti-racist labor movement as unionized police officers continue to kill Black people with impunity and block accountability measures .
There are a spectrum of opinions on how to do that : abolish police unions ; kick police unions out of the AFL-CIO ( as a resolution from the Writers Guild of America , East recently called for ) ; or perhaps establish a set of labor movement principles by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if they want to be included .
Some unions have taken up explicitly anti-racist stances in the past few weeks : On June 5 , the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA Executive Board unanimously adopted a lengthy resolution “ loudly ” declaring that “ Black Lives Matter , ” and detailing a number of steps by which the union will take in the aviation sector , through public policy pushes and within the labor movement itself .
The contours of the debate about police unions might also sound familiar to climate campaigners , having @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of unions whose members ’ work is bound up in fossil fuels .
In a fall 2016 , Laborers ’ International Union of North America ( LIUNA ) General President Terry O ’ Sullivan penned an irate letter to membership about indigenous-led opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline , which the union had over a thousand members working on .
As the encampment against the project at Standing Rock made national news , O ’ Sullivan complained about a “ concerted campaign of misinformation , ” writing that a “ small , but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are environmental activists from outside of North Dakota—have moved from peaceful protest to aggressive tactics that threaten the safety of construction workers , public safety officers , and protesters themselves.
” He went on to call the unions supporting protests against the pipeline—including SEIU , CWA and National Nurses United— “ bottom-feeding organizations ” that “ have sided with THUGS against trade unions.
” Excising police and other workers charged with running the country ’ s punitive criminal justice system may be easier said than done .
Calls thus far have focused on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Police , which is not a member of the AFL-CIO , and the International Union of Police Associations ( IUPA ) , which is .
But several traditionally more progressive unions , including the American Federation of State , County , and Municipal Employees ( AFSCME ) and the American Federation of Government Employees , feature police , parole and corrections officers , as well as ICE and CBP agent unions among their other members .

These are hardly separate fights, however. As those demonstrating at Standing Rock learned, police are willing to use force to protect fossil fuel interests; as protests against both police brutality and fossil fuel infrastructure have picked up, state legislators have pushed nearly two dozen laws looking to further criminalize both. Journalist Amy Westervelt pointed out this week in the Hot Take Newsletter that Chevron—which made a big show on social media about its commitment to black lives this week—helps fund a police force 50 percent larger than those in neighboring cities in Richmond, California, the predominately black and brown city housing its pollution-heavy refinery. Meanwhile, those calling to defund the police are calling for investments in sectors that are already low-carbon and often unionized, including health care and education.
Abolishing policing and fossil fuels are each gargantuan lifts, and climate campaigners won’t be able to do the latter alone: Taking on one of the most powerful industries the world has ever known will require pressure at least as concerted and public opinion–shifting as that put on city governments this summer. As historian Robin D.G. Kelley detailed in his 2015 book, Hammer and Hoe, fossil fuel companies for more than a century have used racism to divide workers against one another, smearing union organizers as outside agitators to break up multiracial solidarity in Appalachia’s coal mines. In more recent decades, utilities have taken to manipulating civil rights groups with generous funding to defeat renewables and energy efficiency measures. Within and without organized labor, there’s no path to a safer and more sustainable society for working people that doesn’t involve overcoming these twenty-first-century divide-and-conquer tactics.
Patrick Houston, the climate and inequality campaigns organizer with New York Communities for Change, which organizes low-income communities of color in New York around racial and economic justice, sees clear connections between his day job and the marches he’s been joining in the past two weeks. “Systemic racism and the climate crisis can’t be separated, both when you’re looking at it through a systemic lens—of how racial inequality makes people more vulnerable to the climate crisis—but also just in a more practical, everyday sense,” Houston tells me. “So many of our members are concerned about the cost of paying rent, concerned about how they’re treated by the police. These things occupy your mind and leave less emotional capacity, time, and resources to push for a piece of legislation that’s going to create jobs in your community in the next five years,” he says, referencing NYCC’s advocacy for a Green New Deal in New York, with support from organized labor.


newrepublic--2020-06-11--America’s Top General Isn’t That Sorry

America’s Top General Isn’t That Sorry

With bosses and colleagues like that , it ’ s easy to applaud Milley for moral courage of some sort .
But the general ’ s apology covered only his appearance beside Trump , not his own troubling role in the violence and terror carried out in Washington by uniformed , oath-swearing American citizen-soldiers during a dark week that three Times defense reporters—among them an Afghanistan War veteran—called “ a debacle for the National Guard.
” That was the debacle that Trump ultimately wanted , after ranting to his military advisers , the nation ’ s governors , and anyone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he wanted to use American military might to squash the protests .
It pitted undertrained , mostly-minority Washington-area National Guard soldiers against their peacefully protesting neighbors and relations .
Milley ’ s reported role in all this , along with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy , was to attempt to preserve the Constitution by allowing Trump to set fire to just one small corner of the document .
As Trump emerged from his bunker beneath the White House , he clamored for the regular United States Army to cross its own Rubicon into Washington @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by Republican Senator Tom Cotton and The New York Times editorial page .
Milley ’ s and McCarthy ’ s subsequent plan to preserve the republic was to show Trump that he didn ’ t need full-time soldiers to crack skulls ; part-time Guard soldiers would do the trick just fine .
Early on in the protests , the Times reports , “ General Milley and Mr. McCarthy warned the Guard throughout the day that if it could not control the protests , Mr. Trump would most likely call in the 82nd Airborne @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the D.C. Guard , which had the only sizable military force on the streets.
” Since Trump first repeated the words of the president ’ s oath , tomes have been written about how intelligent advisers have self-destructed while trying to anticipate or blunt his most childish and fascist caprices .
The military establishment has been no exception to this dizzying rule—redirecting Trump ’ s “ Space Force ” obsession into a dull bureaucratic reshuffling and whittling down his overseas military withdrawal plans by convincing him he needs to secure Mideast oil .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the spectacle of the U.S. military ’ s top general and the Army secretary pleading with National Guard leaders to kick ass in what the Times called “ a last-ditch attempt to keep active-duty troops outside the city .
”

That was the debacle that Trump ultimately wanted, after ranting to his military advisers, the nation’s governors, and anyone with a Twitter account about how badly he wanted to use American military might to squash the protests. It pitted undertrained, mostly minority Washington-area National Guard soldiers against their peacefully protesting neighbors and relations.
Milley’s reported role in all this, along with Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, was to attempt to preserve the Constitution by allowing Trump to set fire to just one small corner of the document. As Trump emerged from his bunker beneath the White House, he clamored for the regular United States Army to cross its own Rubicon into Washington. He was aided in this effort by Republican Senator Tom Cotton and The New York Times editorial page. Milley’s and McCarthy’s subsequent plan to preserve the republic was to show Trump that he didn’t need full-time soldiers to crack skulls; part-time Guard soldiers would do the trick just fine. Early on in the protests, the Times reports, “General Milley and Mr. McCarthy warned the Guard throughout the day that if it could not control the protests, Mr. Trump would most likely call in the 82nd Airborne. The pressure was particularly intense on the D.C. Guard, which had the only sizable military force on the streets.”
Since Trump first repeated the words of the president’s oath, tomes have been written about how intelligent advisers have self-destructed while trying to anticipate or blunt his most childish and fascist caprices. The military establishment has been no exception to this dizzying rule—redirecting Trump’s “Space Force” obsession into a dull bureaucratic reshuffling and whittling down his overseas military withdrawal plans by convincing him he needs to secure Mideast oil. But none of these can remotely touch the spectacle of the U.S. military’s top general and the Army secretary pleading with National Guard leaders to kick ass in what the Times called “a last-ditch attempt to keep active-duty troops outside the city.”


Now Do Lincoln

Running along the southern border of North Carolina , U.S. Route 74 stretches from the state ’ s mountains in the west all the way to the Atlantic Ocean .
And as numerous green signs reminded me while driving it last week , its official state designation is still “ Andrew Jackson Highway ” —an honor granted to the seventh United States president in 1963 , in part because of a low-simmering feud with South Carolina about Jackson ’ s true birthplace .
But after driving east for a couple hours , a new green sign appears at the Robeson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ American Indian Highway.
” Robeson County is home to the Lumbee Tribe , one of the eight state-recognized tribes that managed to survive the Jackson-authored Indian Removal Act of 1830 .
That a Southern state government would construct a new highway that drove through the heart of its largest Native community and name it after one of the main architects of Native American genocide is outrageous but , sadly , not particularly surprising .
The Native population in my home state fought for years to alter the name , signing petition after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Department of Transportation approved the change .
Robert Chavis , one of the main organizers , wrote in The Robesonian at the time that the new name was designed to “ honor all the different tribes that had lost loved ones on the Trail of Tears.
” The sight of the signs returned to me on Tuesday night after a group of people in Richmond , Virginia , splattered the city ’ s statue of Christopher Columbus in red paint , ripped the hunk of metal from its base , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , they spray-painted “ BLM ” on its base and chucked the statue into Fountain Lake .
Five hundred miles north , a group of Bostonians knocked the head clean off their statue of Columbus , the same one that was covered in red paint and “ Black Lives Matter ” in 2015 .
Completing the trifecta on Wednesday night , a Native-led coalition tore down the Columbus statue at the Minnesota State Capitol .
The toppling was praised by Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanagan , a citizen of White Earth Nation , who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ was a constant reminder that our systems were not built by or for Native people or people of color , but in many cases , to exclude , erase , and eliminate us.
” Those statues towered over public lands , were maintained with public tax dollars , and , ultimately , were torn down by the public ’ s hands .
Like I did when University of North Carolina students toppled their campus ’ s infamous Confederate statue , Silent Sam , I drew a great deal of joy watching @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the shallow lake floor .
It was a community-led rejection of a symbol that has long purported to represent the European right to “ settle ” an already settled land .
The act , born of anger and grief , felt like a mass expression of triumph .
In Virginia , people cheered and screamed as they knocked the ode to the colonizer from its perch and hurled it into the water .
In Minnesota , they sang in celebration and reflected on what it meant to tear it down .

Yes, actually.
There’s a joke in Rick & Morty that involves a character known as Abradolf Lincler, a mashup between Hitler and Lincoln. To the standard white American viewer, which is exactly the audience it was probably written for, the joke likely lands without a hiccup. Here is a character that combines the Ultimate Good Man with the Ultimate Bad Man; have a laugh, let’s move on. To a Native viewer—specifically, to citizens of the Dakota nations, Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe, and Diné, Apache, and Pueblo nations—the joke likely lands a bit differently, given that Lincoln was America’s chief executive as its military forces massacred and enacted forced removal policies against these and other tribal nations. The same is true of Mount Rushmore, where President Trump will spend his Fourth of July watching fireworks pop and sparkle over Tȟuŋkášila Šákpe, one of Indian Country’s many desecrated sacred sites. This history is present in every remaining gaudy display honoring Teddy Roosevelt. It’s even the case for the hallowed Lincoln Memorial. All of these remembrances were designed to be partial—to remember the side of history that the U.S. wants to acknowledge. They are a physical embodiment of America’s desire for selective memory and serve as just as much of a cover for colonialism as “Andrew Jackson Highway” or the countless Columbus statues. And they, too, will eventually face their day of atonement.
The question now—and the reason for the fatigue—is: When? If it took 500 years for some Americans to begin disavowing Columbus and 200 years for North Carolina to raise an eyebrow at Jackson, how long will it take for the same public hands that tossed the statue in Fountain Lake to deconstruct the mythos around those who are uniformly viewed as paragons of American progress? Lincoln, Roosevelt, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and countless others still honored across our landscapes are just as responsible for genocide, land theft, and forced assimilation as Trump’s hero. What if we really reckoned with them and their legacies? As my colleague Osita Nwanevu recently wrote, “There’s no telling, really, what we might do as a country if we were willing and able to take in everything in full—if we could review the whole sweep of what we are and have been. But more police precincts would probably be set ablaze.” More statues, too.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--Book Publishing’s Next Battle: Conservative Authors

Before 2024—or , god forbid , 2028—Tom Cotton will almost certainly publish a book .
The Arkansas senator ’ s first book—Sacred Duty , published by HarperCollins ’ s William Morrow imprint in 2019—was a portrait of the Old Guard , which serves in Arlington National Cemetery .
Cotton was a member of the Old Guard in between tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan , and the book was , despite his hard-right politics , apolitical .
The point was to underline his bona fides : Other U.S. senators may claim to support the troops , but here is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( who also really supports the troops ) .
Cotton ’ s next book will almost certainly be of another cursed genre : the campaign book .
It is no secret that Cotton is eyeing the White House , and he appears to be well-positioned as Donald Trump ’ s successor .
A second Cotton book will undoubtedly advocate for restrictions on immigration , argue that Big Tech companies are biased against conservatives , and play up Cotton ’ s insistence that American troops be brought in to shut down violent protesters angered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well as the subsequent controversy his position caused at The New York Times .
The publishing landscape in 2024 , however , may look rather different .
A large , long overdue reckoning is afoot in the industry .
On Monday , thousands of workers conducted a work stoppage—an unprecedented action in an industry with little union representation—in support of the Black Lives Matter movement and in protest of publishing ’ s staggering lack of diversity , both in terms of the industry ’ s workforce and the types of books it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a hashtag with hundreds of entries , has drawn attention to the low advances paid out to writers , particularly women and writers of color .
These have been issues for a long time—Lee & Low has been releasing figures that showcase the industry ’ s lack of diversity for years—but major publishers , including three of the Big Five , have made commitments that suggest something might actually change .
And increased scrutiny is now being paid not just to what publishers aren ’ t publishing , but to what they are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have been cash cows for years .

At the same time, these publishing houses are, like many corporations in the country, being asked by their employees and customers to live up to a set of values. And that would seem to be impossible while also publishing the likes of Tucker Carlson, who declared on his show earlier this week that the protests across the country are “definitely not about black lives.” (Carlson’s most recent book, Ship of Fools, was published by Free Press, a Simon & Schuster imprint.)
Some have suggested that a form of quality control is required. “I’m OK with books being published from different political viewpoints—in fact, it’s necessary for debate and being able to see a whole picture,” publicist Kimberly Burns told Vanity Fair last year. “The problem is when authors write things only to get themselves attention or to make news, instead of to enhance a dialogue. If publishers are going to continue to cash in, as they have been, it’s time for those publishers—certainly the Big Five publishers—to bring in fact-checkers and more copy editors.” The lack of fact-checking in corporate publishing remains a scandal, but there are few signs that any conglomerate publisher plans on making the expensive decision to apply basic scrutiny to its books any time soon.
Fact-checking would, it’s also worth pointing out, make it impossible to publish a great many conservative books. Donald Trump Jr.’s Triggered contains a number of factual inaccuracies. What a fact-checker would make of something like Corey Lewandowski’s Let Trump Be Trump or Nick Adams’s Trump and Churchill: Defenders of Western Civilization is anyone’s guess. Even the more “respectable” side of conservative publishing would have problems. I’m not sure how a book like Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism would fare in the environment that Burns suggests.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--The Fall and Rise of the Guillotine

The Fall and Rise of the Guillotine

Chanting , red-white-and-blue banners waving , crowds infuriated , a guillotine carried through their midst .
A scene reminiscent of 18th-century Paris played out in Puerto Rico on a Tuesday night in June , as demonstrators participating in a Black Lives Matter protest carried a massive , authentic-looking guillotine to La Forteleza , the governor ’ s San Juan mansion .
Two days prior , a guillotine was hauled onto the streets of Ferguson , Missouri , lit by the neon lights of Andy Wurm Tire & Wheel .
If you ’ ve been watching a certain segment of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of guillotine iconography won ’ t be a surprise .
Jacobin , the brocialist magazine , famously sells a poster of one of its early covers featuring a guillotine formatted , Ikea-style : “ Assembly Required.
” The left-wing site Boing Boing has a page titled “ Guillotine Watch ” ( occasionally there ’ s news about actual guillotines ; mainly , it ’ s just stories about rich people doing objectionable things , presumably meaning they deserve to be beheaded ) .
When numerous wealthy families were found to have bought their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country in the Operation Varsity Blues scandal , Twitter became a minefield of calls for the families to be guillotined .
In an article on backlash to celebrity culture published in March , The New York Times noted that “ the # guillotine2020 hashtag is jumping.
” And almost any search on Twitter for the name of a figure disliked by the socialist left—from Brett Kavanaugh to Beto O ’ Rourke—plus the word “ guillotine ” will turn up quite a few results , usually pushed by rose-sporting profiles .
Does the guillotine-happy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ streets ?
Most , likely , do not .
Nor are those shouting “ eat the rich ” —another , possibly apocryphal , reference to revolutionary France—literally cannibals .
Rather , these references are a combination of in-group messaging and out-group shock value , all alluding to a shared radicalism , a shared knowledge of a history of political violence , and a sense of epochal struggle , one that began long before revolutionaries flooded Paris in 1789 and will continue long after the marchers in San Juan and Ferguson are in their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it can all be a tongue-in-cheek joke , or it could be serious .
For those on the outside , it ’ s a shock to the system .
Naturally , anyone who evinces earnest concern can be met with a doe-eyed response : Lighten up , you take things way too seriously .
Whether or not our modern-day executioners intend to deploy the guillotine or simply use it as a prop for a session of rhetorical cosplay , it all nevertheless contributes to the renewed culture of violence in American politics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if violent political imagery leads to violent acts , but the mere usage of such violent iconography indicates that there is a newfound cultural acceptance of violence as a morally acceptable means to an end .
A recent study of “ lethal mass partisanship ” by political scientists Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lilliana Mason found that 15 percent of Republicans and 20 percent of Democrats agree that the United States would be better off if a large number of the opposing party ’ s supporters “ just died.
” What happens when you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recognizable sigil for the slaying of their political enemies , and treat it as an utterly normal part of the public sphere ?

One of the more bizarre, roundabout uses of historically informed violent imagery in American politics is the use of aloha shirts and Hawaiian-inspired prints by far-right activists. The trend originates, the Anti-Defamation League has found, with the 1984 film Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. The title became a joke in numerous circles after the movie’s release, with “2: Electric Boogaloo” attached to other titles in reference to possible or actual sequels (one could, for instance, humorously refer to The Empire Strikes Back as Star Wars 2: Empire Boogaloo). That’s how the world got “Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo,” an initially sardonic reference to a second civil war that the far-right and white supremacists eventually co-opted into a statement of willingness to participate in such a conflict. Since the film utilized aloha shirts, they became a shorthand: Gun-toting protesters now wear them to indicate to those in the know that they support a second war between the states.
“I know this all seems like a joke and easy to dismiss, but that is part of their strategy to lure in young men and downplay what they are talking about,” Reece Jones, a University of Hawaii professor, wrote on Twitter, in a thread explaining the trend. “It is deadly serious. These men are preparing for a civil war.”
Plausible deniability is a common theme in modern political references to historical violence, particularly those on the right.
Plausible deniability is a common theme in modern political references to historical violence, particularly those on the right. It’s easy, if someone objects to the message of a Crusader meme or a professed affinity for this or that right-wing death squad, for the poster to say that they don’t agree with the politics of these groups but are merely interested in their history. That less well-informed people, who are casually interested in history and who fail to do their own research and read the work of professional historians, likely sometimes wind up on the same fora and buying the same merchandise as right-wing ideologues and white supremacists doesn’t make the situation any less clear. As The New York Times’ John Ismay reported, that makes the job of content moderators at social media sites like Instagram even harder, as it blurs the line between discriminatory or violent content and legitimate historical discussion. In some instances, it might take a person with specialized knowledge of a historical subfield to be completely sure which is which.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--I Helped Turn an Empty Hotel Into a Shelter. Then the Owner Evicted Us.

I am a citizen of Red Lake Nation , but I was born and raised in Minneapolis , Minnesota .
My grandparents raised me from the time I was six months old , and my grandad , who I call my dad , was a citizen of the Ho-Chunk Nation .
I am the mother of two living children right now , and I ’ ve been homeless since March 24 .
I used to have a vehicle and a place to live .
I was roommates with a friend of mine over by St. Louis Park .
I lost @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t like talking about what happened .
It was a serious situation where I woke up in the hospital the next day and my roommate had been taken to jail .
When I became homeless , it was the middle of the pandemic .
Before , my roommate and I were watching the news and we stayed home all the time trying to stay safe from the virus .
We didn ’ t go anywhere or do nothing .
So it was hard for me at first to be homeless and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just out there 24-7 .
It was so cold out .
I was on the streets during the beginning of George Floyd protests , too .
I was actually there the day before they burnt down the Third Precinct Police Department .
I recorded some of the protest on my phone , but because I was there when they started tear gassing us and shooting into the crowd , I broke my phone and lost it .
Police violence happens to us Native people too , but we don ’ t speak up @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But we get hit , too .
We have to come out and speak out about this kind of violence .
It hurts me to talk about it .
My son , who ’ s 25 , is incarcerated right now in Hennepin County .
During the start of the protests , I was sleeping in a tent with my boyfriend near the Midtown Greenway Railroad tracks .
But for the last little while , before we were evicted by the owner , I was staying at the old Sheraton on the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ volunteers turned it into a sanctuary for those of us without homes .
My boyfriend and I both didn ’ t have IDs , but they still took us in anyway .
I ’ ve met a lot of people here who have been so helpful , and I ’ m grateful for that .
I would see regular residents and say , “ Hi ” to them .
Everybody just helped out each other , no matter what it was .

During the start of the protests, I was sleeping in a tent with my boyfriend near the Midtown Greenway Railroad tracks. But for the last little while, before we were evicted by the owner, I was staying at the old Sheraton on the south side of Minneapolis. Some local volunteers turned it into a sanctuary for those of us without homes. My boyfriend and I both didn’t have IDs, but they still took us in anyway. I’ve met a lot of people here who have been so helpful, and I’m grateful for that. I would see regular residents and say, “Hi” to them. Everybody just helped out each other, no matter what it was.
I was volunteering, cleaning up the place whenever I could. I’m a very clean person. I’d take the garbage out, pick up linens, vacuum, sweep here and there—I just tried to do something to keep the place clean. It was organized as best as it could be; it just seemed like the negativity came about too much. I’m not a judgmental person. I am an alcoholic. My mother was an alcoholic. And it took me a lot of years to come out of denial about my alcoholism and speak it out loud. So when I was walking around the hotel, I’d ask people, “Are you all right? Do you need something?” I was just trying to help out as best I could. It just needed more security from within the sanctuary community, which is mostly made up of those of us without homes and then some volunteers from the community who helped organize food and supply donations from local businesses.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--The Preachers of the Austerity Gospel Are Back

There was something of a twist in last week ’ s monthly jobs report : In May , the unemployment rate in the U.S. had seemingly declined by a few percentage points , hinting at the start of an economic recovery .
The president was overjoyed by the news .
“ A rocket ship , ” he called the purported rebound .
Following his administration ’ s disastrous response to the coronavirus and his threats to quash ongoing protests over police brutality through military force , Trump ’ s best hope of reelection this fall is , talking heads have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But since the release of the May report , some economists have warned that the uptick in jobs could have been misleading or incorrect .
And in any case , more than 30 million workers remain unemployed .
The rocket ship , so to speak , is probably due for a crash-landing .
As the financial press has noted , though the stock market has fluctuated wildly over the last few months , it ’ s also proven more than adept at resurrecting itself .
Unfortunately , the well-being of Wall Street and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the well-being of the majority of American workers .
( How else could you explain markets surging while the nation reels from mass unemployment and widespread unrest over police violence ? )
On Wednesday , the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development called the current downtown the worst recession in a century and warned that the economy could further plummet following a second outbreak of the coronavirus , which incidentally seems to be in the making after the reopening of several states against public health officials ’ warnings and a rash of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re in the midst of an essentially unprecedented economic crisis , and almost certainly in for a very long stretch of hardship , calls for budget-tightening have reliably restarted .
Austerity is the hammer that thinks everything is a nail , as it were .
Republicans continue to oppose a new stimulus bill even as food banks remain overwhelmed by demand , and nearly half of Americans have lost income as a result of the coronavirus .
The numbers in the May jobs report , shaky as they were , have only given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote on a new relief package .
“ The economic fallout from this pandemic may have bottomed out and begun to turn around weeks earlier than had been predicted , ” Mitch McConnell said earlier this week .
“ Our citizens are getting their jobs back by the millions.
” The 30 million people still out of work probably don ’ t take much comfort in that assessment , but Senate Republicans have vowed not to entertain any further stimulus proposals until July , which conveniently includes a two-week recess right before pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That ’ s perhaps not much of a surprise from the party that fretted over laid-off poverty-wage workers receiving slightly more in unemployment benefits than they made while working .
But as is usually the case , a certain amount of budget handwringing has also started up in ostensibly more liberal corners .
This week , The New York Times editorial board issued a caution to mayor Bill de Blasio against borrowing money to cover the city ’ s funding shortfalls .
Though their proposal identified some legitimate areas of waste—cushy consulting contracts @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overtime—they inevitably also landed on city workers ’ benefits as a site of possible belt-tightening .
“ If the fiscal crisis is serious enough to consider assuming billions in debt , it is serious enough to ask the unions to come back to the negotiating table , ” the board wrote .
“ Among the issues to discuss : the city ’ s exceedingly generous health care benefits.
” That seems incendiary—if not a little homicidal—during the worst public health crisis in a generation .

That’s perhaps not much of a surprise from the party that fretted over laid-off poverty-wage workers receiving slightly more in unemployment benefits than they made while working. But as is usually the case, a certain amount of budget hand-wringing has also started up in ostensibly more liberal corners. This week, The New York Times editorial board issued a caution to Mayor Bill de Blasio against borrowing money to cover the city’s funding shortfalls. Though its proposal identified some legitimate areas of waste—cushy consulting contracts, unnecessary software licenses, sprawling NYPD overtime—it inevitably also landed on city workers’ benefits as a site of possible belt-tightening. “If the fiscal crisis is serious enough to consider assuming billions in debt, it is serious enough to ask the unions to come back to the negotiating table,” the board wrote. “Among the issues to discuss: the city’s exceedingly generous health care benefits.” That seems incendiary—if not a little homicidal—during the worst public health crisis in a generation.
Even if some kind of economic recovery is indeed underway, budget austerity in this moment—even the sort that seems measured, or nominally less malicious than Republican schemes—will only seed the ground for more wide-scale misery. On Wednesday, the Federal Reserve predicted a slow, years-long recovery and forecast that millions of the jobs lost during the pandemic could take years to return, or even vanish forever. It’s also worth recalling that while the recovery from the Great Recession officially began in 2009, it took more than a decade for household income and jobs to return to their pre-recession levels. Then there’s the question of what kind of work might come back, if and when it does. Right before the pandemic, during the same period that employment in the U.S. was at a record high, nearly half of all Americans were working low-wage jobs. The employment rate is one thing, in other words, but the number of jobs that pay a living wage is quite another.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--Shirley Jackson and the Horrors of Marriage

In 1938 , the writer Shirley Jackson , along with her husband , Stanley Hyman , attended a séance at the home of their good friend Jay Williams , an actor , musician , and occult enthusiast .
Williams claimed that he would summon up the devil in the form of “ a beautiful woman riding on a tiger , ” and that once the devil showed himself to Jackson in this shape , she would be able to request from him her heart ’ s deepest desire , “ for a price.
” That Jackson went to meet the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for something secret—for an end to her unhappy and lopsided open marriage ; or the love and the respect of other writers ; or a more appealing face so that her mother , an attractive socialite , would no longer consider her a “ lumpish redhead.
” Certainly , she was unhappy ; certainly , she felt convinced that she was not like other women , but a pariah who had often been deserted or abused by those she loved .
When the time came , Williams made them repeat something that , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , mamaloi , ” a string of “ unintelligible words in a strange language.
” Pointing to a shadowy corner of the room , their host seemed to suggest that he had successfully conjured something from the ether .
Jackson , stunned by her own terror , cried and shook .
The moment stayed with her forever .
Williams , she later said , seemed to have a direct hotline to “ all the borderline evil and the darkness in the world.
” In Shirley , Josephine Decker ’ s woozy and witchy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feasible that Jackson has been somehow cursed or haunted by the devil .
She may also be the devil : vicious , almost insensitive to humanity or tenderness , enlivened by the act of ruining others ’ evenings , others ’ furniture , and others ’ lives .
It is somewhere around 1948 , after the publication of her story “ The Lottery ” in the New Yorker , and a young associate professor and his pretty wife have come to Bennington to stay with Jackson ( Elisabeth Moss ) and her husband @ @ @ @ @ @ @ think that the wife , Rose ( Odessa Young ) , is a wide-eyed innocent , were it not for the fact that finishing “ The Lottery ” on the train— “ they stoned her , Fred , ” she breathes , “ the whole town , even her children , it ’ s terrific ” —gets her hot enough to have sex with her husband .
We might think the young professor is inanimate if he does not occasionally grope his wife , or say something uninteresting about his job .
On @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bohemian party at the Hyman-Jackson home , all bone-dry quips and slouching drinkers , and eventually Rose is so caught up in its welcoming bonhomie that she does the unthinkable and compliments Shirley on “ The Lottery ” to her face .
She does not say , as she probably ought to if she is hoping to amuse the frightening author , that its final scene of stoning got her worked up enough for a little afternoon delight .
“ Rose , Betty , Debbie , Cathy—you ’ re all the same to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , before adding apropos of nothing : “ They didn ’ t tell me you were pregnant .
”

“What happens to all lost girls?” Shirley murmurs, deep in thought about the ending of her novel. “They go mad.” Decker’s films often present themselves as full-blown horror movies, full of shifting narratives and evil omens, even if they might more accurately be categorized as psychodramas, mysteries, experiments, or what was once referred to—somewhat patronizingly—as “women’s pictures.” Butter on the Latch, her 2013 thriller about two friends reconnecting at a Balkan folk camp, begins with a scene that remains one of the most frightening sequences in modern cinema. The subject is a date rape. It suggests that its writer-director, perhaps by dint of her experiences as a woman, has a direct hotline to all the borderline evil and the darkness in the world.
We watch her waiting for her husband’s verdict on a manuscript, in close-up: The fear flickering in her face makes it appear that she is waiting to be guillotined or shot rather than edited.
“I have been so sad all morning,” Jackson’s own unloving mother once wrote to her in a letter, “about what you have allowed yourself to look like.” Much has been made of the lack of vanity in Elisabeth Moss’s turn as Shirley Jackson, the subtext being that it is alarming that she has allowed herself to look like Shirley Jackson: plain, a little padded in the middle, a hag by the standards of Hollywood women, and a woman by the standards of most novelists before the age of Instagram. Moss is arguably one of the most skilled actresses working, a viable heir to Laura Dern in her aptitude for depicting female breakdowns. (It surprises me that David Lynch has yet to cast her, although films like Queen of Earth have done their best to showcase her ability to play women with split personalities, to say nothing of her ability to cry extravagantly on a whim.)
There is one scene in Shirley, near the very end, in which we watch her waiting for her husband’s verdict on a manuscript, in close-up: The fear flickering in her face makes it appear that she is waiting to be guillotined or shot rather than edited, a feeling terribly familiar to most writers with even a passing care for the style and integrity of their creations. Michael Stuhlbarg, too, as Stanley Hyman, is terrific, perverting the benevolent beatnik professor he played to so much acclaim in Luca Gaudagnino’s Call Me by Your Name and adding something simmering and sinister, a sexist wolf in groovy clothing. For all of the film’s horror-adjacent styling, it is Stanley’s muted sadism, his bully-boy malignancy, that proves most devilish of all.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--One Quick Trick for Curbing the Fossil Fuel Industry’s Political Influence

Nationalization could also be pretty cheap as compared to the tens of billions of dollars polluters receive each year and the trillions already spent in 2020 on coronavirus relief .
As Skandier , Paul , and Renzy note in the report , “ While a few years ago taking over just the top 25 oil , gas , and coal companies would have required over $ 1.15 trillion , today a takeover could cost just $ 550– $ 700 billion ( or half of that if the Fed were to acquire only majority control—51 percent—of companies ) .
” Calls @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more regulation on polluters or to build out renewable energy—have tended to sidestep the oil-drenched elephant in the room : that as it lobbies for bailouts and ever-more-generous subsidies , the fossil fuel industry will try and quash anything called climate policy with its virtually unlimited stores of cash .
The traditional response to this from Democratic lawmakers has been to temper emissions reductions proposals so that they can pass muster with the GOP politicians on whom oil , coal , and gas companies rely to look out for their interests .
Even @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the economy while preserving the business model of the world ’ s biggest polluters , there ’ s no good reason to suspect they ’ d go along with it .
The relatively modest and deeply flawed cap-and-trade measure Democrats attempted to pass through Congress in 2009 was predicated on support from some segments of the fossil fuel industry .
When it was convenient , and already scant Republican support started to wane , polluters ’ emissaries dipped out of the grand green-corporate coalition which had been pushing the bill , the U.S @ @ @ @ @ @ @ companies like BP and ConocoPhilips , which had been involved in USCAP , had all the while been paying into powerful trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute and National Association of Manufacturers , who were trying to crush it .
For industry , it was a win-win : If a bill did pass , it ’ d be sufficiently watered down , exempting them from a wide range of regulations .
Better yet , it might not pass at all , and talk of climate action would go away for a few @ @ @ @ @ @ @ latter is exactly what happened , and fossil fuel companies have doubled down on spending since .
In the last three election cycles , Skandier , Paul , and Renzy note—2014 , 2016 , and 2018—the oil and gas industry has made $ 254 million worth of campaign contributions .
Just in 2019 , it spent $ 125 million lobbying members of Congress .
Those who propose nationalizing the industry point out that the fossil fuel industry ’ s leaders are not some fair-weather negotiating partners to be swayed by facts and reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as such .
Their years spent funding climate denial , despite knowing the profound risks posed by rising temperatures ; delaying timely action on the issue ; and continued commitment to a business model premised on exploiting coal , oil , and gas for decades to come , all make them the main obstacle to averting catastrophic levels of warming .
Of course , nationalization won ’ t flip a switch and make Republicans start voting for bold climate policy and environmental justice measures ; plenty of other polluting interests—including Koch Industries—will pay @ @ @ @ @ @ @ stop the flow of dollars from the likes of Exxon and Chevron to Capitol Hill , making more and better climate policy more likely .

Calls for climate action—whether in the form of more regulation on polluters or to build out renewable energy—have tended to sidestep the oil-drenched elephant in the room: that as it lobbies for bailouts and ever-more-generous subsidies, the fossil fuel industry will try and quash anything called climate policy with its virtually unlimited stores of cash. The traditional response to this from Democratic lawmakers has been to temper emissions reductions proposals so that they can pass muster with the GOP politicians on whom oil, coal, and gas companies rely to look out for their interests. Even if it were possible to radically decarbonize the economy while preserving the business model of the world’s biggest polluters, there’s no good reason to suspect they’d go along with it.
The relatively modest and deeply flawed cap-and-trade measure Democrats attempted to pass through Congress in 2009 was predicated on support from some segments of the fossil fuel industry. When it was convenient, and already scant Republican support started to wane, polluters’ emissaries dipped out of the grand green-corporate coalition which had been pushing the bill, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership. Moreover, companies like BP and ConocoPhilips, which had been involved in USCAP, had all the while been paying into powerful trade associations like the American Petroleum Institute and National Association of Manufacturers, who were trying to crush it. For industry, it was a win-win: If a bill did pass, it’d be sufficiently watered down, exempting them from a wide range of regulations. Better yet, it might not pass at all, and talk of climate action would go away for a few years as Democrats lost interest. The latter is exactly what happened, and fossil fuel companies have doubled down on spending since. In the last three election cycles, Skandier, Paul, and Renzy note—2014, 2016, and 2018—the oil and gas industry has made $254 million worth of campaign contributions. Just in 2019, it spent $125 million lobbying members of Congress.
Those who propose nationalizing the industry point out that the fossil fuel industry’s leaders are not some fair-weather negotiating partners to be swayed by facts and reason, and shouldn’t be treated as such. Their years spent funding climate denial, despite knowing the profound risks posed by rising temperatures; delaying timely action on the issue; and continued commitment to a business model premised on exploiting coal, oil, and gas for decades to come, all make them the main obstacle to averting catastrophic levels of warming. Of course, nationalization won’t flip a switch and make Republicans start voting for bold climate policy and environmental justice measures; plenty of other polluting interests—including Koch Industries—will pay them not to. But it can stop the flow of dollars from the likes of Exxon and Chevron to Capitol Hill, making more and better climate policy more likely.


newrepublic--2020-06-12--Spike Lee’s Da 5 Bloods Takes On the Black Trauma of Vietnam

In the final shot of the 1989 civil war movie Glory , the corpse of Private Trip ( Denzel Washington ) rolls down a sand dune and comes to a stop under the armpit of his equally dead commander , Colonel Shaw ( Matthew Broderick ) .
A historical piece about one of America ’ s first units of black soldiers , Glory is an illustration of the difficulty facing directors who want to make fiction out of war : No matter how good the characters , death is always going to end up in the starring role .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ genre of films about America ’ s black military history is Da 5 Bloods by Spike Lee , which starts streaming today on Netflix .
Four old platoon-mates meet up on vacation in modern-day Vietnam , where they fought together , decades earlier .
Paul ( Delroy Lindo ) , Eddie ( Norm Lewis ) , Mel ( Isiah Whitlock Jr. ) , and Otis ( Clarke Peters ) are still alive , but their beloved leader , Stormin ’ Norman ( Chadwick Boseman ) — “ Our Malcolm and our Martin , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s arms in the war .
Now , joined by Paul ’ s son David ( the charming Jonathan Majors ) , the four survivors set out into the Vietnamese jungle once more , to recover their lost comrade ’ s body and something else—something valuable—they left behind .
Da 5 Bloods is well over two hours long and veers between cinematic styles in ways both joyful and bewildering .
Historical footage ( both real and fictional ) is spliced with glossy contemporary scenes , and the first hour builds a solid portrait @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , which was only strengthened by the grief of losing their commander .
The late Stormin ’ Norman , we learn , talked often about black history .
He also taught the bloods to build solidarity with each other through love of man and faith in God , which in turn enabled them to discover their true selves as individuals .
Fighting for a country that does not treat you as a full citizen means living inside a contradiction .
Da 5 Bloods suggests that this contradiction has two chief effects : First @ @ @ @ @ @ @ learn what is and isn ’ t worth dying for ; and second , it begets the kind of intergenerational trauma that has no statute of limitations .
Beneath the layer of blood and the ever-present threat of death , Da 5 Bloods is a study in intimate masculine relationships , specifically black ones , and the way those bonds are exploited in the name of war .

Lee also repeats a device in Da 5 Bloods that he used in The Miracle of St. Anna, his 2008 film about black soldiers in occupied Italy during World War II, which also juxtaposed bloody violence against intense male friendship. In that film, a sexy German woman’s voice spoke to the troops through loudspeakers as they crept towards the battlefront, telling them that it was absurd to fight for a racist country that wouldn’t fight for them. This time, it’s Hanoi Hannah doing the same thing, and it occasions the same outraged resistance among our sharpshooting young soldiers. Although both things probably happened, and it makes for two effective scenes, why do it twice? There are other repetitions that suggest Lee is either being excessively self-referential or is mining his old movies for material.
Da 5 Bloods is an emotionally exhausting movie, because its lead characters are in endless conflict with themselves, one another, and the past. Lee also seems to be in conflict with himself in this movie, as if yanked between comedy and tragedy and unsure which way to go. The result is a maximalist and colorful film, full of plot twists and sudden reversals, swamping the viewer in a sense of chaos well matched to the madness of the Vietnam War.
In the middle of it all, Delroy Lindo glows like an ember about to start a fire, his face a constant reminder that it can be harder to survive a war than not to make it out. In a film about mass extermination, nobody can out-act death—but Lindo comes much, much closer than most.


newrepublic--2020-06-13--Democratic Veepstakes in a Time of Protest

Elizabeth Warren carries none of that baggage and would also lend some heft and credibility to claims that Biden is planning an FDR-sized presidency .
But her chances probably rest on whether Democratic leaders who are ambivalent about the size of Biden ’ s ambitions—and hostile to progressives—fear party disunity more than they value minority representation on the ticket .
This seems unlikely .
Biden ’ s lead in the polls seems to have muted talk about progressive defections , and , again , the salience of the Floyd protests shouldn ’ t be underestimated .
Moreover , while Warren @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insisted that her support among black voters shouldn ’ t be discounted , important black figures who have Biden ’ s ear , such as Congressional Black Caucus chair James Clyburn , have expressed a clear preference for a black woman .
One of Warren ’ s other advantages is that she would be well prepared to succeed Biden should he pass in office—age has been at the front of mind for Democratic and national voters since Biden entered the race .
But there are several other potential candidates with at least state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ few mentioned by the AP , such as Grisham , Rice , and Harris .
Harris appears to be the likeliest pick , as Bloomberg ’ s Jennifer Epstein reported Friday .
On paper and on balance , she makes sense .
She meets representational demands and , at 55 , is substantially younger than Biden .
She ’ s already established a national profile and proven herself competent on a presidential debate stage .
Additionally , she ran to Biden ’ s left during her brief campaign .
Criticisms of her record @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the primary will certainly be revived , as they should be .
But activists haven ’ t yet punctured the electorate ’ s preference for the kind of police reformism Harris and Biden endorse , and Biden may well see Harris ’ record as an advantage—moderate enough , the thinking might go , to further insulate the campaign from the right ’ s messaging on defunding the police without Harris ’ actually having been , like Demings , the head of a police department .
Given Biden ’ s position in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be more likely to hurt him than substantially help him , and Trump has been itching to find a new and viable line of attack .
One of the president ’ s notable rhetorical habits has been his insistence that Biden , as moderate as he might seem , will ultimately be controlled by more radical figures in the Democratic Party .
“ His handlers want him to ‘ Defund the Police , ’ ” he wrote in a representative tweet last week .
“ I want more money for Law Enforcement !
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ running mate will be a focal point of the campaign , particularly if the pick is a woman of color .
Harris , if she ’ s selected , will be both Hillary ’ d and Obama ’ d at once by a president and a conservative press eager to rekindle the forces of political sexism and white backlash .
But the numbers on Trump ’ s worsening position offer good reason to suppose the strategy might not work .
All told , her selection seems like a reasonable bet for observers to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ year has already utterly defied prediction .

Moreover, while Warren’s supporters on social media have insisted that her support among black voters shouldn’t be discounted, important black figures who have Biden’s ear, such as Congressional Black Caucus chair James Clyburn, have expressed a clear preference for a black woman. One of Warren’s other advantages is that she would be well prepared to succeed Biden should he pass in office—age has been at the front of mind for Democratic and national voters since Biden entered the race. But there are several other potential candidates with at least state-level executive branch experience, including a few mentioned by the AP, such as Grisham, Rice, and Harris.
Harris appears to be the likeliest pick, as Bloomberg’s Jennifer Epstein reported Friday. On paper and on balance, she makes sense. She meets representational demands and, at 55, is substantially younger than Biden. She’s already established a national profile and proven herself competent on a presidential debate stage. Additionally, she ran to Biden’s left during her brief campaign. Criticisms of her record as a prosecutor and as attorney general from the primary will certainly be revived, as they should be. But activists haven’t yet punctured the electorate’s preference for the kind of police reformism Harris and Biden endorse, and Biden may well see Harris’s record as an advantage—moderate enough, the thinking might go, to further insulate the campaign from the right’s messaging on defunding the police without Harris’s actually having been, like Demings, the head of a police department.
Given Biden’s position in the polls, any pick he makes will be more likely to hurt him than substantially help him, and Trump has been itching to find a new and viable line of attack. One of the president’s notable rhetorical habits has been his insistence that Biden, as moderate as he might seem, will ultimately be controlled by more radical figures in the Democratic Party. “His handlers want him to ‘Defund the Police,’” he wrote in a representative tweet last week. “I want more money for Law Enforcement!” This suggests that Biden’s running mate will be a focal point of the campaign, particularly if the pick is a woman of color. Harris, if she’s selected, will be both Hillary-ed and Obama-ed at once by a president and a conservative press eager to rekindle the forces of political sexism and white backlash. But the numbers on Trump’s worsening position offer good reason to suppose the strategy might not work. All told, her selection seems like a reasonable bet for observers to make. But, obviously, this year has already utterly defied prediction.


newrepublic--2020-06-15--The Coronavirus and the Right’s Scientific Counterrevolution

Still , while Trump may now loom large over these controversies , it ’ s important to recall that feuds with particular experts are rooted in a dynamic that runs deeper into the administration and the current governing class on the right .
Consider a story from the lead-up to the pandemic .
The Washington Post reports that in January 2018 , a team of science diplomats from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing repeatedly visited the now-infamous Wuhan Institute of Virology .
They cabled the State Department to express serious concerns about lax safety standards at the lab—and specifically warned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bats leading to a new SARS-like pandemic .
The Post reports that “ the embassy officials were calling for more U.S. attention to this lab and more support for it , to help it fix its problems.
” The administration apparently never acted—whether to provide support to the lab or take any other measure to address this warning .
Instead , once the pandemic had hit , Trump officials canceled an NIH grant for American scientists who had conducted research in partnership with scientists at the Wuhan lab .
Much has been made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the administration ’ s hostility to science .
But what is more notable is the administration ’ s apparent failure not only to act on the warning prior to the pandemic , but to leverage the relationship of NIH scientists with their Chinese counterparts—whether to lend institutional support suggested by the diplomats , learn more about the work being conducted at the lab , or exert pressure on the lab to improve its safety standards or even shift its focus away from deadlier viruses .
With such approaches , there might well have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end the funding as a final pressure tactic—and to actually carry through on that threat .
But from what we know , the administration simply skipped straight to cutting off funding after the pandemic was already under way .
For all its talk of swamp-draining , the Trump administration has had no serious idea of what to do with the institutions of scientific inquiry other than neglect them .
Trump officials simply ignored large swaths of the federal science bureaucracy until events forced them into view .
Once that happened , the only @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that of a hostile takeover .
The scientific gadfly can serve as an irritant—and science often needs to be irritated out of its complacency , its reflexive expectation of cultural and political deference .
But the moment the gadfly is put in charge , it has little idea what to do , no vision of how to leverage the institution to reform it , much less renew it .
My colleague Brendan Foht has observed that the prevailing way our culture has talked about science during the pandemic is not as a tool @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an instrument for managing perceptions .
We check virus-tracking sites such as Worldometer in much the same way investors look at the stock market ; we eagerly share the latest study that shows our side is scientific and the other is emotive .
The irony is not only that the Trumpian right co-opted the early expert lines that proffered tut-tutting skepticism—science shows it ’ s not as bad as flu , the real contagion is fear—but that it became even more deeply invested in invoking science as a partisan scorekeeper .
This is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the right with debating the virus ’ s fatality rate .
As Foht writes , knowing whether the rate is 1.0 percent or 0.5 percent does not tell us anything useful about when we can reopen restaurants , or how to do so safely .
All it might tell us is that the crisis is actually imaginary—that , like the geocentrists of yore , we have had the wool pulled over our eyes .
In these corrosive , shallow , interminable debates about science , what is most sorely missing is any talk @ @ @ @ @ @ @ understand how experts arrive at their advice , or how leaders use it wisely , apart from the exercise of judgment .
Though we might think this point is obvious , it is belied by the common image of science as a neutral , even godlike encounter with eternal , capital-T Truth .
With the benefit of a true understanding of the role of judgment in expertise , we would not need the deferential language of “ following the science , ” the condescension of being told our disagreement with the experts is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feeling of earth-moving scandal when experts get things wrong .
We do not need a radical cognitive overhaul to imagine the role that judgment should play in science , for the pandemic has brought it plainly into view .
We are now familiar with the multiple levels of assumptions that go into models of the pandemic , the discretion required both to create them and to apply them wisely .
And despite the claims of many state governors to be merely doing what the science tells them , it should be obvious to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the conflicting advice of experts , into action has required extraordinary acts of prudence .
It is the soundness of judgment , not the degree of deference to or defiance of experts , that ’ s served as the critical dividing line between wise leadership and disaster artistry .
Our politics is beset by the tempting myth that science is an oracle , a referee for the deepest questions about what we owe to our fellows , our families , future generations , and the natural world .
This myth has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how to relate to expertise : deference or debunking .
In turn , it has left us unable to hear in others ’ invocations of science anything other than smug attempts to gain power over us , or brutish refusal to accept the obvious truth .
The pandemic has shown us the perils of science shaming .
But the debunking style it has produced in reaction may pose a graver danger .
The Galilean right senses , not without reason , that invocations of science often function as a mask for social , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trouble is that instead of forging a more humane relationship with science , gadflies on the right have decided to steal that power for themselves .
Entranced by a story about how they have triumphed over the slavishness of groupthink , the Galileans have only become more manipulable , more credulous , more deluded .
In an insightful 2013 essay , M. Anthony Mills drew on G.K. Chesterton ’ s claim that it is not quite right to view a conspiracy theorist as someone with a flaw in his reasoning .
Talk to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ you may well be flummoxed at the discovery that he has a better command of the research than you do , that he can answer and dodge and weave until you quit in exhaustion .
He may even be capable of “ saving the appearances ” —of offering an explanation for all the observable facts .
“ The problem , ” Mills writes , “ is not so much a flaw in his reasoning but that his whole reasoning process has become unmoored .
‘ The madman is not the man who has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the man who has lost everything except his reason.
’ ” The trouble with the Galilean right is not that its partisans have lost their reason—really they have it in perverse excess—but rather that in their war against the establishment they have lost their sense .
Judgment has given way to technique , coherence to deconstruction , the picture of the whole has broken apart into skillful scribbles .
Cast out of the hall of scientific power , intoxicated and giddy , they discover that science has given them the tools to blow @ @ @

We do not need a radical cognitive overhaul to imagine the role that judgment should play in science, for the pandemic has brought it plainly into view. We are now familiar with the multiple levels of assumptions that go into models of the pandemic, the discretion required both to create them and to apply them wisely. And despite the claims of many state governors to be merely doing what the science tells them, it should be obvious to any observer that translating the fragmentary evidence, and the conflicting advice of experts, into action has required extraordinary acts of prudence. It is the soundness of judgment, not the degree of deference to or defiance of experts, that’s served as the critical dividing line between wise leadership and disaster artistry.
Our politics is beset by the tempting myth that science is an oracle, a referee for the deepest questions about what we owe to our fellows, our families, future generations, and the natural world. This myth has offered us only two explicit options for how to relate to expertise: deference or debunking. In turn, it has left us unable to hear in others’ invocations of science anything other than smug attempts to gain power over us, or brutish refusal to accept the obvious truth.
The pandemic has shown us the perils of science shaming. But the debunking style it has produced in reaction may pose a graver danger. The Galilean right senses, not without reason, that invocations of science often function as a mask for social, rhetorical, and political power. The trouble is that instead of forging a more humane relationship with science, gadflies on the right have decided to steal that power for themselves. Entranced by a story about how they have triumphed over the slavishness of groupthink, the Galileans have only become more manipulable, more credulous, more deluded.
In an insightful 2013 essay, M. Anthony Mills drew on G.K. Chesterton’s claim that it is not quite right to view a conspiracy theorist as someone with a flaw in his reasoning. Talk to a committed anti-vaxxer or just-the-flu-er, and you may well be flummoxed at the discovery that he has a better command of the research than you do, that he can answer and dodge and weave until you quit in exhaustion. He may even be capable of “saving the appearances”—of offering an explanation for all the observable facts. “The problem,” Mills writes, “is not so much a flaw in his reasoning but that his whole reasoning process has become unmoored. ‘The madman is not the man who has lost his reason. The madman is the man who has lost everything except his reason.’”
The trouble with the Galilean right is not that its partisans have lost their reason—really they have it in perverse excess—but rather that in their war against the establishment they have lost their sense. Judgment has given way to technique, coherence to deconstruction, the picture of the whole has broken apart into skillful scribbles. Cast out of the hall of scientific power, intoxicated and giddy, they discover that science has given them the tools to blow it up.


newrepublic--2020-06-15--Can the Never Trumpers Deliver the Goods in 2020?

The Republicans dedicated to the defeat of Donald Trump—known as “ Never Trumpers ” —are enjoying a moment of renewed interest in their cause .
They are among the president ’ s sharpest critics , and many hold prominent positions as columnists for The Washington Post , The New York Times , and other publications .
Although those on the left welcome their assistance in defeating Trump , some are also skeptical of them , fearing they want more than just a repudiation of Trumpism ; they may also want to move the Democratic Party rightward to a more moderate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book , Never Trump : The Revolt of the Conservative Elites , by the political scientists Robert P. Saldin of the University of Montana and Steve M. Teles of Johns Hopkins , provides some insights .
They argue that the Never Trumpers have undergone a significant transformation since 2016 .
Before the election , many opposed Trump not so much because they found his policy positions abhorrent , but because they supported rival GOP candidates or thought Trump was unelectable .
But they were also alienated from Trump by his rejection of policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intellectuals—academics , think tank scholars , and others who saw themselves as the principal source of the party ’ s policy ideas .
After the election , 2016 ’ s Never Trumpers split : Some made peace with Trump , perhaps reluctantly , or because he was good enough on the issues they really cared about .
Republican legal scholars , for example , have been delighted by Trump ’ s appointments to the federal bench .
However , other Never Trumpers became so disgusted by his performance in office that they left @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leaves the GOP , one is not really a Never Trumper anymore—that term implies a critic from within the party .
And once such dissidents have moved outside the party , there is little to distinguish them from Democrats except for their pedigree .

They define Never Trumpers as people who identify themselves as Republicans but voted against Trump in the 2016 primaries and also against him in the general election. Back then, they represented about 10 percent of the Republican electorate. By and large, Barber and Pope find these voters to be moderates, by Republican standards. They tend to be younger, wealthier, and better educated than the hard-core Trump supporters who voted for him in both the primaries and the general election.
The average Never Trumper had an income in the $70,000 to $80,000 range, while the strong Trump supporter earned an annual income between $50,000 to $60,000. The former was likely to have a degree from a four-year college, while the latter only had some college and no degree. The average Never Trumper was 49 years old, while a strong Trump supporter boasted an average age of 59. And Never Trumpers were likely to be employed full-time, while hard-core Trump supporters were more likely to be retired.
Confusingly, the authors note that Trump was viewed by many Republicans as the more moderate candidate among those running for the GOP nomination in 2016. One would have thought that many in the Never Trumper camp might have been attracted to him for that reason. In fact, his electoral support came mainly from among those identifying as strong conservatives, while the Never Trumpers voted for Hillary Clinton.


newrepublic--2020-06-15--Why Conservatives Believe a Chinese Lab Created the Coronavirus

As the United States struggled to contain the initial onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic , a few conservatives peddled an outlandish theory to explain the origins of the disease .
The virus , they claimed , did not emerge in the Wuhan market where most experts believe it appeared , but at the Wuhan Institute of Virology , a research laboratory about eight miles away .
In late January , The Washington Times suggested that scientists at the lab had developed the disease as part of China ’ s biowarfare program .
Even after an article in Nature found that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it could not be a “ laboratory construct , ” the theory had no trouble mutating into a new , more durable form : If the virus hadn ’ t been manufactured , perhaps it had escaped the lab by accident , the product not of biowarfare but of unsanitary Chinese negligence .
The media personality who jumped farthest down this rabbit hole was not a Fox host or a Breitbart hack , but the center-right blogger Jim Geraghty of the National Review , who was , before now , mostly known for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Geraghty analyzed translated media reports and amateur YouTube videos to identify “ the trail leading back to the Wuhan labs , ” theorizing that researchers may have brought a bat to the lab from a cave and inadvertently been splashed by its blood while studying it .
“ This wasn ’ t bioterrorism , ” he warned a few weeks later , “ but the next virus could be deliberate.
” When mainstream news outlets reported that most experts considered the Wuhan facility to be secure , he conceded that they had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ can we be sure that no researcher at any point made any mistakes ?
” Soon , Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas was accusing the “ Chinese Communist Party ” of releasing the virus through willful negligence , and Donald Trump was hinting that researchers had let the virus loose by “ mistake ” —a classic act of Trumpian projection designed to distract from the many disastrous miscues his administration has committed in its efforts to contain the virus .
This is not the first time an American politician has tried to pin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the surgeon general blamed Chinese immigrants for a bubonic plague outbreak , calling it an “ Oriental disease , peculiar to rice eaters.
” But the Wuhan lab theory is particularly worrying , since it has caught on not just with fringe conspiracy theorists and the occasional rogue health official but with politicians at the very highest levels of government .
Hawks such as Cotton have sought to confront China for years ; now , they can accuse Xi Jinping ’ s government of a crime far worse than currency manipulation or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Republicans believe the virus came from the Wuhan lab , and as the election approaches , Trump is sure to look for a place to focus the anger of his base .
And if the ideologues around him parlay their pet theory into an act of aggression against China , the cure may indeed prove worse than the disease .

As the United States struggled to contain the initial onslaught of the coronavirus pandemic, a few conservatives peddled an outlandish theory to explain the origins of the disease. The virus, they claimed, did not emerge in the Wuhan market where most experts believed it had appeared, but at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a research laboratory about eight miles away.* In late January, The Washington Times suggested that scientists at the lab had developed the disease as part of China’s biowarfare program. Even after an article in Nature found that the chemical structure of the virus proved it could not be a “laboratory construct,” the theory had no trouble mutating into a new, more durable form: If the virus hadn’t been manufactured, perhaps it had escaped the lab by accident, the product not of biowarfare but of unsanitary Chinese negligence.
The media personality who jumped farthest down this rabbit hole was not a Fox host or a Breitbart hack, but the center-right blogger Jim Geraghty of the National Review, who was, before now, mostly known for straightforward election commentary. In early April, Geraghty analyzed translated media reports and amateur YouTube videos to identify “the trail leading back to the Wuhan labs,” theorizing that researchers may have brought a bat to the lab from a cave and inadvertently been splashed by its blood while studying it. “This wasn’t bioterrorism,” he warned a few weeks later, “but the next virus could be deliberate.”


newrepublic--2020-06-15--The Atlantic Coast Pipeline Battle Is About People, Not Precedent

Decision day at the Supreme Court on Monday brought joy and justice for the LGBT community .
But it also handed severe setbacks to others—specifically , the Appalachian and Southern communities who happen to live along the 600-mile planned route of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline ( ACP ) .
In late 2018 , the Fourth Circuit found that the Forest Service had broken federal law by approving the pipeline ’ s route through National Park Service lands in the George Washington National Forest—the latest route has the pipeline crossing the Appalachian Trail 34 times .
Monday , the Supreme Court @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; Justice Clarence Thomas authored the opinion in United States Forest Service vs. Cowpasture River Association , with only Justices Sonya Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissenting .
Without diving too deep into the weeds , the court ’ s reasoning was that the Mineral Leasing Act allows the Forest Service to issue permits on pipelines that cross through national forest land .
As North Carolina State associate professor and Lumbee Tribe member Dr. Ryan Emanuel pointed out on social media three weeks ago , the Supreme Court ’ s ruling is not a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ partners in the ACP venture .
The high court ’ s ruling will now trigger a case in the D.C .
Circuit Court .
That case looks at the “ Kafkaesque ” process , in one judge ’ s words , by which federal permits are obtained by energy companies .
There ’ s also the matter of getting approval for the pipeline to cross Blue Mountain Parkway , and approval for construction of the compressor station in Union Hill , whose environmental justice review was sharply condemned by the Fourth Circuit in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countered by HB 167 , a Virginia state law passed in April that is designed to prevent energy companies from forcing customers to pay for unnecessary gas pipelines .
This legislation is particularly interesting in light of recent reports that the region in Virginia that ACP is planned for already boasts a 35 percent energy surplus , one that S & P Global predicts will grow to 60 percent within the next seven years .
The fight , in short , is far from over .
But as analysis of the legal ramifications @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to remember that this is not only about setting precedent for whether the pipelines enabling global warming should be allowed to cross under national forests or heavily used trails ( they shouldn ’ t ) ; as the battle over the ACP continues , the nation ought to take a moment of self-reflection and ask itself why everybody with a modicum of power—judges , federal regulators , energy companies , and local , state , and federal politicians on both sides of the aisle—continues to enable a pipeline model that targets communities of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ towns with pinpoint precision .

The main public relations approach Dominion and Duke Energy have employed to obscure this pattern is the same one employed by every other natural gas or oil pipeline backer: promising temporary construction jobs for impoverished communities to make the project seem like an economically viable and necessary undertaking. What the energy companies typically fail to include in their sales pitches is that many of these jobs require specialty training that leads energy companies to bring in outside labor, leaving only a few dozen permanent positions remaining for the affected local economies. But even were this widely known, it wouldn’t help the fact that these communities have also been systematically marginalized in the political processes through which such decisions are made. North Carolina is just now beginning to unwind the damage done by a decade of Republican supermajority dominance in the state legislature, which resulted in electoral maps that did everything possible to diminish the strength of the Black vote.
Pipeline companies like Dominion and their main ACP partner, Duke Energy, have also tried to curb resistance before community members have an opportunity to decide democratically what is truly best for the place they call home. This was particularly clear last January, when NC Policy Watch’s Lisa Sorg reported that Dominion offered the four tribes along ACP’s route—in North Carolina, the Haliwa-Saponi and the Lumbee; in Virginia, the Monacan Indian Nation and Rappahannock Indian Tribe—a $1 million payoff per tribe if they would sign a document to declare their support for the project.
Take a visit to the official ACP website, and all you’ll find on the pipeline’s communications with Native communities is the FAQ line that, “communication with Federally and State/Commonwealth recognized American Indian tribes that may be impacted by ACP has been ongoing through the life of the project”—a funny way to say that input from these communities has been repeatedly rejected. Even if they remain divided by the offer on the table, many tribal citizens and other communities have raised their objections to the project and its attempt to exploit a struggling economy. Lumbee Tribal Chairman Harvey Goodwin Jr. has stood tall against the ACP, as have the residents of Union Hill.